PART 2. "Look Out, There's A Monster Coming!"
"So, Doctor, how did you come to be floating about in space in an old police box?"
"One has to be somewhere, Colonel Dare, does one not? In this case the TARDIS brought us here."
"TARDIS? What's that, sir?"
"It's an acronym," said the Doctor. "It stands for 'Time And Relative Dimensions In Space'. It's a sort of vehicle for travelling in, you see. Very cosy it is too."
Dan Dare's eyebrows, already extremely noticeable with their unique zigzag outer ends, attempted to climb up to the very top of his forehead to indicate his great surprise. For something little bigger than a cupboard, 'cosy' would seem to be an understatement!
"But how...?"
His next question was summarily interrupted by the reappearance of his favourite lady boffin, Professor Jocelyn Peabody, accompanied by the heart-stoppingly stunning young blonde girl who had claimed she was an android, now relatively modestly clad in figure-hugging tee-shirt and slacks, reassuringly more substantial than her earlier birthday suit. Poor Colonel Dare at once became tongue-tied and confused again.
"May I please show the Buffybot round the station, Colonel Dare? I'm sure it would be perfectly safe," the Professor asked.
"I'm very well behaved, Colonel. I promise not to touch anything without your express permission!" the android assured him. She smiled winsomely, and the Professor felt a little pang when she observed him blush once more.
He cleared his throat in an effort to control a tendency for his voice to become somewhat squeaky with embarrassment.
"That would be up to Major Lafayette, Miss Buffybot. Ahem. He is the Space Fleet's Commanding Officer here, so you should ask him. Digby and I are only visitors to this space station."
He beckoned the Professor away for a discreet word, under the impression they would be out of earshot of the Buffybot, unaware of her Slayer-like hearing ability, which had been further enhanced by the upgrades performed on her before her arrival.
"Are you really sure it would be safe, Prof? After all, we know next to nothing about any of them except what they're telling us about themselves."
"Well, I'm no expert, but I've spent quite a little while talking to her, Dan, and I feel perfectly safe and relaxed in her presence. She simply behaves like a young girl in a new country where she's unfamiliar with the customs - a very intelligent young girl, I might add! If you're worried, why don't you send Digby with us?"
"Good idea, Prof. That would let me concentrate on trying to get some sense out of this Doctor chappie. So far as I can make out, he seems to be completely away with the fairies!"
---
"Of course, the whole idea was to find a new source of food for the Earth. That was why we went to Venus in the first place," said Digby indistinctly, his mouth full of fish and chips. He shovelled in another gigantic fork load.
"That's where we met both these other races, the Atlanteans and the Treens. It was after we'd helped free the Treens from their super-scientific dictator the Mekon, that they built the 'Anastasia' for Colonel Dare and me, to thank us - that's the little two-man spaceship we towed you in with - and we were just on our way here to Mars for a skiing holiday on the ice cap, and to test the ship, when we found you in yon police box, just floating around in space!"
He stuffed a last forkful of chips into his mouth, and swapped his plate for a large bowl of spotted dick half drowned in custard.
"Now this is what I call food!" he declared. "Before we got the Venusians to help us by growing food there, we were practically down to living on just vitamin blocks and water! Uggh!"
While he was absent mindedly listening to all this, Marvin was looking round the space station's restaurant with considerable interest. There were plenty of people here, well dressed and obviously well off, waiting for their turn to take the shuttle down to the surface of Mars for the holiday of a lifetime. If what the short, fat space pilot was saying was accurate, then this Earth was considerably different from the one described by the Buffybot.
As to whether it was the same Earth from which Arthur Dent had been, or perhaps still would be rescued by Ford Prefect, well he didn't have enough information to be sure, but it certainly didn't seem to match the description of that world either.
Which left a further very interesting question for anyone who might like to hear it, which was 'where had Zaphod Beeblebrox gone in the escape capsule that the Haggunenon Admiral had evolved into after being the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal, which had at the time been in the middle of eating Zaphod, the Earth girl Trillian, and Marvin himself?' He'd never bothered to wonder why Zaphod hadn't taken the two of them with him - that was just Zaphod being his usual self, and Marvin wasn't in the least bit surprised about that! That was just typical humanoid-type behaviour. He had, however, sometimes wondered why the damaged teleport machine they'd finally found behind one of the black panels in the otherwise now deserted Haggunenon flagship, had not sent Trillian and himself to the same destination, but he supposed that was just the Universe playing 'silly buggers' as usual. Nothing new there then!
Anyway, he didn't expect to ever meet any of them again, which was perfectly all right by him.
"So how did you come to be in the police box?" Digby asked, with a spoonful paused halfway to his mouth.
Marvin shrugged. "I'm just a hitch hiker," he said.
---
Once more all eyes turned to look at the small, strange looking party walking across the concourse. Leading the way were Colonel Dan Dare and the Professor, with the Buffybot between them, her arms casually draped round both their waists. The Colonel was obviously extremely embarrassed by the situation he found himself in, while Jocelyn Peabody just seemed mildly amused.
Next came Marvin, clanking slowly along, his feet now making considerably more row on the metal flooring than before, because he'd taken off his tap shoes, and with him was spaceman Digby. Behind them were a couple of Space Fleet security officers, and bringing up the rear the Doctor and the Space Station's senior officer, Major Pierre Lafayette, deep in conversation.
