Doctor Who - Code of the Krillitanes Read online

  CODE OF THE KRILLITANES

  "I blame those new Brainy Crisps. Since he started eating them, he's been too clever by half."

  Can eating a bag of crisps really make you more clever? The company that makes the crisps says so, and they seem to be right.

  But the Doctor is worried. Who would want to make people more brainy? And why? With just his sonic screwdriver and a supermarket trolley full of crisps, the Doctor sets out to find the truth. The answer is scary — the Krillitanes are back on Earth, and everyone is at risk!

  Last time they took over a school. This time they have hijacked the internet. Whatever they are up to, it's big and it's nasty. Only the Doctor can stop them — if he isn't already too late...

  Featuring the Doctor as played by

  David Tennant in the Acclaimed

  hit series from BBC Television.

  ISBN: 978 1 84607 928 3

  UK: £1.99

  Science fiction/TV tie-in

  CODE OF THE

  KRILLITANES

  JUSTIN RICHARDS

  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

  Published in 2010 by BBC Books, an imprint of Ebury Publishing A Random House Group Company

  ©Justin Richards, 2010

  Justin Richards has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.

  Doctor Who is a BBC Wales production for BBC One Executive Producers: Russell T Davies and Julie Gardner Original séries broadcast on BBC Télévision. Format © BBC 1963.

  'Doctor Who', 'TARDIS' and the Doctor Who logo are trademarks of the British Broadcasting Corporation and are used under licence.

  Krillitanes created by Toby Whithouse.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval System, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

  The Random House Group Ltd Reg. No. 954009.

  Addresses for companies within the Random House Group can be found at www.randomhouse.co.uk.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978 1 846 07928 3

  The Random House Group Limited supports the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), the leading international forest certification organisation. Ail our titles that are printed on Greenpeace approved FSC certified paper carry the FSC logo. Our paper procurement policy can be found at www.rbooks.co.uk/environment Editor: Jacqueline Rayner Project Editor: Steve Tribe Cover design by Lee Binding © Woodlands Books Ltd 2010

  Typeset in Stone Serif

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Cox and Wyman, Reading, RG1 8EX

  Chapter One

  It was a lovely sunny day, and something was very wrong indeed.

  The Doctor thrust his hands deep into his jacket pockets and sniffed the London air. It smelled just as he expected, so there was nothing wrong there. Well, there was nothing more wrong than usual.

  He set off down the street, nodding a greeting to a curious cat. He smiled at an old lady carrying shopping bags.

  She smiled back, then hurried on her way.

  A few children were kicking a football about. The Doctor leaned against the end wall of a house and watched them for a while. The street ended in a small turning area where the ball bounced off the walls of houses. Two bundled sweatshirts marked out a goal.

  The ball bounced off a wall and rolled up to the Doctor.

  He picked it up and threw it back to a boy with spiky black hair, who ran after it. The boy was about 12 and had teeth that were still too big for his mouth.

  ‘Training for the Olympics?’ the Doctor asked.

  ‘That’s not for years yet,’ the boy told him.

  ‘Oh.’ The Doctor was disappointed. ‘I must be a bit early.’

  He licked his index finger and held it up to test the breeze.

  ‘2010, yes?’

  The boy nodded. His friends had joined him and were watching the Doctor with interest.

  ‘You’re funny,’ one of the other boys said.

  ‘Very often,’ the Doctor agreed.

  The spiky-haired boy was eating crisps from a brightly coloured packet. He offered the Doctor one.

  ‘No thanks. You have to be careful how much salt you eat, you know.’

  The boy agreed. ‘I know. Six grams is probably too much for an adult. Nearly half the people in Britain go over that.

  The sodium is what does the damage. High blood pressure, risk of heart disease...’

  The Doctor listened as the boy explained. He went into more and more detail about the dangers of eating too much salt. Then he paused to eat another crisp.

  ‘Is he always like this?’ the Doctor asked the other boys.

  ‘He’ll be explaining Einstein’s Theory next.’

  He had meant it as a joke, but the spiky-haired boy took this as an excuse to do exactly that. ‘The “constant” that Einstein used was the speed of light,’ the boy was saying as the Doctor stifled a yawn.

  ‘Actually, I did know that,’ he admitted.

  The boy was talking faster and faster. Before long, he and the other boys had explained how to bypass Einstein.

  They knew how to design spaceships that could travel faster than light.

  By this time, the Doctor had stopped yawning. ‘Where do you go to school?’ he asked.

  Then he realised that the boys had gone back to their football. One of them loudly worked out the angle he would have to bounce the ball off one of the walls to get it in the goal. The Doctor frowned. The boy was exactly right.

