by Adam Roberts
‘Ah!’ said the Dr. ‘Yes. Gather round, assistants. Gather round.’
Linn stepped smartly to stand next to the Dr. I tried to do the same, but caught my knee on the edge of the central console in my haste. This was very painful. I yelped and doubled over, trying simultaneously to grab my knee and to keep my balance. I failed in both respects, and instead slammed my forehead against the console. This was also very painful.
After some effort I was able to pull myself upright. I could see stars. This was because the Dr, oblivious to my pratfalling, had pulled up a viewscreen schematic of the area of space through which we were travelling.
‘Our next mission,’ he was saying. ‘Hell. We must avert a terrible dynastic squabble. Apparently a single stick-back-plastic apostrophe, inserted onto an official sign in exactly the right place, should do it.’
‘What about this Stavros fellow?’ Linn was saying. ‘I don’t like the sound of this Time Gentleman Violator.’
‘Ow,’ I said, rubbing my forehead. ‘Ow, ow, ouch.’
‘It’s a nasty piece of work,’ the Dr agreed. ‘It’s designed to destroy a Time Gentleman’s braintide.’
‘Braintide?’ Linn asked.
‘The sum total of his brainwaves.’
‘Ah!’ said Linn, in an I see! tone of voice.
‘Ah!’ I said in a my-skull-really-hurts-I-mean-I-don’t-want-to-alarm-anybody-but-I-just-may-actually-have- dislocated -my-knee tone of voice.
‘If Stavros, or one of his Garleks, aimed that weapon at my brain’—the Dr patted his own chest—‘it would be curtains for me. Those little velvet curtains about a foot tall that are drawn across the slot at the crematorium through which the coffin disappears. Those sorts of curtains.’
‘I thought you said your brain,’ I said, cross on account of my hurty head. ‘Why were you tapping your chest?’
‘That’s where my brain is located,’ the Dr said.
‘So where is your heart?’
‘Are.’
‘Up where?’
‘No - are - where are your hearts. I have two.’ He tapped his head. ‘One on the left and one on the right side of my head. It’s always seemed to me an arrangement infinitely to be preferred. Or, perhaps not infinitely, but. You know what I mean.’
Chapter Eight
THE DOOM OF THE HELL-MET WOMAN
Finally, after what seemed like a very long-drawn-out journey, the TARDY rematerialised. ‘We’ve arrived!’ announced the Dr, somewhat superfluously. ‘Here we are.’
‘And this is the location of our mission?’ Linn asked.
‘Oh yes.’
‘So where are we, exactly?’
‘According to my screen here,’ said the Dr, ‘we’re on a planet called, um.’
‘Um?’ I said.
‘The Planet Um is in the Hesitant System,’ Linn explained, in a superior voice, ‘orbiting the Star Sch.’
‘No, not um,’ said the Dr. ‘That was me pausing, trying to read the iddly-bittly typeface on this . . . Hell. That’s what it’s called.’
‘Hell,’ I said. ‘That doesn’t bode well.’
‘Well,’ said the Dr, airily. ‘I wouldn’t read too much into that. It might be that Hell means something very pleasant and inoffensive in the local language. Something like, I don’t know, Chicken Korma. Or Eiderdown. Or something.’
‘Never mind all this chatter,’ said Linn, impatiently. ‘Let’s sort out this mission. It’s placing an apostrophe on an official sign, I think you said. Let’s go do it! Let’s place that apostrophe!’
The Dr was peering carefully at the screen. His brow had furrowed. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Hmm. Yes . . . well, that could prove a little tricky. Nope, we can’t leave the TARDY. I’m afraid.’
‘Why can’t we leave the TARDY ?’ Linn asked.
‘Well let me see if I can explain,’ said the Dr, running a very unspringy and indeed bone-based hand through his springy, boneless hair. ‘On Earth, where you come from . . .’ He paused.
‘I know I come from Earth,’ I said.
‘Yes, yes. Don’t interrupt me. I get distracted. Earth - on Earth, where you, Prose, originated - on Earth there is a substance known to scientists as oxygen. It’s in the air.’
‘This,’ said Linn, speaking for the both of us, ‘we know.’
