Doctor Who_ Wetworld - Mark Michalowski [19]
And then suddenly the tentacle thing had pulled away and whipped back into the darkness with a mighty splash of water, drenching the Doctor and Martha.
‘That thing,’ he mused. ‘I take it you’ve not seen it before?’
‘Never,’ Ty replied. ‘And what was it doing in an otter nest?’
‘Could it be some sort of symbiote? Something that lives with them, shares their nest? Maybe it’s a pet. Maybe that’s why you’ve never seen it?’
‘Could be,’ Ty considered. ‘But I’ve seen inside a couple of nests before and never seen anything like that.’
‘Well, we’ll sort that out later – we’ve got to get Martha back to the settlement. If I were you, I’d take a look at the skeletons in there.’
‘Skeletons?’
Ty glanced over into the ruined nest, and saw gleaming bones in the shadows on the other side of the pool. ‘They might well be the people you lost in the flood,’ the Doctor said.
She nodded, trying not to think about the implications of that statement. ‘What about your ship?’
The Doctor threw her a dark look. ‘I think that can wait, don’t you?’
The hospital, the Doctor was relieved to see, was better equipped than he’d expected, considering the losses that the settlers had faced –
a low, wide bungalow, partly constructed from prefabricated plastic panels, partly from wood, sitting at one edge of the square. The main ward was empty when the Doctor arrived. Martha was rushed to a bed and covered up with a blanket.
‘This is Dr Hashmi – Sam Hashmi,’ Ty introduced the Doctor to the short, elderly man who came over briskly as they arrived. ‘Dr Hashmi – this is, erm, the Doctor.’
‘And this is Martha,’ said the Doctor swiftly. ‘She’s suffered hypoxia,’
he said, and pulled aside the hair on Martha’s temples. ‘But the lack of oxygen’s not what’s worrying me – what d’you reckon this is?’
Sam peered closer at the speckle of red dots.
‘Puncture wounds? Has she been attacked by something?’
‘Oh yes!’ said the Doctor sourly. ‘A very big something. A very, very big something.’
‘What?’
‘Well if I knew that, I wouldn’t be calling it “a very big something”
would I?’ he snapped and shook his head. ‘Please, just do what you can for her, Dr Hashmi.’
Sam set about taking Martha’s pulse and blood pressure before hooking her up to a body monitor whilst the Doctor stood back and watched, arms folded.
‘She’ll be fine,’ Ty said, putting a hand on his shoulder. ‘I’m sure of it.’
Suddenly, Candy came rushing in.
‘Professor Benson!’ she said. ‘They said you’d gone out to. . . ’ Her voice tailed off as she saw Martha. She glanced at the Doctor and then back at Ty. ‘Who’s that?’ she whispered. ‘That,’ the Doctor answered without turning, ‘is Martha. My friend.’
‘Oh,’ said Candy. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Someone’s going to be,’ muttered the Doctor. ‘Or some thing.’
There was a long and awkward pause, and then the Doctor suddenly spun on his heel.
‘Right!’ he announced. ‘Tell me all you know about these otters.’
Col had said they didn’t need any more otters for a while, but Orlo found them fascinating enough to just watch. The weird thing was that they didn’t seem to bear grudges. He’d caught and taken, what, over two dozen by now. And despite that – despite the way they struggled and scratched when he caught them – it didn’t seem to make them more wary of him. He reckoned it was because he never hurt them and always let them go. In fact, crazy though it sounded, Orlo wondered if, somehow, the otters weren’t actually pleased that he caught them. It made no sense, except that it was always the slower, more aggressive ones that he managed to catch (the cleverer ones just ran rings round him) – and when they were released, they were always smarter and more peaceable.
Let Professor Benson work that one out.
He squatted down at the top of a gentle rise, sheltering from the growing sun under a tree, and watched a couple of dozen of the otters diving in and out of the water, the light