Touch The Sky: Doctor Who/Studio C [Book 3]

Midnight (Part 2)

98 kliks later, the group was gathered around the middle-aged couple, whose names they had learned were Val and Biff Cane.

"So Biff said, 'I'm going swimming...'"

"Oh, I was all ready, trunks and everything! Nose plug," Biff said.

His wife was giggling madly. "And his little nose plug. You should have seen it!"

"And I went marching up to the lifeguard, and he was a Shamboni, you know, those big foreheads..." Biff said. The Doctor gestured to his own forehead and nodded.

"Great, big forehead!" Val said.

"And I said, 'where's the pool?'" and he said..."

"The pool is abstract!" they chorused. Jethro mouthed the words in the background, evidently having heard the story a hundred times before. Everyone else, on the other hand, laughed.

"It wasn't a real pool!" Val got out through her giggles.

"It was a concept!" Biff added.

"And you were wearing a nose plug?" the Doctor asked.

"Oh, it was like this," Biff said, pinching his nose closed and affecting a dumb voice. "Ooh, where's the pool?" A chorus of laughs sounded through the vehicle again.

150 kliks later, the Doctor was standing in the gallery as Dee Dee poured herself of a coffee. "I'm just a second-year student, but I wrote a paper on the Lost Moon of Poosh," she was telling him."Professor Hobbes read it, liked it, took me on as a researcher, just for the holidays. I say researcher—most of the time he's got me fetching and carrying, but it's all good experience."

"And did they ever find it?" the Doctor asked.

"Find what?" she asked.

"The Lost Moon of Poosh?"

Dee Dee laughed. "No, not yet."

"Well, maybe that'll be your great discovery one day," he told her, then lifted his cup. "Here's to Poosh."

"Poosh," Dee Dee agreed, tapping her cup with his.

209 kliks later, the Doctor was seated with the blonde woman they had noted earlier, whose name was Sky. Matt sat across the aisle, content to listen without adding much to the conversation. "No, no, we're with some friends of ours. They stayed behind in the Leisure Palace," the Doctor was telling Sky. "You?"

"No, it's just me," she said.

"Oh, I've done plenty of that, traveling on my own," the Doctor told her. "I love it. Do what you want, go anywhere."

"I'm still getting used to it," Sky admitted. "I found myself single rather recently, not by choice."

Matt felt a pang at her words.

"What happened?" the Doctor asked.

"Oh, the usual. She needed her own space, as they say. A different galaxy, in fact. I reckon that's enough space, don't you?"

"Yeah," the Doctor said. "I had a friend who went to a different universe."

Matt glanced at him sharply, surprised he'd seemingly brought up Rose so casually, but Sky interrupted whatever he might have said as she parsed through the meal in front of her. "Oh, what's this? Chicken or beef?"

Spearing one on his plastic fork, the Doctor eyed it. "I think it's both."

251 kliks later, Professor Hobbes was giving a lecture, complete with projector and diagrams. "So, this is Midnight, do you see?" he said, gesturing to the screen. "Bombarded by the sun, x-tonic rays, raw galvanic radiation. Dee Dee, next slide!" She complied and the image changed. "It's my pet project. Actually, I'm the first person to research this. Because, you see... the history is fascinating... because there is no history! There's no life in this entire system! There couldn't be. Before the Leisure Palace Company moved in, no one had come here in all eternity. No. Living. Thing."