Doctor Who - The Silent Stars Go By

by Dan Abnett

  'Saw what?' asked Bel, following along with Samewell.

  The Doctor stopped suddenly. 'That's also a very deliberate straight line,' he said. There was another line of prints in the snow, crossing Vesta's path like a 'T'. It was also fading in the snowfall, but not quite as fast because of the sheer size of it.

  'What made those?' asked Amy, slowly and very cautiously.

  'I don't know,' said the Doctor, hunkering down to examine them. He measured one out against the side of his hand.

  'They're giant,' said Samewell. There was a catch of anxiety in his voice.

  'Yes,' said the Doctor, 'they are.' He got up. 'They were here first,' he said. 'She came upon the trail.

  Found it.'

  'What are you, the last of the Mohicans or something?' asked Amy.

  The Doctor looked at her.

  'Baden-Powell taught me the rudiments of tracking,'

  he replied.

  'Of course he did,' she replied.

  'Chingachook merely refined some of my techniques,' said the Doctor.

  'Chingachook's a fictional character,' Amy replied.

  'Is he?' asked the Doctor.

  'Yes, he is,' said Amy.

  'Or was that just the deal Fenimore Cooper struck to get permission to write the story?'

  'What are you talking about?' asked Bel.

  'The real question,' Amy replied, still looking at the Doctor, 'is why are we talking about it, because it's a stupid conversation.'

  'You started it,' said the Doctor. He turned back to the tracks. 'Look, she came up here, came across the tracks.'

  'The giant tracks,' said Amy.

  'The giant tracks, yes, and then she headed off back into the woods. In a hurry.'

  'Scared?' asked Bel.

  'Maybe scared. She didn't retrace her steps, just went off in a hurry. Come on,' he added, and started to follow the new trail in a hurry.

  'Slow down, Davy Crockett!' Amy cried, following.

  'Davy Crockett was a terrible tracker!' The Doctor called over his shoulder. 'Lovely man. Nice hat. Very overrated in the tracking department.'

  He came to a halt again. They'd reached a small clearing close to the northern end of the memory yard.

  'What is it?' asked Amy.

  'Oh dear,' said the Doctor.

  'What is it?' Amy repeated.

  'Something bad happened here,' said the Doctor quietly.

  Samewell and Bel came up behind them.

  'Is that..?' asked Samewell.

  'That's blood,' said Bel.

  The snow was falling heavily, but it hadn't quite managed to obliterate the dark stains soaked into the ground cover.

  'Yes, it is,' said the Doctor. 'And I'm rather afraid there's an awful lot of it.'

  Ten seconds before he drowned, Rory managed to right himself in the fast-flowing undercurrent, just long enough to hammer his fists against the roof of ice. It was like banging against the glass of a display aquarium. The noise was as muffled as the thud of his heart. Nothing yielded.

  The light was strange under the filter of the ice.

  There was a sickly blue-green cast. The water, so curiously warm, swirling him along in a turbulent spiral of froth and twinkling air bubbles. He bounced.

  He up-ended. He glanced off the ice sheet, hurting his head.

  Five seconds before he drowned, he failed to hit the ice with a last, frantic punch.

  Three seconds before he drowned, the water flow accelerated and smashed him through some kind of submerged gate or shutter.

  One second before he drowned, he stopped drowning and breathed again.

  There was no ice.

  He'd surfaced, with access to the wintery air. He gulped it in, as though he was drinking it, filling his burning, about-to-burst lungs. He went under again, remembered to tread water, and came up spluttering.

  Blinking water out of his eyes, he tried to get his bearings. He was in a pool, like a large mill pond.

  Traces of slushy ice drifted on the surface, but it was generally unfrozen.

  The river had brought him downhill under its frozen crust and thrown him through a sluice gate into the pond. He still couldn't fathom why the water, deep under its cooler surface layers, was warm. It had to be some kind of artificially heated flow, surely?

  Whatever the answer, it wasn't his immediate concern. The unnatural warmth of the water had spared him from a numbing death, but he was still soaking wet outdoors on a snowy day. He had to get out, get dry, find shelter.

