‘Hurry, Doctor! UNIT won’t be able to cope with the invading forces on their own!’
‘I’m going as fast as she will go, Jo. I’m sure the Brigadier and the UNIT chaps have it under control.’ he said calmly with his natural air of authority.
‘I’m sure they do, Doctor, but the Master worries me’, his companion replied.
‘It’s strange to think you two used to be friends, now you seem to be enemies.’ she commented, thinking over the last few times she had come across the evil renegade Time Lord.
‘Yes, you could say went to school together…’
The street around them was quiet, very nearly empty and semi-rural with quaint little shops and cottages adorning each side. But suddenly there was a large banging sound, coming from Bessie’s engine. The whole front half of the car was quickly hidden by a vast cloud of grey smoke. The Doctor stamped on the brakes and the old car juddered to a halt. Jo coughed, the smoke filling her lungs. The Doctor meanwhile had jumped out of the car and revealed the engine. After battling with the smoke, to his horror, he soon saw that several engine parts had completely disintegrated.
‘Bessie my dear, how could you let me down now.’ he said saddened and frustrated.
‘What’s wrong, Doctor?’
‘The car has broken down, Jo,’ he said. ‘I can’t understand it, I built this engine with my own fair hands.’ the Doctor said, running a hand through his shock of white hair.
‘That probably explains it!’ Jo quipped to herself. The Doctor looked up from the bonnet of the car and gave her a serious look, but Jo could hardly contain her laughter.
The Doctor sighed. He gazed around desperately and until he saw a curious looking shop. The windows were darkened, though lots of bizarre antiques and junk could be seen. He turned to Jo.
‘I’m just going to see if this junk shop has any appropriate car parts, won’t be long.’ he said.
‘Car parts? You’d better not be there is an invasion going on anytime soon!’ Jo reminded him.
‘Thank you, Jo.’ hardly needing to be told.
He headed towards the shop, focusing his eyes in an attempt to see what was inside. When he stepped through the door, he entered another world. A world of dismembered furniture scattered around. Empty picture frames hanging on the walls along with an eclectic mess of other items. The Doctor’s eyes gazed around sharply; he could hardly decide what to look at. Finally, after a bit of hands-on rummaging in cardboard boxes, he found something that, with a little tinkering, would do just the job. And then he heard a voice. It broke the silence, startling him, he immediately stood up. He looked around but the source of the voice could not been seen. Probably at the back of the shop, hidden by all the junk, the Doctor guessed.
‘I’m off now, Mr Jenkins,’ the voice said. It was a woman’s voice, she sounded very young. A teenager, perhaps, the Doctor thought.
‘Alright, Sophie, enjoy your weekend.’ came another voice. It was a man’s voice, he sounded pretty friendly.
‘I will do.’ said Sophie. The girl quickly appeared. She was surprised to see the Doctor, a sign that they didn’t often get customers. The girl was young, nearly seventeen. She had long, brown, wavy hair and wore trendy clothes, and had her hair in pony tails, not helping her already youthful appearance.
‘Mr Jenkins, customer for you.’ she said loudly to the shop owner in the back. Sophie headed to the door and left. The Doctor could hear footsteps and sure enough there was Mr Jenkins. A portly, red-faced man, whose old fashioned and untidy clothes, made him seem years older than he actually was.
‘Ah, hello.’ the man said welcoming the Doctor.
‘Good afternoon,’ the Doctor replied, ‘I’m the Doctor. I understand this is somewhat of a long shot, but you don’t have any car parts by any chance?’
‘Car parts? Engine parts you mean. I’m sure we’ll have something in here,’ he said rather bemused by the stranger’s request.
‘Oh, good.’
‘Back in a few moments, maybe you’d like to have a rummage in some of those boxes for what you are looking for,’ the large man said pointing to a mountain of boxes.
‘Yes, alright,’ the Doctor said politely, though he didn’t wish to take up the task of looking through the huge array of boxes.
After a few minutes of the noise of Mr Jenkins’ hands rummaging around, the middle-aged man pottered back to the Doctor, with a vast array of items cradled in both hands. ‘This is the best I can do, I’m afraid,’ the shop owner said apologetically.
The Doctor scanned the items with his eyes and smiled with delight when he spotted a curious piece of metalwork that, with a little tinkering, would do just the job. ‘Don’t worry, that’ll work fine,’ the Doctor smiled. ‘How much is it?’
