Doctor Who: Nothing O'Clock: Eleventh Doctor: 50th Anniversary Read Online Free PDF Page A

care. The walls of the
     house were soft and covered with a light layer of fur. And they
     moved gently, in and out, as if they were … ‘Breathing. It’s a
     living room. Literally.’
    He said, ‘Give me Amy back. Leave
     this place. I’ll find you somewhere you can go. You can’t just
     keep looping and re-looping through time, over and over, though.
     It messes everything up.’
    ‘And when it does, we begin again,
     somewhere else,’ said the woman in the cat mask, on the stairs
     above him. ‘You will be imprisoned until your life is done. Age
     here, regenerate here, die here, again and again. Our prison
     will not end until the last Time Lord is no more.’
    ‘Do you really think you can hold
     me that easily?’ the Doctor asked. It was always good to seem in
     control, no matter how much he worried that he was going to be
     stuck here for good.
    ‘Quickly! Doctor! Down here!’ It
     was Amy’s voice. He took the steps three at a time, heading
     towards the place her voice had come from: the front
     door.
    ‘Doctor!’
    ‘I’m here.’ He rattled the door.
     It was locked. He pulled out his screwdriver and soniced the
     doorhandle.
    There was a clunk and the door
     flew open; the sudden daylight was blinding. The Doctor saw,
     with delight, his friend, and a familiar big blue police box. He
     was not certain which to hug first.
    ‘Why didn’t you go inside?’ he
     asked Amy, as he opened the TARDIS door.
    ‘Can’t find the key. Must have
     dropped it while they were chasing me. Where are we going
     now?’
    ‘Somewhere safe. Well, safer.’ He
     closed the door. ‘Got any suggestions?’
    Amy stopped at the bottom of the
     control-room stairs and looked around at the gleaming coppery
     world, at the glass pillar that ran through the TARDIS controls,
     at the doors.
    ‘Amazing, isn’t she?’ said the
     Doctor. ‘I never get tired of looking at the old girl.’
    ‘Yes, the old girl,’ said Amy. ‘I
     think we should go to the very dawn of time, Doctor. As early as
     we can go. They won’t be able to find us there, and we can work
     out what to do next.’ She was looking over the Doctor’s shoulder
     at the console, watching his hands move, as if she was
     determined not to forget anything he did. The TARDIS was no
     longer in 1984.
    ‘The Dawn of Time? Very clever,
     Amy Pond. That’s somewhere we’ve never gone before. Somewhere we
     shouldn’t be able to go. It’s a good thing I’ve got this.’ He
     held up the squiggly whatsit, then attached it to the TARDIS
     console, using crocodile clips and what looked like a piece of
     string.
    ‘There,’ he said proudly. ‘Look at
     that.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Amy. ‘We’ve escaped
     the Kin’s trap.’
    The TARDIS engines began to groan,
     and the whole room began to judder and shake.
    ‘What’s that noise?’
    ‘We’re heading for somewhere the
     TARDIS isn’t designed to go. Somewhere I wouldn’t dare go
     without the squiggly whatsit giving us a boost and a time
     bubble. The noise is the engines complaining. It’s like going up
     a steep hill in an old car. It may take us a few more minutes to
     get there. Still, you’ll like it when we arrive: the Dawn of
     Time. Excellent suggestion.’
    ‘I’m sure I will like it,’ said
     Amy, with a smile. ‘It must have felt so good to escape the
     Kin’s prison, Doctor.’
    ‘That’s the funny thing,’ said the
     Doctor. ‘You ask me about escaping the Kin’s prison. By which,
     you mean, that house. And I mean, I did escape, just by sonicing
     a doorknob, which was a bit convenient. But what if the trap
     wasn’t the house? What if the Kin didn’t want a Time Lord to
     torture and kill? What if they wanted something much more
     important? What if they wanted a TARDIS?’
    ‘Why would the Kin want a TARDIS?’
     asked Amy.
    The Doctor looked at Amy. He
     looked at her with clear eyes, unclouded by hate or by illusion.
     ‘The Kin can’t travel very far through time.