"Ze North and South polar ice caps of Mars are very populaire destinations for skiers, Monsieur le Docteur, zough for myself, you understand, I prefer ze warmer climate on Venus. Now we are at peace wiz ze Treens, zis too is becoming most populaire also".
The Doctor nodded thoughtfully. It was becoming obvious to him through his conversations with these two high-ranking Space Fleet officers that the TARDIS had somehow managed to slip sideways across the time tracks into yet another version of reality. He too had realised that this was neither the timeline that the Buffybot had come from, nor Marvin either. Fascinating! When he got back on board the TARDIS, he was going to have to give the control unit a good kicking!
"You are not by any chance a doctor of medicine, are you Monsieur?" the Frenchman enquired. "I get zis ache, sometimes." He waved a hand vaguely over his rotund person to indicate an approximate location.
"I regret, no, Monsieur le Commandant," the Doctor apologised with a smile. "I call myself a Doctor of Temporal Physics, which is rather better than saying I'm a Time Lord. People are liable to look at you in such a funny way," he added, more to himself than his companion.
Pierre Lafayette shrugged. "No matter, it is not important. I 'ope you did not mind me enquiring?"
"Not in the least, my dear chap!" exclaimed the Doctor jovially, slapping him on the back. "However, you could endeavour to take the weight off your feet once in a while!"
"Magnifique, Monsieur le Docteur! Parfait! I shall try it at once, as soon as we get back from our little tour of ze station. And 'ere we are at ze lift down to ze 'angars, where we keep our space craft, you understand?"
A couple of minutes later they stood in an even larger open space, where a neat row of space ships of various designs, both large and small, stood parked along one wall. At one end of the hangar was the huge air lock and launch tube through which they entered the station or exited into space, and at the other were various large complex items of machinery concerned with the operation of the station; air supply, gravity generation, water storage, power and lighting, and sundry other equipment. Digby and Marvin wandered off through a door opposite the spacecraft so the robot could look at the workings of more equipment out of sight in another area.
"Is that your new ship, Colonel Dare?" the Buffybot asked, looking admiringly at a small, silver two seat craft parked at the end of the row. The individual bubble canopies over the crew positions gave it the look of a friendly, google-eyed creature gazing interestedly at them. Next to it, looking rather shabby and somewhat out of place, stood the TARDIS, which had been brought back down again in the freight lift from the upper level where it had first been taken on arrival.
"The 'Anastasia', yes. Built for us by the Treens in gratitude for freeing them from the power of the Mekon, their super-scientific dictator. A beauty isn't she?"
But the Buffybot was not the only person admiring the little ship.
"Oh, Dan. She's superb!" Jocelyn Peabody exclaimed. "I'd love to go for a spin round the station in her some time!"
Colonel Dare looked at her in surprise. There was nothing he would like better than to get the Professor at close quarters out in his little ship, just the two of them. Unless, that is, it was with the Buffybot instead. The fact that she was an android made no difference to him.
"There are two bunks behind the piloting positions at the front, for use on long journeys," he told them. "They have equipment storage underneath, and overhead is a large clear multi-panel roof the whole length of the crew area. You can get a wonderful view of the stars from there, you know," he added, strictly for Professor Peabody's benefit.
He pointed to the stern part where the fuselage bulged out to house the two propulsion systems - both the rocket motors and the impulse drive.
"The airlock hatch is on top, and here along each side are the wings. They're folded back at the moment, but whenever we enter an atmosphere we can open them out - she can fly like a plane, and land at any ordinary airfield."
"Most ingenious," said the Doctor politely, though he had seen far more sophisticated spacecraft many times before now, whenever 'now' was. "A very pretty little thing." Dan Dare's chest expanded with pride at the compliment.
The Buffybot ran her hand along the smooth, highly polished metal. Then, looking round at the Professor she said with a grin, "I think you would enjoy a trip in this ship with the Colonel very much!"
Jocelyn Peabody returned her gaze and managed to keep a straight face, though the Buffybot was almost certain she detected a little twitch at the corner of her mouth.
"I'm quite sure I would," she said, and glanced at Colonel Dare, who for some inexplicable reason went pink. Again!
At this point they were suddenly interrupted by Spaceman Digby and Marvin emerging in an undignified and rapid manner from the doorway they had gone through only a few minutes earlier, and running across the hangar deck as if their lives depended on it. Everyone looked at each other, as if to say 'What the...?' and both the security officers stepped forward - to be almost knocked off their feet by the two arriving at the double.
"What's going on? Digby?"
"Marvin?" said the Doctor, dropping the joke about calling him Shirley.
"We've just been shot at in there by a dustbin, Colonel Dan, sir," gasped Digby dramatically, simultaneously trying to get his breath back while attempting a hurried salute.
"I would have described it as more like a pepper pot," Marvin said pedantically, "not that my opinion counts for anything, I'm sure. Actually there were two - so there was a salt cellar as well. In fact you could say we were just fired on by an oversized cruet set!"
"They were dustbins," Digby reiterated stubbornly. "Great big bloody dustbins with knobs on!"
"Dustbins? A cruet set? Shot at? I don't understand. Get a grip on yourself, man," snapped Colonel Dare, to whom the description seemed absolute nonsense. "What on Earth are you talking about?"
"Oh deary, deary me," said the Doctor quietly, and sighed. "Here we go again!"
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TBC.
Author's Note 2:
In "Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future", Space Fleet craft were driven by impulse waves beamed to them by generating stations, long before 'Star Trek' had an impulse drive!
