Doctor Who_ Wetworld - Mark Michalowski [11]
‘Hello!’ he said. ‘I’m the Doctor. Can I interest you in some uplifting words – cheery banter and rousing speeches a speciality.’
Martha coughed herself awake, choking and retching on the stale water in her throat and lungs.
It was dark. Almost pitch black, in fact. She wasn’t cold – which, in her dazed state surprised her somewhat – but she wasn’t particularly warm either. She lay still for a few moments, trying to get her bearings, trying to remember what had happened.
The last thing she remembered was pushing her hand out of the TARDIS, through the stretchy force field, or whatever it had been. She coughed again, and wiped her face with the back of her hand, feeling the soggy silk glove that she’d forgotten she was wearing. And then it all came back to her: she’d pushed her hand through the force field into water. And then something had grabbed her – something powerful and muscled, something that had dragged her from the TARDIS
like a parent pulling a child down a supermarket aisle. Martha blinked, wondering again why it was so dark, wondering whether something had happened to her eyes. Wondering whether she was blind. She felt her heart begin to race in her chest as her panic began to grow. She heard a soft pattering noise above her. It sounded like rain on a tent.
And then she heard another sound: a tiny, tiny whispering noise.
No – more like a scratching. No. That wasn’t right, either. Where had she heard it before. . . ?
Yes! That was it! It sounded like a cat, washing itself-with that strange scraping, slurpy noise they made.
She sniffed cautiously.
There was a dry smell, musky and animaly. Not unpleasant, but not particularly reassuring, either. And not cats.
Something touched the back of her outstretched hand and she gave a yelp, pulling it back and hugging it to herself. She heard the pattering of tiny feet and a gentle sniffing noise. More than anything, she felt embarrassed that she’d actually yelped.
Was she in some animal’s burrow? Had she been snatched from the TARDIS by something and dragged to its nest? If she had, she could think of only one reason why a wild animal would do that. She suddenly remembered why the Doctor had brought her here, and her skin turned icy cold. He’d brought her here for breakfast.
Only whose breakfast. . . ?
‘We’ve got to tell Pallister!’ said Col firmly.
‘If I –’ the Doctor said calmly, standing awkwardly near the door.
‘Of course we tell Pallister,’ replied Ty. ‘Just not yet. It’s the middle of the night!’
‘So what?’ countered Col. ‘We wait until morning and then tell him that we’ve had a stranger in here – an offworlder – all night and that we didn’t want to wake him?’ He gave a snort.
‘Perhaps I cou–’ tried the Doctor again.
‘He’ll go mad, that’s what he’ll do.’
‘And if we take him there now,’ reasoned Ty, ‘Pallister’ll just have him locked up until morning anyway. And Candy says he has a friend out there.’ ‘He says,’ Col scoffed. ‘How do we know that –’
‘Well,’ the Doctor interjected, ‘you could always try ask –’
‘– he’s telling the truth? Candy says he turned up out of nowhe–’
‘Right!’ bellowed the Doctor, instantly silencing the two of them.
‘Enough, as Donna Summer and Barbra Streisand once said, is enough!’
And Col and Ty shut up instantly and turned to him, their eyes wide with astonishment.
‘If you’d have the good manners to argue with me, instead of about me, then maybe we could get this sorted,’ he said. ‘Do you lot take classes in interruption?’ He threw a glance at Candy and raised a hand, his fingers spread out. ‘One,’ he counted off a finger, ‘I was not stalking Candice.’ He paused and frowned at the girl. ‘Candy?’ he puzzled. ‘ Candy? ’ He shook his head sharply. ‘Two. . . ’ Another finger was counted off. ‘Yes, I do have a spaceship out there in the swamp, just like you do; and yes, my friend is – I hope – still inside it. And three.’ He stopped and stared at his long, pale fingers. ‘Three. . . ’ He sighed. ‘I should have made the one about Martha into number three, shouldn’t I? Two’s just pathetic.