by Mike Tucker
‘Besides,’ he had said with a grin. ‘I thought that you might appreciate taking the scenic route.’
There was a slight jolt as the ship came to a standstill, and Laura was aware of a faint buzzing in her earpiece as the Doctor engaged the TARDIS force field.
He hurried over from the console. ‘Ready?’ he asked, looking for all the world like a small boy about to show off his latest toy.
Laura took a deep breath. ‘Ready.’
The Doctor clicked his fingers and the door swung open.
And Laura stepped out onto the rings of Saturn.
Chapter
15
It was like every dream that Laura had ever had. No, she corrected herself. It was better than every dream she had ever had. Beneath her feet, the rings stretched off like a vast glittering highway, billions upon billions of tonnes of rock and ice slowly tumbling in an impossible ballet. Unable to quite believe that it was really happening, Laura took a step forwards, the sparkling energies of the force field that burst around her boots with every footfall making the experience even more surreal.
Aware that she was grinning like an idiot, Laura turned back towards the Doctor. He was just standing there, leaning casually against the side of the TARDIS, watching her. Laura couldn’t help herself. She doubled over with laughter. It was so absurd. A man and his stupid blue box just hanging there against the huge boiling mass of the gas giant. She could feel tears rolling down her cheeks.
‘Careful,’ said the Doctor, walking forwards and catching her gently by the arm. ‘Carry on like that and your helmet will fill up.’
The moment of hysteria passed and Laura blinked away the tears. ‘Yeah. They didn’t design these things for people who cry, sneeze or need to blow their nose.’ She squeezed the Doctor’s hand, the thick spacesuit gloves making the gesture clumsier than she would have liked. ‘Thank you. For this.’
The Doctor gave the faintest of smiles. ‘We should get on.’
With the Doctor leading the way, the two of them made their way along the force-field corridor towards the strange alien ship. As they approached, Laura could see long jagged gashes torn in the strange black material of the hull. Given the linear precision of the marks, it seemed unlikely that they had been caused naturally.
‘Blaster damage?’ she ventured.
The Doctor had obviously noted them too. ‘Certainly caused by an energy weapon of some description.’
They reached the side of the ship and Laura reached out, running the palm of her glove of the pitted black surface. ‘It looks like it’s made of stone.’
‘Or bone.’
‘Bone?’ Laura pulled her hand away in distaste.
‘Yes.’ The Doctor was starting up at the gentle curve of the spacecraft, lips pursed, eyes taking in every detail. ‘The Alaskan Eskimos on Earth used to make their boats from whalebone. Funny how the same patterns occur throughout the universe.’
‘You think that this is the skeleton of an animal of some kind?’ Laura tried to take that in. ‘But it’s huge.’
‘It’s not unusual to find creatures from high-pressure planets growing to extreme sizes. If these animals have an exoskeleton capable of withstanding extreme pressures, then it stands to reason that they would be a useful resource. The Ba-El Cratt must possess an extremely sophisticated biomechanical technology.’
That was an understatement, thought Laura. It was no wonder that the ship hadn’t shown up on sensors. There was nothing about its design or construction that would have registered as ‘manufactured’ in the traditional sense. She started to get a sensation of unease, wondering what else about the Ba-El Cratt was going to come as a surprise.
‘Do you think that looks a likely candidate?’
The Doctor was leaning back, craning his neck to look at something high on the side of the ship. Laura followed his gaze. There was an opening in the hull, less haphazard than the huge raking gashes that they had already noticed. This looked more like an actual part of the ship. It was fairly obvious that the Doctor thought that this was an entrance of some kind.
Laura scanned the surface of the hull. Whilst it had initially looked completely smooth she could see that there were enough lumps, nodules and indentations to make the climb to the hole possible – tricky, but possible.
‘I’m game if you are.’
‘Come on, then.’
With no further ado, the Doctor started to make his way up the steep curve of the hull. Waiting a few moments until the Doctor had gained some height, Laura followed him, watching to see where he was finding suitable hand and footholds, and using the same points to aid her own ascent.
