Doctor Who_ Wooden Heart - Martin Day [35]
Jude ran feverishly at her side, whimpering under her breath – in terror, or in fear for her father, Martha couldn’t tell which – but not once did she fall or stumble or put a foot wrong.
‘This is it!’ exclaimed Martha, skidding to a halt and almost falling to her knees. ‘Look!’ She jogged forward, pointed to the tree that bore the faintest of impressions of a hard metal door. Jude simply stared, uncomprehending and silent.
The Doctor, sonic screwdriver between his teeth, thundered into the clearing, knocking Martha over. ‘Turned it off,’ he said, dropping the screwdriver into a pocket and helping Martha to her feet. ‘Doesn’t seem to have made any difference,’ he added pointlessly, as the noise of trees being torn asunder made it quite clear that the dragon-thing was almost upon them. ‘Seem to have over-egged the pudding a touch,’ he added, with a grin.
Martha pointed at the tree with the shadow of the door seemingly stamped onto its trunk. ‘There,’ she said, still panting.
The Doctor brandished the sonic screwdriver, waving it in front of the tree and changing its settings all the time.
The creature edged into the clearing, but its back was towards them now. It looked like Saul had started to irritate it once again, dancing in front of the monster like a frantic, diminutive manikin, shouting and slashing when the opportunity arose.
‘Dad!’ exclaimed Jude, about to run towards her father, but Martha held her tight.
‘Hurry!’ Martha hissed at the Doctor, then tried to soothe the struggling child. ‘It’s OK, we’re all going to get out of here…’
Suddenly the very trees around them began to flicker. Like two random images pasted one on top of the other, Martha glimpsed the enclosed, almost featureless corridor of the space research station Castor stretching into the distance beside her. The Doctor seemed to be succeeding in overlaying the reality of the spaceship over the illusion of the forest. But then the vast and forested vista returned, apparently even more solid, even more real, than the glimpsed metal corridor.
‘Almost there!’ shouted the Doctor, still adjusting the screwdriver.
Martha glanced down at Jude, who paused in her struggles. Martha wondered if the collision between twin realities was only visible to her and the Doctor, or if the girl could see the space station too.
The dragon-beast, however, seemed momentarily disturbed, pausing in its attack. It swung its head from side to side, distracted.
Martha turned to the Doctor – just as Jude wriggled free and shot across the forest clearing towards her father – in the direction of the metal corridor that had been visible a few moments before. ‘No! Come back!’ cried Martha, but it was too late.
And then the forest disappeared, entirely replaced by the space station corridor – and the huge airlock-style door that Martha remembered coming through to get into the forest in the first place. Of the beast, of Jude and Saul, there was suddenly no sign. They had faded with the forest.
It was utterly silent, and the Doctor and Martha were absolutely alone on the space station.
‘Where did they go?’ asked Martha.
‘Still in the forest,’ said the Doctor quickly. ‘It’s here, all around us, in another part of reality – a world all of its own which we can’t see any more.’ He pointed the sonic screwdriver at the huge door, and the screwdriver emitted an ear-shredding whine. ‘But the forest world might reassert itself at any time, and then we will be trapped inside it again. We’ve got to get this door open. We’ll be safe on the other side. The space station is stable through there – the forest doesn’t reach beyond this door.’
‘What about Saul and Jude?’
‘They are exactly where they were – where we used to be. We can help them from here! Trust me. If you stay and the forest world