‘Well, this world, this planet Hell, has - well, to put it in technical scientific language, it has no oxygen in the air.’
‘I see.’
‘You don’t sound surprised?’
‘I’m not,’ I said. ‘I mean, I’m assuming it’s pretty rare that you land on a world with precisely human-breathable air. As I understand it, the oxygen levels even on Earth have fluctuated quite considerably over the last forty thousand years. In the rest of the cosmos - well I’d guess that a million forms of life have evolved breathing everything from argon to zeon. Assuming zeon is a gas. Or am I thinking of neon? Anyway, anyway, the point is, I’d assume that perhaps one in a trillion planets have atmospheres breathable by creatures such as us.’
‘Well,’ said the Dr, ‘Hmm. It’s. Actually it’s quite complicated. ’
‘Is it? How?’
The Dr tapped at the monitor and brought up a visual representation of the world outside the TARDY. The scene displayed was of rolling hills covered in green grass, a pale blue sky, a bright yellow sun. It looked inviting. I mean, apart from the fact that the hills were rolling. I don’t, incidentally, use rolling as a merely metaphoric or conventionalised description of the hills. These hills were literally rolling. Some hidden geologic force was slowly rotating them like colossal, green horizontal kebabs. They were grassy all over, though; and there were cows and even little rabbits visible upon them, who didn’t seem too bothered by being dipped under the earth for long minutes. When they popped up again, they were still happily munching the grass. I assumed that their feet, or hooves, were adapted so as to be able to cling to the turf whilst it was upended. But I was unable to check my theory, because the Dr refused to open the door.
‘I can’t open the door,’ he said, again.
‘It looks very pleasant outside,’ I pointed out.
‘You two, you’re not, you aren’t paying attention to what I say,’ he complained. ‘There’s no oxygen. Right? Step through that door and you’ll choke.’
‘Well alright,’ said Linn, in a matter-of-fact tone of voice. ‘I’m assuming you have breathing apparatus? For all the occasions when you visit planets that don’t happen to have the precise and delicate combination of gases we’re accustomed to on Earth? Isn’t that standard Time Gentlemen gear?’
At this the Dr looked shifty. He shifted his eyes from side to side, and shifted his weight from foot to foot. He shifted his scarf, flicking it from over his left shoulder to over his right. I think you take the point that he was shifty.
‘We don’t usually have much call for breathing apparatus, ’ he said.
‘Not much call for it? Are you serious?’ asked Linn, incredulous.
My credulity was also in. ‘It can’t be the case,’ I objected, ‘that you always just happen to visit planets with breathable atmospheres?’
‘Pretty much,’ he said. Then he mumbled something, and looked away.
‘And there’s nothing—’ Linn pressed, ‘nothing in this entire TARDY, that would help us? Not so much as a gas-mask? Not even a snorkel ?’
The Dr shrugged his shoulders. He wasn’t meeting our eyes.
‘I simply can’t believe,’ Linn continued, ‘that there is not, in this entire spaceship, a single piece of breathing gear.’
‘I’ll go and have a look,’ muttered the Dr, looking unhappy. ‘There might be something in one of the . . . you know. In one of the. Other rooms.’ With this he slipped through a door and hurried away into the inner labyrinth of the TARDY.
‘Don’t just go for a little lie-down,’ Linn called after him. ‘You go find us some breathing equipment, you hear? You hear, Doctor?’
There was no answer.
>
‘Doctor?’ she called again. ‘Have you gone off to have a little lie-down somewhere? Don’t you have a little lie-down! You fetch us some equipment, so we can go exploring on this world and sort out the apostrophe business on this planet! Do you hear?’
Nothing.
‘Doctor?’ screeched Linn. ‘We’re doing this for your benefit you know! Neither of us wants to go gallivanting about this strange planet. We’re trying to help you!’ She waited, with her ear to the door. ‘You have gone to have a little lie down, haven’t you!’ she called.
‘I think he may, actually,’ I offered, ‘indeed have gone for a little lie down.’
‘Curse him,’ said Linn without vehemence. ‘Do you think we should try and winkle him out of whichever room he’s run off to?’