She had a sudden flashback to her time at the Academy, to the hours on the climbing wall that had formed part of her physical training. She could never have imagined that it would be perfect training for what she was doing now. Free climbing in the rings of Saturn. There was something for her memoirs. The difference was, back in the Academy there had always been the safety line to arrest her fall. If she slipped now, it was a one-way trip to the centre of the planet.
Then again, she mused, she might get lucky. She might get swept up amongst the tumbling boulders below and become part of the rings, gently orbiting for ever. Another ‘Peggy’. That, she decided, would be a good way to go.
‘This last bit is going to be tricky.’
The Doctor’s voice snapped her from her daydream and she mentally scolded herself for getting so distracted. Above her, the Doctor was carefully navigating his way over the lip of the opening. Laura watched him nervously. The edges looked sharp. He could easily tear his suit open if he wasn’t careful.
With a grunt of effort the Doctor hauled himself over the edge, vanishing inside the ship. Moments later he reappeared, peering down at her from the hole, the effort of the climb clearly visible on his face.
‘Come on, I’ll pull you up.’ He reached out with a gloved hand to assist her.
Laura grasped his hand and, making sure that she kept her body well clear of the sharp edges, heaved herself into the fissure.
She found herself in a long, narrow passageway, totally dark and silent. The Doctor fumbled with something on his belt, and the interior of the ship was suddenly lit with a harsh, white light as the lamp on his helmet snapped on.
Laura gasped and took an involuntary step backwards, stumbling as the heel of her boot caught on the edge of the hole that she had just climbed through.
‘Careful,’ said the Doctor, pulling her away from the edge and turning on her own helmet light.
Nodding her thanks, Laura slowly made her forward, staring at the strange alien shapes that twisted around her. Any doubts that she had about the Doctor’s theory that this ship might have once been a living creature were swiftly dispelled. The ship was so … organic. It was if someone had given some lunatic artist a pile of bones and a bag of clay and asked him to make a sculpture.
‘Come on, we’ll try this way.’ The Doctor set off along the corridor, seemingly unfazed by the strange biological nature of the vehicle. Not wanting to be left alone for one moment in this dark, unsettling place, Laura hurried after him.
‘Bill?’
Bill’s pent-up breath came out in a rush as she recognised the voice of Jo Teske. ‘Oh, thank God. You gave me the fright of my life.’
Jo stared at her standing on the chair in bemusement. ‘I was getting some stuff from my quarters. I saw the open door, heard someone inside … Bill, this is Rince’s room, what on earth are you doing in here?’
Bill hopped down onto the floor, gabbling in her excitement. ‘Jo, it’s here. I think I’ve found it.’
‘Found what?
‘The transmitter, proof that Rince is the saboteur!’
‘Transmitter? What transmitter?’ Jo caught her by the shoulders. ‘Bill, will you just slow down for one minute and tell me what you are talking about?’
Taking a deep breath, Bill explained about the ship in the rings, the crude way the communications syst
em had been rigged to explode, the subspace signal that the Doctor had detected. From the expression on her face, Bill could tell that Jo was having trouble believing everything she was being told, but the proof she needed was literally at their feet.
Reluctantly, Jo had agreed to help her remove the panel from the ceiling, but after several minutes struggling with it, it became clear that it wasn’t going to budge easily.
‘It’s no good, Bill. I agree that it looks like it can be moved, but it’s obviously fixed somehow.’
Bill had to agree. ‘If the Doctor was here he could probably move it in seconds with that sonic screwdriver of his.’ A solution popped into her head. ‘Graham’s shed.’
‘What?’ Jo stared at her as if she was mad.
‘Come on. We need to get some tools.’
The passageway that the Doctor and Laura were following suddenly opened up, the floor sloping away into a dark, oval chamber. Like the rest of the ship, the room was a weird juxtaposition of curving walls and jutting, bone-like structures.
