Part 8 (2/2)

She scowled at him and settled heavily back in the driving seat. 'Sit down, everyone,' she commanded. ”This old thing doesn't travel as smoothly as some TARDISes you might be used to.'

With that she started to twiddle the dials, flip down the necessary switches and conjure up the coordinates. She did it all with the stagey flourishes of a magician about to make his a.s.sistant vanish.

Flying blind, indeed. Didn't the others realise? They could wind up anywhere. They might find themselves teetering at the very summit of the tallest peak, or materialise encased in solid rock. Her safety mechanisms were permanently on the blink. She couldn't bring herself to tell everyone how little faith she actually had in her vessel. The Doctor might periodically b.i.t.c.h about his own s.h.i.+p, but at least he never had to worry about the things that kept Iris awake. Her last (and final) companion had fled her company, saying the bus was a flying deathtrap.

The Doctor's might be an antiquated time vessel, but it wasn't a cut-price one, patched and cobbled together with spares picked up from all over the place. She remembered, with shame, fixing the dimensional stabilisers with a pair of laddered tights. She'd never got round to fixing them properly. Life seemed too short for routine repairs. Still...

'Here goes!' she yelled, and gave the dematerialisation lever a firm yank.

Sam, Gila and the Doctor held on tight to whatever came to hand.

Everything that wasn't nailed or screwed down rattled, fell over or shot into the air. Outside, through the windows that hadn't been smashed and boarded up, or covered with useless maps, spun the endless aquamarine void of the s.p.a.ce-time vortex. It seemed more immediate, Sam thought blearily, seeing it here in Iris's s.h.i.+p, rather than the Doctor's. Here, you felt you might just step out of the bus's pneumatic doors and plummet for ever into the airless, timeless mirage.

'I'm making up the precise coordinates,' Iris shouted, above the clattering in. 'Just like you said.'

She was taking a perverse pleasure in this, thought the Doctor. Rubbing our noses in being forced to turn all devil-may-care.

That was when the bus went into a sickening nose dive and they were all flung against the walls. There was a painful cascade of cups, lamps, books, bottles and knick-knacks.

'I can't control it!' Iris screamed.'I knew this would happen. She hates short jaunts!'

'Do something!' the Doctor bellowed and fought to stand upright. He clung to the pa.s.senger straps and tried to haul himself towards the driver's cab as the bus bucked and jounced.

Time slowed when he reached her side. The two of them shouted at each other, while Gila and Sam were left sprawling behind in the ma.s.s of Iris's old belongings.

'Let me have a go,' the Doctor shouted at Iris.

She tried to slap his hands away.'You don't know her,' she cried, and started to jab at the controls.

'You'll run us aground; he warned.

They were careering madly. He stared into the coruscating maw of the vortex and found himself entranced. He never liked to look too hard. It was a null place, and yet full of mult.i.tudinous, mesmerising possibilities.

It played tricks on him.

'We're ready,' said Iris nervously, her fingers twitching at the controls. 'I think we can rematerialise.'

She looked up then, and saw, with the Doctor, the wraithly figures cl.u.s.tered about the s.h.i.+p's exterior. The creatures pressed their insubstantial selves against the windscreen gla.s.s, mocking and flaunting and jeering. Their dead and empty eyes looked straight in at the pa.s.sengers.

'Djinn,' said the Doctor. ”They've come after us.'

'Right,' said Iris grimly, and plunged the relevant lever down. With a tremendous lurch and the familiar groaning of a TARDIS's engines wheezing into life, the whirling vortex about them seeped and bled away...

... and was replaced by daylight once more.

Searing blue daylight that made their eyes ache and water, the second they lifted their battered, deafened heads.

'Safe!' Iris yelled and slapped the dashboard.'We did it!'

The mountains were behind them. They had come through.

Gila struggled through the mess to the very back of the bus, into the trashed kitchen, and shouted back that they were definitely over the mountains. Sam let out a whoop.'No climbing!'

'Hang on a second,' said the Doctor, staring outside.

They were perched on the lip of a sand dune. They had arrived in the foothills at the other end of the mountain range. But the bus was balanced precariously on the very lip of - and here Sam got to look out of the window and report the worst - 'A sixty-foot sheer b.l.o.o.d.y drop!'

It was a smooth, sand-blown one-in-ten.

The bus rocked slightly under their feet as they moved. Iris barked at them all to keep still.

'I knew something like this would happen! I told you all - I said, there's no safeguards against anything like this. We're lucky we haven't been dashed to pieces on the rocks - or worse.' She rounded on the Doctor.'This is your fault.You bullied me.'

'Stop hopping about,' he said, his tone deadly serious. 'If we dislodge the bus we could fall backwards all the way down that crest.'

They all fell silent.

The TARDIS's engines moaned and whispered, as if in protest. Now they could feel that steady, slow, seesawing motion, as if the bus was s.h.i.+lly-shallying.

The waited.

The Doctor made a decision.'Sam, Gila, come down here to the front of the bus. If we concentrate our weight down this end...'

They started to move.

There was a creak.

'Slowly!' the Doctor warned.'It's all about... equilibrium.'

At that point there was a despairing howl from the engines, and then they cut out completely.

”That's it!' said Iris. 'She's given up. She's gone into hibernation in shock.

I told you she hates short jaunts. Her nerves won't stand for it.'

The bus was silent. No pacifying background hum. They could hear the tyres whisper as they tried to get a purchase on the sand. The shuffle of the ground beneath them was the only sound and it seemed deafening.

'I think we're all right,' the Doctor said.

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