Apollo 23
Page 1
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Apolo 23 by Justin Richards
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The Forgotten Army by Brian M inchin
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Published in 2010 by BBC Books, an imprint of Ebury Publishing.
A Random House Group Com pany
Copyright © Justin Richards 2010
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Doctor Who is a BBC Wales production for BBC One. Executive producers: Steven Moffat, Piers Wenger and Beth Willis
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For Jim, Nick, & Simon
the Gentlemen who Lunch
Twenty minutes before he died, Donald Babinger was feeding bits of his cheese sandwich to a pigeon.
It was a cold, grey day, and the pigeon seemed grateful for the attention as well as the" crumbs. It pecked eagerly at the bread, ignoring the cheese and the pickle. Babinger was sitting on the steps up to the bandstand, huddled in his coat.
The bandstand was where the teenagers hung out in the evening, in the park near the library. The railings were rusted and the pitted concrete floor was studded with dark blobs of well-trodden chewing gum. But the cracked roof offered some shelter from the persistent drizzle.
Ten minutes before he died, Donald Babinger stuffed the last remains of his sandwich into his mouth, smiled apologetically at the pigeon, and stood up. A brisk walk round the edge of the little park, then back to the office. He liked to get out at lunchtime, even when the weather wasn't so good.
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Babinger believed it was a good idea to get a breath of fresh air.
Which was ironic, given how he was about to die.
His mind already returning to the spreadsheet he needed to sort out in the afternoon, Babinger walked slowly across the little park. He nodded a mute greeting to a young woman pushing a toddler in a buggy. He smiled at a woman in a red raincoat walking her dog. He shook his head sadly at the litter blown in clusters against the low metal fence round a flowerbed. He wondered yet again how the developers ever got permission for the new shopping centre that cast its grey concrete and glass shadow across the end of the park. His colleague Mandy would still be queuing for her lunch at Perfect Burger. What a waste of time when you could bring your own sandwich...
Perhaps he wouldn't have begrudged her the time if Babinger knew he only had five minutes left to live.
He spent most of that five minutes completing his tour of the park. With only thirty seconds left to live, he checked his watch, saw that his lunch break was almost over, and turned back towards the bandstand. The mother and toddler were on the other side of the park. There was no sign of the woman with the dog.
Babinger decided to cut across the park rather than follow the path the rest of the way. Best to get back and crack on with the accounts. Yes, that was the wise decision.
The decision that killed him.
Donald Babinger was almost back at the bandstand 8
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when he felt the first tightness in his chest, the first difficulty in getting his breath. His vision blurred and swam.
He blinked, and shook his head to clear it. But the world was going grey. The sky was darkening.
His breathing came in ragged gasps. His chest continued to tighten. The ground under his feet was no longer damp grass but dry dust. The shopping centre was gone. The bandstand was gone. Everything was gone, and in its place...
'Oh my—' Babinger started to say.
But no words came.
He had no breath to speak them.
Babinger was on his knees, his hands tearing at his burning throat. His tongue fizzed like his saliva was boiling. His eyes felt like they were about to burst.
Babinger's whole body seemed light and bloated. He fell onto his back, convulsing and shaking. So cold.
Then, abruptly, he was still. The drizzle pattered on his face. It pooled into his unseeing eyes, until it overflowed and ran gently down his face like tears.
'We'll need a post mortem, of course,' the pathologist said.
The police sergeant nodded. He waited for the photographer to finish, then gestured to the waiting ambulance crew.
'You can take him away now. Poor bloke.' He turned to the pathologist. 'So, what do you reckon?'
Dr Winterbourne shrugged. He had worked with the police for over twenty years - long enough to know not to commit himself, but also to be aware that sometimes a quick diagnosis could be vital. 'Probably
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heart failure. He seems healthy enough, apart from being dead of course, but you can never tell. Just because he looks young and fit...' He sighed. 'There's no justice in the world.'
Sergeant Rickman suppressed a grin. 'Thanks for that.'
'I mean, not in this sort of thing.'
'I know.'
They both watched solemnly as the ambulance men drew a dark plastic sheet over the body on the stretcher.
'Yes, must have been his heart’ Wint erbourne decided.
'Though it's funny - the colour of his skin, the way his tongue...' His voice tailed off. 'Well, it's all consistent with asphyxiation. As though he were strangled.'
'He was on his own,' Rickman said flatly. 'That woman with the kid saw him from over by the gates. Said he just sort of clutched his face and then keeled over. She'd just taken the kid out of his buggy, so she couldn't leave him and run over to help. Shouted the place down till someone else noticed.'
