Doctor Who_ The Price Of Paradise Part 15

Finally Rez prised himself loose and joined Professor Shulough, who led him into the airlock. As the doors closed, Rez looked back one last time at his paradise home and then turned away.

The Doctor and Rose ushered Jaelette, Kaylen and the other Laylorans away from the ship as Hespell ignited the manoeuvring thrusters and the huge metal ship slowly lifted off the ground. Surprisingly graceful, it gained height and then speed as it cleared the trees and reached the open sky. Then, shifting to antigravity engines, it accelerated and quickly headed off into s.p.a.ce. Within a minute there was nothing to see but a dot in the sky and a moment later even that had disappeared completely.

The Doctor and Rose walked back to the TARDIS in silence, deep in their own thoughts. Rose took the opportunity to take one last look at the wonderful planet and her heart went out to poor Rez, who had been forced to leave this paradise.

'Will he be all right?' she wondered out loud.

'I think so,' the Doctor answered after a moment or two. 'Humans are very adaptable.'

'But this is all he's ever known.'

'Until now.' The Doctor smiled. 'Anyway, it's the only way this place can get back to its normal state.'

'A paradise planet that no human can ever visit. That's a bit sad, isn't it?'

The Doctor shrugged, searching in his pocket for the TARDIS key.

'You know that feeling on a winter's day, when it's snowed in the night and you come downstairs and everything is different. There's a blanket of white and it's all perfect, untouched?'170.

'Yeah,' Rose said, 'and you want to go out in it but at the same time you don't, 'cause then it'll get mushy and covered in footprints and. . . spoilt.'

The Doctor nodded. 'It's the same thing here. Nothing lasts for ever, not even the Paradise Planet. But it can last for a bit longer yet.'

He opened the door and stepped through into the impossibly cavernous console room of his own ship. Rose hesitated for a moment in the doorway, looking back at the beach.

'Oh, well,' she said, following the Doctor and closing the TARDIS door behind her, 'there's always Clacton, I suppose. Not much call for a bikini there, though.' The Doctor was already at the controls, setting switches and preparing to dematerialise.

'I think we can do a bit better than that,' he said, grinning. He pulled at a lever and set the central column in motion. 'Let's go and explore!'

Between the beautiful beach and the fantastic forest a wind whipped up out of nowhere and, with a wild trumpeting sound, the blue police box exterior of the TARDIS gently faded from view. Elsewhere, the SS Humphrey Bogart SS Humphrey Bogart, battered and ugly, punched a hole into hypers.p.a.ce and disappeared from view.

'Here,' said the professor, setting a mug of a hot liquid in front of the young man who was now dressed in a spare uniform. Rez took the mug and sniffed suspiciously.

The professor smiled, taking years off her age. 'I made sure I took some jinnen with us. Can't expect you to get used to tea overnight, can we?'

Rez took a grateful sip. It was a little on the weak side but he kept quiet about it, not wanting to upset his new guardian. He studied the woman who had promised to look after him in this strange new life. She seemed more relaxed now, younger, even though she had been forced to abandon her long-sought paradise. She was looking through the scant possessions that he had brought on board with him and held up the strange cube that had been packed into his escape pod.171.

'Do you know what this is?' she asked him.

Rez shook his head. He'd spent hours looking at it over the years but its meaning had always eluded him. It was just a plain plastic cube as far as he knew.

'It's a memory cube,' she told him, and started running her fingers over each of the surfaces, looking around for something.

'Ah!' she exclaimed, as she found the hidden switches that she knew had to be there.

The cube lit up as it burst into life. A hologram field sprang into view above one of the sides and the cube started to run a program. The hologram showed two humans, a handsome but slightly worriedlooking man and a beautiful young woman with long blonde hair. They began to talk to the baby son they were about to place in an escape pod. Rez watched and listened, tears rolling down his face. His parents were long dead, but here at last they were able to speak to him.

Petra Shulough moved across the room to sit next to him and placed an arm around his shoulders.

'Now we can find out who you are and where you came from,' she whispered to him gently.

She realised that she had been given a new and much more valuable quest to follow, and this time she would not be alone. 172 .

Acknowledgements.

I am indebted to a number of people who have helped me in producing this novel and would like to take this opportunity to thank them all.

First, everyone at BBC Worldwide, especially Stuart Cooper, Kate Walsh, my patient and talented copy-editor, Lesley Levene, and Justin Richards, the creative director of these books, who gave me the chance to be here.

I'd also like to thank my fellow writers in this line, Stephen Cole, Steve Lyons, Jac Rayner, Gareth Roberts, Mike Tucker and Justin Richards (again), for inspiration and for setting the standard so high!

I must also thank my very patient wife, Kerry always my first editor and my children, Cefn and Ka.s.sia, who have all been very understanding during this book's accelerated production process. Finally, I want to thank everyone at BBC Wales and in the BBC Drama Department who have worked so hard to produce the wonderful revival of Doctor Who on television. In particular I must thank Helen Raynor, my point of contact in the Doctor Who Script Department, and, of course, the main man, Russell T Davies, whom I want to thank particularly for the opportunity to be (a small) part of this splendid new era of Doctor Who. Thank you all.173.

About the Author.

Colin Brake has stopped counting birthdays and given up measuring his height! As a writer and script editor he has been involved in the television business for twenty years. He has worked on shows as diverse as EastEnders, Trainer and Bugs and written scripts for many programmes, including over thirty episodes of the BBC daytime soap Doctors.

Having been thwarted in his ambition to become the next script editor of Doctor Who back in 1989, when the BBC cancelled the programme, he is rather amazed to find that he has now written Doctor Who audio plays, short stories and novels.