Read Death of the Doctor for Free Online

and Rani this was the small cramped room Colonel Karim had shown them earlier.
    But right now they were in Jo and Santiago’s room which was, if possible, even smaller and more cramped, with a bunk bed shoved up against one wall, opposite just another blank, featureless wall with a ventilation shaft in it. There was barely enough room for more than one person to stand in the room, so as Jo and Sarah Jane sat on the bed to discuss the service and their belief that the Doctor just couldn’t really be dead, the three teenagers realised they needed to get out to give them space.
    And themselves.
    ‘Right,’ said Rani, practical as ever. ‘We’ll head off and find the canteen. Cups of tea all round?’
    ‘Ooh,’ Jo said, diving into her humungous carpetbag and pulling out a sachet. ‘Just hot water for me, sweetheart. I’ve got some powdered Lapacho –’ and Jo stopped and smiled at Sarah Jane. ‘The Doctor took me to a planet once. Peladon. And the smell of Lapacho is just like the royal palace there.’
    Sarah Jane breathed in, as if smelling it herself. ‘I went to Peladon.’
    ‘You never did!’ laughed Jo.
    Sarah Jane nodded enthusiastically. ‘With the Great Beast, Aggedor.’ Sarah Jane put her hands into claws and roared, and Jo giggled.
    ‘Same planet!’
    And Clyde eased Rani and Santiago out of the room. ‘Okay ladies, laters!’
    Sarah Jane watched the door close behind them, then reached into her own bag and pulled out a notebook and pen. ‘Right, we need to make a list. Because we need to work out who’d fake the Doctor’s death and why.’
    And Jo nodded, but her mind seemed to be elsewhere. ‘I often think about the people we met,’ she said. ‘Whatever happened to them after we got back in the TARDIS? There was this planet we went to once, waaaay out in space. And there were these funny little people with a sort of peepshow device, with scenes of aliens in it, and they got loose and we sorted out that problem and dealt with these awful bureaucratic toffee-nosed people in charge, but…I sometimes look up into the sky at night, at one of the stars, and wonder if it’s that planet, and what it’s like now.’
    ‘I do that, too,’ Sarah Jane admitted. And sighed at the memories, her list forgotten.
    Back in the Funeral Chamber, standing by the Doctor’s lead coffin, were the three Shansheeth. Amaranth was still strumming the Cradle of the Lost, his musical instrument, now loudly enough that the sound travelled out of the room via the solitary, very small, air vent nearby. Almost as if the sound was being aimed towards that vent deliberately…
    ‘Brothers of the Wing,’ said Amaranth, ‘I have filleted the Cradle to find the most powerful memories.’
    ‘With the results?’ said Aureolin.
    ‘As we were told, it is the two women. They remember the Doctor most vividly of all. So very strongly…’
    And Amaranth played his instrument while Azure and Aureolin unfurled their massive wings and reached across the coffin to one another and held clawed-hands, bowing their heads as their associate strummed the Cradle again.
    And the air around them shimmered and a hologram blurred into view, getting more crystal clear with every strum.
    Azure hummed in time to the music and then spoke.
    ‘The Cradle sings! Surround them with song. Tempt them with days long past – the memories must grow, if we are to succeed…’
    The music flowed into the ventilation shaft as the three Shansheeth watched the hologram showing them Sarah Jane Smith and Jo Grant sat on the floor of Jo’s tiny room. She had laid a pretty Tibetan rug down and they were sitting on each end of it, a variety of candles placed around them, the various aromas both clashing and combining to produce an atmosphere the two women found relaxing and freeing.
    The Shansheeth too breathed in, as if the scents were coming through the same vent as their music was travelling down towards the women.
    Jo and Sarah Jane had closed their eyes