Doctor Who: Virgin New Adventures - Bernice Summerfield [062] - Oh No It Isn't! by Paul Cornell

Author:Paul Cornell
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science-Fiction - Doctor Who
ISBN: 9780426205074
Publisher: Virgin
Published: 1997-05-14T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

Fairy stories

After several hours of walking, Stokes’s party had come to the structures in the centre of the hall.

The artificial sky above had long since darkened and the only light source for the latter part of the journey had been the lines on the ground, which glowed powerfully green. Indeed, the academics had gasped when they first saw that luminescence, because it became apparent that the pattern of lines stretched across the entire floor, forming a sort of target, with concentric rings around the centre crossed by inward-running lines of the sort they were following.

No thought had been paid to stopping. An hour or so ago, they had heard the first echoes of distant hootings and gurglings. The Grel were somewhere behind them.

In front of them loomed the structures. They were tall, thin, green walls, surrounding a round enclosure with an arched entrance. Nervously, they made their way through it.

On the other side was a large compound, with three similar entrances at the points of the compass. There were many seats, arranged in groups, and machines of unknown purpose scattered between them. In the centre of the compound was a circular area, about the size of one of the university’s cricket pitches. On one side of it there stood a spar-shaped object, with wreckage all around it. The floor of the circle was cracked and shattered where it had fallen from above and buried itself, still upright, in the ground.

Looking up, Stokes could see the dark outlines of many vast shapes overhead. Only one spar had fallen. There were many more still up there, with a long way to fall.

Professor Epstein glanced around the seating and the central arena and shrugged. ‘Some sort of sporting arena? Not many seats for a crowd that had to come such a long way.’

‘The Perfectons could obviously have walked into another dimension and walked out here,’ Singh snapped. ‘That’s why the hall’s so big: distance to them was no object.’

‘Rubbish!’ giggled Blandish. ‘Big halls are created to impress, and if you can just hop in and out, then you swiftly cease to be impressed.’

‘You’re forgetting the issue of functionality,’ said Wagstaff, waving the knob of his walking stick in the air. ‘What if they needed a big hall to get everybody in here?’

‘Ridiculous! A hall this big would take the whole population of the planet to fill!’ Singh gestured around him. ‘And why, then, would there be so few seats?’

‘We did see another encampment across the floor,’ said Lucinda. ‘There may only be a few seats here.’

‘Shoot me down in flames if you like, but you know what this place reminds me of?’ Janes was getting excited, kneading the air with his big hands. ‘A spaceport departure lounge. This looks just like a boarding gate, and that –’ he walked up to one of the machines and gave it a friendly thump ‘– is a refreshment dispenser.’

‘Fascinating,’ sighed Singh. ‘If only we could find out when the next flight is, we could –’

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