Doctor Who_ Trading Futures - Lance Parkin [69]
‘No. I didn’t have time to track the radio signal.’
‘But we only get one trip.’
‘Yes, don’t worry. I’ve got the perfect place in mind.’
He pressed the button.
* * *
In one of the rear compartments of the Concorde, Anji and Cosgrove were examining the corpse of the alien.
Cosgrove had started by checking the weapon the creature had been carrying. But he’d damaged it beyond repair when he’d shot it. He looked disappointed.
‘Help me with this armour,’ Anji suggested. She was trying to remove the breastplate, but it wasn’t budging.
‘“What man dare, I dare / Approach thou like the rugged Russian bear / The armed rhinoceros or th’ Hyrcan tiger, take any shape but that, and my firm nerves shall never tremble.”’
‘Macbeth,’ Anji said.
Cosgrove looked down at her admiringly. ‘Yes. Well done. I always liked the Scottish play. I suppose one good thing about the Learman years was that the schools got their priorities right when it came to English Lit. Your generation was very lucky.’
Anji didn’t have the faintest idea what he was talking about. ‘After my time,’ she told him. ‘I did it for GCSE.’
Cosgrove looked puzzled. ‘How old are you? I’m sorry – if you don’t mind me asking.
Anji raised an eyebrow. 'There are some things a gentleman never asks.’
‘I’m no gentleman.’
‘I can tell, or you’d be helping me with this armour.’
Cosgrove stopped looking at her and started helping. ‘It’s like it’s welded on,’ he concluded after a few moments’ struggle.
‘Perhaps it is.’
He was examining the muzzle. ‘There’s a nose guard. That might come off.’
It came away very easily. Anji examined it. The front was the same spiky metal rubber stuff. The inside, though, was packed with what looked like glowing circuitry.
‘What do you make of that?’ she asked Cosgrove, passing it over.
‘It’s electronic.’ He poked his fingers in two large sockets, then leaned in to examine the corpse.
‘I think these things fitted over its nose.’
He laid it back over the creature’s snout. He was right, they were a perfect fit.
‘Breathing apparatus?’ he suggested.
Anji wasn’t convinced. ‘Where’s the air supply? The tubes?’
‘You can get rebreathing devices that are compact.’
‘Yes, but there’s still a small air cylinder. Look, you can see there just isn’t room for one.’
She took it again and turned it over in her hand. The circuits were glowing softly.
‘It’s active,’ she said, then, ‘can you smell that?’ She held the device to her nose. ‘That’s really weird. It’s like one of those scratch and sniff cards. She could smell flowers, a citrus sort of smell, and also something like woodsmoke.
Cosgrove was looking puzzled. ‘I’ve just got no idea what that is. Look. We should wait for an expert. We could end up damaging it.’
With that, he left, going back to the passenger cabin, and the free champagne Baskerville had laid on.
Anji sat looking at the body of the alien. She wouldn’t put it past it to get up and start charging around. Do that inside a plane in mid‐flight, and everyone would die.
Cheery thoughts.
The door to the compartment opened, and Baskerville stepped in.
‘What have you discovered?’ he asked. He was looking nervous. Then again, Anji was sure she did, too.
Anji handed over the nose guard and admitted she didn’t know what it was.
‘This is an alien,’ Anji told him.
Baskerville nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘You weren’t expecting them.’
‘Ms Kapoor, I thought I’d taken every possible eventuality into account when drawing up my plans. Well, I was wrong.’
He poked the alien’s head. ‘Ugly thing, isn’t it?’
‘No. Baskerville, I don’t think you realise how serious this is. They want time travel.’
Baskerville looked at her.
Anji thought about it a bit more. ‘That’s got to be it, hasn’t it? It’s the reason you’ve got Cosgrove and the President here. They’re clearly very advanced aliens, but that doesn’t mean they have time travel. So they’ve come here looking for you, as someone who can give it to them.
‘Do you know what fascinates me, Ms Kapoor?’ He