by Doctor Who
Rose could see that both sides of the argument had their supporters, but neither commanded a majority. The one thing they all agreed on, though, was that what had happened was connected in some way with the crashed sky boat. She cleared her throat and tried to interrupt the debate, which was beginning to get a little heated.
‘Excuse me,’ she began, but her voice was drowned out. She tried again. ‘Oi!’ she cried, much louder, and this time she got their attention.
‘Look, it’s no good just shouting at each other.’
‘You’re an outsider – what do you know about this?’ retorted one of the more belligerent elders.
Rose bristled but kept her cool. Losing her temper wouldn’t help the situation at all.
‘The people in that ship are human, like me. Like Rez here.’
Rez shot her an unhappy look, not pleased to be singled out like this.
‘Perhaps I can talk to them, find out what they know. They may be able to help find your missing people.’
Mother Jaelette looked at her with interest. ‘Is that likely?’
Rose nodded. ‘They’ll have technology, tools that might help. . . ’
And the Doctor’s there, she thought to herself, he’s worth a whole pile of tech all by himself.
To her relief she saw that Mother Jaelette was nodding; it looked like Rose had persuaded them not to take any action until this option had been explored. Rez stepped forward.
‘I’ll take you,’ he said simply. ‘I promised I would.’
‘Thanks.’ Rose smiled at him.
As Mother Jaelette gave him a big hug and told him to take care, Rose felt a twinge of guilt. She was taking Rez away from his family 92
and she had an ominous feeling that he might never come back to them.
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The walk through the forest was different this time. It was still as beautiful as ever and everywhere Rose looked there was another stunning vista to marvel at, but since the attack last night something subtle had changed for her. It might be a paradise but now she was very much aware that there could be monsters lurking all around.
Rez led the way, confidently striding through the maze of different trees, following the path the monsters had taken last night. They walked in silence, each occupied with their own thoughts.
Finally they reached an area where there were signs of damage to the tree tops.
‘This must be where the ship came down,’ Rez told her, pointing up at the broken branches.
A little further on they reached a clearing and there, battered but intact, was the spaceship.
Rose was getting a bit blasé about spaceships these days, but she’d never seen one quite like this. She could tell instantly that this was not a new ship. It looked a bit like one of the cars she used to see boys working on back home on the estate. Not new by any means, but well loved and showing signs of a long life of repairs. On the Powell Estate you’d see cars with bonnets and doors in colours that didn’t match the 95
rest of the car, and it was the same with this space vehicle. Panels looked to have been replaced by spares from entirely different ships, or possibly bits salvaged from junkyards.
‘Perhaps that’s why it crashed!’ she speculated out loud.
Rez gave her a look. To him it was an amazing, technologically advanced machine and it was clearly intimidating him.
‘Do you think it’s safe to just walk up to it?’ he asked.
Rose wasn’t sure. ‘We could go under a white flag?’ she suggested.
Unfortunately a quick search of her pockets failed to produce anything that even faintly resembled a white flag, although Rose did find a half-empty packet of Polos, which was a bonus.
‘Come on, then,’ she said finally, popping a mint into her mouth and offering Rez one. ‘Let’s just walk slowly, keep our hands where they can see them and hope they don’t fancy any target practice.’
A little nervously they stepped out of the cover offered by the trees and began to walk towards the spaceship. As they got closer Rose could see that the main airlock doors were open and there were a couple of people standing just inside.
‘We come in peace,’ she called out hopefully, adding, ‘Don’t shoot!’
‘Rose Tyler, where the heck have you been?’ called a familiar voice.
To Rose’s shame she completely lost it. ‘Doctor!’
She ran towards him and was delighted to see that he was running to meet her too. They collided in a giant bear hug that was probably so not cool, but Rose just didn’t care. Sometimes being cool was just overrated.
Finally the Doctor let her go and they just grinned at each other for a moment, then they both began speaking at once, stopped, started again at exactly the same moment and then stopped again, laughing.
‘You first, then,’ Rose said finally.
‘No, no. . . ’ insisted the Doctor, ‘you carry on.’
‘Actually I don’t know quite where to begin,’ Rose confessed.
The Doctor threw a look in the direction of Rez, who was standing around looking a little embarrassed at the overt display of affection.
‘How about starting with introducing the new boyfriend?’ suggested the Doctor with a grin.
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This is Rez,’ Rose said, ignoring the Doctor’s teasing. ‘He’s a human living with the locals,’ she added.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ said the Doctor, extending a hand for the lad to shake.
Rez looked a little hesitant.
‘Does he shake?’ he asked, raising an eyebrow at Rose.
She and Rez exchanged a knowing look and then both of them burst into hysterics.
‘I’ll take that as a no, shall I?’ The Doctor sounded a little hurt.
Rose managed to stop herself laughing and apologised. ‘Private joke,’ she explained.
If anything this only made him look more upset.
‘So, are you going to introduce us to your new friend?’ she asked, grinning, and nodded over the Doctor’s shoulder in the direction of a severe-looking woman in her fifties who was walking purposefully towards them.
