Chapter 6

The Pilot and The Doctor

Not for the first time that day, The Doctor was baffled. He blinked and looked again.

It was a small 1930s cargo aircraft, cleaved in two by a tall tree. Whole branches had been hewn off in the crash, and bits of metal from the plane's outer shell lay scattered, half melted in the long-gone heat. The Doctor inched his way as far as he could to the front, where a branch had split right through the front windscreen. He peered in, and there in the dark, a shrunken cracked face leered out at him.

It was only a skull, but The Doctor jumped back a few feet in surprise. It looked as if it had been mummified, but more likely had all its water sucked from its body. Much like what he had seen in Venice. 'Dryads..' he murmured.

'We should bury them,' said Amy, 'not just leave them in the aeroplane. The Doctor jumped - he had forgotten how silently Amy could move. The Doctor had already scrambled in through the passenger door and was rummaging around in the back.

'Who was this person, Doctor, anyone you knew?'

'No, but whoever it was was had a thing about salt, whole tubs of it! Rock salt by the looks of things.'

There was a banging noise. 'OOOoh, what's this?' he wiped the dust off it.

'Hey, Ponds? Can you tell me what this is?' he said, tumbling out the back door of the plane. He was a holding some sort of pocket watch with a strange face.

'Ermm..'

'Its an aneroid barometer! You can predict the weather with it!'

'So?'

'I have a plan!'

Rory and Amy exchanged looks.

'I mean a real one! A good one!'

Rory and Amy raised an eyebrow each.

The Doctor turned around, and knelt down by the plane and began soldering with the sonic. 'Help me, will you?'

About an hour or so later, The Doctor flicked his hair out of his eyes, and stared up at the strange apparatus in front of him. It had been a plane, but the metal it had been made of had been stripped and bent round to make a new shiny monster. When they had first got inside the plane, there had been some interesting discoveries. There was a police telephone which only called one place, but what that place was The Doctor wasn't sure; the line seemed to be dead, there had been a lot of wires scattered about the floor of the cockpit, bits left over from the renovation The Doctor thought and there . It was now clear from the crude adjustments to the cockpit that the aeroplane had been hastily (and brilliantly) converted into a kind of TARDIS. There were no doors on the passenger or pilot sides and the walls were now just metal bars.

They had buried the pilot, away from the river in case of erosion. In with him they had put his leather hat and goggles and filled the grave with earth. The dryads had watched as they had filled the grave in, but did not attempt to come any closer. A few minutes later, The Doctor had looked back, and he was almost sure he saw the tree squatting by the grave move.

'Doctor?' said Amy, breaking his chain of thought, 'why did we just rebuild the plane?'

'Because we, Pond, are going for a ride! You see those salt tubs in the back, I'm going to ask you and Rory to empty them out the doorway when we get to say, 50,000 feet.'

'Why?'

'Is it safe?'

'No idea', The Doctor said brightly, climbing into the pilot seat, 'hop in!'

'No way! I'm not going until you tell us exactly what you're up to!'

'Fine then! Have you ever heard of cloud seeding, Rory?'

'No?'

'They did it at the Beijong Olympics'.

'Beijing, Doctor'

'Oh yes so they did!'

'Well, we're going to do it, we're going to try rain making!'

'Have you ever flown a plane before, Doctor?,' Rory asked nervously.

'Of course I have!'

...

'Err, you have to turn the engine on'.

'Oh right!'

There was a clunking noise and some thumping. Then, making them all jump, the propeller cracked into life, spinning faster and faster, like an increasingly desperate fly inside a jar. Beside the river, the land opened out and formed a long treeless glade along the bank.

'Right!' shouted The Doctor, masterfully pulling a lever. There was a loud banging noise and with a jerk that nearly through them off their seats, the propellers roared into life.

'Ok..' The Doctor said as the plane slowly rolled forward, getting faster and faster. They turned around a slight bend, and there was the end of the clearing, coming on fast. The plane was eating up the ground, and the trees were getting close by the second!

'O, god..' said Rory bracing himself. The trees were very close now, less than a hundred metres away. Amy closed her eyes, and grabbed Rory's hand.

'Use the stick!' Rory shouted over the din of the engine. The Doctor flung the stick forward as the trees reared up in front of the plane.

'GERONIMO!'