Doctor Who_ The Also People - Ben Aaronovitch [49]
And the Doctor just hung there, peering into the sea with an expression of absorbed irritation, as if he could whistle up a clue like a magician. 'Watch the spray,' the Doctor called as the undercarriage clipped the top of a wave. 'I don't really want to start swimming just yet.'
What was he looking for? Chris asked himself. What could he possibly hope to find that God had not? A small blue light on the instrument panel caught his attention; it was inset into the face of a small gauge below the altimeter. The needle pointer was stuck resolutely at the bottom of a graduated scale, the last third of which was shaded blue.
'Doctor,' he called, 'I think we're running out of fuel.'
The engine faltered, coughed twice and ran smooth again. Well done, Chris, not the future predictive but the present tense – we have run out of fuel, we are about to crash into the sea. The Doctor scampered nimbly into his cockpit. 'Gain some height while we still can,' he said, but Chris was already pulling back on the stick. 'I wish you'd told me sooner.'
'The French plane had better endurance,' said Chris.
'Can you see anything that looks like a back-up drive?'
Chris hurriedly scanned the instrument panel. 'No.'
'Sometimes,' muttered the Doctor, 'these people take authenticity just a little bit too far.'
They were still climbing but Chris was detecting a definite slackness when he adjusted the throttle. The engine coughed ominously again. They were probably flying on vapour now.
'Do you think we can make it to the beach?' asked the Doctor.
Chris looked over to where the coast was a dark smudge in the far distance. 'I don't think so.
Couldn't we ask God for some inflight refuelling?'
'I'd rather not,' said the Doctor. 'Asking for divine intervention is not my style. Besides, God would never let me live it down.'
The engine coughed one last time and died. Chris put the nose down to maintain airspeed. It was suddenly very quiet.
'Have I ever told you,' asked the Doctor, 'how much I hate swimming?'
'We might not get the chance,' said Chris. 'This thing is nose-heavy. We might just cartwheel when we hit and break up.'
'You,' said the Doctor, 'have been spending far too much time with Bernice. We're not done yet; all we need is a handy last-minute coincidence.'
'Such as?'
'That ocean liner will do nicely.'
Chris banked gently to avoid bleeding off too much airspeed and levelled off with the ocean liner framed with the V-shape of the stalled propeller blades. 'Watch your glide path,' the Doctor told him. 'She's further away than she looks.'
The ocean liner was big, really big. Sixteen kilometres from bow to stern, he was to learn later, a kilometre across and seven hundred metres tall. Without the Doctor's warning the scale of the ship might have fooled Chris, made him think he was closer than he really was, fooled him into a wet landing kilometres short. Even so it was not until he was close enough to make out the tiny passengers on the decks that he really got his mind around its size. The Doctor radioed the liner and asked for permission to land.
'Sure,' said the liner and lit up an empty promenade deck with a double line of pink holograms.
Chris circled twice above the liner's funnels using the hot air to gain a small margin of error and then glided into a final approach.
It was eerie landing with just the sound of wind humming in the wing braces. Promenade decks and games courts flicked by underneath, cabins and swimming pools, comms antennae and gantries, lifeboats as big as houses and landing pads with helicopters and VTOL jets parked in untidy rows. Gusts of wind rebounded off the cliffs of portholes and pulled