137 - Doctor Who - Dragonfire by Ian Briggs

Author:Ian Briggs
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-07-12T01:23:30+00:00

The woman turned to leave, but then turned back again and looked at Glitz. ‘Don’t just stand there gawking, man.

Start looking for her.’

‘Certainly, missus.’

Glitz turned a little confusedly, and started looking, while the woman flounced off in a quiver of pink ostrich.

Glitz had already peered uncertainly behind two fire extinguishers and an ash tray before he realised what he was doing...

The Doctor was hurrying through the empty corridors.

‘Ask him what he’s up to,’ Ace kept insisting, as the two women hurried along in the Doctor’s tracks. But Mel knew better than to pester the Doctor with trivial questions when he was in this kind of a mood.

Suddenly, Ace halted, and pointed at an access ladder on the wall that led down to the floors below. ‘Here – this is a short cut to my quarters. It’s right underneath us.

Look.’

Mel looked at the ladder. There was some graffiti felt-tipped onto the wall beside it:

‘Ace for Wayne?’ said Mel with a slight smile.

‘Yeah, he’s my stuffed dog.’ Then Ace realised what Mel had been thinking, and turned on Mel accusingly. ‘Here, who d’you think he was?’

‘Come on, you two!’ called the Doctor from down the corridor. ‘Why are you always squabbling?’

‘Come on,’ said Mel.

‘No – wait. I just want to pop back to my quarters. I feel a bit naked without a couple of cans of nitro.’

‘There isn’t time.’

‘Will you two hurry up!’

‘I’ll only be a sec.’ Ace was already half-way down the ladder. ‘I’ll catch you up before you reach Kane’s Cryogenics Chamber.’ And she was gone.

Mel ran and caught up with the Doctor. ‘What’s happened to Ace?’ he asked in concern.

‘She’s gone back to her quarters. But she said not to wait for her.’

The Doctor was annoyed by this time-wasting. ‘I’ll have something to say to her when I see her again. Come on.

The Creature’s still in danger.’

‘I hope it’s found somewhere to hide. Somewhere safe...’

McLuhan was calm as she lay with her finger pulling gently on the Cosmolite’s trigger. She heard the quiet ticking of the signal tracker that Bazin was holding.

‘One hundred metres,’ he said, as the ticking grew slightly faster.

For some reason, an incident from her childhood suddenly came into McLuhan’s mind. She and her gang of friends had been playing in a disused quarry, and the boys had dared the girls to climb up a rock face. There were plenty of hand- and footholds, but it was almost vertical.

The smallest girl had got halfway up, then got frightened.

McLuhan was nearest to her and had started to edge towards the small girl. She kept looking at her and could see the sheer terror in the small girl’s eyes. But before McLuhan could reach her, the expression in the girl’s eyes changed. It was almost as if the small girl had realised that the choice between life and death was hers, and had decided to fall. Even as a child, McLuhan knew at that moment that the other girl would fall before she could reach her.

‘Fifty metres. It’s there!’ Bazin’s voice brought her back to the Ice Passages.

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