The Slitheen Excursion Read online

  ‘They were terrified of me,’ said June.

  ‘Yes, well, humans are quite funny-looking.’

  ‘They weren’t half as scared of you,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘But then I’m obviously not . . .’ He tailed off, glancing up at her. ‘I’m obviously not as funny-looking as you.’

  ‘I’m not funny-looking!’ she protested.

  He looked her up and down, then shrugged, put his glasses away and headed out of the grotto. June seethed for a moment, then realised he might disappear back into his blue hut. She couldn’t just let him get away; she needed to know who he was. June ran to catch him up as they emerged into the early-morning sunshine. He turned back to her, a curious look in his eyes. She decided to play it bold, like they were already working together.

  ‘So what do we do now?’ she asked.

  ‘We?’ said the man, surprised. ‘You forget all about this. Go home. You’re . . .’ He hesitated as a thought struck him. June bristled as he looked her up and down again. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked her.

  ‘Uh,’ she said, surprised. ‘June,’ she said.

  The skinny man smiled. ‘Hello, June. I’m the Doctor.’

  She laughed. ‘Is that a codename? Do alien hunters all have names like that?’

  The Doctor grinned. ‘Oh yeah,’ he said. ‘We’re like a league of superheroes. I sometimes wear a cape. Not today, obviously.’

  ‘There’s a whole army of you, is there?’

  The Doctor tried to hide it, but she saw the change in him, the sadness in his eyes. ‘Oh yeah,’ he said. ‘A whole army.’

  June had only just met him but she instinctively reached for his hand. ‘It’s OK, I’m sort of on my own, too,’ she told him.

  He nodded, slowly. ‘What brings you to Greece in the first place?’ he asked her

  ‘How do you know I’m not local?’ she said. ‘Maybe I can just speak English.’

  ‘Well, yeah,’ said the skinny man, like it was obvious. ‘But your accent is a dead giveaway. Lived most of your life near . . . Basingstoke, maybe. But living in Birmingham now. What are you doing out here?’

  June swallowed, amazed he could know so much about her just from how she spoke. ‘Came to see all this,’ she said self-consciously, gesturing down at the ruin of the theatre, the Doctor’s weird blue hut on what had once been the stage.

  ‘They performed Agamemnon for the very first time on that stage,’ said the Doctor. ‘Beautiful evening, standing room only. Of course they hadn’t invented popcorn. But what a show! Brilliant ending. I won’t spoil it for you but they pull this brilliant gag . . .’

  ‘Yeah, when Cassandra cries out,’ June told him. ‘I know. I’m doing Classics.’

  The skinny man blinked at her. ‘Classics?’ he said. ‘Are they still teaching that?’

  ‘Yes,’ said June wearily. She had got a little tired of people asking her why she didn’t do a proper subject.

  ‘Brilliant,’ said the Doctor. ‘I thought it was all vocational courses these days. Not study just for the sake of study. So you’re out here to see the real thing.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Good for you. Better than just looking it up on the internet, isn’t it?’

  ‘Or seeing it on TV.’

  ‘I could show you around if you like,’ he said. ‘As a thank you for saving the city. We could go to the Benaki Museum, see the sketches by my mate Edward Lear . . .’

  She grinned. ‘I’ve got a train home in an hour,’ she said, twisting round to show him her rucksack. ‘It’s why I’ve got all my stuff.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said. Again she saw the terrible loneliness in him. ‘Oh well, can’t be helped.’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘But I’ve done the museums. I’ve done the temples and the forum. And the old city walls at Kerameikos . . .’

  ‘Not much I can show off to you about, then,’ said the Doctor.

  ‘No,’ said June. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘So what do you make of it?’ he said, looking away from her, surveying the ancient theatre. ‘I mean, comparing the real place to what you’ve only read about it?’

  June sighed. She’d been trying to answer that very question for herself since she’d first arrived.

