Read Online Doctor Who BBCN17 - Sick Building by Doctor Who - Free Book Online

a rms. He knocked the pills and the bottle out of its grasp. ‘Behave yourself, Master Tiermann,’ the tablet robot said.
    It wouldn’t stop. ‘It’s gone haywire,’ Solin told Martha, panic in his voice. He backed away, and the robot followed. Now its hands were empty, but it hardly noticed. Those skinny fingers were twitching and still reaching for Solin.
    ‘Let’s get out of the kitchen,’ Martha said. The robot, attracted by her voice, whirled on its castors and stared at her.
    ‘You must have your tablets, miss. You must calm your nerves.’
    ‘It’s the same as the shields,’ Solin said. ‘The Craw, it must be.
    Making everything go wrong.’ He looked really scared now, as he and Martha backed steadily away. ‘Don’t you realise? What it’ll be like if all the robots. . . ’ His eyes boggled at the thought. ‘Oh my god.’
    ‘Run!’ Martha took hold of him and they shot across the kitchen, away from the robot’s grasp. They ran down the hallway and the next corridor after that, not even daring to check that the thing was 49

    keeping up after them. But it wasn’t. It had given up and stayed in the kitchen.
    When they reached the drawing room, Martha stopped and swung round to face Solin. ‘Take me to the Doctor,’ she said.
    ‘I can’t, Martha. I would help you if I could. But. . . ’ He even stared at the floor ominously, as if imagining what lay beneath their feet.
    ‘What’s down there? Why has your father put him there?’
    ‘There’s no danger. It’s just storage space. Old stuff. . . stuff that doesn’t work any more, that’s what gets shoved down there.’
    ‘And when you leave? Will he leave the Doctor there?’
    ‘Of course not.’
    ‘The Doctor was only going for the TARDIS, you know. We need it so that we can get away, too. Is that fair, Solin? We came to help you, in all good faith. And your father ends up putting us in danger.’
    Solin sat down heavily on one of the sofas. ‘I don’t know what to do. Everything’s going mad.’
    Martha looked at him. She could see she was going to have to take charge. She had to get him to help her free the Doctor. And to do that she would have to make him realise what danger they were in, and how only the Doctor would be able to help them.
    ‘Do you have something. . . I don’t know, radar or something. That will let us see how close the Craw is?’ she asked him. ‘You said your father had been monitoring its progress. . . ’
    ‘Here,’ Solin said. ‘It’s easy.’ He turned to a control panel on the coffee table beside him and tapped a few buttons. Several sliding panels in the large wall in front of them slid upwards. ‘There are screens in every room,’ Solin said. ‘We have access to everything we need through them.’ He pressed some more buttons and the huge monitor screen shimmered into life. A series of views flashed up, one after another. Views of the Dreamhome in the morning light. They could see the flames that Tiermann had created. They were holding steady, bright and tall. But they looked disastrous, to Martha’s eyes.
    The very opposite of safe. As if the whole Dreamhome was drowning in flame.
    Then there were views of the woodlands. They caught a glimpse 50

    of creatures stirring. An impression of widespread panic. Crashing undergrowth. A muscular ox-like creature on its hind legs, storming through the trees. ‘Show me the whole valley,’ Martha said. ‘Can you tune it so we see. . . higher up? And further out?’
    As Solin worked and more views flashed across the screen, Martha gained an impression of just how huge this world was. ‘The valley’
    sounded so cosy and close. But, on looking at these pictures, she could tell that the valley where the Dreamhome lay was colossal. It was the size of one of Earth’s great continents. But that wasn’t very reassuring. The Craw was still on its way. It would be here by the middle of the night.
    And here it was. Solin managed to get the surveillance