Doctor Who_ Just War Part 25

Steinmann's face fell. 'You can't be suggesting...'

The Doctor was still smiling. 'Chris, could you fly this plane?'

'Of course.' Belatedly, Chris realized what the Doctor had just asked. 'You don't mean...'

'Begin pre-flight checks. We're leaving.' The Doctor patted Munin's side.

12 Planning for the Future

The Doctor slammed his palm against the large red b.u.t.ton next to the door. Alarm bells started to ring all around him and the hangar door began edging open. He jogged back to Munin. Chris had pushed the inspection platform away from the plane, then tied Steinmann's wrists to the scaffolding with a length of hosepipe. The n.a.z.i officer glared at the Doctor.

'You'll never get away.' Even now, Steinmann was defiant.

'Where's Hartung?' the Doctor demanded, his voice low.

'Guernsey,' Steinmann stated. The Doctor was puzzled; he hadn't expected the answer to be quite so forthcoming.

However, he didn't have enough time to worry about it. He raised his hat to Steinmann and left, pulling the chocks away from underneath the plane.

Chris was strapped into the pilot's seat, a leather facemask fastened around his chin. The Doctor dropped into the co-pilot's chair, slotting his briefcase alongside the seat.

'Why haven't you started the engine yet?' the Doctor demanded.

'It's dorsal-mounted. Both pilots have to be inside first.'

The Doctor nodded thoughtfully. Chris was already sealing the canopy.

'When we arrived, I timed how long it took to open the door: we've got about ten seconds to go.'

'It's OK, I've completed the pre-flight checks: the plane is fully fuelled, the bomb bay is full.'

Chris was already flicking switches. Behind them, there was a judder and the engine didn't roar into life. A masterful display of soundproofing. The seats and instruments began rattling.

'The sound is absorbed into the fuselage, where some of it becomes kinetic energy,' observed the Doctor. 'So Munin is a bit of a boneshaker, I'm afraid.

'I think I've just bitten my tongue,' Chris mumbled. The young man released a lever and the plane began edging forward.

The Doctor was scanning the co-pilot's instrument panel.

He flicked a few switches. 'Variable Illumination Grid activated.'

'Where are we heading to?'

'Hartung: he's in Guernsey. I know the way. Can I help at all?' He looked out the window. Steinmann had worked his way free and was running towards the plane.

'The co-pilot's job in this sort of plane is to navigate, keep an eye out for trouble and to drop the bombs. Sit back and enjoy the ride.'

The Doctor smiled, his teeth rattling. Chris loosened the throttle and adjusted the rudder pedals - or whatever it was that jet pilots did on these occasions; it had been so long.

The plane nosed out of the hangar and began taxiing out on to the runway. A column of guards was setting up a blockade, but they had obviously been told not to shoot at the plane. As the engine began firing faster, the rattling was smoothing out to a jarring vibration.

'Are the antigrav controls back there?' asked Chris.

The Doctor shook his head. 'We're a little too early for that.'

'I'll just have to improvise, then,'

The plane lurched skywards, in a manoeuvre that violated a number of the laws of motion. The Doctor's stomachs lurched. The ground spun on some alien axis beneath them, sloshed up alongside, and then proceeded to throw itself past them at several hundred miles an hour.

'Yahoo!' Chris hollered. The Doctor would have jumped out of his seat had he not been securely strapped into it. It was a good job that he was, because Chris took it upon himself to do a loop the loop. Gravity and the horizon took a little while to settle down.

'Is the plane easy to fly?' the Doctor asked casually.

'Sure. It's just like driving that motorbike I stole.' The answer did not inspire confidence in the Doctor. Then again, he ruminated, in the twenties and early thirties the Germans had been forbidden to manufacture fighter aircraft. Many aviation companies had been forced to branch out and built motorbikes and cars instead. For many centuries afterwards the BMW logo had been a stylized propeller blade, a symbol of this heritage. Chris seemed to have an affinity with machinery, especially fast and dangerous machinery. On their travels together, Chris had often managed to gravitate towards the local flying machines, and he'd been able to fly all of them so far.

'Which way, Doctor?' Chris was asking.

The Doctor thought for a moment, making a show of peering out of the canopy. 'Dead ahead,' he declared finally.

Benny watched the Kent countryside run by, the rocking of the train lulling her into a gentle doze, despite her aching hand. The sun shone through the compartment window, warming one side of her face. It was mid-March, so it would be cooler outside. The landscape was one of rolling meadows bordered by hedgerows, gradually becoming more and more urbanized as they got closer to London. This was the early electrical age: the first few electricity pylons and telegraph lines now ran through the fields and every so often it was possible to make out a radio mast in the distance.

Mostly, though, the landscape was still made up of apple orchards and fields of hops. The trees were just coming into bud; the land was renewing itself after a harsh winter.

