Doctor Who BBC872 - To the Slaughter

‘They’re Old Preservers,’ Tinya protested. ‘Must be.’
‘This organised?’ He shook his head. ‘Liaise with Security. Get descriptions
circulated now. They must have shown on the ’corders sometime.’
Tinya nodded. ‘Are you aware of any unlogged dockings or excursions from
this station?’
Falsh stared hard at her. For so light a query there was suspicious weight to
her voice.
‘Since it seems I can trust nobody to do what I need them to,’ he told her, ‘I
shall go through the records myself.’
She nodded before she left. Almost as if she’d expected that answer all
along.
Trix was now skinning her knuckles beating on the blast door, just in case the
guard the other side might hear. The fumes were starting to make her retch.
Her ears must be bleeding with the din, and the air seemed so hot it was
scalding.
Giving up at last she turned around but couldn’t see anything through the
smoke.
‘Doctor?’ she called timidly.
Well, she wasn’t about to start screaming for help at the top of her lungs.
She wasn’t a screamer.
She’d just stand here by herself and roast to death when the spaceship left.
‘Doctor!’ she shouted. ‘Where the hell are you?’
‘Over here,’ came his distant voice.
She stumbled towards it, through the weird luminous smog, she didn’t
know how long for. A ridge in the floor almost tripped her. Then she came up
against something hard – a wall?
‘Here!’
And suddenly a hand reached out from the blindness and dragged her into
a cooler, darker place.
She sank to her knees, fighting back nausea, so relieved she could cry. Her
eyes were streaming. ‘Where are we?’ she croaked.
The Doctor’s face dropped down beside her with a manic bounce. ‘Rather
a stroke of luck. Another ship in the bay, fuelled up and ready to go.’ He
slapped her heartily on the back. ‘Come on. We’re hijacking it!’
‘Oh God,’ she moaned, and let him drag her along after him for a few metres.
Then she pulled free. That was another thing she wasn’t. A helpless
trail-along-behinder.
Then again, how else was she going to find the cockpit? She settled for
grabbing hold of his coat-tail. He didn’t seem to take offence, just the lead as
they legged it through long, black circular corridors.
27