‘Let me introduce the commander of this fine ship, Professor Petra Shulough,’ said the Doctor. ‘Professor, this is my travelling companion, Rose Tyler, and this is, er, her new friend, Rez.’
The professor nodded at the newcomers but her expression remained serious. ‘You live with the natives?’ she asked Rez.
He nodded. ‘I was found here as a baby in an escape pod fifteen years ago.’
‘An orphan!’ exclaimed the professor, and Rose thought she could detect an unexpected emotion in the woman’s voice. Was it empathy?
‘And you’ve been brought up as a native since then?’
Again he nodded.
The professor seemed to be making an effort to stifle whatever emotional reaction she was having and her voice hardened. ‘So what can you tell us about the creatures that attacked us last night?’
‘Creatures?’
‘Big hairy chaps with four arms and serious talons,’ the Doctor said, giving Rez some more details.
‘Snap!’ said Rose.
‘You’ve seen them too?’ The Doctor sounded excited.
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Rose affected an air of nonchalance. ‘Been there, seen that, bought the T-shirt,’ She grinned again.
‘You were attacked too?’ asked the professor, surprised at this development.
‘Our village was raided last night,’ explained Rez.
‘But it was OK,’ Rose hurried to tell the Doctor. ‘I saw them off with a hot drink!’
‘I’m sorry?’
Rose was pleased to hear the surprise in the Doctor’s voice.
‘I threw my drink at them and it seemed to stop them. Like Superman and kryptonite.’
‘You found a weakness!’ The Doctor was impressed. Rose was chuffed. The score was now two-nil, Rose told herself.
‘I think we need to compare notes,’ the Doctor decided, and started to lead them bac
k towards the spaceship. ‘And talking of hot drinks, any chance of a cup of tea, Professor?’
Hespell was on guard duty. Not that there was much to guard – the creature still seemed unconscious. Most humans would recover from a stun charge like that in a matter of hours, but you never could tell with aliens. Or so he’d heard. Hespell hadn’t actually met many aliens.
Humans from distant colonies, yes, but not many real count-the-eyes, freaky aliens.
He pulled out his EntPad and started playing one of his favourite games. It was a classic shoot-em-up adventure, a real retro gaming experience without even the most primitive kind of virtual neural feedback, but it was still pretty exciting. Well, more exciting than doing nothing anyway. Within minutes he was totally absorbed in the game’s fictional scenario, sending his team of avatars out on the first stage of their quest.
Behind him, unnoticed, the hairy beast’s eyelids began to twitch. It was beginning to awaken at last.
Rez was finding it difficult to keep up. Both the Doctor and Rose had been speaking nineteen to the dozen since they’d met up and it was 98
giving him a headache. So, ignoring them, he turned his attention to his surroundings. The sky boat was everything he had imagined it would be: full of strange electrical sounds and magical machines. It was the most advanced technological thing he had ever seen and yet, despite the very alien nature of everything around him, he found it strangely comforting. It was almost as if he was meant to be part of this world. Perhaps the ship he’d been born on had been something like this.
Rez didn’t often spend much time thinking about his origins. He still had the remains of his escape pod, the keepsakes and the mysterious cube that had been placed in it with him, but that was all he had of his life before Laylora and that was all he wanted. If he stopped and thought about the mother and father who had put him into that pod he got upset, even though he had no idea about who those people might have been. He had concluded long ago that speculation was pointless and, anyway, the only person who deserved the title ‘mother’
was Jaelette, who had taken him in. The Tribe of the Three Valleys were the only family he had ever known.
Leaving the Doctor and Rose to catch up, Professor Shulough had joined Rez, who was staring into space.
‘How did a human teenager come to be on this planet, then?’ she asked.
He told her his story, but she seemed more interested in the tribe and the planet than in what had happened to him. She asked him lots of questions about the way they lived and how the planet provided for them, and seemed fascinated by the answers he gave. The professor must be a few years older than Mother Jaelette, thought Rez, but she was nothing like her. He couldn’t imagine anyone being comforted by a cuddle with this woman. She seemed so cold and distant.
Underneath her severe exterior, however, Petra Shulough found herself strangely intrigued by the young man. Something in his story resonated deep inside the most private part of her being. Was it some long-buried maternal instinct? She doubted it; she’d never been conscious of a desire to parent before.
So what was it? She had never been very good at expressing herself 99
emotionally – she preferred to keep people at a safe distance – but as she listened to the young man speaking about his life, she felt an urge to reach out and hold him tight. She found herself wondering what it had been like for him to grow up among aliens, cut off from his own people. It must have been so hard. She knew there was no loneliness quite like that of an orphan.
Cross with herself for thinking like this, she took a deep breath and tried to concentrate on the facts. This boy represented an opportunity; a unique resource. His knowledge and his experiences could be the key to confirming that this was Guillan’s paradise.
‘So what’s the story with these monsters, then?’ Rose was asking the Doctor.
‘I don’t know,’ he confessed. ‘At least not yet.’
‘Not run into them before?’
