Doctor Who_ Space War - Malcolm Hulke [1]
In a gloomy corner of one of the spaceship’s cargo holds stood the TARDIS. It looked, as ever, like an old-fashioned London police box. But its appearance was deceptive, for the TARDIS was a highly-advanced Time and Space ship, designed and built by the Time Lords. Doctor Who, himself a Time Lord, stole his TARDIS because he desperately wanted to travel and see the wonders of the Universe. However, the one he stole had two major faults. For one thing he could never get it to go exactly where he wanted. It seemed to have a mind of its own. The other fault was that TARDISES were designed to change their appearance on arrival so as to fit in with the local background. On the Doctor’s first trip the TARDIS worked well enough to make itself look like a police box, but after that its appearance never changed again.
Though small on the outside, the interior of the TARDIS was huge, a very large and modern control room with the Time and Space mechanism in the centre.
Standing now in the corner of the cargo hold, the TARDIS looked very out of place. One of the doors flung open and a pretty young woman stepped out. Jo Grant was in a flaming temper.
‘I’m never going in that thing again,’ she shouted back into the TARDIS.
Jo Grant had always wanted to be a lady spy, and hoped that her uncle, an important Civil Servant, would help her achieve that ambition. Instead he had her employed by UNIT, the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, where Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart seconded her as the Doctor’s general assistant because he couldn’t think what else to do with her. She still wasn’t used to accompanying the Doctor on his journeys through Space and Time.
The Doctor emerged from the TARDIS. ‘Now then, Jo, be reasonable.’ He smiled to show that being lost in Space was all part of a day’s work.
She fumed, ‘Honestly, only you could have a traffic accident in Space.’
‘Except that we didn’t,’ retorted the Doctor. ‘By a brilliant last minute course correction I’ve materialised the TARDIS inside the spaceship.’
She took in their immediate surroundings. The hold was filled with large packing cases. ‘What do we do now?’
‘If I’m going to get us back to Earth, I’d better find out where we are.’ He turned to go back inside the TARDIS.
‘But I thought we were on our way back to Earth?’
The Doctor paused. ‘To avoid hitting this spaceship I had to make a random jump into normal Space. I can’t reach a destination if I don’t know where I’m starting from. So I’d better check the instruments.’
‘Doctor,’ said Jo, matter-of-fact, ‘even when you do know where you’re starting from, you very rarely get where we want to go.’
He looked pained. ‘I try, Jo. I try.’ To avoid any further criticism the Doctor hurried back into the TARDIS.
Jo breathed a deep sigh. Then she curiously pushed back the lid of a packing case. It contained flour, plain ordinary flour. As she let some of the flour run over her fingers. a movement through the port-hole caught her attention. Jo crossed to the port-hole and looked out into the black emptiness of infinite Space. Millions of distant stars twinkled at her. The point of interest, though, was a small black spaceship, about half a mile away. It had no lights, no markings. Some instinct told Jo that this ugly black spaceship meant danger.
On the flight deck Hardy and Stewart were also watching the spaceship, on their television monitor screen.
Hardy murmured, ‘Maybe it’s a wreck.’ There were occasional wrecks floating in Space, ships punctured by meteorites when all the crew had been killed instantly through the sudden escape of their life-supporting oxygen.
‘Or maybe they need help,’ said Stewart.
Hardy pulled the microphone near his lips and tuned the radio transmitter to the inter-ship emergency wavelength. ‘This is Earth Cargo Ship C-982 in close proximity to you. Do you read me?’
Both men listened for a response over the