  The pool, shadowed by mature trees, was flanked by buildings. They looked like they were made of wood and stone, with plates of grey metal. The drab side-walls were patched with green moss and lichen as though they had stood for years, and some of the metal pins and bolts had corroded green. The buildings overhung the pool, and parts of them extended out into the water like dams or the gates of a filtration plant.

  Rory let the gentle current of the pool, its power slackened by the sluice, carry him towards the projections. He caught hold of some metal pipework.

  The cold of it hurt his palms. He went down the frame, hand over hand, dragging himself through the water until he was close to a small metal jetty, then he heaved himself up out of the water. It felt like he weighed a ton.

  Water streamed off him, pouring out of his saturated clothes as he stood up. Steam plumed off him. He could feel the cold biting into his skin, turning his clothes into heavy, clammy bandages.

  He slopped down the jetty. The buildings were definitely water mills of some kind. The river had been directed via the sluices into the catchment pool so that it could drive turbine systems hidden in the utilitarian structures. The buildings seemed old, but the technology appeared modem. Rory had already got used to dismissing that kind of anachronism.

  The sky had changed colour, as if it had soured like milk, and heavy snowflakes were starting to fall. Rory knew he had to get inside one of the buildings before he lost too much of his core body heat.

  There were no immediate signs of a door.

  He walked along the jetty, and then along a timber-planked service walkway between two of the structures. There was no snow here, as though internal heat had kept it from laying. If he could only get inside...

  It suddenly occurred to him to look around and check for signs of pursuit. He had no idea how far the river had carried him, but even the slightest chance that the green thing was still after him made his heart skip.

  He looked back up the pond towards the sluice, and towards the trees on the far bank. He saw nothing but green shadows and the snow, which was now falling quite fast.

  Green shadows seemed perfect for a green thing to hide in, no matter how big it was.

  He followed the walkway round. There had to be a hatch or an entrance somewhere.

  He stopped. He heard something. He couldn't tell what it was. The crunch of a footstep? The creak of ice? The crack of a branch snapping under the snow's weight?

  It was close. Had that thing located him again already? How had it caught up so fast? He crept a little further, encumbered by his soaked clothing. There was a hatch. Down the end of the walkway, there was definitely a hatch.

  He took a look over his shoulder.

  Just for a second, he saw the light reflect off red eyes. Just a glint, like the gleam of blood. Red eyes, out there in the enclosing darkness of the wood.

  Red eyes searching for him.

  He hurried towards the hatch. Looking back, he saw that the eyes had gone. He heard a noise. A footstep on a metal walkboard.

  Something was on the jetty. Something was moving.

  Rory reached the hatch. There was a recessed slot built to fit a human hand. He reached in and turned the rotator bar. The hatch unlocked. He pulled it open and went inside, not even caring what might lie within.

  Warmth hit him, and darkness surrounded him. He heard another footstep on the jetty, closer. He dragged the hatch shut and locked it behind him.

  He looked around. He was in some k
ind of machine space above one of the turbines. He could hear the rush of water and the cycle of a wheel or a screw system coming up from below. It was very dark, but it was a lot warmer inside than outside.

  He crouched down inside the hatch. He could hear whatever it was moving outside. He could hear it walking along the jetty and then the timber planks. He put his hand on the door bolt to stop it being turned from outside. Something came close to the hatch, went past, and then came back. He held his breath as it began to scrape and scratch at the recessed handle. He could hear a deep, rasping breath, a ragged, asthmatic wheeze.

  It was trying to get in. It was trying to get in and get at him. It knew he was there.

  The scraping and rattling grew worse, as if the thing outside possessed hands that were too big to fit the slot. It banged the hatch instead. The breathing became more laboured, a wet hiss from gurgling lungs.

  The effort suddenly stopped. Rory waited, clasping the inside handle. He heard a noise, almost a voice, followed by movement.

  Then the hideous discharge of the green thing's weapon, a repeated burst, squealed right outside. It made him jump. It hurt his ears. There was an impact.