‘Ah, the control cabin,’ said the Doctor, scurrying down the slope eagerly.
‘And how exactly to you deduce that?’ Laura hurried after him.
‘Oh, pfff.’ The Doctor waved a hand at her in irritation. ‘I’ve been in enough bio-mechanical ships to recognise a control cabin when I see one. Zygon ships, Axon ships. Even the TARDIS began life as a coral outgrowth, although I get the impression that she was never watered properly.’
‘But …’ Laura stared around the organic-looking space in bemusement. ‘How? I mean where are the controls, the instruments …’
‘Here.’ The Doctor thrust his hand into one of the hundreds of indentations that pockmarked the walls, floor and ceiling of the chamber.
Laura peered into the hole. ‘But there’s nothing there. No circuitry. No connections.’
‘You’re still trying to make sense of this as if it’s a recognisable piece of machinery.’ The Doctor withdrew his hand from the hole and sighed. ‘It’s not your fault, I suppose. You do the best you can with those tiny little brains of yours.’
‘Hey!’
Ignoring her look of indignation, the Doctor plucked at the fabric on the sleeve of her suit. ‘Look, why do we wear these?’
‘Because we need something that can sustain our atmosphere. Something that gives us protection against the cold, the radiation, the vacuum.’
‘And if our suits are damaged?’
‘We suffocate, we freeze, our blood boils.’
‘Exactly! The pressure of our bodies has nothing outside to keep it in. Now, given everything that we’ve learned about the Ba-El Cratt they must be an aqueous life form of some kind.’
‘Aqueous? You mean liquid?’
‘Actually, I suspect that they are probably gelatinous, with a consistency similar to a very badly made blancmange, but my point is, think about what happens to a pressured liquid when you release it into a normal Earth-type atmosphere.’
Laura did think about it. If the Ba-El Cratt were a high-pressure liquid life form, then presumably they had to maintain that pressure in order to exist. Without it, the liquid in their makeup would turn to gas. They would literally evaporate into nothing. Explosively. ‘It must make life very difficult.’
‘It must make life virtually impossible!’
Laura looked around the chamber, trying to get her head around such a fundamentally different form of life. ‘So you’re saying that they just pour themselves into this … vessel?’
That made the Doctor grin. ‘Exactly!’ He walked to the middle of the chamber, throwing his arms wide and turning on a slow circle. ‘This room would have been full to the brim with the crew. Just think about it, no connections, no communicators, no machinery, no technology, no shouting or yelling. Direct control. The entire crew, swimming around almost as if they were one creature, orders, conversations, instructions literally flowing between them.’
‘And then they crashed.’
‘Yes. In your solar system there are only three planets that they could possibly survive on, three gas giants that have the immense pressures that they need.’
‘Then they took one hell of a risk in coming here.’
‘Yes.’ The Doctor looked thoughtful. ‘I wonder why they did?’
Laura thought for a moment. ‘Hang on, if they can only survive in extreme pressure then how come the ship is in orbit up here and they ended up down there?’
‘Dunno.’ The Doctor shrugged. ‘I’m guessing that if we looked we’d find the equivalent of an escape pod missing.’ His eyebrows suddenly twitched as a sudden thought stuck him. ‘There must be a ship’s log of some kind.’
Pulling his sonic screwdriver from a pouch in his suit, the Doctor started peering into the various holes and pits in the walls. Laura looked slowly around the room. It was beginning to seem ever more unlikely that Baines might be alive. Even if the Ba-El Cratt had managed to transport him up here somehow, there was no way that he could possibly survive in such an alien environment without his pressure armour.
An organic opening in the far wall caught her eye. If there was a chance – even a slim chance – that Baines was being kept prisoner in some other part of the ship then she had to at least look. She turned to let the Doctor know her intentions, but he was crouched down on the far side of the chamber, one arm reaching deep inside one of the larger openings, the green light from his sonic device casting a large flickering shadow of him on the ceiling.
