30. Chloe in Florida.
1. Roller Coaster Temptation.
"Would you like a scary but amazing experience?" the Doctor asks.
"Ooh, yes please," Chloe says enthusiastically.
Officially, she is just eighteen in calendar years but has been out with the Doctor or with her mother on so many Tardis outings which have often turned out as major adventures that she must be over twenty.
Chloe is the daughter of one of the Doctor's recent companions, Crystelle.
They are talking in the Doctor's Tardis Control room.
"It will be like a roller coaster in the sky without tracks," the Doctor moves his arms in a wide circle, taunting her enthusiasm, but it seems unabated.
"I've worked out how to keep us safe," the Doctor grins and pauses. "Except I can't keep us safe!"
How tantalising! To be told there's an amazing outing, but then it's far too dangerous!
"I like a bit of danger!" Chloe asserts enthusiastically, but maybe a touch foolhardily.
"It will be more than just a bit of danger," the Doctor says. "Are you up for it?"
"A roller coaster in the sky?" Chloe toys with the idea. She has returned in one piece from all the adventures she has been on with the Doctor... so far. Most of them have seemed safe, well, a few of them anyway.
"We'll be in conventional transport of the age," the Doctor says. "How many people will your wristwatch Tardis take?" He refers to a device that Chloe has built herself (ref. 29).
"Only the one, unless we try touching at the time," Chloe says more cautiously.
"Then that's our safety equipment!" the Doctor announces boldly. Most of the transporters he has come across will take more than one person when they maintain contact during the transportation.
But we haven't tried it with more than one person, Chloe thinks. Maybe her immaturity precludes her from challenging the Doctor.
Chloe only built it recently and has only used it on a very few trips out, and certainly only with one person.
She made it use her thoughts of where and when she wants to go to direct it when she presses the activation button.
"I'd like to investigate a report of an aeroplane that flew from an island to the mainland in such a short time that no-one would believe it, the Doctor says. "The only certain recorded incident of this was near Florida."
"Where's that?" Chloe asks.
"What's happened to your Earth geography?" the Doctor asks gently chidingly. "The east coast of North America."
"Oh, yes, I think my geography books show a dotted line, it was fully submerged, but my history books said it was a beautiful place before that." Her schooling looked back from three millennia after Florida flooded.
"We're going back to before it's heyday," the Doctor says, "to a day when it was in its infancy. A small plane took off from a small island, normally a flight of fifty minutes, and landed on the mainland only ten minutes later. Impossible, they said. They just failed to believe the clocks!"
"So, what happened to that tiny plane?" Chloe asks.
"That's what we're about to find out."
"Will you follow it in your Tardis?"
"No. Something much more dangerous." The Doctor grins.
"Will we smuggle ourselves on board?"
"No. We will follow in our own small flimsy plane of the time," the Doctor says. "Up for it?"
"Won't we be seen by their radar?"
"No, I'll cloak us from that."
"Danger! Tiny plane flying behind another tiny plane?" Chloe says almost mockingly. "Actually, Doctor, where's the danger?"
"The danger, my dear, is from the winds. There was a very particular type of storm that day. You've heard of a tornado? Locally they called it a twister. They're usually vertical but this one was unusually horizontal, and it lasted more than just a few minutes, and it was miles long."
"How fast were the winds?" Chloe asks.
"Let's go and see, shall we?" the Doctor says keenly.
The Doctor presses a few buttons and pulls a lever.
The familiar grinding noise ends in a recently familiar gentle thud.
"I must attend to that landing circuit sometime," the Doctor says, mildly irritated.
"You mentioned we would be in a small flimsy plane," Chloe says. "Where's that coming from?"
"Oh, I booked it earlier," the Doctor confirms. "It should be all ready for us."
A small plane flying near a tornado? That sounds different.