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First published by Puffin Books 2012
This edition first published by Puffin Books 2016
Written by Jonathan Green
Copyright © BBC Worldwide Limited, 2016
BBC, DOCTOR WHO (word marks, logos and devices), TARDIS, DALEKS, CYBERMAN and K-9 (word marks and devices) are trademarks of the British Broadcasting Corporation and are used under licence.
BBC logo © BBC, 1996. Doctor Who logo © BBC, 2009
The moral right of the author and copyright holders has been asserted
ISBN: 978-1-405-92629-4
1. You Don’t Want to Go to Mars
2. Chance of Rain Later
3. Stowaways
4. A Long Way from Home
5. Thar She Blows!
6. Leviathan
7. Ishmael
8. Welcome to Florida
9. Ready When You Are
10. Upstream
11. Occupational Hazard
12. Terrible Lizard
13. Carnivore
14. Geronimo!
15. What Happened to the Sky?
16. Here Be Dragons
17. Mr and Mrs Pond
18. Just Add Water
19. Flotsam and Jetsam
20. Too Close for Comfort
21. The Bigger Picture
22. One in a Trillion
23. On Wings of Fire
24. Zombie Dinosaurs
25. A Million Times Worse
26. No More Time to Lose
27. All Good Things
28. Bucket of Bolts
29. Damage Limitation
30. A Second Chance
31. Life’s Little Mysteries
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‘So, who do you want to see first?’ the Doctor asked. He flicked the floppy fringe of dark hair out of his eyes with a jerk of his head and fixed Amy with an intense stare.
She stared back.
He might look like a young man but he had the oldest eyes in the universe. And he dressed like a geography teacher.
‘Who have we got?’
‘How about Michelangelo painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel?’ the Doctor suggested. He danced around the TARDIS’s hexagonal control console, pulling a lever here and cranking a handle there. ‘Or Caravaggio? Or Leonardo da Vinci painting the Mona Lisa? Although I’ve met him before, so we’d have to time our visit quite carefully. But of course, it’s up to you. So what’s it to be? The Renaissance awaits!’
‘Oh, it’s so hard to decide,’ Amy squealed in delight. ‘It’s just so exciting. First I get to meet Vincent van Gogh and now the Renaissance!’
‘I was quite keen on visiting Olympus Mons on Mars,’ said the young man leaning against the balcony railing. He clearly wasn’t expecting good weather in the Late Middle Ages as he was already wearing his winter vest. ‘Did you know that it’s the largest volcano in the Solar System?’
‘In your solar system perhaps,’ the Doctor muttered.
Rory looked at him, a hurt expression on his face.
‘Oh, come on, Rory!’ the Doctor laughed. ‘You don’t want to go to Mars. It’s just … red. Very red. Red everywhere in fact.’
‘And what’s wrong with red?’ Amy asked, peering at the Doctor from behind a tress of auburn hair.
‘Nothing,’ the Doctor backtracked quickly. ‘Nothing at all. Lots of great things are red. Strawberries for instance. Strawberries are great. I love strawberries. And sunsets. Very lovely things, sunsets. It’s just that Mars is a bit … boring. Well, dangerous. Actually more like lethal. You might as well say you want to stop by a Welsh quarry, or a mining village for that matter.’
The Doctor, Amy and Rory shot each other several anxious glances.
‘Yes,’ the Doctor went on, ‘let’s not go there again. Not after what happened the last time.’
‘Oh, come on, Doctor, I’m only kidding with you.’ Now it was Amy’s turn to laugh. ‘Besides,’ she said, grabbing Rory by the arm and giving it a squeeze, ‘a bit of culture will be good for you, Mr Pond.’
‘All right,’ Rory said, ‘just so long as we steer clear of Venice this time.’
The Doctor and Amy looked at each other again.
‘Good point, well made,’ the Doctor said and flicked a switch on the TARDIS console.
A resounding crash shook the control room. Amy felt the floor give way beneath her and suddenly she and Rory were falling. They collided with the railing surrounding the console platform and grabbed hold, both winded and shaken.
The Doctor was still clinging on to the control console itself, looking down at them across the sloping floor with a startled expression on his face.
‘Was that you?’ Amy asked.
‘No! Of course not,’ the Doctor replied.
‘Only remember you’ve been flying this thing with the brakes on for the last nine hundred years!’
‘It’s closer to eight hundred actually, but never mind that now.’
‘So, if it wasn’t you, Doctor,’ Rory cut in, ‘what was it?’
Suddenly the TARDIS lurched again and the three companions found themselves stumbling back across the platform the other way.
‘Whoa there!’ the Doctor yelled, only just managing to keep a hold of the control console as Amy and Rory crashed into the barrier on the other side. ‘I think we just collided with something.’
‘I know I did,’ Rory gasped, clutching his side.
‘While travelling through time?’ Amy screwed up her face in annoyance. ‘Now why doesn’t that surprise me, Doctor? Does that sort of thing happen a lot?’
