Chapter 4
Police Lieutenant Jared Summers lazily took a sip of his afternoon tea and glanced at the telephone. Nothing, he though to himself. There hadn't been any crime reports all morning. No murders, no robberies, not even any reports of jaywalking! Jared looked around his barren office, and sighed. "This has got to be," he said to no-one at all. "the most boring day of my li-"
He was interrupted by a knock on the door.
Jared got up so quickly that his chair fell over, and dashed over to the door. Finally! Someone needed his help! He swung the door open, and froze at who he saw in front of him.
Standing there was the strangest-looking man you could ever imagine. He wore a brown hat that barely covered the mess of brown curls below it. An overly-long, multicoloured scarf ran around his neck and down the sides of his coat, all the way to his feet. And his face seemed to be frozen in a giant, toothy grin.
"Hello!" the strange man said. "I'm so sorry, could you tell me what date it is?"
"Um... well... it's the twenty-ninth of August."
"What year?"
Jared frowned. How did this man not know what year it was? Was he joking?
"It's 1969-"
"Ah, wonderful." The man cut him off. "We seem to be at around the right coordinates. We'll have to use your office for a moment. Come in K-9."
He walked in to Jared's office, and was followed by what looked like some sort of dog, except it was made of tin, had a rectangular body, and appeared to be on wheels. So really, nothing at all like a dog.
The man went over to the desk and opened the window. "You see, we've been tracking this object through the vortex for quite some time, now, and we've predicted that with its current trajectory and speed, it should arrive at these coordinates in-how long, K-9?"
"Forty-eight seconds, master." the dog replied. Jared jumped back. A talking dog? Made of tin? Now that he thought about it, it reminded him of those robots you saw on TV.
"Who are you, though?" asked Jared.
"I'm the Doctor." the man replied. He looked like the furthest thing from a doctor.
"Doctor of what?"
"Oh, I'm a doctor of many things." he said as he stuck his head outside the window. "In this case, you can call me a doctor of tracking-down-vortex-debris. I see it coming now, K-9."
"What's coming?"
"Well, I don't know. That's what makes it fun!" He flashed another wide smile at Jared. "Now, we should probably duck."
"Why?"
"Just duck!" the Doctor yelled as he pulled Jared in front of the desk. "Any moment now..."
For a second, silence. Then, a the sound of something flying though the air at an incredible speed. Jared saw some blur of an object fly past them, out the door. A clatter was heard at the end of the hall.
"The debris has landed, master." said the dog-robot.
The Doctor stood up and slowly walked out into the hall where the object had landed. A minute later he came back holding in his hand a boomerang.
"Why do you have a boomerang?" asked Jared, still shaken.
"Well, this is the vortex debris." said the Doctor.
"But that's-that's a boomerang!"
"And it appears it was flying through space and decided to land on Earth. These things do happen, you know." The Doctor threw the boomerang out the window. It flew off into the distance.
"Come on, K-9, back to the TARDIS. Romana's waiting for us." The Doctor and K-9 turned and left the office, leaving a very frightened Jared Summers crouched behind his desk.
