Shada

by Douglas Adams

  ‘Nothing is wrong,’ said Skagra levelly, though in his head he could see the Doctor being eviscerated by an enormous harpoon. He coughed. ‘Ship. Give me details of the Doctor’s TARDIS capsule.’

  The Ship was ready with the information in microseconds. ‘My gracious lord, it displays the characteristics of a Gallifreyan time-travel capsule, Type 39, possibly Type 40.’

  ‘I know that,’ said Skagra, fighting the compulsion to exclaim. ‘Inform me of its present whereabouts. Is it still on this planet?’

  ‘Oh yes indeed, my lord,’ said the Ship. ‘It is in close proximity. In fact, intruders including your enemy, that nasty Doctor, are approaching us from it at this very moment.’

  Skagra sat forward. ‘Show me!’

  The Ship provided a holo-screen, showing a high angle from one of the sensors. On the screen was the Doctor, accompanied by two other humanoids. The first Skagra recognised as the fair-haired female who had accompanied the Doctor in some of the video-texts he had scanned. There was another male, unfamiliar to him but outwardly brutishly human and stupid-looking. Bringing up the rear was the Doctor’s irritating mobile computer, the unit so humorously titled K-9.

  Skagra watched as the Doctor walked straight into the side of the Ship.

  The Doctor, walking slowly forward into the empty meadow, suddenly cried out and rubbed his nose. He raised a commanding hand to halt the others.

  ‘Don’t move!’ he ordered. Then he stretched out his long arms tentatively. Chris watched as he seemed to touch an invisible wall, patting the thin air as if it contained solid shapes, like a mime artist.

  ‘K-9, there’s something here!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘Affirmative, Master,’ said K-9.

  ‘Then why didn’t you tell me there was something here, you stupid animal?’

  ‘This unit assumed that you could see it, Master,’ said K-9. ‘Apologies. I had not completed my scan and had not noted the object’s non-refractive exterior as regards the humanoid visual spectrum.’

  ‘I think it’s invisible,’ said Chris.

  ‘What is it, K-9?’ asked Romana.

  ‘It is a spacecraft, Mistress, of very advanced design,’ said K-9.

  ‘Are you sure about that, K-9?’ said the Doctor, rubbing his nose. ‘I’m sure we can spare a week for you to waggle your probes at it.’

  K-9 sniffed. ‘Scan complete. Many of the ship’s functions are beyond my capacity to analyse.’

  Chris reached out and touched the invisible hull of the craft. ‘If I build something this clever, I’ll want people to see it,’ he said.

  ‘K-9,’ said the Doctor, ‘what’s it powered by?’

  ‘Insufficient data,’ said K-9.

  ‘Aren’t we all?’

  ‘What about its origin?’ asked Romana. ‘Where does it come from?’ She reached out and felt the hull, touched it briefly and stepped back as if she wasn’t impressed.

  ‘Insufficient data,’ said K-9.

  ‘What does it look like?’ asked Chris.

  ‘A very large spacecraft,’ said K-9.

  ‘How large is very large?’ asked the Doctor.

  ‘One hundred metres long,’ answered K-9.

  ‘And is that large for a spacecraft, then?’ asked Chris. ‘Cause I’ve never see one.’

  ‘Well, I’ve seen bigger,’ said the Doctor, feeling his way down what was probably the side of the ship.

  ‘We’re not really seeing this one, are we?’ observed Romana.

  ‘There must be an entrance,’ said the Doctor. ‘Find the door and I’ll have us in there quicker than you can say sonic screwdriver…’

  Chris suddenly noticed something. There was a low electronic hum coming from about six feet in the air.

  ‘That sounds like a door,’ said Romana.

  There was another, lower hum from the same place. It seemed to Chris to be getting closer and closer to him. He stepped back nervously as a small line of grass right in front of him suddenly flattened as if something had been dropped on it.

  The Doctor pushed in front of Chris and put a tentative foot forward. The heel of his boot made a metallic clang. He rocked forward to put his weight on it, and moved his other foot experimentally up a few inches. Then he pulled the first foot up cautiously and was suddenly standing a few inches above the ground.

  ‘Looks like stairs,’ mused the Doctor. ‘Well actually, it doesn’t look stairs, it feels like stairs. No way to welcome visitors, particularly those of us without legs.’ He nodded to K-9.