‘There are hundreds of rooms back there,’ I pointed out. ‘He could be in any of them. We’d be searching through them for hours and hours. Best let him have his lie down. He’ll come back through when he wakes up. It might even recharge his batteries.’
‘It’s a—most—provoking—thing . . .’ Linn said, shaking her head.
‘He certainly seems to like his little naps,’ I agreed.
‘I suppose so,’ I agreed.
Linn went over to the central control panel and opened a little door in its side. ‘Aha! First place I look!’ she exclaimed, delighted. She reached in and pulled out a helmet. It looked a little like a deep-sea-diver’s helmet: a metal globe a little larger than an average adult human head, with a small glass screen in the front. ‘I knew it!’ she declared, sounding very pleased with herself. ‘I knew there’d be something!’
‘Will it fit?’ I asked.
‘It’s exactly the right size. I wonder if it comes with, you know, oxygen tanks and such?’
‘According,’ I observed, reading from the side of the helmet, ‘to this little plaque on the side it’s all integrated into the device. Self contained air supply, water and even food. Nutrition Pap Brand three-five-one-one, apparently. Your Time Gentleman Breathing and Life Support Equipment is Guaranteed for One Thousand Years. Sounds just the ticket.’
‘Doesn’t it just?’ she agreed. She reached back inside the cupboard and pulled out an identical-looking helmet. ‘Here you go - one for you too.’
‘You don’t think,’ I said, hesitantly, ‘that the thousand-year guarantee has expired, or anything?’
‘Nonsense,’ she returned. ‘They look positively brand new.’
I peered at the helmet in my hands. It was certainly a gleaming item, undusty and unscuffed. ‘I suppose you’re right.’
‘Right,’ said Linn, in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘This is what I suggest. We put these on. We pop outside, have a look around, and hopefully work out what needs to be done to straighten the timeline here - find that sign, insert the apostrophe. It’ll be good practice for me, and we can sort it all out before the Doctor even wakes up from his afternoon nap.’
‘If you’re sure that’s a good idea—’
‘Of course I am! Can you imagine his face when we come back? Look Doctor, we sorted it all out whilst you were napping! Ha-ha!’
‘Well,’ I said, uncertainly. ‘OK.’ I lifted up my helmet ready to put it on. Linn did the same.
Then something peculiar happened. In the split-second before I dropped the helmet over my cranium, Linn disappeared.
One minute she was there, and the next she had vanished. Completely vanished ! I opened my mouth to shout in surprise, but my fingers at that precise moment let go of the helmet to drop it onto my shoulders. I barely had time to cry out.
Then everything went black.
The next thing I knew was an enormous crash and an earthquake-like shudder that knocked me from my feet. I’d like you to imagine - if you’ll indulge me - a large warehouse built of reinforced steel girders and iron cladding, with a huge metal domed roof; and that this warehouse had then, somehow, been elevated six feet above the ground, suspended there, and then dropped onto a concrete or stone ground. That was the nature of the ear-splitting clatter that greeted me. It almost burst my ears. The reverberations from the collision echoed and re-echoed.
I picked myself up and looked about me. I had somehow been transported into a huge enclosed space, some kind of circular barn or hangar, lit by a dim window very high up in an enormous curving wall. The floor stretched thousands of yards away from me in every direction. A huge duct, wide enough for me to climb inside had I been so minded, dangled from the wall before me. I stared at this huge structure. It ended in a bizarre truck-sized sculpture in black rubber. It looked as though it might fit inside a giant’s mouth as his gum-shield.
I turned slowly to examine my new surroundings. The roof was curved and groined like a giant version of the inside of the Dome of Saint Paul’s. It towered so enormously over me that thin and wispy clouds were visible floating in at the zenith.
It took me only a moment to understand what had happened. Of course: the helmet was TARDY technology. It was, accordingly, much bigger on the inside than the out. I ran to the nearest portion of the wall - it was a brisk, ten minute jog away - and tried to slide my hands under the rim and lift the huge dome off me. But it was hopeless: It was like trying to - no: let me be precise, it was exactly the same as - trying to lift an entire eight-hundred-metre tall aircraft-hangar built of steel girders and iron claddings with my bare hands.
I couldn’t even get my hands underneath the lip of the helmet. It was being pressed into the floor with a weight of many hundred thousand tonnes.
