Doctor Who_ The Last Dodo - Jacqueline Rayner [47]
In a funny kind of way, the Doctor was quite pleased. After all, merely being surrounded by sabre‐toothed tigers wasn’t much of a challenge when he’d already figured out how to stop them – the old road‐melting trick didn’t have to be a one‐off. So, a dinosaur in the mix at least made things a bit more interesting. At the very least, running away from it while simultaneously trapping tigers added some spice to the mix.
The dinosaur trod on a pillar box, squashing it flat, an action that would cause a number of bills to remain unpaid, some birthdays to be left uncelebrated, and a promising romance to be broken off amid a storm of rows and allegations.
The Doctor was dodging here and there, sonic screwdriver waving frantically to and fro as he liquefied this bit of tarmac, reformed that bit, avoided teeth and ducked out of the reach of claws – all the while trying to keep a significant distance between himself and the dinosaur.
So far, there was only one dinosaur; no others of the same kind had turned up, either in the town or – as far as he could see – on TV. That was also interesting. Because perhaps this was the real thing, the actual ‘specimen’ that both the TARDIS and Tommy had tracked down. Although the Doctor had sent Martha back to the museum to find out what was going on, he did already have a few ideas about some of it, and one of those ideas was that the duplicate animals were not genuine exhibits from the Museum of the Last Ones. If they were not ‘specimens’, it would explain why Tommy had not been able to zap the sabre‐toothed tiger – but if this was the real deal, a Last One whose details were in the Museum’s central computer, then it could be immobilised. And he just happened to have one of the pendants in the TARDIS. Not programmed for this particular creature, of course, but such petty details hardly worried the owner of a sonic screwdriver.
The Doctor had a sudden thought. He hadn’t returned the ISpyder guide to Martha, it was still in his pocket. Doing several things at once was second nature to the Doctor, and he kept running while he brought up the book’s prehistoric reptile section, feeding in as many details of the dinosaur as he could to narrow down the selection. Aha! There it was. Megalosaurus. And it had been a native of these parts. So the likelihood of it being genuine was fairly high. Good.
He looked up from the book’s screen. He was just approaching the side street where the TARDIS had landed. And there in front of him was another sabre‐toothed tiger. He raised the screwdriver again, but there was no tarmac to melt, just paving slabs. He turned. The Megalosaurus was just clearing the coffee shop. He was between a rock and a hard place. No, actually that sounded a lot more attractive than his real situation. Just leave it that he was between a fierce, huge, deadly prehistoric killer, and an even fiercer and more huge deadly prehistoric killer.
The sabre‐tooth got nearer. The Megalosaurus got nearer. Nearer and nearer. Escape options flashed into the Doctor’s head but were instantly rejected, each leaving him further away from the TARDIS and not significantly safer anyway.
Nearer. Nearer. The Megalosaurus lunged. The sabre‐tooth lunged. The Doctor took a deep breath… as the two monsters sank their teeth into each other.
Round and round the creatures span, a fearsome whirlwind of teeth and talons. The Doctor, breath let out, hovered on the outskirts, trying to sense an opening that might lead him to the TARDIS, but the fight was between him and the alleyway entrance.
The dinosaur was winning, the big cat tiring as blood poured from the wounds of tooth and claw. With one final, moribund effort, the sabre‐tooth lashed out and the Megalosaurus stepped back – into the mouth of the cul‐de‐sac. The cul‐de‐sac where the TARDIS was. The cul‐de‐sac that was really too narrow for an enormous dinosaur.
The Doctor watched in consternation as the tiger breathed its last. The Megalosaurus tried to move forward