  Chris suddenly had an idea. He picked up a big pile of autumn leaves that had been blown into the meadow, strode up to the line of flattened grass before the Doctor, and flung them upwards in his general direction.

  The leaves flopped wetly down, onto nothing at all – but various levels of nothing at all, giving a vague brown wet indication of a staircase that led up to nowhere. ‘Aha,’ said Chris. ‘Well at least it gives us a vague idea of where the steps are.’

  ‘Well done, Bristol,’ said the Doctor. ‘Isn’t he good, Romana? Plucky old Bristol, that’s what this situation needed, a bit of practical thinking, and not afraid of getting his hands dirty.’

  He turned and started going up the steps slowly, one by one.

  Romana started after the Doctor. Two steps up, she turned with a smile. ‘Since you don’t mind getting your hands dirty, you can bring K-9.’

  Chris rubbed his dirty hands on the sides of his jeans and looked down at K-9, who was wagging his tail impatiently. He bent down and hefted him up, grateful that he wasn’t as heavy as he looked.

  ‘Kindly exercise caution while conveying this unit, young master,’ said K-9.

  Chris staggered in an ungainly fashion after the Doctor and Romana. So it was Sunday morning, and he was carrying a robot dog up some slippery steps into an invisible alien spaceship. Nobody was ever going to believe a word of this.

  He glanced up to see that most of the Doctor had vanished into nothing, and now Romana was disappearing from her hat down. He quickened his pace –

  There was no appreciable sensation whatever. Chris suddenly found himself seeing not the empty meadow but a small, spotlessly white chamber, like someone had flicked a switch behind his eyes. He jerked his head back, instinctively startled, and saw the meadow again.

  ‘Come on, Bristol!’ he heard the Doctor call.

  Chris squared his shoulders and walked through.

  He found himself in the white chamber. The Doctor and Romana were examining the featureless, curving white walls. Ahead of them was a large circular closed door.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Chris, setting K-9 down gratefully. ‘This must be the ship’s airlock. Assuming spaceships have airlocks, but then again yours doesn’t, but then again it’s not strictly a spaceship, is it?’

  He trailed off, looked behind him, and saw the meadow, framed by another circular door. There was a low hum and it irised shut, cutting out the reassuring world of Cambridge and normality. A horrible thought struck him. ‘Wait a minute, nasty things happen to people in airlocks.’

  ‘Do they?’ asked the Doctor.

  Chris nodded. ‘In films and things.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Chris,’ said Romana. ‘With a ship like this, Skagra could have blasted us down the moment we left the TARDIS.’

  ‘Don’t upset Bristol, Romana,’ said the Doctor. He knocked on the far door. ‘Come on, open up.’ He put his mouth to the door and sang loudly, ‘Why are we waiting?’

  Chris was alarmed. ‘Hold on, this Skagra guy, he’s a cold-blooded killer. Are you sure it’s a good idea to provoke him? I mean, I’m not an expert, but when dealing with a psychopath is it a good idea to go shouting abuse through his letterbox?’

  The Doctor gave Chris a look that was suddenly utterly sincere and serious. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  Romana put a hand on Chris’s arm. ‘Don’t worry. The Doctor knows what he’s doing.’

  The Doctor turned to her with a big grin. ‘Thank you, Romana,’ he said.


  Romana smiled back. ‘Well, usually.’

  And then suddenly there was a blazing glow of intense white light – and the Doctor was gone.

  ‘Where is he?’ asked Chris.

  Romana looked around. ‘Where are we?’

  Chris looked round in panic. He suddenly realised that he, Romana and K-9 were no longer where they had been. The Doctor hadn’t vanished – they had.

  The room they stood in was still spotlessly white, and it was even smaller than the airlock.

  But what made Chris’s blood run cold was the fact that there were no doors. Wherever they were, there was no way out.

  Chapter 32

  THE DOCTOR HAD watched helplessly as a spinning cube of white light appeared from nowhere, forming around Romana, K-9 and Chris. A moment later the cube had disappeared again, taking his three friends along with it. He was alone in the airlock.

  There was another electronic hum, and the inner door irised smoothly open to reveal Skagra.

  The Doctor faced him, and spoke in a level, serious tone. ‘What have you done to them?’