  Something fell, or collided with something else heavy.

  The weapon went off again.

  Silence.

  Rory waited for a long time, scarcely daring to move or breathe. He waited for some sign or clue from outside, but heard no further sounds.

  When he had waited, unmoving, for what seemed like long enough, and then a bit longer just to be safe, he got up quietly and began to grope through the darkness to see if he could find a more secure hiding place further inside the structure.

  He realised he wasn't alone in the building. He came to this realisation immediately after he managed to say the words 'Hang on', and immediately before something heavy smacked him across the side of the head and knocked him out.

  Chapter

  7

  The Stars in the Night Sky

  'Is it?' Amy asked quietly. Her voice was muffled because the snow had made her face numb, and also because she didn't want Samewell or Bel to hear her.

  For the same reason, she'd kept the question unspecific.

  The Doctor glanced at her and shook his head.

  Amy knew that was Doctor Code for I have no idea, but I intend to retain a cautiously positive approach to the situation.

  'But it could be...' she asked, trailing off before she got to 'this girl we were looking for?'

  The Doctor was crouching in the middle of the clearing, examining the stains soaked into the snow.

  His knees were on a level with his ears, so he resembled a frog on a lily pad.

  Around him, the initially picturesque snowfall had become a full-scale blizzard. The density of flakes was making it hard to see anything, and the snow was quickly covering up all of the traces on the ground.

  Amy hunched in her duffel coat with the hood up so that it framed her face like a funnel. Samewell and Bel were watching them from the edge of the clearing, out of earshot. Bel was stricken with concern. Samewell was trying to keep her calm.

  'I don't know, I don't know,' the Doctor muttered. 'I don't know. I hope it isn't.'

  'We can't stay out here much longer,' said Amy, feeling the obvious needed to be stated at fairly regular intervals lest it slipped the Doctor's mind.

  'I know we can't,' he said.

  'Doctor, is it what you thought it was? This...

  influence you referred to?'

  'No,' said the Doctor. 'That's the thing. This is odd. It doesn't fit. My hunch was clearly wrong. I mis-hunched. I've got to go back and start again.'

  'So you're attempting a re-hunch?'

  'Indeed.'

  'Maybe it is just a glitch, after all?'

  'No, Pond. A glitch, no matter how big, doesn't rip something apart and shower blood everywhere.'

  'At least there isn't a body,' said Amy, encouragingly.

  'There doesn't have to be,' said the Doctor.

  'Whatever bled here, it bled enough to be dead. A body could be lying close by and we'd never see it.'

  He stood up quickly, snowflakes in his hair and eyelashes.

  'Don't let Arabel look around,' he whispered to Amy.

  'Keep her calm and keep her here. I don't want her...

  finding her sister.'

  Amy nodded. Arabel was close by, a phantom in the falling snow, standing under one of the trees, lost in thought.

  'Try to keep her occupied. Don't let her imagine the worst,' said the Doctor.

  'I'll see if she knows anywhere in the area we could shelter,' said Amy.

  'Good idea.'

  Amy went over to Arabel. The Doctor continued to pace around the clearing, scrutinising signs and traces, as though he was in a laboratory where it just happened to be snowing.

  Samewell came up to him. 'I found these over there,'

  he said quietly. He had some grisly objects in his hand, and he furtively showed them to the Doctor. They were almost black, like chunks of coal.

  They weren't chunks of coal. They were pieces of bone, caked in blood.

  'Oh dear,' said the Doctor.

  'It's all right,' said Samewell. 'It's not Vesta. These are bits of backbone from a sheep.'

  The Doctor took one of the sticky lumps out of Samewell's hand and examined it closely.

  'I think you're right, Samewell. Vertebrae. Ovine.'

  'I know sheep. It's my labour to watch the flocks and rear them.'

  'It was a sheep,' murmured the Doctor, relieved.

  'It was a sheep what was killed here,' agreed Samewell. 'Like the other livestock this winter. We think it's a dog run wild, Guide help us.'

  'It's been eaten,' said the Doctor. 'Devoured.

