Doctor Who: Shada by Douglas Adams, Gareth Roberts, Douglas Roberts Read Free Book Online

and he hoped it wasn’t the desserts leaking.
    Suddenly, a stunningly gorgeous man stepped up, as if from nowhere. That was quite an achievement, thought David, as he was wearing a silver ensemble topped up with an even more outrageous hat and cloak. Very bold, and he must have been freezing in that get-up. The stranger had piercing blue eyes, full, sensual lips and, to top it off, he even had a scar – a sexy one, not a horrible one. David gulped. He wasn’t used to being fancied, but this guy was giving him such a look.
    ‘Hello, honky-tonk,’ said the stranger in a severe and almost expressionless voice. ‘I wish to ride with you.’
    David looked around for candid cameras. He couldn’t think of what to say.
    The man had already made his way around the car and was standing at the passenger side. Oddly, David noticed he was carrying an old carpet bag which didn’t go with the rest of the gear at all. He found this impressive. Here was a guy who clearly didn’t care what anybody else thought of him.
    ‘Look, you know,’ David burbled, not at all sure how to handle this. ‘We could go back to my place – I mean, only if you want to – but I’ve got to be somewhere else in a couple of hours, OK?’
    ‘We will go to my place,’ said the man levelly, never taking his beautiful eyes off David.
    ‘Sure,’ breathed David, still stunned. ‘I’m David.’
    ‘I am Skagra,’ said the man flatly.
    Exotic, thought David. Swedish, perhaps? He opened the car, threw the carrier bags into the back seat, got in, leant over and flicked the lock on the passenger side. The man slipped in, hat and all, and sat staring straight ahead, his long thin fingers curled round the leather straps of the carpet bag.
    David gunned the engine and automatically the car stereo blasted into Cilla with ‘Love Of The Loved’. Tinny brass erupted from the tiny speaker. David scrambled to switch it off. He didn’t want the guy to think he was a silly old queen.
    ‘You local then?’ he asked, inwardly cursing at the naffness of that line, the brownness of his car, the fawnness of his coat, the polyesterishness of his shirt, the Cilla-ness of his tape collection, and the small spot on the left-hand side of his neck which he knew was in full view of his passenger and which he’d neglected to deal with that morning.
    ‘I am a visitor,’ said Skagra as the car turned into the narrow, quieter streets around the colleges.
    ‘So which way now?’ asked David.
    The stranger pulled back the straps on the carpet bag. David couldn’t understand what happened next. A big grey ball floated slowly from the bag. It was like something out of a magician’s act, there didn’t seem to be any wires or rods or anything supporting it, and the stranger’s hands stayed completely still on the straps of the bag.
    ‘That’s clever,’ enthused David. ‘You could be the new David Nixon, Skagra, how do you do that?’
    Skagra did not reply, his eyes fixed straight ahead on the road. ‘Stop!’ he barked.
    David found himself obeying, his foot jammed on to the brake pedal. An angry cyclist swerved around the car, shouting an obscenity. They were at the gates of one of the colleges, St Cedd’s David thought it was, though he’d never been clever enough to get more than three O levels.
    David smiled across at his passenger. ‘You’re full of surprises,’ he said, and decided to try and sound experienced and insouciant. ‘What other tricks do you do, then?’
    They were the last words David Taylor ever spoke.
    The grey ball zoomed up to his forehead. He felt its icy, metallic touch for half a second – and then suddenly it was as if his brain was being pulled out of his body. He heard a thin, distorted babble of inhuman voices. There was a sudden searing pain, and David Taylor no longer existed. His last thought in this world was of Mum waiting at the old house.
    Skagra watched as the human’s head lolled to one side, exposing an unsightly blemish. The