  ‘They will not be harmed, Doctor,’ said Skagra in the same bland, emotionless way he expressed everything. He added, ‘For the moment’, but it was not the threat of a madman or dictator, the types the Doctor was used to encountering and besting. It was a simple, untrammelled statement of fact, as if Skagra was passing casual comment on something of no consequence at all.

  ‘I’m not very impressed by the party tricks, Skagra,’ said the Doctor.

  ‘These “party tricks”, Doctor, are purely functional. Their purpose is precisely defined, as is mine.’ Skagra indicated a long curving white corridor that led from the airlock into the heart of the Ship. ‘Come with me, Doctor.’

  ‘First, where have you taken my companions?’ The Doctor advanced menacingly on Skagra. ‘It’s just the two of us here now. I knew you couldn’t hide behind that overgrown billiard ball of yours for ever.’

  Skagra held up a hand. ‘I am undefended at present. But should you attempt a physical assault, I will order the immediate deaths of your friends.’ He gestured down the corridor once more. ‘Now come with me.’

  The Doctor followed Skagra down the corridor.

  ‘What have you done with the Professor’s mind?’ he asked.

  ‘It has been put to a more useful purpose,’ Skagra replied.

  The Doctor seemed about to explode with anger. He restrained himself and instead said quietly and threateningly, ‘I would argue that it was serving a very useful purpose where it was.’

  ‘Possibly,’ said Skagra. ‘But not to me.’

  The Doctor snorted. ‘You realise the Professor is dead?’

  ‘Only his mind was of use to me,’ said Skagra. ‘Not his body.’

  They had reached the far end of the corridor and another large white circular door. ‘It seems to me that you take a very proprietorial attitude towards other people’s minds,’ said the Doctor.

  For the first time, Skagra seemed to react. His full, sensual lips twitched in a micro-expression that mixed amusement and contempt. It wasn’t much, but the Doctor caught it. ‘It seems to me, Doctor,’ said Skagra, ‘that the Time Lords take a very proprietorial view towards the universe.’ He paused. ‘They are your people, aren’t they?’

  The Doctor pressed his face very close to Skagra’s, looking deep into his cold blue eyes. ‘Just exactly who are you, Skagra? And what do you know of the Time Lords?’

  ‘That knowledge will be of no use to you,’ said Skagra coolly.

  ‘Then I think you may as well tell me,’ pointed out the Doctor.

  ‘And I think I may as well not,’ said Skagra. He activated a control on the left of the door and it irised open. ‘We have more important matters to discuss.’ He waved the Doctor through ahead of him.

  The Doctor looked around the spartan command deck of the Ship. There was a bank of controls on each side, and a large white leather padded chair, angled back. Next to the chair was a tall grey cone, with the mind-sucking sphere resting on the top, apparently inert for the moment. Up ahead was a large screen, presently covered by white shutters. The room displayed no trace of individuality or even of having ever been occupied. It was, thought the Doctor, rather like a showroom model. ‘Functional and precisely defined, indeed,’ he said. ‘I don’t like it.’

  Skagra moved to a white cabinet and pressed a button. A panel on the front of the cabinet slid back, revealing a collection of books, meticulously arranged in order of size, largest to smallest.

  The Doctor stepped forward and stooped to examine the contents. ‘I take it back. Quite a collection you’ve got here.’ He recognised the worn gilt lettering on the spines of the books. It was a slightly archaic form of Gallifreyan, from several thousand years ago. ‘The Chronicles of Gallifrey,’ he said, trying not to sound impressed. ‘I thought these were out of print.’

  ‘These titles have helped bring me to my greatest acquisition,’ said Skagra. He crossed to a clear plastic bubble, presumably some kind of scanner, on a nearby workstation. He slid the bubble open and took from inside The Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey. The Doctor noted how Skagra handled the book, delicately, at arm’s length in his white-gloved hands. ‘This book, Doctor.’

  ‘What book, that book?’ The Doctor snatched it from him at lightning speed, flicked through the pages, and handed it back. ‘I’ve read it, it’s rubbish.’

  If he suspected such a move would unsettle Skagra, he was wrong. Without a trace of reaction, Skagra calmly passed the book back to him.

  ‘Then perhaps you would read it to me?’

  The Doctor shrugged. ‘I have a very boring reading voice. By the time I’d got to the bottom of the first page you’d be asleep, I’d escape, and then where would you be?’