  A woman had come out of one of the houses and was watching the boys. The Doctor guessed that she was one of their mums.

  ‘Clever kids,’ he said, joining her.

  The woman smiled. ‘They’re a good lot, really. At least they’re playing footie, instead of bothering other people.’

  ‘They bother me,’ the Doctor said. ‘Oh, not in a bad way.

  But the things they say are a bit worrying.’

  The woman had a bag of crisps. It was the same brand as the boy had been eating. It had the same bright packaging. She offered the bag to the Doctor, and this time he took one.

  ‘They’re good, aren’t they? For crisps they’re very, er, crisp.’ The Doctor picked a bit of crisp from his teeth with his thumbnail. ‘I was really looking for clues about the internet,’

  he went on.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘My TARDIS links up to the local networks when it lands.

  It downloads news and weather and checks if I’ve won the lottery. That sort of thing.’

  ‘That’s useful.’

  ‘Yes, very. Except, when I landed just now, it gave me a virus warning. For the whole internet. Everything. What’s that all about?’ He smiled and accepted another crisp. ‘Sorry, ignore me.’

  The woman smiled. ‘So what’s a TARDIS?’

  ‘Time and Relative Dimension in Space. Don’t worry about it.’

  The Doctor watched the children kick their ball. One of them scored a goal, but another boy said he was offside.

  ‘Which one’s yours?’ the Doctor asked.

  The woman pointed to the spiky-haired boy. ‘Spike,’ she said.

  ‘That makes sense. He was telling me how to build a spaceship. How did he know all that?’

  The woman popped another crisp into her mouth. ‘I blame these new Brainy Crisps. He’s been too clever by half since he started eating them. I can’t decide if I should be pleased or worried.’

  ‘Brainy Crisps?’ The Doctor could see now that the name was printed, bi g and bright, on the packet. ‘Brainy Crisps.’

  ‘They make you more brainy,’ the woman explained. ‘No one knows how they work, but if you ask me it must be based on a special protein molecule. It must attach itself to the red blood cells and carry extra oxygen to the brain...’

  ‘Yes,’ the Doctor said slowly.’ That would work.’

  ‘Not that I’d know,’ the woman went on. ‘I left school after my GCSEs, and I failed all of those. I can’t even work the oven timer.’ She crumpled the packet and stuffed it in her coat pocket.

  The Doctor nodded, deep in thought. ‘So, where do these Brainy Crisps come from?’

  ‘We get ours from the supermarket.’

  ‘That makes sense.’ The Doctor smiled. ‘It was nice talking to you. Thanks for the crisps.’

  ‘No problem. I hope you get your TARDIS problem sorted.’

  ‘So do I.’

  ‘Of course,’ the woman said, turning to go back indoors.

  ,'the problem with Relative Dimensions is the Space-Time Gap. If you get that sorted, then you can time travel by simple Vortex-Jumping. Bye, then.’

  The Doctor stared at the closed door for several minutes.

  When things got this weird, he decided, it was time to go shopping.

  Chapter Two

  It was a while since the Doctor had been to a supermarket.

  He didn’t generally need to go shopping. He had everything he needed in the TARDIS.

  The supermarket was cool and bright with wide aisles. It wasn’t too busy, and the Doctor wandered around, looking at the shelves. Supermarkets really did sell the strangest things, he thought.

  There was even a whole display of televisions. They were hooked up to a camera that showed shoppers walking past. The Doctor paused to examine himself in widescreen.

  He drew back his lips to check his teeth. He stuck out his tongue and was impressed with its colour and brightness.

  Moving on through the pizza aisle, he had to step aside to let a youth barge his trolley through.

  Reaching the bread, the Doctor found his way blocked. A lady was unloading French sticks from a large wheeled bin.

  ‘Can I help you, love?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh yes. I’m looking for crisps.’ He leaned forward.

  ‘Brainy Crisps,’ he told her in a hushed whisper.

  The woman took a step back. ‘Looks like you need them.’

  ‘I do,’ the Doctor confessed. ‘You have no idea.’

  The woman nodded like she thought she had every idea.

  ‘Three aisles down.’

  ‘Thank you. You’re very helpful,’ the Doctor told her.

  ‘They should give you a badge. “Helpful”, it should say. A helpful badge for helpful people.’

  The woman nodded. ‘They’re between the ketchup and the sweets.’

  The Brainy Crisps were just where the woman had said. The Doctor ignored the delights of lemon sherbets and wine gums. He glanced longingly at the jelly babies.

