Doctor Who_ Sleepy - Kate Orman [90]
Professor Summerfield was wandering around and around the clearing. Dawn had seen them using the excavators to cut great trenches in the soil on each side of the buried ship, but she’d made them switch them off before they got close to the actual hull.
Now she was brandishing a shovel and several smaller tools, supervising a group of colonists. Chesinen didn’t like being outnumbered, but all the troopers were gone now, evacuated. It was just the lieutenants and the telepathic Yemayans.
‘Careful with that!’ Benny shouted, hopping down into one of the trenches. ‘Try not to break anything that isn’t already broken. You see? More like this.’
Munoru came over to Chesinen. ‘Where’s your armour?’
said the Kikuyu.
‘What good’s it going to do me?’
He nodded thoughtfully, and started tugging at the catches of his own suit. ‘I’m still not completely clear on why we’re doing this.’
‘Orders are orders.’
Munoru snorted. ‘No-one’s seen White since you got permission to go ahead with this last night. Possibly he’s wandered off into the forest and shot himself.’
‘We’d know.’
‘Would we? The inside of my head feels like it’s been scraped raw. I think that blast did us more damage than we realized.’
Chesinen nodded a little. ‘It’s been easier to talk than esp for a while now, hasn’t it? Listen, we’re doing this because—’
She looked up sharply at an engine noise, but it was just an Olpiron shuttle, its silver hull glittering sharply in the morning light. It disappeared behind the trees. There was a clearing a couple of hundred feet away that they’d been using as a landing base.
‘Because of him,’ said Munoru.
‘Yes,’ said Chesinen.
‘You know,’ said the older lieutenant, ‘White said something to me about not running the show. The Doctor’s been running it all along, he said.’
Chesinen shrugged.
‘He was getting people in and out of the dome the whole time we thought we had it locked down. He travels through time, for God’s sake!’
‘I know. That’s why I think he’s the best person to be deciding what to do now.’
The Doctor jogged into the clearing. Chesinen and Munoru were standing on the opposite side talking — about him, he presumed, from the way they sprang awkwardly apart. He raised his fedora to them.
‘Doctor!’ Benny called, waving at him from a deep and muddy trench. He stepped up to its edge.
SLEEPY’s stolen shuttle was barely twenty feet long.
The worst damage had been done to the stern. There was a visible entry point where the miniature missile had punched in, a great hole in the other side where it had exited, blowing pieces of SLEEPY’s metal skin all over the landscape. The holes were charred and melted where the internal fire had raged.
‘Believe it or not,’ said Benny, ‘this thing could still fly.
The damage looks a lot worse than it actually is. The engine fire should’ve wrecked most of the inside, but the impact must have snuffed it out a few seconds after it started.’
‘And the computer?’
JUST FINE, THANK YOU.
The Doctor reeled back. ‘A little less volume, if you please!’ he yelped.
Sorry, esped SLEEPY. As the Yemayans lose their telepathic abilities, I’ve had to start SHOUTING to get their attention.
‘Soon they won’t be able to hear you at all. We’ll have to hook up a communications system. But the priority for now is to get you out of the ground and fix whatever can be fixed.’
Can you slave the ship’s computer to the colony’s mainframe? SLEEPY wanted to know. It’s hell in this tin.
The Doctor grinned. ‘You read my mind.’
‘I wish I could,’ protested Benny, but the Doctor was too wrapped up in his one-sided conversation to notice her.
How’s the evacuation going?
‘We’ve got everyone to safety that we can. Everyone who’s carrying your memories is here. And we have the other three of the lieutenants, and I expect Colonel White is about the place somewhere.’
Going quietly mad.
‘Very probably. If there were enough people and enough time I’d send someone to sort him out, but he’ll have to wait until afterwards.’ The Doctor glanced at