Not wanting to disturb him, Laura made her way towards the opening and leaned through, the beam from her helmet lamp illuminating the narrow passageway beyond. Like the rest of the ship, the strange rib-like quality of the walls did nothing for Laura’s nerves. It really was like being in the bowels of some enormous beast.
Cautiously, she started to make her way along the corridor, steadying herself against the wall as the ground underfoot became increasingly uneven. It suddenly struck her that in a vehicle where the crew literally filled up the interior like water in a fish tank she had no way of knowing if it was even the right way up or not. For all she knew she could be walking on the ceiling.
The corridor started to narrow, and Laura shot a nervous glance over her shoulder. The opening back out into the control cabin suddenly seemed a very long way away, and she began to doubt the wisdom of her decision to start exploring on her own. She closed her eyes, trying desperately to slow her pounding heart. This was ridiculous, she told herself angrily. She was a highly trained Federation security officer.
‘So act like one,’ she muttered under her breath. ‘Not like some teenager in a haunted house.’
She trained her helmet light on the passageway ahead. The twisting alien shapes made it difficult to judge distance properly, but it looked as though the corridor came to an abrupt end only a few metres ahead of her. She started to move forward once more. If it did turn out to be a dead end, she would just turn around and go back.
As she neared the end of the passageway she became aware that it too opened out, in a similar way to the one leading into the control room. This chamber was far, far smaller, however. And there, in the far corner, there seemed to be something scattered on the floor.
She turned her head, trying to train the beam from her helmet onto the objects to get a better look. As the light panned across them, Laura felt a chill of horror grip her. At the same moment, she suddenly became aware of something crashing along the corridor behind her.
She spun, arms raised to ward off her attacker, only to see the Doctor’s panic-stricken face staring at her, condensation from his laboured breathing clouding the visor of his helmet. ‘We have to get back to the rig,’ he gasped ‘Right now.’
‘Wait!’ Laura shouted as he tried to turn around in the narrow passageway. ‘Doctor, I think this might be Baines.’
Laura stepped aside, allowing the light from the Doctor’s helmet torch to shine onto what she had found. Bones, lots of them, the skull staring blankly from amongst them cl
early humanoid in origin.
The Doctor hurried forwards, kneeling down and scanning the pathetic pile of remains with his sonic screwdriver. ‘No, it’s not Baines,’ said the Doctor grimly. ‘There is more than one body here. And they’re not human.’
‘Then who …?’
‘They’re Cancri.’ The Doctor stared up at her. ‘The aliens that the Ba-El Cratt are at war with are the Cancri.’
Chapter
16
Standing in front of the workbench in the equipment room, Bill could have screamed with frustration. Unlike the canteen, where she had found everything boringly familiar, here she could see nothing that even vaguely resembled a wrench or a screwdriver.
Jo was just watching her from the doorway.
‘Well, come on,’ said Bill impatiently. ‘Help me look for something that we can use to get that ceiling panel down.’
Jo gave deep sigh. Bill could tell that the medic was rapidly starting to think that this was a waste of time. ‘Bill, this is crazy. Just go to Delitsky and tell him what you suspect.’
‘I can’t. Not yet.’ Bill already knew that with the Doctor unhelpfully not around, she was going to need hard evidence if Delitsky was going to take anything she said seriously. The transmitter was the only hard evidence she had. ‘Jo, please?’
‘All right, all right.’ Jo joined her at the workbench. ‘What is it you need?’
‘I don’t know. A screwdriver of some kind. Or a spanner.’
Jo peered at the cluttered workbench. ‘Can’t see anything here.’
‘I can see that. Why don’t you try that tool cupboard?’
Without enthusiasm, Jo wandered over to the metal tool cupboard standing at the end of the bench. ‘It’s Jenloz’s.’
‘How can you tell?’
Jo indicated the cluster of strange, almost Arabic letters stencilled in yellow paint across the door. ‘That’s his name in Cancri. He’s been trying to teach me to read it all year.’ She tried the handle. ‘It’s locked.’
