by Doctor Who
‘And Tommy needs help, which we can’t get for him.’ Again, so much stating the obvious, but at least veering in the direction of my question. ‘Give me your pendant a second.’
I did so, not quite sure what he wanted it for.
‘So, this is what’s going to happen. You’re going back to the museum, you’re going to get help for Tommy, and you’re going to find out what’s going on while I deal with these wee beasties down here.
OK?’ He began to programme numbers into the pendant’s keypad.
Hang on a minute. . .
Before I really knew what was happening, the Doctor had shoved the shopping trolley towards me and, as I grabbed at it instinctively, he flung the pendant’s cord back over my head. Then with a twisty-turny move that would impress any yoga guru, he bent over to push the big blue buttons on both mine and Tommy’s pendants and suddenly. . .
I was back in the Earth section of MOTLO, Tommy at my feet and the Dorothea-containing trolley by my side, knowing that the Doctor was light years away, still surrounded by deadly prehistoric creatures.
I wasn’t happy. But he’d given me a job to do, so I was going to do it. I’d pretty much figured out by now that that was how this whole deal worked.
125
THE I-SPYDER BOOK OF EARTH CREATURES
DROMAEOSAURUS
Dromaeosaurus albertensis
Location: North America
Dromaeosaurus is a carnivorous theropod dinosaur of just under two metres in length. It walks on its hind legs, which are relatively short, but powerful. The centre toe on each of its three-toed feet has a long, sickle-shaped claw. Its body is covered with structures that resemble feathers.
Addendum:
Last reported sighting: late Cretaceous period.
Cause of extinction: environmental change.
I-Spyder points value: 200
The vast Earth section was still empty of creatures as far as the eye could see – Dorothea the dodo aside – and devoid now of visitors too. ‘Hello?’ Martha called, quietly at first, slightly intimidated by the space and the silence, and then louder and louder as no response was forthcoming. Yes, she supposed she was a fugitive, but Tommy’s safety was more important right now. She self-consciously did a little jog around just in case the movement sensors had been switched on, but no alarm sounded.
Having given Tommy a quick check – he was still stable, if not exactly in the best of health – she set off to look for help. It was harder to navigate without the animal landmarks, but signs still stood at most junctions, pointing hopelessly towards a non-existent parrot or panda, and that helped.
Suddenly – whether it was seeing a sign indicating the Black Rhino, or whether she would have remembered anyway – her memory was jogged. The pendants – they could be used to communicate too! Her first instinct was to make her way back to Tommy and then call for help, but she realised that actually it suited her purpose more to be somewhere else, keep out of the clutches of the security guards and remain a free agent. Or Agent. She’d become Agent Jones again 127
because, after all, she had some detecting to do.
She examined the pendant around her neck and found the appropriate switch. ‘Medical assistance required,’ she hissed into it. ‘Earther down, Earther down! Earth section, er. . . ’ She tried to remember what signs she’d seen by their arrival point, and checked her pocket for the I-Spyder guide to see if she’d got the name right – but of course the Doctor still had that. Which meant that she couldn’t update it.
Not that that mattered – the vast emptiness surrounding her meant her accumulation of points had just come to an abrupt halt. ‘Near where the Kosher Cake was,’ she attempted.
‘The Kosrae Crake?’ came a voice in return, possibly Rix’s, Then, in a more perturbed tone, ‘Hang on, who is this?’
‘Never mind that. Just help Tommy.’ Then she firmly pushed the switch into its ‘off’ position.
She crept through the deserted halls, pushing the supermarket trolley in front of her, trying to ignore its squeaky wheel, trying to ignore thoughts of the Doctor millions of miles away, facing down a dinosaur.
In a funny kind of way, the Doctor was quite pleased. After all, merely being surrounded by sabre-toothed tigers wasn’t much of a challenge when he’d already figured out how to stop them – the old road-melting trick didn’t have to be a one-off. So, a dinosaur in the mix at least made things a bit more interesting. At the very least, running away from it while simultaneously trapping tigers added some spice to the mix.