‘No,’ the Doctor replied. ‘Not that often anyway.’
The eerie tolling of the Cloister Bell echoed from the juddering walls of the control chamber.
‘Uh-oh,’ Amy said quietly. She shot the Doctor a look of wild alarm.
‘Uh-oh?’ Rory said. ‘I don’t like the sound of that.’
The Time Lord looked at them. ‘Neither do I.’
‘So what does it mean?’ Amy asked.
‘I’d hold on to something if I were you,’ the Doctor said, doing another manic circuit of the control console.
‘Why?’ asked Rory.
‘Because I think it means we’re going to crash.’
The asthmatic wheezing of the TARDIS’s engines filled the room as the Doctor’s blue box tumbled through the Vortex.
‘We need to land the old girl, and fast!’ the Doctor announced. He grabbed hold of a handle that looked like it should belong to an old-fashioned gramophone record player and started winding it rapidly.
‘What do you want us to do?’ Amy shouted over the howling of the engines as she managed to grab hold of the console. The doom-laden ringing of the bell continued to echo around the chamber.
‘Pond, keep that crank next to your right hand steady!’
‘This one?’ she said, grabbing hold of a lever. The chamber listed again, pitching them all sideways.
‘No!’ the Doctor cried out in alarm. ‘The red one!’
‘Then why didn’t you say the red one in the first place?’ Amy protested, correcting her mistake. ‘Ugh! Men!’
‘What about me? Is there anything I can do?’ Rory asked.
‘The blue stabilisers!’ the Doctor shouted over the dreadful wailing of the crashing TARDIS. ‘Keep your hands on the blue stabilisers!’
Rory did as he was told.
‘Now what?’ Amy asked, as the three of them hung on against the whirling motion of the TARDIS.
The Doctor watched the rise and fall of the time rotor for a moment before answering. His face was bathed in the eerie greeny-orange glow of the control-room lights, making him look like some weird alien goblin.
‘Now hang on!’ the Doctor yelled, an expression of boyish delight on his face, and flicked another switch. ‘Geronimo!’
The TARDIS continued to shake as it spun faster and faster, whirling through the temporal turmoil of the Vortex. And then suddenly it stopped.
Rory slipped from where he had been clinging on to the control console and landed with a thud on the platform floor. ‘Ow,’ he said.
‘Where are we?’ Amy asked, leaving Rory to pick himself up off the floor.
‘Earth,’ the Doctor replied. Pulling a monitor down from above the console, he took a closer look, his eyebrows knitting together as he did so.
‘Can you be a little more precise than that?’ Amy asked.
‘Hmm?’ The Doctor turned his attention from the monitor to his companion. ‘Oh, I see what you mean.’ He glanced at the monitor again. ‘Oh, you know, the usual. Nitrogen roughly seventy-eight per cent. Oxygen twenty per cent. Sunny, with a slight chance of rain later. A little less pollution than you’re used to but a bit of fresh air never hurt anyone now, did it?’
‘Great,’ Amy said, taking Rory by the hand and making for the door, ‘let’s take a look outside then!’
‘Righty-ho, you do that,’ the Doctor called back, still distracted. ‘Just don’t … break anything.’
‘We’ll try not to,’ Amy laughed. She paused at the door, Rory stumbling to a halt behind her. ‘Are you not coming?’
‘No, not just yet. You kids go on ahead,’ the Doctor replied. ‘I just want to make sure the old girl’s okay. I mean, we don’t want her blowing up … again … or anything. Besides, the TARDIS appears to have detected an anomalous temporal signature and I want to double-check the readings. You know, make sure it’s not a phase echo from the collision or anything like that.’
‘What?’ Amy grunted.
The Doctor thought for a moment. ‘Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff,’ he said at last.
‘Okey-dokey. But don’t be too long.’ Amy opened the door. ‘You don’t want to miss out on all the fun, do you?’
And with that she stepped through.
‘Oh.’
‘What is it?’ Rory started. ‘Hey! The ground’s moving.’
‘That’s because we’re not on the ground,’ Amy said, looking around her, eyes wide with surprise.
Rory did the same. ‘Oh,’ he said quietly.
The creak of cables and the groaning of steel filled the air around them. A stinging, sea-salt breeze buffeted their faces and ran airy fingers through their hair. The deck rolled beneath their feet.
‘We’re on a ship.’
‘I know,’ said Amy.
‘At sea.’
‘I know. And we’re not alone.’
Amy returned the stare of the grizzled, weather-beaten face in front of her, before taking in the rest of the circle of rough-looking men surrounding them. They were a mix of nationalities and their clothes looked strangely dated.
The sailors scowled back at them.
Rory swallowed hard. ‘But they’re …’ His voice trailed off.
Amy looked from the men to her husband and back again.
‘I know,’ she gasped. ‘Pirates!’
Rory gave a weary sigh. ‘Again?’