  ‘It’s difficult to tell,’ she said at last. ‘You could spend a hundred years here and still not get it. I keep catching glimpses of a whole other world, the colour and texture of the city as it was.’ She bit her lip, annoyed that she couldn’t put it any better. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘They’re so far from us now. Despite all the history and archaeology, it’s lost behind so many assumptions. How can we ever know what it was like?’

  The skinny man nodded, looking down over the ruin of the theatre and his wooden blue hut. Then he looked up at June, gazing at her with deep, dark eyes. June felt her heart beating in her chest.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘We can’t really know without going there.’ He gazed down at her, his eyes alive with mischief. ‘You know, there might be something I can show off about,’ he said.

  TWO

  THE TARDIS WAS bigger on the inside. June quivered with excitement – she was inside a real spaceship! The Doctor rushed round the raised section in the middle of the vast room, attacking the controls. His features were lit by an eerie blue glow from the central column as he twisted and tweaked the levers.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘I’ve let the authorities know about our aliens and their explosives. Someone will be along soonish.’

  ‘Space police’s finest?’ said June as she came over to join him. She dumped her rucksack out of the way, under a battered old seat. ‘What if the aliens escape before then?’

  ‘I sealed them in,’ the Doctor told her.

  ‘Or if someone else sets off the explosives?’

  ‘I used the want conduit. Someone would have to imagine sunflowers and ball bearings to open it.’

  ‘What?’ laughed June. ‘Why sunflowers and ball bearings?’

  ‘Um,’ said the Doctor. ‘I like sunflowers and ball bearings. Look, can we go now?’

  ‘Shouldn’t I text someone? Let Mum know where I’m going.’

  ‘Go on, then,’ said the Doctor. ‘But I’ll have you back here the very moment you send it. And she won’t believe you anyway.’ He began to work the controls again, winding a dial and typing coordinates with his long, nimble fingers. ‘So. Same spatial coordinates . . . Just adjust the temporal range . . . We want somewhere round 480 BC, don’t we? When the Parthenon’s all spanking new.’

  ‘But nobody will know where I am. What if something happens?’

  The Doctor looked up at her. ‘I won’t let it,’ he said. ‘I promise. One quick trip, just for a look round. Nothing dangerous. No getting involved in anything.’

  A small pink light came on amid the complex controls. The Doctor didn’t seem to have seen it.

  ‘Is that important?’ said June.

  ‘Probably,’ he said, not looking up. ‘It’s a distress signal somewhere in the area.’ He fiddled with some controls and read from the screen in front of him. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Maximum alert, lives in mortal danger, but a thousand years before where we’re headed. Someone else’s problem . . .’

  June was appalled. ‘Who else?’ she asked him. ‘You said you were on your own.’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  She snorted at him. ‘Is there anyone else?’

  The Doctor kept his eyes on the controls and didn’t answer her.

  ‘Doctor,’ she told him. ‘Someone’s in distress.’

  The Doctor looked up at her and she could see his eagerness to answer the call. ‘I said we wouldn’t get involved in anything,’ he told her. And she realised he needed her to take responsibility for the decision.

  ‘It’s dangerous, isn’t it?’ she said.

  ‘Maximum alert,’ he repeated. ‘Lives in mortal danger.’

  ‘But we should help if we can?’

  ‘I made you a promise,’
he said.

  ‘We should help if we can. Do it. Please.’

  He grinned at her and began to hammer at the controls. The TARDIS bumped and bucked around them, so June had to reach for the railing. She thought the Doctor had just got them moving at speed, racing to the rescue. But when she looked up his expression was stern.

  ‘That’s not right,’ he said, eyes fixed on the screen. ‘There’s a great hole of atemporal mismatch right where we want to be. Off the Kodicek scale.’

  ‘That’s bad, is it?’

  The Doctor ran his fingers through his hair. ‘Well it really shouldn’t be there. What happened in Athens in 1500 BC?’

  ‘Did Athens even exist back then?’ said June. ‘What can this mismatch thing do?’

  ‘Um,’ said the Doctor, working the controls, ‘it could do worse than all those explosives. So ancient Greece never existed.’

