Free Doctor Who BBCN17 - Sick Building by Doctor Who

eat but stale crisps. Except – he reminded himself – there weren’t endless days stretching ahead, were there? There wasn’t even a tomorrow morning waiting for them. Today was the day the world ended, remember? He gulped down his pop.
    ‘We have to find a way back to the surface, Barbara. And we need to do it now.’ He belched. ‘Sorry.’
    ‘We?’ cried Barbara. ‘Me as well?’
    ‘Of course!’ the Doctor said. ‘We need to get. . . ’
    ‘What about my friend?’ Barbara said.
    ‘Your friend?’
    ‘He’s down here as well. Been here years. We need to get him out as well.’
    The Doctor was starting to regret starting this. ‘Oh, erm, OK then.’
    Barbara lurched out of her place by the wall and began squeaking away on her castors. ‘He’s not far away. He’ll be so delighted. We thought we were goners, we did. We thought we’d be left down here, hidden in the house. When you-know-what happened.’ She turned to the Doctor. ‘You know what you-know-what is, don’t you?’
    He nodded solemnly. ‘The Voracious Craw.’
    Barbara gave a shudder. ‘Exactly. And the Voracious Craw won’t be satisfied with a can of pop and some mouldy old smoky bacon crisps.’
    The Doctor followed her as she bustled arthritically down the corridor. ‘But Barbara, how do you know about the Voracious Craw?
    Hidden away down here?’
    ‘Ah,’ she said.
    ‘Well, um.
    The house told me, didn’t it?
    The
    Dreamhome told us. The Dreamhome has talked about little else for days now.’
    ‘Has it?’ The Doctor asked, a little surprised by this.
    ‘And the Dreamhome isn’t very happy, Doctor,’ she sighed. ‘About any of Tiermann’s plans.’
    ‘I bet it’s not,’ the Doctor said, just as they rounded a corner and entered a rather darkened, dusty room.
    ‘Here’s my friend, Doctor, here he is. Toaster! Toaster, wakeup!’
    56

    The Doctor moved to help Barbara wake her friend and fellow prisoner. It was a sun bed, lying there somewhat despondently in the shadows.
    In the main living area of the Dreamhome, Ernest Tiermann was ranting and raving to his wife.
    ‘Desperate measures,’ he cursed, taking off his blackened gloves and slinging them down. ‘Never did I imagine myself setting light to our grounds like that. Burning our prized possessions. . .
    as a barrier
    against outside.’
    ‘I know, my dear,’ Amanda fussed round him, along with two of the Servo-furnishings.
    ‘None of it would have been necessary if the shields were fully functional,’ Tiermann shouted. ‘And that’s all down to that idiotic Doctor.
    We should have sent him off with a flea in his ear yesterday.’ Tiermann grunted vengefully. ‘Well, at least we will have the satisfaction of knowing that he will meet his demise along with the rest of everything here.’
    These last few utterances were overheard by Martha and Solin, as they returned from watching the Craw on the monitor screen. Solin could hardly believe his ears. ‘What?’ he cried. ‘Father, you surely don’t intend to leave the Doctor underground when we leave. We can’t! That’s inhuman. . . ’
    Martha tossed her head. ‘It’s no more than I expected.’ She glared at the professor. She wasn’t intimidated by him. She’d come across bullying experts just like him throughout her training. The thing was, not to be browbeaten by them. Now she was facing up to him. ‘Look.
    The shields are failing because of the approach of the Voracious Craw.
    Not because of anything the Doctor or I did to them. The Craw makes technology go haywire. It’s part of its effect. That’s what the Doctor said.’
    Tiermann sneered. ‘He would say that, wouldn’t he?’ Martha was close to losing her temper. ‘But we’ve seen it happen with other things.
    The robot in the kitchen. That went peculiar, didn’t it, Solin?’
    ‘She’s right, father,’ said Solin urgently. ‘I was there.’
    57

    Tiermann looked affronted. ‘Nothing can interfere with the functioning of the