Doctor Who_ The Bodysnatchers - Mark Morris [7]
However, at that moment she heard the trumpeting of the TARDIS's ancient, powerful engines drifting from the console room, and, realising that they would be arriving at wherever they were going any minute, grabbed some clean underwear from a shelf in her vast, ornately carved wardrobe and picked up the pile of clothes that the Doctor had left for her. With a gesture of what she convinced herself was rebelliousness, she put on a Levellers T-shirt under the coral-coloured jacket, though buttoned the jacket up to the neck.
Fully dressed, she appraised herself in her dressing-table mirror, and though she pulled a face she had to admit that she looked kind of cool.The jacket was slim at the hips and made her wiry body look more shapely than it was, the bloomers were comfortable; and the boots she could have quite happily worn in the company of her mates without fear of ridicule.
The only thing she wasn't sure about was the hat, though maybe she could just carry that around with her. She put on her Walkman (though allowed the headphones to dangle loose around her neck), bunged in a Mory Kante tape, then hurried through to the console room.
The Doctor was busy at the console, making minute adjustments to ease the TARDIS's passage from the Space/Time vortex. The rods of light in the transparent cylinder of the time rotor were meshing and then separating above the console like champing teeth. He was muttering to himself, flicking hair absently out of his eyes.
'Hi!'Sam shouted.
The Doctor raised a hand without looking at her, though whether in greeting or to urge her to be quiet she wasn't sure.
Undaunted, she stomped across the room and leaned on one of the four massive girders which curved up into the cobwebbed darkness above the console and supported the time-rotor mechanism. She watched the Doctor for a moment as he skittered around the console like a squirrel, and then she called, 'I gather from the gear that we're off back to Earth again. So what period are we going to grace with our presence this time?'
The Doctor grunted and gestured at the monitor screen. Sam read what it said there, and despite herself felt a tingle of excitement.
The Victorian era! Even now, despite all she had seen and experienced, which was enough to blow anyone's mind wide open, she couldn't get over the awe-inspiring fact that soon she would be walking about in the past of her own planet. It was an era she'd learned about at school, and had perhaps learned more about from watching films and TV serials based on Charles Dickens's novels, and the old musicals that they always put on at Christmas - My Fair Lady and all that.
Yet although her stomach was juddering with anticipation, she couldn't possibly let the Doctor know how excited she was. In what she hoped was a taking-this-kind-of-thing-for-granted sort of voice, she said, 'So what we gonna do this time? Catch Jack the Ripper or something?'
'We're several years too late for that,' murmured the Doctor, evidently preoccupied.
'Oh yeah, right,' she said, as if the Doctor had pointed out something she already knew, but which had briefly slipped her mind. Then a thought struck her and, her eyes shining, she said, 'Doctor?'
'Hmm?'
'Do you know who Jack the Ripper was?'
This time the Doctor looked at her directly. He appeared to consider her question for a moment, then said quietly, 'I know many things. Too many, I think, sometimes.'
'So you do know!' Sam exclaimed.
The Doctor pointed at her and frowned. 'You can't take that with you,' he said.
'You what?' said Sam guiltily. For a moment she thought he was referring to the Levellers T-shirt beneath her jacket, that maybe as a Time Lord he had X-ray vision, but just hadn't happened to mention it to her before. She felt herself beginning to blush at the implications of this, then realised he was referring to her Walkman. 'Why not?' she challenged.
'You know why,' the Doctor said, and then added more gently, 'Sam, you're far from stupid.'
She tried not to appear flattered