Doctor Who The Mark of the Rani Pip Baker

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.Jack mustered a smile of thanks for his friend.Discarding his frayed, hopsack jacket, the brawny Sam Rudge worried about the money he had wasted.‘Wasted?It would save missus hauling tin bath into kitchen.Save stoking t’fire to heat water.’ In summer he could dowse himself under the pump in the yard.But this was not summer and the only warmth in Sam’s scanty cottage was from an all-purpose grate where his wife baked the bread and cooked the stews that formed the mainstay of their diet.‘Wasted? Nay, t’were money well spent.’Was it?None of them noticed a small pipe in the corner.or the jet of crimson steam infiltrating the atmosphere.‘Eh, this feels grand!’ Green, clothes dumped in a jumble on a reed mat, was immersing himself in the soothing water.The jet puffed into a fluffy cloud.‘Hey up! What’s this? Fireworks?’ said Rudge, stifling a yawn.‘Well, ’tis not smoke from fire, I’ll tell thee that.’‘Dost know where’s coming from, Jack?’ Green, dripping suds, clambered out of the bath.‘Pipe in’t corner, looks like.’‘’appen us could stuff it up.’‘Aye.’ Rolling a sock into a ball, Rudge plunged into a crimson mist.‘Best call old woman.‘Tis her –’A strangled sigh.‘Can’t breathe –’ He slumped to the floor.‘Sam!’Before the dumbfounded Ward and Green could render assistance to their friend, the spreading cloud enveloped them.Lungs polluted, they succumbed to the contaminating steam.But the miners’ ordeal had only just begun.A crack appeared in the solid granite wall.widened.the halves separated.and glided apart.Poised in the gap were two bizarre shapes.Muscular humans, their heads were encased in begoggled alloy masks with serpentine nozzled filters.In automated accord, they converged on Jack Ward and carried him into the secret cavity.2The Scarecrow‘Some substitute for Kew Gardens!’Peri’s disgust was justified.The TARDIS had materialised at the foot of a slag heap.A slag heap!She eyed the mountain of waste from a coalmine with displeasure as the black sludge stained her new red shoes.‘Try looking on the bright side.’ Endeavouring to be conciliatory, the Doctor was nevertheless concentrating on a hand-sized, oblong meter he held.‘After all, isn’t coal fossilized plant life?’ He was methodically sweeping all points of the compass with the device.‘What’ve you got there?’ Curiosity overcame disappointment.‘Tracking device.Nifty gadget.Unique.Invented it myself.’‘That I can believe!’‘Registers time distortion.Should indicate the source of the power that interfered with our co-ordinates – aaaaah!’The gadget began bleeping.Obviously this was the signal the Doctor had been seeking.‘Hoist up your skirts, Peri, we’re off!’Holding the bleeping tracking device aloft, he sloshed through the slurry.Aware that every step was making her shoes even messier, Peri trailed reluctantly in his wake.There was no mess or dirt on Jack Ward, Edwin Green or Sam Rudge.Nor were they unconscious any longer.The cloud of steam had evaporated and the wall was restored to normal.Indeed, the bath chamber was just as it had been when they first entered: the baths, the fireplace, the rush mats on the floor.Nothing had changed.except the men themselves.The tiredness had disappeared.So had the friend-ship.They were fighting.Boisterous.Hyperactive.Flicking each other with towels.A particularly vicious swipe stung Edwin Green.He raised his fists, sparring up to Rudge.Only too willing to join combat, Rudge accepted the challenge.The fight was no horseplay.The blows drew blood.Bored with their antics, Jack Ward elbowed them out of his way and made for the door.Glaring pugnaciously, irritably, he chafed a sore place on the left side of his neck where a round, crimson mark now glowed.Separated by his aggressive departure, Ward and Green abandoned their fight and followed after him.They, too, were rubbing their necks.On the left side.Where similar round, crimson marks glowed.Outside the bath house, completely unaware that anything alien had happened to them, their aggression focused on a crippled street-vendor who was selling a bag of muffins to a boy.With a snarl of rage, Green booted the boy aside, Ward knocked the vendor to the ground and Rudge upended the serving tray.Incited by the havoc they had created, kicking the scattered muffins, they stormed through the village, whooping and yelling.It was unnaturally quiet in the field where Peri and the Doctor walked.Not that Peri had registered this.She was studying the hedgerows.‘Most of these hedgerows won’t exist soon,’ she said.Neither Peri nor the tracking device occupied the Doctor.The finely tuned sixth sense that every Time Lord has was troubling him.‘In the twentieth century, I mean.They’re being chopped down to improve farming efficiency,’ Peri continued.Again no reply from the Doctor whose unease was increasing.Whatever was unsettling him had a familiar and disagreeable echo.‘My generation’s already worried about the effect on wildlife.Some species of butterfly are almost extinct.Birds too.’‘Talking of birds – have you noticed anything strange?’Peri resisted the obvious retort that everything about and connected with the Doctor was strange.‘Strange?’‘No birdsong.and no birds [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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