Every so often the train would slow down and come to a stop in a tiny village. The names of the stations had all been removed, presumably to confuse any n.a.z.i train-spotters in the event of an invasion. All the towns looked the same anyway: pretty affairs with village greens, crammed full of brick houses with large gardens and tiny corner shops. There was an air of tranquillity here, something entirely missing from Guernsey, even though the two places looked superficially similar.

'Excuse me, madam.' An inspector leant over her, wanting to see her ticket. He used the form of address reserved for married women who ought to be at home looking after the children.

Trains were unofficially reserved for military use, and unnecessary civilian travel was frowned upon.

Benny reached into her pocket. 'What time is it, please?'

she asked.

'Nearly five o'clock, madam. Soon be there: we're coming up to Orpington.'

She had stopped off in Canterbury, picked up money, a ration book and ident.i.ty papers from the house at Allen Road.

While the building looked the same as it always did, perhaps a little less overgrown, it felt so different without anyone else there. She hadn't wanted to stay, and knew that she had to get to London. She wrote a note and pinned it up on the noticeboard in the kitchen.

Dear Doctor (past or present) - It is now just before four o'clock on the afternoon of 6 March 1941. If it isn't too much trouble, please come and rescue me.

(signed) Bernice Summerfield x.x.x.

PS: There's no milk. Please bring some with you.

He hadn't come. A quick search revealed that while one wardrobe in an otherwise bare room was full of fur coats - real dead animal fur! - and mothb.a.l.l.s, there was no clothing stored anywhere else in the house. She had found a pair of sungla.s.ses, which covered up the bruising around her eyes.

A gold brooch and wide-buckled belt discovered in a s...o...b..x full of electrical components softened the effect of her uniform blouse and skirt, and she'd bought a new pair of shoes in the town on the way back to the station. It had added about an hour to her travel time, but everything else was going to plan.

The inspector clipped her ticket, and handed the stub back to her. She tried to take it from him, but found it difficult to focus.

'Are you all right, madam?' He clearly thought she was drunk. If only.

The train began slowing down. Rather more disturbing, so did the inspector's voice.

There was a flash on the sea beneath them.

'Pull hard right!' blurted the Doctor. Chris did as he said, the plane banking. Almost as he did so, an artillery sh.e.l.l hurled past them. A second or so later, its sound caught up with it.

'German frigate.' Chris saw it now. It was quite a small vessel, but it had brought at least three antiaircraft guns to bear. At this distance it looked like a model, surrounded by little puffs of smoke.

'They've called in reinforcements,' the Doctor noted quietly. He had been monitoring German radio transmissions.

'What I want to know is, how they can see us?'

'Transponder?' Chris wondered.

'Too early for that. It might be something similar, though.

Of course...' The Doctor began looking around his instrument panel. 'Have you got a screwdriver?' he asked.

Chris hadn't. The Doctor began picking at the panel with his fingernails. 'There must be a test signal - if you think about it, that's the only way that the Germans could track the plane during their air trials. You can't clock the speed of a plane if you can't see it or track it on radar. The radio signal has either been left on, or they can activate it remotely. This plane isn't invisible if you know exactly where to look.'

The Doctor had prised off a piece of metal. He began tugging wires out and sparking them together. 'The Americans in the 1980s and '90s used to paint their stealth planes luminous orange during test flights,' the Doctor was saying cheerily, as the acrid smell of burning wire began wafting across the c.o.c.kpit. The Doctor continued. 'Ironic really - they were radar invisible, but you could see them for miles and miles.'

Another panel came away in his hands.

'Careful,' Chris warned. If he shorted out anything important, they'd be dead. The Doctor didn't hesitate, and began poking around at the wiring.

'Fly!' he ordered. 'We should be able to outrun them.'

Roz looked out of the window. It was getting dark, so it must be coming up to six o'clock. George was off on a secret mission somewhere, and she was alone in the room. They had come back from the interrogation room with a sense of fatalism. All it seemed that they could do was to wait for the German attack.

The attack that was due around now.

Air-raid sirens had been sounded along the whole of the south coast, and millions of citizens were huddled in their shelters awaiting their fate. The RAF had every available plane in the air; the radar operators had been warned. The listening stations were monitoring every known military frequency. On the ground, watchers had been posted, barrage balloons had been set up. Firemen and ARP wardens stood ready. Searchlight beams swung across the evening sky, thousands of antiaircraft batteries stood ready.

Roz didn't think it would be enough.

Steinmann sat in the control tower of the secret airbase.

Keller was scribbling down a telephone message. The young officer was on crutches, shot by Lieutenant Cwej.

Steinmann s.n.a.t.c.hed the sheet from him as Keller brought it over. The test signal had ceased transmission. The frigate Vidar reported losing visual contact with the plane shortly afterwards. No air patrols had intercepted them. The Doctor had worked it out.

Steinmann crumpled the paper and dropped it to the floor. 'The air patrols are to widen their search.'

'But, sir, they'll enter British air-s.p.a.ce.'

Steinmann didn't answer.