  June felt suddenly very cold. ‘You’ve got to stop it.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said the Doctor. ‘Probably a good idea.’ The TARDIS continued to bump and buck under them, the engines groaning under the strain. ‘Hang on, we’re going to need to pass through it first. Might be a little bit rough.’

  June clutched the railing tightly. ‘How rough?’ she shouted over the noise of the engines.

  ‘A little bit,’ said the Doctor.

  And then there was an explosion.

  The metal grille of the floor pressed hard against June’s face. She sat up slowly, her limbs aching. The control room of the TARDIS was dark and smoky, the only light from the steaming central dais of controls. Oxygen masks hung down at head height, like in the safety films on planes. The Doctor stood at the controls, perfectly still and his eyes closed.

  ‘Doctor?’ June asked as she got slowly to her feet. She had a hole in the knee of her jeans and felt a sudden twinge of pain when she put weight on her leg.

  The Doctor didn’t answer. She limped over to him. The screen in front of him showed angry static. Steam hissed from a long fracture in the central column, the light inside cloudy and grey. The steam caught at the back of her throat, a taste of spice and peaches. June hoped it wasn’t toxic.

  ‘Doctor,’ she said again, scared now by his silence. Again he didn’t move. She reached out her hand and prodded him in the arm.

  His lips moved.

  ‘What?’ she said, leaning in to hear him.

  His lips trembled, struggling to form a word.

  ‘Out,’ he said.

  June stepped back. ‘You want to get out?’ she asked him. ‘But I don’t know where we are. We don’t know what’s out there.’

  ‘Out,’ he said again, the pain evident in his voice. ‘Get. Me. Out.’

  ‘OK,’ she told him. ‘Maybe some fresh air will clear your head.’ She took his hand, putting her other arm round his waist. He made no response and felt incredibly cold, as if the skinny body inside his suit had been carved from ice. Surely no one could survive being so cold, she thought. But then she’d already come to realise the Doctor wasn’t like anyone else.

  ‘I can’t carry you,’ she told him. ‘You’re going to have to help me. Can you step back from the controls?’

  She hugged him towards her and his legs struggled to respond. He managed one tiny step in her direction.

  ‘Out,’ he said again.

  ‘That’s right, out,’ said June, patiently. ‘Come on. Same again. Another small step like the first one.’

  With agonising effort he moved his other leg. She hugged him towards her and he took another tiny step. One of the oxygen masks slapped against his face but he didn’t seem to notice. His eyes remained closed, his face expressionless, but she could see the desperate effort inside him.

  ‘Have you got a first-aid kit?’ she asked him. ‘Is there anything I can get you?’

  His lips trembled with effort. ‘Out,’ he said.

  There was nothing else she could do but help him.

  Slowly – painfully slowly – June led him round the control deck and down the ramp to the door. He could only manage small, shuffling steps and she had to hold on to him to ensure he didn’t fall. It took for ever. His knees hardly bent at all.

  ‘You’re doing really well,’ she told him, breathing hard with the exertion.

  Still holding on to him with one hand, June reached for the latch of the door. It opened with a creak. And only then did June fully realise her predicament.

  She looked out onto a silvery plain of tall, wild grass, lit by brilliant starlight. They were on a slope, looking down over a long, wide valley, tall rocky outcrops miles off in the distance. A moment ago it had been early morning, now it was dead of night. The air was cool and clean, so clean it made her nose itch. She was somewhere far back in time before the invention of smog. And her only chance of getting home again was this strange man who’d just had some kind of fit.

  Terrified now, June stood on the threshold of the TARDIS, not daring to venture any further.

  ‘Out,’ said the Doctor behind her.

  She turned to face him. His eyes remained closed.

  ‘But we don’t know what’s out there,’ she told him.

  He didn’t respond. Now she’d taken a breath of the clean air outside, the TARDIS tasted acrid and smoky.

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘We’re just going to take one step outside.’

