Part 3 (1/2)

Acting quickly, the Doctor aimed his sonic screwdriver and directed a quick burst at the chair, which fell apart in the man's hands.

'Why did you do that?' Amy asked.

'No point getting it any angrier.' the Doctor replied.

44.Weaponless and surprised, the man turned to run, but the mammoth now had a new target: the door to the rest of the Museum. It headed at full pelt for the locked door.

'Duck!' the Doctor yelled.

In an explosion of splinters and broken wood panels, the mammoth broke free of the Grand Hall and charged down a marble corridor. It roared as it raced through the hall of the Age of Man, sending the skeleton of a three-million-year-old woman clattering to the floor with a thrust of its tusks. Then it slowed to gaze at the vast diorama of Neanderthal man and a picture of a relatively small brown mammoth.

The Doctor was looking around with interest. 'This is the best way to see museums. It gets it over with so much quicker!'

He had ended up sitting behind Amy on the beast's back and was now hanging onto her waist as the white mammoth skittered round the marble floors, his legs flailing out to one side.

Amy shouted back, 'What you doing?'

The Doctor didn't answer - he was too busy trying to stop himself slipping off. Amy reached back and grabbed him by his braces, yanking him back up on top of the mammoth.

'Hah, I never thought I'd be thankful you're wearing those braces,' she said. ”Thought you'd be OK sitting on this with those bandy legs of yours.'

45.The Doctor looked rattled. 'What do you mean?'

Amy grinned at him. 'Haven't you ever looked in a full-length mirror? You could ride a horse between those!'

As the mammoth thundered along another corridor, the Doctor leaned forward as far as he could, and aimed his sonic screwdriver at the mammoth's ears.

'It's not working,' he yelled back to Amy. Hanging on with one hand, he fiddled with the device and tried again.

'What's not working?'

'There's a thing you can do to some animals, makes them relax, like stroking a dog, or turning a rabbit on its back.'

'And that was your plan, was it?'

If anything, the mammoth seemed to have become more erratic, not less.

”Thing is,' the Doctor explained, 'it should work on a mammoth. Something's not right.'

'What do you mean?' she asked.

The mammoth abruptly changed direction, and the Doctor began to slip again. Amy had to yank him back on. She looked back up to see that they were now heading full-pelt for a ma.s.sive whale skeleton.

The Doctor had seen it too. 'Got to be able to steer this thing. I told Commander Strebbins we'd bring it out under control...'

46.Amy was flabbergasted. 'There is no way you can steer a mammoth!'

The Doctor leant forward and put Amy's hands on the neck of mammoth. It felt warm and powerful under her hands. 'Just pull to the left and see what happens.'

'You are impossible!' Amy shouted. She'd imagined travelling around New York in style, and here she was trying to steer a prehistoric animal around the New York Natural History Museum.

Amy gripped the animal tight and pulled the mammoth's neck to the left with all of her might. The mammoth wailed in outrage, and spun rapidly to the right. They smashed through the blue whale's tail, sending bones flying through the air.

Amy wasn't amused. 'I think it's trying to shake us off.'

Increasingly enraged by its unwanted pa.s.sengers, the mammoth was now heading for a replica cave. The top was so low the mammoth was barely going to squeeze through it...

'Can't you steer it away?' the Doctor asked.

7 am so going to get you back for this, thought Amy.

The Doctor yelled 'Duck!' and Amy flattened herself on the animal's back as it galloped through the cave. They made it through to the other side where the mammoth hurtled into a display of penguins, toppling them like dominoes.

47.Amy blinked, her mind distracted, confused by something.

'Are there any Nile Penguins here?'

The Doctor stared at her like she was mad. ”They don't exist, Amy. That's a myth. What made you think of them?'

Amy wasn't sure. For a brief moment, it had felt like a long-forgotten memory had burst urgently back into her life, but it had departed just as quickly, and she had no idea why she'd thought it was important. 'I just had such a weird feeling of deja vu.' she said.

'That's just echoes of memories.' the Doctor told her cheerily. 'Reverberating down your timeline, nothing to worry about. Unless it's deja vu of you wetting yourself. You haven't, have you?'

Amy laughed. The Doctor had an amazing ability to make the scariest things feel fun, and the worst times become the best.

She wanted to hug him, but realised they were about to hit another doorway.

Amy and the Doctor ducked down close to the mammoth's fur again. When they sat back up, they were in the glorious light of the Hall of Diamonds. Amy was dazzled. She'd never imagined such enormous jewels existed.

'Maybe this is a robbery?' Amy yelled at the Doctor. 'A very clever robbery...'

'I don't think so...' the Doctor replied.

He was still lying on the mammoth's back, and was listening intently to something. He gestured for 48 Amy to bend down with him. 'Tell me if I'm wrong, but that doesn't sound like an animal to me...'

Am y couldn't tell for sure but, through the fur and warmth of the animal, she thought she could hear the click-click-click of cogs turning.

The Doctor took his sonic screwdriver out and pointed it at the mammoth's back leg. It whirred and the mammoth's leg gave way with a FATOO M! Amy clung to the fur as, for a second, it seemed like the creature was going to collapse.

With a mighty effort, the mammoth hauled its leg back up.

'That's interesting.' The Doctor was tapping at the mammoth's back. 'This is real muscle and real fur, held on in a real way.' He tugged a bit of white fur loose, and the mammoth wailed. 'See, it really hurts.'

Amy rolled her eyes at him. 'Well, durrr.'

'But underneath this real animal.' the Doctor continued, 'there's a metal skeleton...'