X-NEWS: spcvxb.spc.edu junk: 544701 Xref: spcuna junk:544701 Path: spcuna!rutgers!noao!asuvax!cs.utexas.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!uknet!gdt!ch0mpc From: ch0mpc@midge.bath.ac.uk (M P Clifton) Newsgroups: alt.drwho.creative Subject: The Five Doctors Cabaret Extravaganza part 3 Message-ID: Date: 19 Jan 94 18:06:28 GMT Organization: School of Chemistry, University of Bath, UK Lines: 186 ****************************************************************************** ** The All-Singing, All-Dancing Five Doctors Pro-Am Cabaret Extravaganza * ** part three * ** (c) Matt Clifton * ****************************************************************************** From the moment that Sarah Jane Smith awoke, she knew that before long she would be violently accosted, dragged screaming through the space-time continuum and dumped unceremoniously in a place beyond rhyme, beyond reason, where the seas boiled, the skies were green, and myriad imaginary beings tumbled and danced in the crabgrass. She still got up, though, because she was like that. The reason she knew these things was that K9 had told her. K9 told her a lot of things, hardly any of them of the slightest use or interest ('Information Mistress: The solar temperature at Earth ground level is currently 22.050050 degrees celsius') and her usual response was to punt his metal frame across the room, which probably hurt her a lot more than it did him. The metal dog computer was undoubtedly intelligent; it could thrash an IBM mainframe at championship chess, no problem, but unfortunately it also possessed the conversational aptitude of a stick. On that particular morning, K9 had performed its daily wake-up-Mistress routine, which consisted of beeping loudly several times at 7.00, tuning in to some local radio station, amplifying and broadcasting the signal, and if all else failed, zapping her with a low-energy nose bolt. This usually did the trick, but Sarah had subsequently to get out of bed with great care to avoid earthing herself painfully on the bedstead. On the one time K9 had enquired about this effect, Sarah had scowled at him and asked how he'd like 10,000 volts zinging through him, to which K9 had replied that that sounded rather nice, actually. Now they sat at breakfast - she at the table with cereal, toast and a hot mug of tea, scanning through the morning's Metropolitan - not the thriving daily journal she had led the Doctor to believe, but in truth a lurid sex-contact magazine. The dog lay at her feet (or occasionally on her feet - he had a tendency to roll) taking in sensory data and analysing it through his built-in spectrograph equipment. He whined, deep in constipation. Computation. "Information, Mistress: The charred dough product in your hand -" "-toast, K9, toast-" "- is highly carbonated and contains a high proportion of carcinogenic C-13 particles." Sarah spluttered. "Christ, K9, I don't want to know, OK?" The ritual of breakfast had always been a mystery to K9, and he didn't understand tea at all. Among all the myriad races and worlds it had occurred to his previous master to visit, none other had built their entire civilisation, ethos, and, in some part,religion, on the frequent ritual of boiling up plant leaves in a pot and drinking it with bovine lactose extract. K9 sniffed, and glided across the floor, where he could view events without being kicked. In time his Mistress completed her meal, left the table and spent some time upstairs (another mystery; humans seemed to possess an irrational desire to test the plumbing several times a day) after which she returned, coated, to the lower floor. "I have to go now. Work." The dog beeped. "Would advise not, Mistress. I warned you about the black triangle." "Yeah. Right. I believe you." Stupid dog, she muttered as the door closed behind her. As she strode past the laurel bush at the side of the house, the black triangle hidden in it hiccuped quietly and floated after her. ********************************************************************** The dreaming spires of the university buildings, blended with the tranquillity of the river and the park, conjured up the ideal combination of academia and recreation that characterised the city. The oak-bordered green stirred languidly with the relaxed, unhurried motion of the dons, students and townspeople who often took a stroll, or a boat ride, or just lay around for a while, talking, or sleeping, or eating, or doing jigsaws and things. The two travellers in the punt just passing under the College Bridge were doing none of these. The gondolier, a tall, broad-shouldered man with a mess of curly brown hair and wide, child-like eyes, gazed with affection