Doctor Who_ The Forgotten Army - Brian Minchin [1]
He reached the microphone, shuffled his papers and began to speak. 'Thank you, everyone, for coming. Today our ideas of the past are about to change for ever. We've had plenty of big displays in this Museum, but I can promise you, this is our most mammoth yet!'
Sam pulled the golden cord, and the velvet drapes dropped aside to reveal the world's only Polar Woolly Mammoth. It was one of the most majestic creatures ever to grace the Grand Hall.
Standing four metres tall, the mammoth looked wild, with rippling white fur and long tusks. Yet it was also strangely graceful, like a thoroughbred horse, ready to spring from the traps.
Sam knew that no one could fail to be impressed by its grandeur and size. It was as if the forces of evolution had sought to create in the Polar Woolly Mammoth the largest and most beautiful creature ever. But there were no gasps of awe -
the crowd had fallen silent. They were stunned and shocked, not delighted. Something was wrong. Sam started to feel sick in his stomach, like the day before a big exam. He turned to follow the anxious gaze of his audience.
The Polar Woolly Mammoth had been extinct for 10,000 years, and the body of this one had been lying under the ice cap for almost all that time. It now stood at the centre of the New York Natural History Museum, in a beautiful recreation of its original 9
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habitat. So Sam was as surprised as everyone else to see four fresh mammoth poos splatting onto the floor.
Plop. Plop. Plop. Plop.
One of the schoolchildren started to giggle, and a wave of laughter spread across the hall. Polly's class of kids were clapping with delight, loving the joke that they thought was being played on them.
The Director of the Museum turned to Sam with a face like thunder. 'Is this your idea of a practical joke?'
'N-no!' Sam stuttered. He was as surprised as everyone else. The mammoth was dead. He'd found it buried under a hundred metres of solid ice. It was so dead no one could even remember a time it had existed.
Then the mammoth let out an enormous roar, and the hall erupted into chaos and screams and scuffling feet. The largest mammoth ever discovered had come back to life. All around the Grand Hall, people were leaping from their seats and running to the back of the hall. The giggles had turned into tears. This was very real, very scary and very wrong. Sam could see the news crews broadcasting the pandemonium, jabbering excitedly as the cameras swung between the slowly waking mammoth and the stampede of people in the hall behind them.
Sam started to speak into the microphone. 'Please stay calm. This, er, isn't unusual - this room is very 10
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hot, and the mammoth has been frozen for quite some time...
We can put this down to environmental factors... gas being released... er... It's nothing to worry about at all...'
Nobody was listening. As the world watched live on television, the only known Polar Woolly Mammoth ripped its feet from the podium. Very much alive, and very annoyed at being tied down.
Clearly panicking that it was going to break out and run riot on the streets of New York, the Director of the Museum yelled,
'Close the doors!' Black-clad security guards slammed the heavy wooden doors of the New York Museum shut, large iron bolts barring the only way out of the building.
Stepping closer to Sam, the Director of the Museum whispered furiously in his ear: 'Find a way to stop this. And do it now!' She marched away.
Polly appeared at Sam's side and fixed him with big trusting eyes. 'What should I do?'
Sam couldn't bear the look on her face. He had asked her to bring her students here, and now he'd let loose a prehistoric animal on them.
Behind him, the mammoth was stretching its enormous jaws, its long tusks scraping the floor of the Museum. It had been asleep for a long, long time. And now it was awake, and it was very, very angry. Its plate-sized eyes fixed on Sam, and it started to advance towards him.
Sam wanted desperately to stay calm. He wished 11
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he could find something