Doctor Who_ The Last Dodo - Jacqueline Rayner [49]
Send the creatures back…
The Doctor thought about a few things. Having thought about them, he smiled broadly.
Albert, poised over the wheel of the fire engine, was staring hard at the Megalosaurus when suddenly there was no Megalosaurus there to stare at. He blinked once or twice, then shrugged. Dinosaur, no dinosaur, that was just the way things went. Behind where the dinosaur had been was a blue box, tall in its way but not a quarter of the height of the enormous reptile.
The Doctor emerged from the doorway of the blue box, and waved cheerfully to Albert. Albert waved back.
‘All done,’ the Doctor told him, jogging back to the appliance. ‘Well, I say all, I’ve still got a few billion extinct animals to sort out as well as various probable clones, not to mention picking up my companion from a space museum while avoiding the megalomaniacal proprietor who wants to turn me into an exhibit.’
‘Is that right?’ asked Albert.
The Doctor nodded. ‘But first…’ he said. ‘If I drive it round the block, may I put the siren on this time, please?’
THE ISPYDER BOOK OF EARTH CREATURES
MEGALOSAURUS
Megalosaurus bucklandi
Location: Eurasia (addendum: areas later known as England and France)
The carnivorous Megalosaurus is a large theropod dinosaur, similar in appearance to Tyrannosaurus rex, although half its size – it is about 9 metres long and 3 metres in height. It walks upright and has relatively small arms and a long, heavy tail.
Addendum:
Last reported sighting: Jurassic period.
Cause of extinction: environmental changes.
ISpyder points value: 400
FOURTEEN
I heard people coming, and looked for somewhere to hide. Of course, had I not zapped all the dinosaurs to modern‐day Earth, that would have been easy enough, but as it was… I crouched behind a sign indicating the way to the gift shop, put a finger to my lips and shhhed at Dorothea, and hoped for the best.
The footsteps got louder. There was also the sound of something being wheeled along and for a moment I thought they’d got a shopping trolley too, but as I peered cautiously around the sign I saw that it was actually a wheeled stretcher. The men pushing it wore jumpsuits with ‘Infirmary’ written on the back, and on the stretcher lay Tommy. There was colour in his cheeks and he was breathing normally and, although I wasn’t really in any position to make a prognosis, I was pretty sure he was going to be all right. Didn’t stop me feeling bad for abandoning him, though – but I didn’t have time to indulge in guilt; I had a job to do. Or try to do…
It’s all very well being sent to find out something. But when you actually come to consider the matter, you realise it’s not quite as simple as that. Size of museum: probably several million square miles; size of investigator: well, I might manage six feet if I was wearing high heels and standing on a stool. Like looking for a needle in a haystack as big as Wales. Except more difficult, because at least you’d know (a) that you were searching for a needle, and (b) what a needle looks like. Because I didn’t have a clue what I was after.
Duplicate dodos, double dinosaurs, same sabre‐tooths. Someone had to be breeding them – or, more likely, this being the future and everything, cloning them. That would account for them being identical.
I looked down at Dorothea. I guessed this meant she wasn’t the last dodo after all – that was probably back on Mauritius right now, causing havoc among the holidaymakers – but something grown in a vat from an abstracted cell or two. Did it make her any less of a being? Not in my eyes. I ruffled her neck feathers, and she nuzzled my hand, seemingly perfectly content in my company. I guess, like her earlier relatives, she’d not experienced any predators inside her vat, didn’t know that humans could bring harm. She’d known nothing except a laboratory before her brief foray on to the Earth.
She’d known nothing except a laboratory…
‘Giant Peruvian flightless homing pigeon’, the Doctor had called the bird