at the only passenger, a youngish blonde sporting a schoolgirl outfit - for no other reason that the Doctor liked it that way. Romana, for she it was, looked up from the aged volume she had been studying, and frowned at her companion. "Go on...", she said. "Well," the older man frowned, opening his eyes a fraction of an inch wider than it would seem possible, even for such a manifestly non-human as he, "I told him where he could stick his Key to Time, and said that the Black Guardian sounded a jolly decent chap to me. Unfortunately, he didn't seem to take it all that well." "What did he do?" "Oh, not much. Not much he could do, having his hands tied with this 'cannot be seen to interfere' business. So he merely tusked slightly, raised his eyebrow half an inch, and broke my nose with a left uppercut." "Nasty," lamented Romana. "You had forgotten that the White Guardian used to be a middleweight champion." The Doctor concentrated on navigating the boat around an oncoming troupe of travelling duck entertainers. "So I fitted the Randomiser..." "...the device that brings the TARDIS to Earth every single bloody time we go anywhere..." "...and...what? Nonsense." He ruminated for a while. "Earth, indeed. Rubbish. What rubbish. I've never heard such rubbish." Romana unfolded and stretched her long, silky legs...phwor. "And where have we turned up this time? Ragula V ? The mining colonies of Blagsputter Minor? Gas nebulae of Bombbazola Nexus?" She looked about her as if to locate these destinations. "Apparently not. In fact," she continued, "if I didn't know better I'd say we were... let me see now..." she screwed up her forehead and made pretend calculations on her fingers, "somewhere about..." "Yes, alright" snapped the Doctor. "A Double Alpha in Irony Studies. Very good. Very bloody good." He ruminated for a few moments. "In fact, this time, I wanted to be here. Programmed the TARDIS myself." He paused for thought, then added: "Didn't even look at the manual." Romana discarded the book and studied the Doctor's scribbled itinere. "What does this say? Get jubby bobbies?" "Jelly babies," the Doctor clarified. The Time Lady squinted, and held the list further away. "Defeat...what is this? Shergar? Oh, Skagra. Then...errrg..." It was no use. She couldn't decipher the third line at all. It looked like : 'Sharg Romulan.' That couldn't be right, she thought. She didn't know any Romulans called Sharg. The Doctor was saying something. "...old girl didn't want to come here, either. Had to blindfold her sensors. If she'd had her way, we'd be lounging on the dunes of Paraglon Bacca. But, no, I said, you'll bloody well take us to Cambridge if it's the last thing you do. Having said that, it may well be." "My God", sighed the girl, who did not appreciate these little reminders that the time machine was about as accurate as the Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder and Helen Keller Championship Darts Trio. "Well, for Christ's sake, at least it got us to Cambridge. We can be thankful for that small mercy." "Ah. Well..." began the Doctor. "This is Cambridge, isn't it?", asked Romana cautiously. The Doctor gave one of his wide-toothed grins. "Nope. Oxford." And with a 'weeeeeeep' noise, the black triangular technician's strike that had been shadowing them for the last mile consumed both boat and passengers. It belched and sped back towards Gallifrey. The two men standing above watched the scene in bewilderment, then turned to walk slowly down the road. The shorter man, middle-aged and somewhat grey- haired, turned up the collar of his raincoat with a bad-tempered snort as spatters of rain began to fall. His associate, giving a wry grin, followed the other to the waiting car - a vintage maroon Jaguar. "Come on, Lewis," growled the older man. "Don't just stand there gawping. We've got a mystery to solve, or my name's not Euthanasia Trifle Zhnipp Morse." ********************************************************************* Sarah stood by the bus stop, clad in her wonderful purple raincoat. She knew it was wonderful because people kept staring at her and laughing loudly. Again she checked her watch, then looked up at the road as a horde of shadowy polygons bustled in a disorderly queue before her. "Typical", she sighed. "You wait two hours for a flying black triangle, then three turn up all at once." ********************************************************************* -- ***************************************************************************** * Doctor: The fluid link's run out of mercury, see? * * Ian: No it _hasn't_. The Daleks (original script) * *******Random Grouch**************************ch0mpc@midge.bath.ac.uk********