Doctor Who: BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures [028] - The Taking of Planet 5 by Simon Bucher-Jones & Mark Clapham

Author:Simon Bucher-Jones & Mark Clapham
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science-Fiction - Doctor Who
ISBN: 9780563555858
Publisher: BBC Books
Published: 2000-04-14T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Fitz ran into the room from which the Doctor’s shout had come, to find his friend crouched on the floor, half doubled over. It took Fitz a second or two to move past the shield of his shoulders and see what he had found.

It was the Celestis artefact that they had first seen in the museum. The Doctor’s trembling hands settled on the black opalescent dome of the artefact, his fingers cupping it from above in the same way that the bone supporting structure did from below.

‘Shut the door.’ The Doctor beamed. ‘Now we’re getting somewhere.’

‘Er, where, exactly?’ Fitz asked, eyes wildly scanning the empty circular archway of the room’s entrance. The Doctor threw him the sonic screwdriver. ‘Third ring, five twists left, second, two right, and press the symbol shaped like an oblate Klein bottle.’

‘A what?’

‘The thing like a jug swallowing itself.’

‘Right!’

The Doctor’s hands had sunk into the surface of the globe now, and the midnight sheen of its dead lustre was infecting his wrists, staining them colours Fitz didn’t have words for. Judging from the Doctor’s face it hurt a lot.

He tugged at the ring controls of the screwdriver and pressed the weirdest symbol he could see, holding it cautiously at arm’s length. A thrumm ran up his forearms, running a dull ache into the bones of his shoulders. ‘So what happens next? Do my teeth shatter?’

‘The sonic screwdriver is putting out a vibratory field which is disturbing the air in the gateway so that it resonates and gives off microwaves in a standing pattern. If – and it’s a big if – the Time Lords have mapped their five eyes to the primary visual cortex and their microwave senses elsewhere – say to the so-called blind-sight circuits in the parietal lobe discovered by Dr Weiskrantz…’ He smiled. ‘I’m using human neurology as the analogy here, by the way. Anyway, they’ll be able to see us, but their instincts will insist we aren’t here, and in a fight between reason and instinct, even in Time Lords, reason always gets a bloody nose. It should make us impossible to notice. Ooh.’

The Doctor’s voice broke into a wince of pain.

‘Doctor!’

‘Sorry, sorry, didn’t mean to say that. Don’t worry: it’s just difficult to make this adjustment. The black globe is a time field in its own right, maintaining the core of the machine a couple of microseconds into the future. I can manipulate the buried controls but the neural feedback is considerable, and the blood supply to my fingers is fading in and out. I never could abide pins and needles.’

‘I thought you were in pain.’

‘Well I would be if this was going to take much longer. Sticking part of your body into a discontinuous time field is like risking gangrene and amputation – even for a Time Lord. However, if you know what you’re doing…’ There was a click like knuckles dislocating and the finger supports withdrew from the globe, leaving it hovering a good inch above the rest of the structure.

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