The Doctor burst out of the bathroom, dressed in a bathrobe that was identical to his usual 'colourful' coat, knocking me to the floor in the process.
"Hey watch where you're going." I got to my feet. "You could at least help me up Doctor."
"Hurry up Peri." The Doctor hurtled off in the direction of the console room. I had to run to keep up with his pace.
"I was thinking about that alien plant you discovered."
"What about it?"
"I remembered that I have seen it before somewhere. On the planet Europa to be exact."
Europa, Europa. I had heard the name before. Of course, one of the moons of Jupiter. "I thought you said Europa was a giant ball of ice Doctor."
"At the moment it is but in the future it is a lush jungle paradise."
"They must have invented a doozy of a terraforming machine." I chirped.
"Doozy? Doozy? DOOZY? I wish you would learn English Peri."
"What kind of plant is it Doctor?" Changing the subject with the Doctor was an art form. I had to pick just the right time and choose a topic he could wax lyrical about until he forgot what he was on about.
"Its a common bjun weed, it's as abundant as an Earth daisy. It's not harmful in anyway, in fact I have a recipe for bjun salad somewhere."
"Sounds delicious." Sounds dreadful more is closer to the truth. Why was he so obsessed about food now I wondered
***
Europa was a pleasant surprise. I was expecting a bit of a chill but it was surprisingly warm. I was glad I had kept my favourite peach shorts on as jeans would have been uncomfortable with the humidity. "My it's hot here." The gravity was low to; I felt twenty pound lighter, which was nice.
"Look in the sky Peri."
I looked up at where the Doctor was pointing. "Hey they moved a planet closer to the sun, neat."
"That's not the sun Peri, that's Jupiter or Lucifer as it has been renamed. Almost a millennia ago Jupiter mysteriously ignited and became a companion star to the sun."
"All the moons now have their own sun, life will find a way." A sudden thought stuck me as I remembered that cheesy film. "There's not any animal life here yet is there?"
"Don't expect any dinosaurs Peri. The gravity is not high enough for anything over about ten feet to evolve and flight will be difficult."
I gathered as many samples as I could. This would really get me back in Professor Kingsland's good graces. Then something brushed against my leg and I screamed.
"Don't move Peri, keep absolutely still."
I dared not even breathe until the Doctor had picked up a small rodent. It resembled a large mouse but its fur was green and its eyes a nice shade of pink. "That's the weirdest mouse I've ever seen."
"It was a mouse, but look at how the native flora has changed it. Some kind of genetic drift I suspect. The only time I've ever seen anything like this was when the Daleks cultivated Krynoid pods to make the hybrid Varga plants. Very nasty I can tell you."
I looked at the mouse again. Its fur was twitching and it made noises like it was in pain. Then a spike burst through its skin followed by another and another until it looked like a cactus. The Doctor dropped the creature and it scuttled away.
"Well there's something you don't see everyday. Hostile take over of one organism by another."
"Shouldn't we get back to the Tardis?" I didn't want to stay here a minute longer."
"Yes we've got all the answers we need."
"We have?" I couldn't see what we had learned by a mouse turning into a plant.
"Yes. The contamination from a Dalek experiment wound its way here by means as yet unknown. Then explorers managed to take a few seeds back to Earth. These seeds then somehow managed to be taken back in time where we discover them just before our undead friend takes a liking to your jugular vein."
"That was romantically put."
"Now we need to know how these seeds ended up over a thousand years into the past."
"Some kind of time experiment?"
"Possibly."
***
The Doctor set the co-ordinates and we were off onto another adventure. I had more important ideas like going for a long soak in the bath. Just the thing to soothe away all the rigours of the day.
