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Tommy had pointed out the diplodocus in the distance – at about thirty metres long, it stood out from the crowd – and was doing a goofy impression of it: ‘der, my bwain is so small’. Martha was happily smiling along, when she suddenly realised that the Doctor had dropped behind them. Leaving the Earther laughing at his own joke and digging Rix in the ribs, she slipped away to join her friend. He was looking very grim.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I know I shouldn’t laugh. I know you hate it here.’

‘Not at all,’ he replied, fastening a ghastly false smile on his face. ‘As you can see, I’m being nice and normal and friendly, and I shall keep on being nice and normal and friendly, and I shall not go on the rampage or anything, because I try not to do that unless there are lots of monsters around.’ He glared at the still‐laughing Tommy. ‘Although, second thoughts…’

Martha hastily grabbed his hand and dragged him a bit further away. ‘It’s not monsters,’ she said. ‘It’s something you don’t like, and I understand that, but it’s not monsters.’

‘All these creatures,’ he said. ‘They’re stuck in a living death, Martha.’

‘I can sort of see the point, though,’ she said, slightly nervously. ‘I mean, otherwise these animals would be gone for ever. They’ve got a dodo! Things that people without a time machine would never see. I know that it’s the fault of humans that these animals have gone. We’re rubbish. But doesn’t this balance it out a bit? Doesn’t it undo our mistakes just a fraction – sort of an apology to nature?’

But the Doctor shook his head. ‘Ice ages come and go, continents shift, conditions change. Nature didn’t intend there to be Ankylosaurus or Dimetrodon in the twenty‐first century; they were wiped out long before man first raised a wooden club and said, ooh, last one to kill a woolly mammoth’s a rotten moa egg. Do you really think you and your kind would be around today if dinosaurs still walked the Earth? Yes, humans have mocked nature, wiping out the dodo and the passenger pigeon and the thylacine – but this place doesn’t apologise, it laughs at her even more.’ He drew in a deep breath. ‘Better to die free than to live in a cage.’

‘The animals aren’t aware, though, are they?’ said Martha. But she thought how she’d known, known without a doubt, that the dodo was alive, and she wondered if it had been a spark of sentience she had detected.

She looked towards the distant diplodocus, so majestic, so serene, and shivered.

THE ISPYDER BOOK OF EARTH CREATURES

DIPLODOCUS

Diplodocus longus

Location: North America

The giant herbivorous diplodocus is the Earth’s longest known land‐dweller, more than 25 metres in length. It walks on four legs and has a long, thin neck supporting a small head. Its massive tail – which makes up over half of its length – tapers to a narrow point, and is held horizontal as it walks. It has a ridge of spines down the length of its back.

Addendum:

Last reported sighting: late Jurassic period.

Cause of extinction: environmental changes.

ISpyder points value: 600

THE ISPYDER BOOK OF EARTH CREATURES

Creature Points

Subtotal 9700

Dodo 800

Megatherium 500

Paradise parrot 500

Velociraptor 250

Mountain gorilla 500

Aye‐aye 900

Siberian tiger 600

Kakapo 900

Indefatigable Galapagos mouse 1500

Stegosaurus 500

Triceratops 550

Diplodocus 600

Ankylosaurus 650

Dimetrodon 600

Passenger pigeon 100

Thylacine 250

FOUR

Tommy and Rix finally led the Doctor and Martha to the spot where the Black Rhino had been. Martha had a vague idea that she’d seen a rhino once, but whether it was at the zoo, or a safari park, and if it had been a black one or a white one or a sky‐blue‐pink one, she had no idea at all. She felt a bit guilty about that. ‘You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone,’ she remembered her grandmother used to say, and it was true – probably true of most of the human race.

The see‐through box now had a side missing, a big gaping emptiness at the front. The Doctor lost