Doctor Who_ The Last Dodo - Jacqueline Rayner [14]
‘It’s back on Earth,’ Eve informed everyone.
‘So where do we go from here?’
‘We go after it, of course!’ said the Doctor. ‘Back to good ol’ Earth.’
Rix looked slightly taken aback. ‘I think that’s our job.’
The Doctor flashed him a smile. ‘Oh, I think you’ll find it’s ours too.’ He turned to Eve. ‘You’ll authorise us, I’m sure.’
She nodded, and reached forward to open a desk drawer. From inside she pulled out two of the pendant‐like devices and handed one each to the Doctor and Martha, then turned to her computer. ‘I’ll programme you in,’ she said, and then, thirty seconds later, ‘OK. All done. Enter these coordinates…’
She reeled off a list of figures, and Tommy showed Martha the buttons on the pendant to press. ‘Then it’s the big blue one to operate it.’
‘Come on then,’ said Rix, impatiently.
‘Earth ho!’ called the Doctor.
As one, he, Martha, Tommy and Rix pressed their blue buttons. As one, they disappeared…
…and found themselves somewhere else.
They were in a gloomy warehouse; bare concrete walls and floors made it seem colder than it was, and the dim strip lighting that was the only illumination didn’t help. In a couple of corners lay things that Martha instinctively didn’t want to investigate too closely; even her medical training didn’t overcome that initial squeamishness on seeing something that was certainly dead, and no longer whole. In another corner lay something more recognisable – what must be the Black Rhinoceros. The Doctor was already moving towards it, and Martha followed him warily.
‘Look at you, you’re beautiful,’ he said softly. Then: ‘There’s no danger, it’s been tranquillised,’ he called back as he reached the magnificent creature. But now that hard edge was back in his voice.
‘Oh,’ exclaimed Martha as she joined him, immediately spotting the problem.
Tommy arrived by her side. ‘Its horn,’ he said. ‘It’s gone!’ For a second the anger in his expression matched that of the Doctor.
The rhino had once had two horns, a huge, piercing spike that dominated its face, and a smaller, modest one behind that. It was the larger of the two that had vanished, leaving the creature, however giant, now looking forlorn and somehow feeble.
‘Sawn off,’ the Doctor said, bending closer to examine the stump, crusty with dried blood.
‘But why?’ Martha asked.
Tommy was no longer the light‐hearted joker of earlier; he looked disgusted. ‘One of the reasons they became extinct in the first place – idiots getting it into their heads that rhino horn could cure all ills. People’d pay through the nose for it, and poachers would be happy to provide.’ He sighed. ‘We should thank our lucky stars this one’s still alive. The poachers didn’t usually take such care.’
Martha shivered, and looked up for the Doctor’s reaction – but he’d left the drugged animal and was wandering over to a door on the opposite side of the warehouse. It needed a zap of the sonic screwdriver, but a few seconds later he was through. Martha, feeling that she was spending most of the day following in his wake, trotted after him.
There was a tiny, spartan office through the door, containing nothing but a table, a chair and a computer. The Doctor sat on the chair, wiggled his fingers as if he were about to launch into a piano concerto, and then plunged at the keyboard.
‘Notice anything interesting about this room?’ he asked Martha, without looking up.
She turned her head. ‘Interesting’ was not a word she would have chosen to describe her surroundings in any way. There was no other furniture, no decoration, just a barely illuminating fluorescent tube in the ceiling. To her left was a plain wall of breeze blocks, the same in front of her and to her right. Behind her was the door through which she’d entered. Oh.
‘There’s no exit,’ she said. ‘You can only go back the way you came.’
‘And notice anything interesting about the way we came?’
This time it was easy, now she knew what she was looking for. ‘There was no exit in the warehouse, either. This