  ‘Read it to me,’ said Skagra.

  ‘I presume you can’t read Gallifreyan, then?’ said the Doctor.

  ‘Like a native,’ said Skagra, indicating the other books in his collection. ‘From the Old High Gallifreyan of the Rassilon Era down to the scrawlings of the Sheboogans. But as you know, the book is not written in any form of Gallifreyan.’ He nodded. ‘Read it to me, Doctor.’

  ‘All right,’ said the Doctor affably. He flipped open the first page and coughed. ‘Are you standing comfortably?’

  ‘I am,’ said Skagra.

  ‘Then I’ll sit down,’ said the Doctor, leaping into the padded white leather chair. He was uncomfortably aware of the sphere, sat atop the cone right next to him at head height. He concealed his apprehension, crossed his long legs, coughed again, and began.

  ‘“Squiggle squiggle”,’ said the Doctor. ‘“Squiggle, wavy line, sort of an eye I think, squiggle, squiggle…”’ He stopped and smiled up at Skagra. ‘I’m paraphrasing wildly, of course.’

  Skagra’s lip trembled slightly. ‘Doctor,’ he said warningly, ‘let me remind you that your friends—’

  The Doctor held up a hand. ‘Shhh, this is a good bit. “Squiggle squiggle wavy line, wavy squiggle!”’ Suddenly a look of mock worry came over his face. He flipped through the book again. ‘Skagra, do you realise this book doesn’t make one bit of sense?’

  ‘Doctor,’ said Skagra, composed again. ‘Any fool would realise that the book is written in code.’

  The Doctor stared at the book for a good ten seconds. Suddenly he sat bolt upright in the chair. ‘Skagra!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘What?’

  ‘This book is written in code!’ He winked. ‘How am I doing?’

  ‘I believe that you know the code,’ said Skagra.

  The Doctor shrugged. His eyes kept turning between Skagra, the book and the uncomfortably close sphere. ‘Who, me? Oh no no no.’ His tone changed suddenly, becoming less flippant. ‘I’m afraid I’m very stupid. Very stupid. I am very, very stupid.’

  It was almost as if he was trying to convince himself of that fact.

  ‘Doctor,’ said Skagra patiently, ‘I believe that you, as a Time
Lord of some experience, know this code. Unlike the Professor’s, your mind is relatively young and strong. You will decipher the code for me. Immediately.’

  ‘There’s no point in giving me orders,’ said the Doctor, looking up at him with an oddly vacant expression. ‘As I keep telling you, I’m very, very stupid.’

  ‘That was not an order,’ said Skagra.

  ‘It wasn’t?’

  ‘It was a statement of fact.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the Doctor. ‘How stupid of me not to realise.’

  Skagra raised his hand in a sharp, up-cutting gesture.

  The sphere buzzed into life. Gently it left its position on top of the cone.

  The Doctor made to leap from the chair. Skagra barked out, ‘Ship, restrain him!’

  A warm, female voice said, ‘Certainly, my lord.’

  Suddenly the Doctor cried out. He found that he could not move from the chair. A searing pain surged through his body, pinning him back.

  ‘You will give me the code because you have no choice,’ said Skagra.

  The Doctor grimaced and spoke through gritted teeth, fighting the pain of the chair’s force field. ‘I don’t know about that, Skagra,’ he managed to say, beads of sweat running down his forehead. ‘I don’t know about anything, in fact.’ He closed his eyes and gasped in pain. ‘I am an… appallingly stupid person…’

  ‘That, Doctor, will soon be very true,’ said Skagra. He gestured to the sphere.

  The sphere attached itself to the Doctor’s gleaming forehead. He let out a long cry of terrible pain, and his whole body shook in a series of agonised spasms.

  Skagra watched the process, unmoved. He considered using up a smile but decided against it.

  Finally the sphere detached itself from the Doctor and moved gently into Skagra’s outstretched hand.

  The Doctor lay still and slumped, eyes staring open.

  ‘Scan for life signs,’ ordered Skagra.

  A melodic electronic burble sounded as the Ship carried out a sensor sweep. ‘My gracious lord,’ it reported finally. ‘I am pleased to confirm that your enemy the Doctor is dead.’

  Skagra reached out and took the book from the Doctor’s lifeless, unresisting fingers.