I sat back. This was bad. The space was chilly and I wasn’t even wearing a sweater. Not even a cardigan.
The situation was dire.
‘Help! Somebody!’ I shouted. ‘Doctor? Can you hear me? I’m trapped inside here! Lift up the helmet Doctor - take hold of this helmet and lift it up . . .’
My words re-echoed. It was hopeless. I bashed my fist against the wall and it rebounded. The metal felt at least a metre thick: a huge and impenetrable barrier between myself and the outside world. And even if I could have communicated through this wall, the Dr was snoozing in some alcove deep inside the TARDY. And Linn - Linn must be trapped just like me.
I stepped back, and walked towards the middle of the dome again. Craning my neck I could see the window high above me - clearly I was looking at an inside view of the face-plate of the helmet: it might only be the size of a postcard on the outside, but it was a colossal expanse of glass on the in. For a while I idly speculated about climbing up to it - but it was many hundreds of meters above me and any climb would be a dangerous prospect indeed. And even if I could scale the sheer, curving wall, what would I do then? Wave at the Dr through the glass? But what if he didn’t see me? He was still napping, somewhere in the bowels of the TARDY. If a spacecraft could be said to have bowels. Which, come to think of it, I rather doubted.
It was alright, I told myself. He would eventually wake up. Then he could come back through to the control room, and pick up the helmet. Though fantastically heavy on the inside, it weighed a matter of a few grams on the outside. The Dr would notice it lying on the floor, and lift it up to put it away - revealing me underneath it. All I had to do was wait out the intervening time.
It was a bore. But, I was unlikely to freeze to death in the space of a few hours. Even without a sweater.
I ran my fingers of my right hand up my left arm. The goosepimples there spelt out, in Braille (a script I had had to learn as part of my prose-tailor training) the message: HYPOTHERMIA CAN KILL IN MINUTES. I ignored this message. And, to be absolutely exact, because of the chance positioning of a large mole on my forearm next to a small crescent-shaped scar, it actually spelt out: HYPOTHERMIA CANNED KRILL IN MINUTES, which sounded more to me like a advertisement for a brand of tinned seafood. Which, by a strange chance, I have actually eaten. In a Krill restaurant upon my home world. But this is by the bye.
There was no immediate danger, then. But, insofar as I have always been an impatient fellow, I will con
fess that the prospect of several hours of shivering did not appeal to me. I decided that I had to think of a way out of this prison.
I turned myself about through three-hundred-and-sixty degrees to scan the whole inner surface of the thing. But I discovered that, whilst three-hundred-and-sixty degrees would have been enough to rotate the helmet through one entire turn on the outside, inside it barely covered a fifth of the perimeter on the inside. I turned and turned and turned until I was dizzy, and eventually I was again looking at the giant hose.
It took me a moment to stop feeling nauseous.
No more turning about, I decided.
The thing to do, clearly, was to take a closer look at this hose. From a distance its purpose seemed clear: it would feed oxygen into the mouth of anybody wearing the helmet. Of course, on the inside it was much too large to fit into any actual mouth. But I wondered if it would be possible to - for instance - climb inside it, work my way up the tube and perhaps find some egress to the outside world? It was a long shot, I knew; but I couldn’t think what else to do.
As I walked towards it, the oddly pronged and curved shape of the thing grew larger and larger, until it lost all resemblance to a mouthpiece and became nothing more than a vast ebon blob, suspended in space. It looked like something Henry Moore might have sculpted out of eight tonnes of partially chewed liquorice. Which is to say, it looked extremely unappealing.
Finally I arrived at the foot of the structure. It was connected to the wall, some thirty metres above me, via a tube large enough to run trains underneath the English Channel. In both directions. The mouthpiece itself hung perhaps five metres from the floor - maddeningly too high to reach, even if I stood on tip-toes. Even if I stood on tip-toes and jumped up. I tried doing this, standing on tip-toes and leaping up, four or five times before it occurred to me that the muscles in my toes might be less effective at propelling my entire bodyweight into the air than, you know, the muscles in my legs. So I stood on the flat of my feet and bent my legs and tried jumping again. I jumped higher this way, but it was still useless.
