Doctor Who_ Wetworld - Mark Michalowski [2]
It’s much more difficult than that.’ He reached out and stroked the curved, ceramic edge of the console. ‘It’s about intuition and imagination; it’s about feeling your way through the Time Vortex.’
‘It’s about kicking it when it doesn’t work, is what it’s about.’
He pulled a hurt little boy face. ‘Don’t start that,’ she warned, a smile twitching the corner of her mouth upwards. ‘I’ve heard you, when you think I’m not around, stomping and banging the console.’
‘Well there you go then!’ he said triumphantly, as if that settled the matter. ‘It’s about stomping and banging your way through the Time Vortex!’
He turned away, stowing the sonic screwdriver back in his pocket (after, Martha noted with a grimace, wiping it clean on the sleeve of his jacket again).
‘Intelligence is overrated, Martha – believe you me. I’d take an ounce of heart over a bucketful of brains any day.’
‘Oooh!’ mocked Martha. ‘Bet you’re a whizz in the kitchen!’
The Doctor’s eyes lit up again. ‘And talking about food. . . who’s up for breakfast? All that talk of croissants is makin’ me mighty hungry.’
He stretched out his right hand. ‘And this here hand is a butterin’
hand! How d’you fancy breakfast at Tiffany’s?’
Martha’s mouth dropped open.
‘ Tiffany’s?
You mean the real
Tiffany’s? As in Breakfast at?’
‘Where else?’ the Doctor beamed back, looking extremely pleased with himself.
‘Nice one!’ said Martha, a huge grin on her face. ‘This is the kind of time and space travelling I signed up for! Although,’ she added, ‘I’m beginning to suspect you’ve got a bit of a thing about New York, you know.’
And with that, she was gone.
‘New York?’
The Doctor stood in the console room, watching Martha vanish in the direction of the TARDIS’s wardrobe. A puzzled frown wrinkled his brow. New York? Why had Martha mentioned New York when he was taking her to Tiffany’s near the Robot Regent’s palace on Arkon?
‘Must have misheard her,’ he decided, tapping at the controls on the console and flicking a finger at what Martha would undoubtedly have thought was just a small, brass, one-eyed owl. Blue-green light pulsed up and down the column at the centre of the console and a deep groaning filled the air, settling down as the TARDIS shouldered its way out of the Time Vortex into the real world.
‘Perfect,’ the Doctor said to himself. ‘Textbook landing. Like to see Martha manage a landing as textbook perfect as that!’
‘Ahhh. . . ’ said the Doctor out loud, somewhat surprised at quite how warm, wet and, well, swampy Arkon had become since his last visit.
And slippery.
Because as he stepped from the TARDIS, the sole of his foot skidded on a moss-covered root beneath him, and it was only by grabbing onto the TARDIS’s doorframe that he managed to stop himself from ending up on the muddy ground.
The air hit him like a huge, damp blanket. He stood there, one foot still inside the TARDIS, the other hovering a cautious six inches from the ground, and wondered what had gone wrong. Arkon should have been a prosperous, advanced, Earth-like world. Right about now, a hot, F-type star should have been beating down on him, and his senses should have been assailed by the smells, sounds and scents of technology run riot.
But, instead, all around him was a languid silence, punctuated by the occasional sound of splashing water. And the only smells were the fusty smells of swamp gas and damp. A green smell. He liked green smells – full of vim and vigour and vegetables.
‘Ummm. . . ’ he added, looking out over the oily water that stretched away from the steeply sloping bank where the TARDIS had plonked itself. At the other side, a couple of hundred metres away, shaggy trees lowered their branches almost to the water, like a floppy fringe. And through the canopy of leaves above him, an orange-red sun blistered the purplish sky.
‘This is just a teensy bit wrong,’ he said to himself.
Ferreting around in the TARDIS’s wardrobe for something ultra-glam and ultra-chic to wear to Tiffany’s ( think Audrey Hepburn, she reminded herself, think Hollywood