  Reduced to a few bones.'

  'A dog would do that,' said Samewell. 'A hungry dog.'

  'Yes,' said the Doctor. 'But in just a few hours? This is fresh. It's happened since last night, because the stains are still in the snow. Can even a big, hungry dog eat an entire sheep in that time?'

  Samewell regarded the question with some alarm.

  He was also beginning to look blue around the edges.

  'We need to shelter somewhere,' said the Doctor.

  'This weather's getting worse by the minute.'

  'There's a vent,' Samewell told him. 'It's about a mile from here on the skirt of Would Be.'

  'A vent?'

  'A herder's hut. For when we take the flocks up past the woods onto Moreland in summer. Guide knows it's closer to us than Beside.'

  'OK, good. We'd better get moving,' said the Doctor.

  They started walking, heads down into the blow.

  The snow was in their faces, hard and prickling.

  Samewell knew the way.

  As they trudged along, the Doctor thought about the word Samewell had used. Vent. Another Morphan neologism, presumably derived from the word for wind, as in a place where a herdsman could shelter from that elemental force. In Australia, they called them watch boxes, and in Norway they called them seters. On Umonalis Quadok where, admittedly, they herded ungulate ruminant thwentilopes rather than sheep, they called them Bimbemberabemhamshighans, which the Doctor had always thought was a rather ostentatious label for a one-room shack. In the highlands of Scotland, they called them bothies.

  Snow always reminded the Doctor of Scotland. It was a place he was very fond of. Many years away -

  not necessarily ago, because 'ago' was a clumsy concept to an inveterate time traveller - many years away, in a sideways direction that led to another part of his curiously structured life, the Doctor had visited Scotland and made a good friend there, a highlander called Jamie McCrimmon. Jamie had travelled with the Doctor for a while. They'd been to some places, and done some things, and on several occasions they had ended up in deep snow and deeper trouble. The thought of snow, and Jamie, took the Doctor back to his original, uneasy hunch. It was hard to shake, even though the evidence was no longer adding up. />
  'We should keep looking,' said Arabel.

  'I can't even see my hands in front of my face in this,' said Samewell.

  'She'll freeze,' said Arabel.

  Samewell had his arm around her, leading her along and shielding her with his coat. 'Guide knows we won't be no use to her if we freeze first,' he said.

  The Doctor stopped.

  'What is it?' asked Amy. She was keeping her jaw clenched so her teeth wouldn't chatter.

  'Something,' said the Doctor. He looked around.

  'There's something nearby.'

  It was hard to see for any distance. It was still snowing hard, and flurrying too, and Amy had a feeling evening had set in and taken over the responsibility for making things dark from the snowstorm. Constellations of snowflakes moving against the black trunks of nearby trees was about all she could make out.

  'I don't see anything,' she said, wiping snow off her nose.

  'Neither do I, but I feel it,' said the Doctor.

  'What, like a sixth sense?'

  'Much vaguer. Much, much vaguer. A ninth or tenth sense at best.'

  He rotated on the spot again, flipped out his sonic screwdriver, scanned and then switched it off. He tapped the end of the screwdriver against his pursed lips as he thought.

  'We should keep moving,' said Amy.

  'We should keep moving,' agreed the Doctor.

  'Samewell?'

  'It's up this way, a bit further yet,' Samewell replied.

  'We're close to the edge of Moreland now.'

  There was a break in the trees, a thinning out where the snow was deeper on the ground. The snow was beginning to drift.

  The Doctor stopped again and took another look around. He divined with his warbling screwdriver again. 'Let's liven things up by walking a little faster,'

  he said, smiling.

  The smile did nothing to take Amy's chill away.

  'Hang on!' Rory said, sitting up.

  Of course, it's far too late to say 'hang on!' once you've already been struck around the head with a blunt object and knocked unconscious. He said it nevertheless, and then groaned as the intense throbbing in his head introduced itself and let him know it would be staying for a few days.

  'Ow,' he said, resting his forehead in his hand. 'Ow.

  Also, owww-www.'

  'Don't move,' a voice warned him.