The dinosaur trod on a pillar box, squashing it flat, an action that would cause a number of bills to remain unpaid, some birthdays to be left uncelebrated, and a promising romance to be broken off amid a storm of rows and allegations.
The Doctor was dodging here and there, sonic screwdriver waving frantically to and fro as he liquefied this bit of tarmac, reformed that bit, avoided teeth and ducked out of the reach of claws – all the while trying to keep a significant distance between himself and the dinosaur.
So far, there was only one dinosaur; no others of the same kind had turned up, either in the town or – as far as he could see – on TV.
128
That was also interesting. Because perhaps this was the real thing, the actual ‘specimen’ that both the TARDIS and Tommy had tracked down. Although the Doctor had sent Martha back to the museum to find out what was going on, he did already have a few ideas about some of it, and one of those ideas was that the duplicate animals were not genuine exhibits from the Museum of the Last Ones. If they were not ‘specimens’, it would explain why Tommy had not been able to zap the sabre-toothed tiger – but if this was the real deal, a Last One whose details were in the Museum’s central computer, then it could be immobilised. And he just happened to have one of the pendants in the TARDIS. Not programmed for this particular creature, of course, but such petty details hardly worried the owner of a sonic screwdriver.
The Doctor had a sudden thought. He hadn’t returned the I-Spyder guide to Martha, it was still in his pocket. Doing several things at once was second nature to the Doctor, and he kept running while he brought up the book’s prehistoric reptile section, feeding in as many details of the dinosaur as he could to narrow down the selection. Aha!
There it was. Megalosaurus. And it had been a native of these parts.
So the likelihood of it being genuine was fairly high. Good.
He looked up from the book’s screen. He was just approaching the side street where the TARDIS had landed. And there in front of him was another sabre-toothed tiger. He raised the screwdriver again, but there was no tarmac to melt, just paving slabs. He turned. The Megalosaurus was just clearing the coffee shop. He was between a rock and a hard place. No, actually that sounded a lot more attractive than his real situation. Just leave it that he was between a fierce, huge, deadly prehistoric killer, and an even fiercer and more huge deadly prehistoric killer.
The sabre-tooth got nearer. The Megalosaurus got nearer. Nearer and nearer. Escape options flashed into the Doctor’s head but were instantly rejected, each leaving him further away from the TARDIS
and not significantly safer anyway.
Nearer. Nearer. The Megalosaurus lunged. The sabre-tooth lunged.
The Doctor took a deep breath. . . as the two monsters sank their teeth into each other.
129
Round and round the creatures span, a fearsome whirlwind of teeth and talons. The Doctor, breath let out, hovered on the outskirts, trying to sense an opening that might lead him to the TARDIS, but the fight was between him and the alleyway entrance.
The dinosaur was winning, the big cat tiring as blood poured from the wounds of tooth and claw. With one final, moribund effort, the sabre-tooth lashed out and the Megalosaurus stepped back – into the mouth of the cul-de-sac. The cul-de-sac where the TARDIS was. The cul-de-sac that was really too narrow for an enormous dinosaur.
The Doctor watched in consternation as the tiger breathed it
s last.
The Megalosaurus tried to move forward again – but it was stuck fast, wedged in between two buildings. It seemed temporarily unconcerned, pacified by the corpse of the unfortunate sabre-tooth which it proceeded to tear to shreds, but the Doctor wasn’t so calm. He had to get to the TARDIS. He needed a way over the dinosaur – but, unlike Albert in the supermarket, he had no handy chiller cabinets to climb on. Not that they made chiller cabinets that tall. . .
Albert! Of course! The Doctor suddenly had an idea. He hared off down the road, doubling back on himself.
Yes! There outside the supermarket a fire engine still stood. A fire engine with a ladder on the top. . .
He opened a door and climbed up, schoolboy pleasure at being inside such a machine blotting out all worries about the present crisis.
He flexed his wrists and grasped the steering wheel, a big grin on his face.
A throat was cleared on the other side of the door. The Doctor looked out of the window. ‘I think you might need this,’ said Albert, holding up a key.