  The crisp packets were the same as he had already seen. Their bright colours made them stand out on the shelf.

  There were multi-packs and individual bags. They were all on special offer, with two for the price of one, and extra Super Points.

  ‘Bargain,’ the Doctor murmured, picking up a bag.

  He studied the ingredients list. It told him they were made of potato and vegetable oil and salt and flavouring.

  Which didn’t really help.

  ‘Made with actual ingredients,’ it said below the list. That didn’t help much, either.

  The front of the packet said, ‘Brainy Crisps – The snack that makes you Brainy!’ On the back it told how to go to the Brainy_Crisps website to test how much brainier you had got from eating the crisps. There was also, the Doctor noted, an address for comments or complaints.

  So much for the sales pitch, he thought. Now to find out what was really going on. He stuck his sonic screwdriver between his teeth while he opened the bag of crisps.

  The blue light from the sonic screwdriver lit up the inside of the packet. They certainly looked just like any other crisps.

  The Doctor checked the screwdriver’s readings as he scanned the contents of the bag.

  ‘Excuse me, Sunshine,’ a gruff voice said.

  The Doctor glanced up. He knew the voice wasn’t talking to him. No one would call the Doctor ‘Sunshine’.

  A man in a blue suit was glaring at the Doctor from point-blank range. He was wearing a bright yellow badge. The badge said ‘Derek’, and under that it said ‘Helpful’.

  ‘I’m sorry, did you want to help me?’ the Doctor asked.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing Sunshine?’ Derek demanded.

  The Doctor stared at him. ‘ I’m Sunshine? You wear a badge that yellow and call me Sunshine?’

  Derek sighed like he got this a lot. ‘Have you paid for those crisps?’ he asked.

  ‘What crisps? Oh, these crisps? These crisps here?’ The Doctor frowned. ‘Er, not yet, actually. Not as such.’

  ‘So that’s a “no”, then.’

  ‘Yes. I mean, yes that’s a no. I don’t actually want to eat them,’ the Doctor added. ‘I’m just... looking.’

  ‘You opened the packet,’ Derek pointed out.

  ‘Well, strictly speaking that is true.’

  ‘So that’s a “yes”, then.’

  The Doctor nodded. ‘Excuse me, but is there a point to all this?’

  ‘You want the crisps, you pay for them. Whether you want to eat them or just look at them, you pay for them, OK?’

  ‘OK,’ the Doctor decided. ‘I’ll take them.’ He turned to survey the shelves of crisps. ‘All of them.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘All of them,’ the Doctor said again. ‘Every bag.’

  ‘ Every bag? Why?’

  The Doctor grinned. ‘They’re on special offer. Now then, Helpful Derek, get us a trolley, would you?’

  The Doctor needed two trolleys. He managed to get them to the checkout, pulling one and pushing the other. Each trolley was overflowing with Brainy Crisps.

  ‘I wouldn’t bother if it wasn’t for the kids,’ he told a man who was staring at him. The man’s own trolley was full of cans of beer. ‘What’s your excuse?’ the Doctor asked.

  The Doctor chose the shortest queue. Even so, it seemed to take longer that all the others. That didn’t worry him. He knew there was a law that any queue you chose always moved slowest. It didn’t matter how long it was. He even knew the formula for working out exactly how long it would take.

  There was an old lady in front of the Doctor. Her hair was so white it looked slightly blue. Maybe that was the idea? She leaned heavily on her own trolley, which was almost empty. It held just four tins of cat food, some instant soup, and a small bar of chocolate.

  ‘You sure you’ve got enough crisps?’ the old lady asked the Doctor. Her eyes sparkled with amusement.

  ‘I hope so,’ the Doctor replied. ‘Though to be honest, I’m not sure.’

  ‘Those special offers are dangerous,’ the old lady said.

  ‘You always come away with something you didn’t really want, and you always forget something that was on your list.’

  The Doctor showed the old lady his psychic paper. It showed other people what the Doctor wanted them to see. ‘I think I got everything on my list,’ he said.

  The old lady peered at the paper. ‘It just says crisps.’

  ‘Phew, that’s all right then.’ The Doctor made a point of looking into the old lady’s trolley. ‘You’ve not done so badly though. No impulse buys there.’

  The old lady sniffed. ‘Two for one, it’s dangerous, I tell you. I mean, I don’t even have a cat.’

  They edged forward as a customer finished paying and left. The Doctor caught a rogue crisp bag as it fell. He stuffed it back into the trolley.

  ‘If you ask me, they’re a con,’ the old lady said in a loud whisper.

  ‘Two-for-one deals?’