Doctor Who: The Price of Paradise by Colin Brake

Author:Colin Brake
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science-Fiction:Doctor Who
ISBN: 9780563486527
Publisher: BBC Worldwide
Published: 2007-07-04T10:00:00+00:00

89

To his delight, the Doctor broke into a broad smile. ‘Good lad!

You’re using your brain!’

The Doctor gave him an encouraging pat on the shoulder, which threatened to knock him off balance and send him tumbling into the creature. The Doctor then reached over to pick at something on the monster’s chest.

‘So, now you’ve warmed up your noggin, what do you make of this?’

Hespell studied what the Doctor was holding. It was a necklace, decorated with colourful stones and crystals, threaded on to some kind of vine. The centrepiece was one enormous fist-sized yellow crystal. He gasped. ‘Is that trisilicate?’

‘Looks like it, doesn’t it?’ the Doctor agreed.

‘Wow!’

‘Which raises some rather interesting questions,’ the Doctor announced, getting to his feet. ‘For a start, when was the last time you saw a great big hairy monster like this wearing bling quite like that?’

The atmosphere in the temple crypt was chilly and Rose shivered. She had discovered that it was far more than a simple room. Just as Rez had told her earlier, there was an absolute warren of interconnected cellars and tunnels down here that seemed to go on for kilometres. It was dark, cold and creepy, but fascinating at the same time. Rose found other images on the walls. They were fairly crude but clearly represented a range of ancient Layloran activities. They were even sketchier than the carvings the Doctor had been so fascinated by, the ones that decorated the exterior of the temple. In fact, now she thought about it, some of these tunnels and chambers seemed much older than the building above, as if perhaps the great temple had been built on top of an earlier, more primitive sacred place. A repeated image depicted the Witiku. However, there was more to this underground area than just wall paintings. There were stores of grain and jinnen beans, and other materials too. Rose looked into one room and gasped in surprise. It was filled with a huge pile of crystals. Except, on closer examination, she found that what she had taken to be crystals were some kind of hard jewel, like yellow diamonds. And 90

there were thousands of them. She picked one up to examine it more closely.

‘Pretty, aren’t they?’

Rose nearly jumped out of her skin. She whirled around to see who had crept up on her, but she already had an idea from the voice.

‘Sister Kaylen!’ The not-girlfriend. Terrific.

Rose had been aware of the girl shooting her dark looks all evening. She was clearly very fond of her stepbrother and Rose had halfexpected her to join them for their ‘date’, but she’d stayed away. Rose stood up, dropping the jewel she’d just picked up. Although she had done nothing wrong, she still felt guilty.

‘I wasn’t going to take it!’ she insisted, getting in her defence first. Kaylen just shrugged. ‘Take as many as you like. They’re everywhere.’

Rose couldn’t quite believe her ears. ‘You don’t value these things?’

She picked one up and felt its weight. It would make a lovely necklace, she thought.

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