Doctor Who_ The Paradise of Death - Barry Letts [4]
Well, perhaps not just the Doctor himself. It was all the rest of it. How could she settle down to the workaday world, albeit the supposedly glamorous world of the investigative journalist, after the sort of experience she had gone through with the Doctor? It was still difficult to believe that she’d actually travelled through time with him.
A logical impossibility, time travel. She’d read it up. And yet...
They had first met when Sarah was working on a story.
The rumour of an official cover-up of the mysterious disappearance of a number of research scientists had taken her, under a false name (she had pretended to be her own aunt, a scientist herself), behind the security barrier at the research establishment in question, only to have her cover penetrated in no time flat by this curious Doctor fellow.
Well now. What to do about it? (A sip of strong black coffee.) Kill two birds with one stone, that’s what. (Cliché!) Here was a new project ready made. An in-depth interview with the Doctor, supported by boxes quoting the opinions of his colleagues and rivals. If she slanted it right, Clorinda might just go for it.
Now where did he hang out? He was scientific adviser to... What was it? Where was the telephone book?
Yes, here it was. The United Nations Intelligence Task Force.
She found herself grinning as she dialled the number. It would be just great to see him again.
‘Now come on, Doctor. You’re not seriously telling me that you travelled to Atlantis in that old Police Box?’
The Doctor had also seemed to think it would be great to meet again; and he’d agreed straightaway to the idea of an interview. He’d invited her along that very morning to
‘have a bit of a chat’ as she’d put it, on the understanding that she didn’t stop him getting on with his work.
Perched on a high stool by the workbench, Sarah felt strangely at home. Though the Doctor’s room at UNIT
HQ was fundamentally the traditional lab with bunsen burners, various items of scientific glassware – test-tubes, of course; flasks and jars; even the obligatory retort, as if she were in a mediaeval alchemist’s study – and odd bits of machinery and electronic equipment, the Doctor had made it peculiarly his own.
Quite apart from the TARDIS standing in the corner, there were innumerable objects lying about, some of which would have seemed more at home in a museum – and others in a junk shop.
There were odd pieces of clothing – a hat with an ostrich feather plume; a piece of rusting armour; a very long knitted scarf; a pair of pointed Renaissance slippers –
piles of dried vegetable matter, including some horribly twisted fungi. a dusty stuffed albatross with wings outstretched (she’d had to duck underneath to get into the room), a large photograph of a man with a shock of white hair and a bushy moustache, (Could it be...? It was, you know. Scribbled in the corner, it had, ‘Many thanks for all your help, old friend.’ and it was signed ‘Albert Einstein’) and so on and so on.
‘Been having a bit of clear out in the TARDIS,’ the Doctor had said. ‘Only trouble is, you never know when something might come in useful.’
Now he looked up from the complex piece of circuitry which was engaging more than half his attention. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘I think I’ve found the trouble. It’s a matter of the temporal... what did you say?’
‘Atlantis,’ Sarah repeated. ‘You’re having me on, surely.’
The Doctor returned to his work. ‘My dear Sarah, as they used to say on Venus...’ His voice trailed away as he peered more closely into the intricate network in front of him.
‘Can you come here a moment? There, you see that?
Hold it still for me, will you, while I...’ His voice trailed away again.
‘That little whojamaflip with the white bit sticking out?’
‘That’s the feller.’ The Doctor picked up a strange-looking tool with tiny jaws shaped like a beetle’s mandibles and poked it into