‘I don’t think they’re the travelling kind,’ he murmured, deep in thought. Suddenly he snapped out of it. ‘What was this drink, then?’
The sudden gear change threw Rose. Annoyed with herself, she asked, ‘What drink?’ like a total amateur.
‘This jinnera stuff. You said it stopped the creature.’
‘Yeah, it certainly seemed to. . . like they were allergic or something.’
The Doctor leapt up from his seat and dashed across the room to where the professor was interrogating Rez. ‘The jinnen plant – can you show me?’
‘Of course,’ replied Rez.
Luckily it didn’t take Rez long to find a jinnen bush, heavy with fruit, not too far from the spaceship. He showed the Doctor the leaves they used to brew their hot drink, the peach-like fruit, which they ate, and the seeds of the fruit, which, when dried, were used to make a sleeping potion.
‘What an incredibly useful plant,’ commented the Doctor, impressed.
‘Laylora provides,’ replied Rez automatically.
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‘Does she really? That’s very convenient. . . ’
The Doctor turned to Kendle, who had insisted on accompanying them into the forest. ‘I take it you have lab facilities on board?’
Kendle nodded.
The Doctor gathered a handful of the leaves and the fruit, then stood up. ‘Let’s find out what makes this stuff tick, shall we?’
A short time later work was under way in the spaceship’s laboratory.
At least it was for the Doctor. Rose had been relegated to the position of observer. The Doctor was slicing up bits of the jinnen plant and its fruit, subjecting them to various pieces of testing equipment. It was all a long way from any science Rose had done at school, and she felt a bit annoyed at the lack of explanation that the Doctor was giving her.
‘Anything I can do?’ she asked for the umpteenth time, hoping that she could at least pass him things, like a good assistant, but apparently even that was asking too much.
‘Not really,’ the Doctor said, carefully adding a lumpy mass of pul-verised jinnen seed to a beaker of hot water. ‘Why don’t you take a wander around the ship? I think the professor was going to show your friend around. . . ’
Rose could see that there was little advantage in hanging around here, counting test tubes. The Doctor was in his element, playing the mad scientist, but that really wasn’t Rose’s thing. She was more of a people person. She decided to take his advice and have a look around.
The Humphrey Bogart wasn’t that large a ship (at least not compared to the TARDIS) and Rose managed to find her way to the bridge without too much trouble. When she got there she could see the professor and Kendle but there was no sign of Rez. The two of them were deep in discussion, so she waited at the open door, not wanting to interrupt. Neither of them could see her and, although Rose didn’t like to eavesdrop, she couldn’t help hearing what they were saying.
‘There’s nothing in the book about creatures like those things,’
Kendle was insisting.
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‘But that doesn’t mean this isn’t the planet,’ replied the professor, with equal certainty. ‘Look at the evidence. The size matches, the atmosphere’s right, the gravity. The name. It all adds up.’
Kendle shrugged. ‘There are lots of Earth-like planets out there.
You know the statistics. Planets with essentially the same properties as Earth are common throughout known space. And more than one planet can share a name.’
‘OK, I agree it’s possible that another planet in the same area could have been given the same name, but I still think that this is the one the Armstrong found. This has to be the Paradise Planet that Guillan discovered.’
Kendle shook his head. ‘It’s no paradise. Guillan said the planet he found was totally in balance. Its ecosystem was perfect. Right?’
Shulough nodded. ‘You don’t need to tell me what’s in that journal.
I know it by heart.’
‘The Doctor wa
s talking to the boy when we were outside looking for the plant. He said that things have been bad on this planet recently, earthquakes and floods, wild weather. . . Doesn’t sound very benevolent to me.’
The professor was unimpressed. ‘Oh yes, Rez said something about that to me too, but that’s just native superstition surely. It doesn’t mean anything.’
Rose could see that the argument was going to run and run, so she decided not to interrupt. Instead she backtracked down the corridor and set about exploring for herself. Rez must be around here somewhere.
Rez was already on level nine of the game, much to Hespell’s cha-grin. The boy had found him playing on his EntPad and had instantly wanted to have a go himself. Hespell had shown him the basic controls, not expecting him to have much success, but Rez had taken to it like a duck to water.
As Hespell looked on, with increasing disbelief, Rez had raced through the basic levels of the game and was now close to matching, if not overtaking, Hespell’s own best performance.
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Hespell sighed, wondering if he’d ever get a chance to have another go himself.
Ania Baker, the young crew member who had been injured in the second Witiku attack, had joined the Doctor in the laboratory. Ania explained to him that she was getting bored lying on her own in the MedLab and wanted to help, but the Doctor suspected that it was other company she was really after, not his.
‘Isn’t Jonn here?’ she’d asked when she came into the room, adding,
‘I mean Hespell,’ by way of further clarification.
The Doctor told her that her friend was guarding the captured creature and noted with some amusement the slight blush on the young woman’s face at his use of the word ‘friend’. He then asked her to help him transfer the finished jinnen solution into the various containers they had managed to assemble.
‘How does this work?’ she said, watching the brown liquid fill a plastic container.