Doctor Who - Telos Novellas - 11 - The Eye of the Tyger by Paul McAuley & Neil Gaiman

Author:Paul McAuley & Neil Gaiman [McAuley, Paul & Gaiman, Neil]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Science Fiction, Action & Adventure
ISBN: 9781903889244
Google: OH4LAAAACAAJ
Amazon: 1903889243
Publisher: Telos Pub Ltd
Published: 2003-10-15T07:00:00+00:00

There was a whistle that went up beyond the range of hearing – Casimir clapped her hands over her tufted ears – and with a grating sound the door began to lift up, shuddering to a halt halfway.

‘Now look what you’ve done,’ the voice said petulantly. The Doctor twirled his pen-like tool like a Wild West gunslinger, winked at me, and stowed it away inside his jacket.

‘The guards are coming,’ the voice said, as we ducked under the half-open door. ‘Yes they are, and then you’ll be sorry. Just wait there! There is a Level Two security alert. Wait! Wait!’

We could hear it all the way down the long, dank corridor.

‘You’ve let in the rats!’ it howled.

Water ran down bare rock walls. Pipes snaked overhead, hissing and gurgling. A few dim lights flickered behind wire cages. It was so cold that our breath fogged the air, and something lodged far beneath the wet rock floor was making a deep, rhythmic thumping. Then the corridor made a sharp turn, and we came out onto a short platform, beside a glass capsule the size of a motor car. Its door was firmly shut, and I expected another argument with a disembodied voice, but the Doctor said that the machine was merely switched off. He used his pen-like tool – his sonic screwdriver –

to undo a panel in the metal band that ran around the equator of the capsule, and flicked a few of the switches that this operation revealed. Lights flickered on inside the capsule, a curved section of glass pushed out and slid up, and a voice exactly like that of the door asked us where we wanted to go.

The Doctor looked at Casimir, but she shook her head and said that she had never used the service tunnels.

I heard a faint scratching behind us, and turned and saw a small horde of rats scuttle around the bend in the corridor. They were all wearing scraps of leather harness. Several carried leaf-wrapped packages on their backs, and two pulled a tiny cart piled with bits of metal and lengths of wire. I aimed a kick at them and they scattered, squeaking crude insults, and poured one after the other into a vent from which white vapour curled.

The Doctor was amused. ‘I know it’s becoming second nature to you, Fyne, but try to restrain your impulse to chase after small mammals. Train, you will take us to your terminus.’

The voice told us that the estimated journey time was three minutes, and we climbed aboard. The door shut and with a barely perceptible jolt we were on our way. I stepped up to the nose of the capsule, where the Doctor was watching rock walls rush past on either side, and asked him, ‘What if this is taking us in the wrong direction?’

‘Then we’ll ask it to go the other way – or find another one that does.’ The Doctor looked at me, and said, ‘You’re feeling more yourself by day, Fyne.’

My cheeks prickled.

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