Hello everyone! 🙂
Welcome to ‘Bradley’s Basement’ blog and I’m Tim Bradley!
It’s Day 14 of ‘Bradley’s Basement’s Advent Calendar 2017.
The story continues in ‘The Five Doctors At Christmas’ with the Seventh Doctor and Ace for ‘The Seventh Doctor’s Story’ in ‘Part Fourteen’. Last time, the TARDIS materialised inside the cargo bay of an abandoned spaceship. The Doctor and Ace were without gravity and they discovered pizzas too! 🙂
‘The Seventh Doctor’s Story’ of ‘The Five Doctors At Christmas’ is set after ‘The Space Car’.
Enjoy!
Check out what my Day 14 of my ‘Bradley’s Basement’s Advent Calendar for 2015 and 2016 were about!
Tim. 🙂
Part Fourteen
After a while, the Doctor and Ace left the cargo bay and explored the spaceship. They went down a winding corridor, finding it surprisingly quiet. The two felt uneasy as they went.
“Professor,” Ace whispered.
“Yes?” whispered the Doctor.
“Have you noticed? There’s nobody about,” she said. “This spaceship is empty.”
“Indeed it is,” the Doctor replied. “I’m guessing some kind of massive disaster happened aboard this spaceship when they were delivering the pizzas to this…Snowtown place on whatever planet it is for the kids.”
“I suppose you have an idea of where you’re going,” Ace said to the Doctor.
“We’re trying to get to the bridge,” the Doctor told her. “We need to find a turbo-lift. There isn’t a turbo-lift when you want one on a spaceship like this.”
“We’ll find a turbo-lift soon enough,” Ace reassured the Doctor. “Trust me, I should know. I once captained the space vessel Vancouver, remember?”
“Yes, yes, Ace,” the Doctor said testily to her. “I remember. I was once the ship’s doctor.”
Eventually the Doctor and Ace turned the corner and found a turbo-lift down at the end of the corridor.
“See!” Ace declared triumphantly. “I told you! There would be a turbo-lift!”
“Come on then,” the Doctor said eagerly. “Let’s make for the bridge!”
The Doctor and Ace made their way forward and approached the turbo-lift. Very soon, the turbo-lift doors opened and they entered inside. The turbo-lift doors closed, as it took Ace and the Doctor up to the main bridge of the spaceship.
They eventually reached the main bridge of the spaceship and entered it as they came out of the turbo-lift. The Doctor and Ace looked around to find the bridge completely empty. There was an eerie silence as they looked around the bridge. It was pretty dull-looking and control consoles had their screens flickering and distorting data and information.
“This is getting weirder and weirder by the minute, Professor,” Ace told the Doctor.
“Yes,” said the Doctor thoughtfully, pressing the question mark end of his umbrella up to his chin. “So it is, Ace. So it is.”
After a few moments of pondering, the Doctor made his way over to the captain’s chair. “Let’s see if we can find out what happened in the spaceship’s logs.”
Ace joined the Doctor as they approached the captain’s chair. The Doctor sat down in it with Ace standing beside him. He pressed a few button controls as the captain’s voice came out from the command chair.
“Personal log,” the captain’s voice echoed. “Date….Eight Nine…Captain Terams speaking…We…strange phenomenon…giant vortex…unable… to break free… magnetic field….doubt those children…get…pizzas…Christmas…can’t get out….this mess…”
The recording was mostly garbled and distorted. The Doctor couldn’t get any more from the log. Both he and Ace looked up concerned.
“Sounds like they ran into a storm big time, hey Professor,” Ace suggested.
“Yes,” the Doctor replied grimly. “At least we know who those pizzas were for and why they were being delivered to children. It’s for Christmas.”
“Hey!” Ace exclaimed. “It could be Earth this ship is in orbit around. Perhaps they’re delivering pizzas to children who don’t have much. Like refugees in an abandoned country.”
“Or it could be one of the Earth colonies in your future,” the Doctor added.
“Yeah,” Ace said, nodding her head. “It could be that. I wonder though how famine, starvation and racism issues have been handled in Earth’s future.”
But the Doctor wasn’t paying much attention to Ace. He seemed to be deep in thought. “There’s something familiar about all this,” he said. “I’ve been in a situation like this before. If only I could remember when.”
“What?” Ace said bemused. “What are you on about, Professor?”
But before the Doctor could respond to Ace’s question, he suddenly went into a trance. Ace noticed this and started to become worried.
“Hey Professor?” she called to him. “Didn’t you hear me? I said ‘What are you on about?’”
The Doctor didn’t respond. Ace became even more worried. “Professor?” she prompted.
She started clicking her fingers in the Doctor’s face. The Doctor remained transfixed, unblinking despite Ace trying to get his attention.
“Professor?” she said again. This worry Ace had for him turned into panic. “Doctor?” she cried out.
In the Doctor’s mind meanwhile, he saw a young man with blonde hair, wearing a cricket jumper as well as a cream-coloured coat on it with a stick of celery is his lapel. The Doctor recognised who this man was. It was his fifth self.
“You,” the Doctor said to the young man in his mind. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m sorry to interrupt you,” the young Doctor said to him. “But this is important. And no, you can’t respond to this message. This was pre-recorded in my mind before it could be sent to you where you are now.”
“What?” the Doctor asked perplexed.
“Listen to me carefully,” the young Doctor told him. “You remember that message that my future incarnation sent me? You know the skinny idiot with the pinstripe suit?”
“Yes,” the Doctor replied, despite himself.
“Well here’s a reminder of what he said in that message,” the young Fifth Doctor told him. “Beware of the man of disguise and the little boy Simon is the key to all this. That’s what he said to me. I hope you’ll be able to find out more answers should you come across these two people my future incarnation warned me…us about.”
Eventually, the Fifth Doctor’s message ended and the current Seventh Doctor was back in the room with Ace. The Doctor shook himself out of his trance and saw Ace before him, looking concerned, as they were on the bridge.
“Doctor,” Ace said to him. “Are you alright?”
The Doctor shook his head and blinked frequently to gain a grip on reality. “Yes Ace,” the Doctor reassured his companion. “I think so, yes.”
“What happened, Professor?” Ace asked curiously. “Where were you? What went wrong?”
For once, Ace’s Doctor didn’t have an answer for her. “I’m…I’m not sure,” he told her.
Ace could see that the Doctor was as much in the dark as she was. This scared her. Would her Doctor be able to handle a situation where he wasn’t totally in control, she wondered…
TO BE CONTINUED…
© Tim Bradley, 2017
Bradley's Basement 