Doctor Who_ The Forgotten Army - Brian Minchin [16]
Dinosaurs from all over the continent had gathered around the oasis of warm water and, as the longest winter crept in, the dinosaurs had been frozen deep down under the glaciers.
If the story was right, the dinosaurs would have been frozen so quickly, and kept in conditions so cold, that they would be the best preserved dinosaurs ever. And if the map was right, there would be types of dinosaur in the hidden valley that no one had ever seen before.
So when Sam had heard there was a spare place on an Arctic mission he knew it was too good an opportunity to miss. Whilst his colleagues were labelling whale bones in Stockholm Museum, he
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had set off with two huskies and a warm coat to search for the mysterious Dinosaur Oasis and its treasures. They had all thought he was mad.
But Sam had surprised them all when he'd returned to Stockholm, his borrowed fishing boat weighed down with a very unusual cargo. Sam Horwitz had found the first ever Polar Woolly Mammoth.
Standing four metres tall, its tusks were two metres long, and it's eyes the size of dinner plates. Its teeth were long and still sharp, unblemished by the years in the cold, and its muscles still rippled, preserved in all their might and glory.
The beast had a coat of pure white fur, and a mouth as wide as a car. It was truly fearsome to behold. And Sam had found it.
The mammoth had been shipped back to New York in great secrecy. Sam hadn't told Polly because he knew she'd have wanted to see it. And he knew if even a few people saw it - even Polly - the secret would get out.
They'd been successful in keeping the mammoth under wraps and, until this fateful day, hardly anyone had seen it.
Rumours had spread around the Museum of what Sam was working on. People had speculated that he'd found the
'missing link' of the chain of Evolution, or that he'd found a new kind of prehistoric human skeleton.
But now the creature had turned out to be 62
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something entirely different. And Sam desperately wanted to do something to put right what he had done.
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Chapter
6
When Oscar arrived at the Midtown Police Station, he was horrified to find most of the uniformed police were standing outside drinking cups of takeaway coffee.
'What are you doing?' he asked, finding it hard to believe they were all outside.
'We're on orders from Scotland Yard,' an older cop answered. 'Girl with red hair, she was very insistent we wait outside. Nice girl though, she bought us all these.' The cop nodded to a big box of doughnuts, most of which had been eaten.
Oscar cursed and ran to the main doors, only to find the front desk was shut down and the police station locked.
'They can't lock me out of a police station!' he 65
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yelled. But it seemed that they could.
Keeping an eye on the Doctor was going to be harder than Oscar had imagined.
The Doctor woke up behind bars. He was lying on a metal bunk in a New York Police Department cell.
On the wall beside him, someone had scratched what looked like a tally of years. For a short moment, the Doctor panicked.
Had he been in the cell for that long? Where was Amy? Still cloudy from the tranquilliser, he couldn't quite piece together the last few hours.
A familiar voice broke his thoughts.
'Oi, Dozy of Alcatraz!'
The delicate sound of Amy Pond brought a smile to the Doctor's face. She was standing at the cell door with a bored expression.
'Do you have any idea how long I've been waiting for you?'
she went on. 'It's not like they have magazines in the waiting room here. You missed the best bit: me, a box of doughnuts and twelve skinny lattes, and the NYPD were mine for the taking. You should have seen me, I was pretty impressive. Anyway, looks like New York has taken a shine to the mammoth.'
She unfurled a copy of the New York Times and held it up to the hatch so the Doctor could see the front page headline: 'New York Welcomes Woolly the Mammoth'.
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