  She led him through the narrow doorway and out into the night. A breeze rippled through her clothes, but her shiver came from fear. The ground was hard as iron under her feet, an unforgiving land. She could see nothing but grassland and stars ahead of them, nothing that offered comfort.

  The Doctor still had his eyes closed, his whole being closed off from this new world. June stood with him just beyond the door of the TARDIS, feeling utterly alone.

  The tall grass shuffled in the breeze – for a moment she thought she saw something moving inside it, but her mind was just playing tricks on her. She scanned the grassy plain, making out occasional outcrops of rock or spindly trees. Off in the distance, starlight twinkled in the calmly moving sea. She turned to see what was behind them. And let out a yelp of surprise.

  The hill rose up behind them to a sheer cliff face of rock, the pale stone almost blue in the starlight. The cliff face was raw, untouched by human hand, yet June recognised the crude outline immediately. One day this would be the Acropolis. The TARDIS had arrived exactly where it had set off from, just several thousand years in the past.

  A sharp clicking sound in the eerie silence made her turn quickly back round. She ran back to the Doctor, already knowing what it must have been. The Doctor stood where she had left him, perfectly still with his eyes closed. But the door of the TARDIS had shut.

  June tried to fight her way in. The metal handle on the door trembled with warmth but the door would not budge.

  ‘You’ve got a key, haven’t you?’ she said to the Doctor as she struggled to get back inside. ‘Please tell me you’ve got a key.’

  ‘Out,’ said the Doctor behind her.

  June let go of the handle and went to him, taking his hand in hers. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘It isn’t safe outside. I don’t know when we are but there’s nothing out here to help us.’

  He didn’t respond.

  A desperate chill ran through June. ‘I can’t do this on my own,’ she begged him. ‘Doctor, I need your help.’

  The Doctor’s eyes snapped open. For a moment she thought he had come back to her, but his eyes didn’t seem to see. She waved a hand in front of him. He didn’t even blink.

  ‘I’ll have to go through your pockets,’ she told him. ‘See if you’ve got the key.’

  She reached a hand forward, but just before she reached him he flinched. The sudden movement made her jump.

  ‘Hey,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what else to do.’

  ‘Out,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, “out”,’ she said crossly. ‘We’re out. I did what you wanted. But now what do we do?’

  ‘Cat,’ said the Doctor.


  June stared up at him. ‘Cat?’

  He didn’t respond.

  ‘What’s “cat” meant to mean?’ She dipped her hand into the jacket pocket of his suit. Something behind her purred.

  Ever so slowly, June withdrew her hand and then turned slowly round.

  It took her a moment to see the cats, hidden in the tall grass.

  There were three of them, each about two metres long with muscular bodies and long, muscular limbs. Only one of them had a mane; it was the two females who dared to pad forward out of the grass towards her.

  ‘Cats,’ said the Doctor again, simply.

  ‘No,’ June told him. ‘Lions.’

  THREE

  JUNE STARED BACK at the lions, utterly terrified. The three lions regarded the Doctor and June but didn’t come any further forward. They seemed wary of them, and the long shadows cast by the light from the TARDIS. Which gave June an idea.

  ‘Rahrrr!’ she shouted, running towards the lions while waving her arms above her head. The lions took a few steps backwards, more out of surprise than fear. But, unlike the blobby aliens from before, they then stood their ground. They let June run up as close as she dared, regarding her with amusement.

  She stopped just in front of the two females. The lead lioness sniffed at her curiously. Its fur shone white in the starlight, its muscles taut with power. June looked in awe at the long, sharp fangs, the claws like enormous razor blades. The lions were perfectly evolved as predators and June stood right in their path. Yet the lead female then hung its cat-like face on one side like a kitten wanting to play. Its yellow eyes glittered with mischief.

  ‘Hello, moggy,’ June told it kindly. ‘Who’s a big, fluffy cat, then?’ She blinked her eyes slowly at it, remembering something off the telly about that being how cats smiled.

  The lioness blinked its own eyes back at her, as if in understanding. It rocked back slightly on its back legs and she thought it might be sitting down, accepting her, wanting her to tickle its belly.