The ambulance pulled away into the traffic. A s mall group of people stood on the other side of a taped boundary, watching. A reporter from the local paper waved a notepad and tried to catch the sergeant's eye.
'Let me know about the post mortem,' the policeman said. 'For now let's say it seems like natural causes, no suspicious circumstances. That sound OK to you?'
'Fine, fine,' Winterbourne agreed. 'You know, 10
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there's a little Italian place up there.' He pointed at the curved glass wall of the looming shopping centre. 'You're thinking there might be other witnesses?' 'I'm thinking I've not had any lunch’ Winterbourne corrected him. 'Talk to you later.'
Mand
y had been queuing at Perfect Burger for ten minutes when the spaceman appeared.
They didn't just do burgers. She usually had a tuna salad, which was a bit more healthy. With chips. But today was so cold and grey she didn't really fancy salad. She was looking at the menu board when the spaceman arrived.
One moment he wasn't there, the next he was. Maybe she blinked. He must have stepped out from the door to the toilets or something. Funny she'd missed that - a figure so bulky in a white spacesuit and bulbous helmet couldn't just appear.
He stood staring at Mandy. Or she imagined he did. She couldn't see his face, because the helmet was a gold-tinted mirror that reflected the queue of people as more and more of them slowly turned to look.
The astronaut moved awkwardly in his spacesuit. He walked stiffly towards Mandy, swaying from side to side - his legs didn't seem to bend enough to move easily.
When he was so close she could have reached out and touched him, the spaceman stopped. There was a trail of fine grey dust across the floor behind him. His large boots were coated in it, Mandy saw. The trail stopped by the menu board - like he really had just appeared there.
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'Must be a publicity thing’ someone behind Mandy said.
'Selling something, yeah’ a man agreed. 'He's going to tell us he's just had the greatest pizza in the solar system, or something.'
The queue wasn't really a queue any longer. Everyone was gathering round the spaceman. People were coming over from the other fast food outlets. Shoppers on the gallery above were staring down, pointing and laughing. As publicity stunts went, this one seemed to be working.
The spaceman lifted his arms, reaching up to fumble with the clamps at the point where the suit joined the helmet.
'Bet he's hot in that.'
'What's he advertising anyway? Some new movie, d'you think?'
There was a hiss of pressurised air as the clamps released. The astronaut twisted the helmet sideways. Then he lifted it off his head.
Beneath the helmet, the man was wearing a white hood, like a balaclava. There was what looked like a phone headset attached, complete with earpiece and microphone.
He looked even more awkward holding the helmet, and instinctively Mandy reached out to take it from him.
'Thank you, ma'am.' He had a deep voice, with an American accent. Mandy could now see there was a small US flag on his shoulder, and under it his name, she assumed -
GARRETT.
His hands now free, the astronaut pulled off the hood, to reveal dark, close-cropped hair beneath. He
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looked to be in his thirties, with eyebrows that almost met in the middle above his wide nose. He untangled the headset from the hood and glared at it in evident frustration.
'Anyone here got a cell phone I can loan?'
The man behind Mandy laughed. 'I've got a mobile you can borrow.'
'You're not in Kansas any more, ' someone else called.
'Yeah, I guessed.' Astronaut Garrett smiled thinly, but Mandy could see the concern and worry in his grey eyes, the way he swayed unsteadily on his feet, as he took the man's mobile.
For a moment, he stared at the small buttons on the mobile and then the broad, stumpy fingers of his glove.
'Want me to dial?' Mandy asked. She offloaded the helmet to another woman, then took the phone. She punched in the number the astronaut told her. It started 001 -
wasn't that the code for the USA? Mandy was glad it wasn't going on her bill.
'It's ringing.' She handed it back.
The phone disappeared inside the enormous gloved palm. Garrett raised it to his ear. There was silence as everyone waited to hear who he was talking to. Waited for some clue as to what he might be selling or promoting.
In the middle of the silent shopping centre, right outside Perfect Burger, Garrett's voice was clear.
'Houston,' he said, 'we have a problem.'
13
Chapter
1
The lunchtime rush was almost over, and there were a few spaces left in the car park.
A sudden breeze stirred the autumn leaves, whirling them into an unnatural frenzy. A rasping, grating sound split the air. With a resolute concluding 'thump', a dark blue police telephone box stood solidly where it had not been a few moments earlier. It straddled two of the parking spaces, the light on top flashing for a moment.