The Doctor reached out, but Albert didn’t hand it over. ‘What’s up?’
he asked.
‘I need the ladder,’ the Doctor told him. ‘To climb over a dinosaur.’
‘Ladder needs two people to operate,’ said Albert. ‘Shove over.’
‘Do you know how to drive this thing, then?’
‘I’m the man with the key,’ Albert said. ‘Why d’you think the rest all went off on the other appliance? Course I know how to drive it.’
130
The Doctor looked crestfallen. ‘I was sort of hoping you didn’t,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose. . . ’
‘Nope,’ said Albert, grinning. ‘Tell you what, though, maybe on the way back. After we’ve sorted the dinosaur.’
The Doctor returned the grin, moving over to let Albert into the driving seat. ‘It’s a deal!’
To the Doctor’s disappointment, Albert wouldn’t let him put on the sirens or the flashing blue lights as they drove down the road towards the Megalosaurus. ‘You really want to alert that thing?’ the fireman asked, which the Doctor had to admit was a good point. The dinosaur didn’t pay any attention to them as they pulled up, though, still being occupied with its sabre-toothed meal. But how long it would remain distracted for was the question.
‘Yup, that’s a big beast all right,’ commented Albert matter-of-factly as he pulled on the brake. ‘Lucky it’s a big ladder. . .
The fireman showed the Doctor how to use the system of ropes and pulleys that extended the ladder upwards. They were both uncomfortably aware as they worked that the merest flick of a claw could prove their undoing, should the dinosaur switch its attention to them.
‘Any particular reason you need to climb over the thing?’ Albert asked as they began hauling away.
‘Got a time machine the other side,’ the Doctor said.
‘Oh,’ said Albert.
Soon the ladder was fully extended. The Doctor made Albert get back into the vehicle’s cab, with strict instructions to drive away should the Megalosaurus become an immediate danger – no matter what position the Doctor was in. Then he began to climb.
The dinosaur’s head was lowered, attacking the tiger corpse, but it was still a formidable height. The Doctor reached the top – just as a huge eye flickered towards him.
The head reared up. Jaws opened. The Doctor leapt. . .
. . . And landed on the creature’s scaly forehead. He scrambled upwards as a forearm flailed worryingly near, but then he was over the top and sliding down the other side, like he was in the Flintstones title sequence. The TARDIS key was in his hand ready, and he slid 131
off the end of the tail and inserted the key in one flowing movement.
He grabbed the pendant out of its slot on the console, zip zap zipped with the sonic screwdriver, and was back through the doors in seconds. Were his calculations correct? Would it work?
Yes. The dinosaur froze, and the Doctor breathed a sigh of relief.
But now what? Could he reverse the reversal, Martha had asked; send the creatures back? Well, he had a pendant, and he had the sonic screwdriver. He didn’t have access to the museum’s central computer, but he did have the TARDIS.
Send the creatures back. . .
The Doctor thought about a few things. Having thought about them, he smiled broadly.
Albert, poised over the wheel of the fire engine, was staring hard at the Megalosaurus when suddenly there was no Megalosaurus there to stare at. He blinked once or twice, then shrugged. Dinosaur, no dinosaur, that was just the way things went. Behind where the dinosaur had been was a blue box, tall in its way but not a quarter of the height of the enormous reptile.
The Doctor emerged from the doorway of the blue box, and waved cheerfully to Albert. Albert waved back.
‘All done,’ the Doctor told him, jogging back to the appliance. ‘Well, I say all, I’ve still got a few billion extinct animals to sort out as well as various probable clones, not to mention picking up my companion from a space museum while avoiding the megalomaniacal proprietor who wants to turn me into an exhibit.’
‘Is that right?’ asked Albert.
The Doctor nodded. ‘But first. . . ’ he said. ‘If I drive it round the block, may I put the siren on this time, please?’
132
THE I-SPYDER BOOK OF EARTH CREATURES
MEGALOSAURUS
Megalosaurus bucklandi
Location: Eurasia (addendum: areas later known as England and France)
The carnivorous Megalosaurus is a large theropod dinosaur, similar in appearance to Tyrannosaurus rex, although half its size – it is about 9 metres long and 3 metres in height. It walks upright and has relatively small arms and a long, heavy tail.
