Doctor Who_ War Games - Malcolm Hulke [17]
Punic Wars, Mongol Invasion. A small area in the centre of the map was completely blank.
‘Where do you think that is?’ Zoe asked, pointing. ‘It hasn’t even been printed on.’
‘Exactly,’ said the Doctor. ‘I think that’s where we must make for.’
‘I find this most difficult to understand,’ said Carstairs.
‘All these wars are going on at the same time?’
The Doctor nodded. ‘For some reason that we don’t understand—yes. My guess is that whenever we come to these dividing lines we’ll find that mist...’ He stopped, listened, and put his fingers to his lips. They all stayed quiet as he crawled to the partly open rear door.
They had stopped the ambulance once again in No Man’s Land. The Doctor saw the spike of a German helmet bobbing up and down behind a mound of mud. He looked around and saw two more. He retreatedback into the ambulance.
‘We’ve been found, I’m afraid. We’re probably already surrounded. Lieutenant, lie down on a stretcher and pretend to be wounded. And you, Lady Jennifer, look after him. Zoe and Jamie, follow me.’
The Doctor slipped down onto the muddy road and made casually for the driving cabin. His companions came behind him.
‘We’d better try to get started again,’ he said, loud enough for the Germans to hear. ‘That poor man must get to a hospital.’
The Germans waited until the Doctor had mounted the running board and was about to get behind the wheel.
Then they emerged from shell holes all around, a morning patrol of about twenty men. Three came towards the Doctor.
‘ Sie mussen mit uns kommen, ’ one of them called.
‘Come with you?’ the Doctor called back. ‘Yes, if you insist. Which way this time?’
While Carstairs lay moaning in the captured ambulance, tended by Lady Jennifer, and Jamie and Zoe sat in a German front line trench drinking coffee with some friendly soldiers, the Doctor was in a dug-out being questioned by Leutnant Lücke. Lücke was a stern, humourless young Prussian who tried to conceal his youth with a stiff military facade.
‘For the last time,’ he said in excellent English, ‘what were you doing behind our lines?’
‘I’ve told you,’ said the Doctor. ‘We were lost and the nurse gave us a lift.’
‘Then what was she doing behind German lines?’
‘She was lost, too. I do assure you, sir, we are quite harmless. That young officer is badly wounded, you know.’
‘A doctor is on the way,’ said Lucke. ‘The British officer will be given our best medical treatment and sent to a prisoner of war camp. The nurse will be interned.’
‘Thank you,’ said the Doctor. ‘That puts my mind at rest. Well, I had better get on my way.’ He rose to his feet.
Lücke smartly stepped between the Doctor and the exit to the trench. ‘You are not going anywhere! Three people in civilian clothes behind our lines, that is very suspicious.
Admit you are spies.’
‘I can assure you we are not.’
‘Then tell me where you came from before the British ambulance gave you a lift. And this time,’ said Lücke, drawing his hand gun, ‘I want the whole truth.’
The Doctor looked at the gun. ‘Would you really shoot me? In cold blood?’ He looked straight into the young officer’s eyes. ‘Could you kill a man you had been talking to?’
‘You are appealing to my sense of decency,’ Lücke said.
‘All right, I won’t point my gun at you.’ He laid it on the crudely-made table, though he still kept his hand on it.
‘Just remember thousands of German soldiers are giving their lives for the Fatherland every day, so military justice is sometimes rough. Now tell me the whole truth about yourself and your companions.’
‘All right,’ said the Doctor. ‘But it will astound you.’
The young officer listened quietly while the Doctor explained truthfully that he was not of this planet, that Jamie came from 1745 and that he had met Zoe in a floating space station in the distant future.
‘And that’s where you all come from?’ Lücke said scornfully when the Doctor had finished.
‘I told you you would be astounded,’ the Doctor answered. ‘Ask my friends if you don’t believe me.’
‘I certainly shall!’ Lücke turned towards