Doctor Who_ The Forgotten Army - Brian Minchin [15]
There was a timid knock on the door, and Sam's evening of woe instantly got a whole lot better. Polly Vernon was at the door, smiling brightly.
Is it safe to come in?' she asked.
Sam laughed, so relieved to see a good friend like Polly.
Even better, she was carrying boxes of Chinese takeaway.
'Thought I might find you here...' she went on. 'Maybe we can just stay in tonight? Out of everyone's way.'
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Sam couldn't help but give Polly an enormous hug. He'd turned his cell phone off after the hundredth news crews rang for the thousandth time. All demanding interviews and statements. 'Was this a hoax?' 'Where was it found?' 'Who is responsible?'
Sam had turned on the TV earlier - only to see himself facing down a mammoth, and the Director of the Museum talking sternly to camera about the internal investigation to be launched, and saying plainly and pointedly that this was the brainchild of one of their junior colleagues - Sam Horwitz.
'What are they saying out there?' Sam asked Polly.
She looked at the floor. 'Don't you worry about them, they'll calm down. No one was hurt, that's the important thing.'
'Except the Barosaurus,' Sam said glumly.
Polly nodded. 'Yes, but that's been dead for millions of years, so no one counts it.'
Sam was so pleased Polly was there. But he had to ask her.
'Are you disappointed in me?' He could feel his eyes welling up with tears and blinked them back.
Polly said nothing. She just opened her arms, and gave him a big hug. 'It wasn't your fault,' she said eventually.
'Who could have known they were able to survive hibernation like that?'
'I'm so sorry, Polly. I was so scared.'
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Polly was shaking her head. Today, you were the bravest man I've ever seen. That thing is one crazy animal. It can probably eat a Tyrannosaurus Rex before breakfast, and you went toe to toe with it! You didn't even run. I was so proud of you.'
'But it's all my fault,' Sam moaned.
'You tried to get everyone to be calm. There were five hundred people in that room, and only one person thought of saving everyone else. You.'
Sam felt the happiest he'd been in hours. Maybe it wasn't going to be so bad. Even though he knew his time in the Museum was over and he'd be lucky to get a job teaching fourth graders, he was proud that he had friends like Polly.
'So, Mr Explorer,' Polly was saying, 'I think it's time you told me where on Earth you found that monstrosity. I thought you'd been eaten by moths or something you'd spent so much time at work. Now I know you were keeping this secret. No wonder I didn't see you for so long.'
Sam realised that the burden of the secret was lifted and he no longer had to hide. For the first time in months he felt able to tell Polly the truth.
When he'd first met Polly, Sam's life had been very different.
He'd been a lowly research assistant and, for all his jokes and games, he had been learning to forget his dreams. As a boy, Sam had always loved reading about prehistoric creatures and imagining what the past was like. He dreamed of 60
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seeing the days when Tyrannosaurus Rex ruled the world, and when herds of Diplodocus grazed the vast plains. But after months of boring work in the Museum he had thought that he would never get to be an adventurer, or to blaze his own trail through undiscovered mountains and dangerous jungles.
But then, one day, while he was cataloguing reindeer droppings, he had found a piece of paper tucked inside an old map of Svalbard. It had claimed to be the location of a hidden treasure of dinosaur bones, buried beneath hundreds of metres of Arctic ice, high in the icy plains of Svalbard.
The notes on the edge of the map claimed that dinosaurs had