Doctor Who_ Match of the Day - Chris Boucher [77]
„Sooner or later everybody dies,‟ the pilot said. „Trick is to make it later rather than sooner.‟
Leela was floating closer to the wall, but this time she was careful not to reach out and push haphazardly but rather to wait until she was close enough to it to use the surface in a more controlled way. She tucked her knees up against her chest and put her arms round her legs and in this position let herself bump gently against the soft foam. She stayed folded in a ball waiting for the best angle and when she felt herself beginning to drift away from the surface again she straightened her body, held her arms out in front of her, and kicked off with her legs. She flew the length of the cabin faster than she had expected but then she found it easy to slow herself by putting her hands flat against the surface she was approaching and letting her arms relax. She was not fully under control but she was no longer completely helpless. With practice she felt she could master this weightlessness. She would practise, she decided. She pushed herself off again. Practising would not be difficult. This was fun.
„I‟m sorry to spoil your fun,‟ the pilot said over the proximity speakers, „but before you get too carried away, we‟re coming up on the first navigation vector point.‟
„What does that mean?‟ Leela asked. Showing ignorance of technical detail was not a dangerous sign of Weakness, she decided. It could work the opposite way in fact because it would flatter the pilot, which might put him at his ease and make him careless.
„It means the main drive will be kicking in for... let‟s see now... thirty hours or so. Then there‟ll be twenty hours weightless... after which it‟ll be full main drive for the rest of the trip. Assuming they make it to the rendezvous coordinates at the agreed time and I don‟t have to make a whole bunch of adjustments, I should be able to hand you over before we become so bored with each other‟s company that death seems like an entertaining alternative.‟
„I have nothing by which to measure the passing of time,‟
Leela said.
„Sorry about that,‟ the pilot said, sounding smugly amused again. „You‟ll just have to take my word for it, won‟t you.‟
Leela asked, „You will warn me when these things are about to happen?‟
„I will indeed,‟ he said, and immediately intoned: „Main engine burn begins in five; four; three; two; one. Burn is initiated, we have white lights on all boards, acceleration is steady and rising.‟
Leela heard the engine‟s vibration softly murmuring in the air and felt the smallest beginnings of a directional change in her, now not quite weightless, glide.
Chapter Thirteen
As far as he could remember, the Doctor had never been the getaway driver in an actual, genuine jailbreak before and he was finding it rather exhilarating. He sat in the driver‟s seat of the illegal, unregistered runner that Sergeant Ronick had provided and watched the fat policeman strolling with Sita Benovides in the grounds of the police lock-up. At some point the two of them were going to make a run for the motorway, on the hard shoulder of which the runner was parked. The computer was programmed, the runner‟s drive was ticking over and the Doctor was ready to do his part. Of course getaway driver was a relative term, he thought ruefully. All he actually had to do was to operate the passenger doors and then release the brakes so that the runner would move off and slot smoothly and unremarked into the constant stream of motorway traffic. It was not strictly necessary for him to be here at all, he realised, except that Ronick had clearly wanted him involved. The Doctor was not sure whether this was because he saw it as a test of their new partnership, or because he thought that a senior undercover officer in state