Almost at once, the doors of the TARDIS opened and the Doctor strode out. He looked round with interest at the parked cars. He glanced up at the grey sky. He blinked rain out of one eye, and he flicked his head to get his damp hair out of the other. Then he straightened his bow tie and pulled his crumpled jacket into some semblance of order.
'Great,' Amy said, stepping out behind him. The breeze blew her long red hair round her face. 'The
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planet Car-Park, one of the most glamorous locations in the Asphalt Galaxy.'
The Doctor nodded in full agreement. 'Though actually’ he s aid, 'it could be Earth. Britain at an expert guess.'
'You got that from the car number plates’ Amy said.
'No. From the weather. Look at that.' The Doctor held his hand out to let the light rain moisten it.
'I do recognise rain’ Amy told him. 'I'm Scottish, remember?' She fumbled in her jeans pockets. 'Got any money?'
'Tons.'
'I mean money money. Like change. For the machine.'
The Doctor stared at her blankly.
'Never mind.' Amy had found a pound coin and a few ten pence pieces.
The Doctor watched with interest as she fed them into the nearest ticket machine, then pressed a big green button.
'What are you doing?'
'Ticket’ she said, as it printed out and dropped into a little slot at the bottom of the machine. 'It's pay and display.'
'Display what?'
"The ticket.'
Amy ducked back into the TARDIS, and stuck the ticket inside the bottom of one of the windows in the door.
'We're staying then?' the Doctor said as she came out and closed the doors. He nodded at the ticket
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visible through the glass.
'Only for a couple of hours. That's all I could afford.'
'And what are we doing?'
Amy led the way towards a large building that looked like it had been thrown together out of glass and concrete.
'Shopping.'
The Doctor nodded, wrinkling his nose against the thin rain. 'The whole universe’ he announced as they entered the concrete and glass shopping arcade. 'All of time and space.
From the creation of Bandrazzle Maxima to the heat-death of Far-Begone. From the tip of Edgewaze to the Bakov Beyonned... And you want to go shopping.'
A little old lady with a walking stick turned to look at him suspiciously. The Doctor grinned at her and said
'Hello'. She moved quickly on.
'Nothing wrong with a bit of a shop. It's got to be done.
We can have lunch too’ Amy added, pointing to a clock mounted on the wall nearby.
'Lunch?' The Doctor sucked in his cheeks and stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets. 'Well that's all right then. I haven't had lunch for centuries.'
There was a little Italian restaurant on the first floor. Amy chose a table close to the large window looking out onto a small park with a bandstand in the middle. She could also see down to the floor below where people were queuing for burgers and other fast food. The Doctor inspected the plasticised menu that was left propped up between the salt and pepper.
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'Do they come to us or do we have to go to them?' he wondered. 'I can't see milk mentioned.'
'They must have it for the coffee. Unless they use those little pots.'
'I bet they use those little pots.' The Doctor leaned back in his chair, tilting it dangerously, long fingers laced together
behind his head. 'Do they come to us or do we go to them?'
he asked loudly. 'To order, I mean?'
It took Amy a moment to realise he was talking not to her, but to the man at the table behind him. The man was wearing a dark, crumpled suit and looked about 50 years old with greying hair.
Getting no answer, the Doctor somehow managed to turn the chair, pivoting it on one leg so he was sitting facing the man across his table.
'Oh, sorry’ the man said. 'Yes, they come to you. Well, they came to me.' He smiled across at Amy and the Doctor.
'But maybe I'm special.'
'Everyone's special,' the Doctor told him. 'Look at Amy, she's really special. And I'm the Doctor.' He stuck his hand out.
The man politely half stood as they shook hands. 'Me too.'
The Doctor's brow creased into a slight frown. 'Small universe.' He nodded at the man's plate of pasta. 'You're not eating much. Is the food here rubbish, then?'
'No, no. It's very good.' The man poked at the pasta with his fork. 'But I do find death rather spoils my appetite.'
The Doctor sighed. 'I know the feeling. Mind you, 18
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I haven't died for months. Quite hungry afterwards, I find.'
He swung the chair back to face Amy. 'Probably means he's vegetarian or something. Bit of a weird way of saying it.'
Amy wasn't sure that was what the man had meant at all. She got up and went to sit in the spare chair at the man's table.
'You said "me too". Do you mean you're a doctor?'
'Yes. Well, pathologist, actually. Gyles Winterbourne.'
The Doctor had spun back again. 'Ah - hence the death.'
Winterbourne turned to the large window bes ide them.
"This probably wasn't the best place to sit. The poor chap died down there, in the park.'
'Accident?' Amy asked. She could see several policemen standing round and a small group of onlookers.