Death of the Doctor Read Free Page B

they were lying now.
    After a minute in the darkness of the tunnel, the world around them burst into light and size – the car had arrived in a massive underground car park, alongside a variety of other vehicles, both military and civilian. And a couple Clyde thought looked more like space shuttles!
    The door was opened and as the driver escorted Sarah Jane, Clyde and Rani exited the other door and found themselves facing Colonel Karim, all smiles and courtesy. But Clyde was uneasy. The smile didn’t reach her eyes – either she was putting an enormous effort into being civil to her visitors, or she was hiding something.
    Then again, maybe he was being paranoid. The blue crackling energy on his hands had worried him and if he wasn’t careful, he’d be jumping at his own shadow next.
    He looked around the car park as the driver opened the car’s boot and passed him his overnight bag.
    ‘Now this,’ he murmured to Rani, ‘this is what I call a base.’
    ‘Yeah,’ Rani said back. ‘If you like guns and stuff.’
    And Clyde realised that apart from the three of them, everyone carried a gun of some sort. Even Karim had a revolver holstered at her side.
    ‘This way, please,’ the Colonel said, leading them to a huge metal door, like the ones Clyde had seen on films about submarines.
    But instead of turning a wheel to open it, Karim tapped a code into a panel by the door and with a hiss, it swung inwards.
    Clyde noted the number. 231163. Never knew when that might be handy, if he ever came back to a UNIT base and wanted to show he knew his way around.
    As he stepped through the door, he was immediately surprised by how sterile and plain the corridor was. Indeed, it even smelled of ammonia or something, like Miss Jerome’s science lab at school.
    It was in every possible way unfriendly.
    And Colonel Karim seemed to realise this as she gave them a guided tour – well, at least she pointed out labs, offices, toilets. She didn’t actually open any doors and show them anything, or introduce them to any of the staff she mentioned.
    ‘We’ve allocated bedrooms to you all,’ she said. ‘The funeral’s tomorrow at nine hundred hours, so that gives you time enough to acclimatise.’
    Clyde wasn’t sure what they needed to acclimatise to, bar the smell and the various featureless corridors they had walked down, guaranteed to ensure he had no idea of the way back to the car because everything looked the same.
    They went through another keyboard-activated door and as it shut with a clang behind them, Karim explained this was the Funeral Wing and that they were under a curfew. But she said it with a smile. ‘The doors to the Funeral Wing will be sealed at twenty-one hundred hours tonight –’ she glanced at Clyde. ‘That’s 9pm.’
    ‘I know,’ Clyde replied. ‘I’m not stupid.’
    Karim looked at him with an expression that either meant she didn’t believe him, or that she was disappointed to learn he knew such things. Either way, it annoyed him.
    ‘This is still a working military base,’ she continued. ‘So you’ll only have access to the specified areas.’
    ‘That’s nice,’ Sarah Jane said tartly. ‘Bring us all this way just to tell us we’re not trusted.’
    There was a moment, just a look, between Sarah Jane and Karim, and Clyde reckoned the temperature in the corridor actually dropped a few degrees.
    Rani must have felt it too, because she broke the tension by asking Karim who else was coming to the Doctor’s funeral.
    ‘It’s been a bit of rush,’ Karim said. ‘Sir Alistair’s stranded in Peru due to volcanic ash restricting long-haul flights that even we can’t overrule. And Miss Shaw can’t make it back from the Moonbase until Sunday.’
    ‘Whoa! You’ve got a Moonbase?’ Clyde just stared at her. That was so cool. ‘I wanna go to that!’
    ‘Maybe one day,’ Karim said. ‘When you’re a grown-up.’
    As Karim turned away, Rani threw Clyde an “ooh, get her” look and Clyde