So Jennifer was gone. . . I’d find her. This seemed a friendly planet. Maybe, I told myself , she’d gone back to the ship. Maybe she found another way into the building, I liked to think that she must be brilliant even if it was her first time off planet and she would be safe.
Getting past the worm, well that wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. Looking more closely it wasn’t a single worm at all. It was a colony, and a jet propelled one at that. It was then that I found Jennifer. It appeared that she had tried to go through the worm, and she had gotten trapped. I radioed the ship. Maybe she still had a chance if I was careful.
These creatures, they all looked so pretty and were so deadly, but deadly wasn’t what scared me. What scared me was what would need such an array of them to protect itself. The guide books for the planet only said it was a temple of some kind, left by the first inhabitants of the planet. The question on my mind was did I have enough time to go, find out about them, and get back to rescue Jennifer before the worm decided the dinner bell had rung.
Getting back to the ship was easy enough, but I needed access to the library, and the Captain was keeping it locked. That might take a little flirting, after all Jack Harkness was my teacher in the fine art of saying “hello”. The Captain was in his quarters , and I knocked softly.
“Hello sir, ” I fixed him with my bluest eye, and licked my lips. ” I need a book, that’s locked up and I was hoping you could reopen the library for me.”
“What book ?”
“It’s the Atlas Obscura for Dimidium. They were the first settlers here. I need to find out what they built, there’s a building over beyond the shopping district . . .”
“And . . .?”
“And Jennifer will die if I don’t . . . “