Doctor Who_ Prime Time - Mike Tucker [3]
Clamping one hand over his ears the Doctor scrabbled desperately for the volume control. The music faded to a tolerable level. The Doctor stared at the screen, then adjusted some more instruments.
His eyes narrowed.
He gave a deep sigh, crossed back to his chair and slid an elegant leather bookmark into his book.
‘Ah well, it was too good to last.’
He placed the book on the chess table, crossed to the door, and bellowed into the gloom.
‘Ace!’
Ace was cycling at nearly forty miles an hour when she heard the Doctor calling her name. She let the bike coast to a halt, drawing in deep breaths of mountain air. She sat for a moment, drinking in the view, then slipped off the VR
headset. She clambered off the cycling machine and crossed the gym, pulling her towel from the rail on the wall and wrapping it around her neck. Her muscles throbbed pleasantly.
It had been a good work-out.
‘Ace!’
The Doctor’s voice drifted down from the console room again. Funny how she could always hear him no matter where she was in the TARDIS. Not that the reverse was true of course. Oh no. Once he vanished into the maze of corridors you could never find him. Not unless there was something interesting to look at. Then he had an uncanny knack of appearing in the console as if by magic. But if you wanted him to do the washing-up...
‘Ace, come and look at this!’
‘Coming, Professor.’
She began to jog towards the console room, padding softly through the pale TARDIS corridors. It always felt as though you were going uphill when you headed for the control room, nothing that you could measure, more of a feeling, but it always felt as though it was at the highest part of the ship.
She crossed the ivy-tangled square of the cloister room and increased her pace. Might as well keep her work-out going to the bitter end.
The door of the control room appeared at the end of the corridor, and suddenly the model of the Flying Scotsman appeared at her feet. Keeping pace with it Ace sprinted towards the doorway.
She and the train burst into the control room at the same time, the model letting out a triumphant whistle.
The Doctor looked at her, eyebrows raised. ‘I hope you’ve got a ticket.’
Ace nodded,‘First class.’ She slumped into one of the chairs. ‘What’s up, Professor?’
The Doctor nodded at the scanner screen, and twisted a dial on the console.
Laughter and cheering and brash synthesiser music blared from the speakers. Ace clamped her hands over her ears.
‘Bloody hell, Professor!’
The music ended with a crash of cymbals and a large man, his face plastered with make-up, his suit garish and glittery, loomed into view.
‘Thank you, folks, thank you! You’re back with Roderik Saarl, live on Channel 400, broadcasting throughout the galaxy, bringing you the best in news, views and top-class entertainment! Tonight we investigate the increasing problems of Ogrons. On every street corner, in every city on an increasing number of planets, innocent passers-by are being subjected to...’
The Doctor cut off the sound and turned to look at her.
‘Well?’
Ace rubbed at her ears. ‘Well, what?’
‘Did you notice anything strange, anything unusual?’
‘Other than the colour of that man’s face, you mean?’
The Doctor glared at her. ‘Ace!’
‘No, Professor! Nothing unusual! It’s a television show, that’s all, and not a very good one.’
The Doctor turned back to the console, adjusting controls, tapping his teeth, peering intently at the screen.
Ace pulled the towel from around her neck and began to rub at her hair. ‘If you’re going to watch TV then you can probably find something a bit better than that. I thought documentaries would be more your thing, you know, nice wildlife programmes.’
The Doctor shot her a filthy look.
‘I would hardly be scrutinising this...’ he waggled his hands at the screen,‘This, entertainment, if I didn’t have good reason. What has completely passed you by is the signal encoded in the transmission.