‘Oh, free. I need to get rid of a lot of this stuff as soon as possible,’ Mr Jenkins explained.
‘Really?’ the Doctor asked, his interest piqued. ‘Why’s that?’
‘Early retirement, Doctor. I’ve got myself an allotment not far from here and take life easy, I’ve worked hard all my life, I think I deserve it,’ he said.
Who was that girl that was here a few minutes ago?’
‘Hasn’t anybody told you that you ask too many questions, Doctor?’ Mr Jenkins chuckled.
‘Frequently,’ the Doctor remarked.
‘That was just Sophie, she’s a nice girl.
I’m leaving her in charge of the shop while I retire.’ But the Doctor hadn’t heard him. Instead, his interest was held by a strange looking object tucked in between boxes. It was an iridescent diamond, with a strange looking metal welded around the edges.
‘What’s this?’ he asked his, expression one of complete seriousness. All previous smiles were long gone.
‘Oh, some junk,’ Mr Jenkins said, continually bemused by the Doctor’s behaviour.
‘Junk? Why, this is priceless junk, Mr Jenkins. It’s alien!’ the Doctor announced.
‘Alien? Are you having a laugh?’ Mr Jenkins cried with laughter.
‘I’m being incredibly serious. Where did you get this?’ the Doctor enquired.
‘I’ve no idea!’ he protested, though the Doctor wasn’t convinced.
He took out his high-tech sonic screwdriver, and watched it whirr as it scanned the room.
The Doctor turned his back on Jenkins as the scan continued. It suddenly let out a high pitched bleep, and the Doctor frowned and peered back on the shop-owner who was squirming uncomfortably.
‘Anything you’d like to tell me Mr Jenkins?’ he asked.
‘No.’ he answered, unconvincingly. The Doctor wondered what he was so adamant to hide.
The screwdriver whizzed even more violently than before, whatever the shop keeper was hiding, the Doctor was very close. He put the mysterious object deep into the pocket of his velvet jacket. He crept forwards towards an ordinary looking wall, filled with various brick-a-brac.
‘No!’ Jenkins cried, lunging at the Doctor. But it was too late. The Doctor had disappeared into a burst of blue energy. Jenkins had grabbed his arm in an attempt to stop him, but the energy consumed him too. As the energy disappeared in a flash, no hint of what had just happened was left behind.
~~~
The Doctor stumbled out of a blast of energy and into the darkness. He nearly slipped on the soft, muddy surface that made up the ground. There was a noise behind him, he turned around to see the worried expression on Jenkins face as he realised what had happened.
‘Where are we?’ he asked the Doctor, worriedly.
‘You know very well where we are, Mr Jenkins, you can drop the act now,’ the Doctor told him, angrily. ‘Now, let’s get out of here.’ Both men turned, but a low rumbling noise caught their attention. They saw huge insect creatures surrounding them. They had green spindly legs which helped them tower above the Doctor and Jenkins, and had triangular faces, and huge eyes the size of footballs at either side of the terrifying faces. As the Doctor looked into them, he saw their eyes were made up of millions of different sections, like cracked pieces of red glass.
‘Oh, hello there. We were just leaving,’ the Doctor said politely to the creatures.
‘You will not leave!’ one of the creatures bellowed at the pair.
‘Doctor, what’s happening?’ Jenkins cried as he felt his rotund stomach threaten to turn at the sight of the creatures.
‘You do realise that this is entirely your fault.’ the Doctor whispered to him. Jenkins smiled apologetically to him.
‘Silence!’ another of the creatures ordered them. ‘We have reason to believe you have something that is ours!’
The Doctor thought for a moment before he started digging in his pocket for the peculiar object he had put their earlier. ‘Oh, you mean this?’ he asked. The creature’s huge bulbous eyes started to boil at the sight of the item.
‘That is the sacred diamond of Arzura! The basis for our whole religion. You stole it!’ it screamed. All eyes looked accusingly at the Doctor and Jenkins.
‘No, no, no!’ Jenkins protested.
‘We were simply returning it to you. You really should be more grateful,’ the Doctor told them.
This angered the creatures. ‘Execute the humans!’ one shouted, the voice echoing all over the rocky caverns.
‘No, you really don’t want to do that,’ the Doctor warned the creature. ‘I’m a Time Lord,’ he told them.
‘A Time Lord?’ the voice of the creature asked. ‘I’m sorry we were not more hospitable.’
‘Oh, that’s alright,’ the Doctor smiled.