Addendum:
Last reported sighting: Jurassic period.
Cause of extinction: environmental changes.
I-Spyder points value: 400
Iheardpeoplecoming,andlookedforsomewheretohide. Ofcourse, had I not zapped all the dinosaurs to modern-day Earth, that would have been easy enough, but as it was. . . I crouched behind a sign indicating the way to the gift shop, put a finger to my lips and shhhed at Dorothea, and hoped for the best.
The footsteps got louder. There was also the sound of something being wheeled along and for a moment I thought they’d got a shopping trolley too, but as I peered cautiously around the sign I saw that it was actually a wheeled stretcher. The men pushing it wore jumpsuits with ‘Infirmary’ written on the back, and on the stretcher lay Tommy.
There was colour in his cheeks and he was breathing normally and, although I wasn’t really in any position to make a prognosis, I was pretty sure he was going to be all right. Didn’t stop me feeling bad for abandoning him, though – but I didn’t have time to indulge in guilt; I had a job to do. Or try to do. . .
It’s all very well being sent to find out something. But when you actually come to consider the matter, you realise it’s not quite as simple as that. Size of museum: probably several million square miles; size of investigator: well, I might manage six feet if I was wearing high heels and standing on a stool. Like looking for a needle in a haystack 135
as big as Wales. Except more difficult, because at least you’d know (a) that you were searching for a needle, and (b) what a needle looks like. Because I didn’t have a clue what I was after.
Duplicate dodos, double dinosaurs, same sabre-tooths. Someone had to be breeding them – or, more likely, this being the future and everything, cloning them. That would account for them being identical.
I looked down at Dorothea. I guessed this meant she wasn’t the last dodo after all – that was probably back on Mauritius right now, causing havoc among the holidaymakers – but something grown in a vat from an abstracted cell or two. Did it make her any less of a being?
Not in my eyes. I ruffled her neck feathers, and she nuzzled my hand, seemingly perfectly content in my company. I guess, like her earlier relatives, she’d not expe
rienced any predators inside her vat, didn’t know that humans could bring harm. She’d known nothing except a laboratory before her brief foray on to the Earth.
She’d known nothing except a laboratory. . .
‘Giant Peruvian flightless homing pigeon’, the Doctor had called the bird to cunningly mislead a curious passer-by. And the ‘Dodo’ entry in the I-Spyder guide had called it ‘the largest member of the pigeon family’. Could it be possible. . . ? Was there any chance whatsoever that the Doctor’s jesting words had contained a grain of truth. . . ?
I waited until the infirmary party was completely out of sight, and then hefted Dorothea out of the trolley. She started walking forwards and I held my breath, but she’d only gone to investigate an empty paper cup, presumably dropped by a visitor.
I breathed out. It had been a daft idea. Time to rethink.
Here’s what I’ve found is useful, being a detective – OK, being with the Doctor – coming up with ridiculous, pie-in-the-sky hypotheses and not being afraid to test them. Where was all this stuff happening?
That’s right, Earth. Therefore who was most likely to be involved?
Yup, one of the Earthers. After all, one of them had already been exposed as a dodgy dealer. I considered Frank as the culprit. Possible, but he was currently locked up, so how could he have sent all the clones to Earth? Plus, would he have the scientific knowledge 136
necessary to create them in the first place?
Still, the Earthers’ quarters seemed as good a place as any to start the search. Of course, I didn’t know where they were. I did, however, know which cafeteria door Vanni had gone out of on her way to bed, and I couldn’t think of any other starting point. So I put Dorothea back in the trolley and set off. I didn’t have the instincts of a homing pigeon, but I was fairly sure I could find the way to the cafeteria, mainly because there were signs with great big arrows indicating the right direction.
The sight of the canteen made me realise that I’d only had a doughnut all day, and I was starving. Of course, I didn’t have any money on me to get something out of the vending machines. Then I spotted a cardboard box by the side of a half-empty machine. Refills?