Deep Time

by Trevor Baxendale

  ‘I don’t like it the look of it,’ Hobbo said. ‘And it stinks.’

  ‘Cyanobacteria living in the fungus,’ explained the Doctor. ‘The corrosion and the damp allow for algal cells to develop. They’re tiny, harmless composite organisms that can sprout up anywhere if the conditions are right.’

  ‘I don’t mean that.’ Hobbo circled the obelisk, examining it in some detail. ‘I just don’t like the look of it. Something about it doesn’t feel right. Like it’s strange, and familiar, all at the same time.’

  ‘Could it be something to do with the Phaeron?’ wondered Jem. ‘You said they existed beyond time and space. That might account for any sense of déjà vu.’

  ‘It’s possible,’ said the Doctor thoughtfully.

  ‘Wait, look,’ said Hobbo, pointing at the entrance to the obelisk. ‘They’re back…’

  There was a distinct, azure glow developing in the shadows, and a number of ghostly forms began to manifest. They grew ever more apparent, and more detailed, until three hooded figures stood in the darkness, staring out at the Doctor, Jem and Hobbo.

  The Doctor stared back at them. The faces inside the hoods were mostly concealed, but in the nearest he could make out a long, disjointed proboscis surmounted by a pair of deeply set eyes the colour of blood. He was strongly reminded of the appearance of plague doctors during the eighteenth century on Earth, who wore beak-like masks stuffed with herbs and salts to prevent the wearer breathing in any kind of airborne communicable disease. There was a distinctly insectoid appearance to the long, pointed faces too; perhaps, considered the Doctor, the proboscis had its origins as some kind of organ for feeding or sucking. It wasn’t an altogether pleasant thought, when matched with the blank, unmoving eyes.

  ‘What do they want?’ asked Hobbo warily.

  ‘They want us to go in,’ said Jem.

  The Doctor turned to the astrogator. ‘Can you communicate with them directly?’

  ‘No,’ Jem replied. ‘But I can sense what they want…what they require.’

  ‘And they require us to go inside?’

  ‘They want the Imperfection.’

  ‘Do they, indeed?’ The Doctor thought about this for a moment and then turned back to the obelisk. The figures had disappeared.

  ‘We should go in,’ said Jem, starting forward.

  ‘Wait a sec,’ Hobbo interrupted, stopping her. ‘What if we’re the “imperfection” they want? What if it’s all some kinda trap?’

  ‘It isn’t,’ said Jem simply.

  The Doctor walked forward, hesitated at the fronds of weed that hung from the mantel, and then stepped through. He turned around and looked out of the obelisk at Hobbo and Jem, his eyes invisible in the shadows. ‘I think I’m beginning to understand,’ he said. ‘Come on, slowcoaches.’ And with that he took a step backwards and disappeared into the darkness completely.

  —

  Marco was pulling Tibby along the passageway. ‘Keep up,’ he urged.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  A blue light appeared at the end of the passage and Marco yanked Tibby back, pushing her against the wall. She felt the coldness and held her breath as one of the tall, robed figures materialised in the darkness. Its hood moved as whatever lay within began to turn towards them. A pair of dark eyes peered chillingly from a long, aquiline face and then the vision was gone. The blue light faded and darkness swept back into its place.

  Tibby breathed again. ‘I think we should go back for Clara and Ray.’

  ‘There isn’t time!’ snapped Marco. ‘Those ghosts are everywhere. We have to find the others first; then we can help Clara and Balfour.’

  He tried to pull her after him, but she refused to move. ‘I don’t like this. I don’t know where we are or where we’re going.’

  ‘Relax. I do.’

  ‘So where are the others?’

  ‘I’ll show you.’ Marco adopted a reasonable tone. ‘Look, you want to see the Doctor again, don’t you?’

  More hope surging through her, an instinctive response to something she had dared not to think about for so long now. ‘The Doctor’s here? Have you seen him?’

  ‘Of course he’s here. And all the others, no doubt.’

  ‘How do you know? Have you seen them?’

  ‘Listen, Tibby. We can either stand here doing a full question and answer session or we can get on with it. Trust me – I know where we are now and where we need to go. Now come on!’

  Marco grabbed her hand – better than her arm, at least – and led the way further into the darkness.

  —

  ‘What the hell was this place?’ Hobbo wondered aloud, her voice echoing backwards and forwards along the tunnel.

  The Doctor either didn’t hear her or didn’t bother to reply. He strode confidently ahead, using his sonic screwdriver to light the way. The cool green glow revealed what seemed to be an intricate cave system carved out by unknown hands. The circular walls and floor were oddly smooth and etched with obscure markings.

  Hobbo hurried to keep up. ‘This is gettin’ weirder all the time. Do you know where we’re even goin’?’

  ‘I’m trying to home in on the signal from my TARDIS.’ The Doctor paused to fiddle with the screwdriver for a minute and then held it up to his ear, listening carefully. ‘It’s getting weaker all the time, even though we seem to be getting closer. I don’t understand…’

  ‘This place is like a maze,’ said Jem.

  A blue glow appeared around the corner, and the now familiar robed shape stepped into view. Jem watched in barely concealed awe as the birdlike face turned slowly within the shadow of its hood to look directly at her. Nictitating eyelids flicked across the dark eyes and then the wraith vanished.

  ‘We must keep on,’ Jem said. ‘Go deeper into the caves. The Phaeron are waiting for us. They’re calling us!’

  ‘Not that way,’ said the Doctor, sweeping his sonic around in a circle. ‘This way…the TARDIS is this way.’

  ‘But the Phaeron are waiting, Doctor!’

  ‘Let ’em wait!’ The Doctor shrugged. ‘They’ve been waiting here for a billion years. They exist beyond time and space, remember. They can wait a little longer.’

  ‘Hold on.’ Hobbo called them over to where she had reached to touch the nearest wall. ‘Look at this.’

  They were standing in circular passageway with alcoves spaced at regular intervals. The light from the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver picked out more markings; regular, square indentations and circles. Hobbo pointed to the markings on the floor, scuffing away the dust and dirt with her boot to reveal a diamond pattern.

  ‘What is it?’ Jem asked.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Hobbo said. ‘They remind me of somethin’, though.’

  ‘C’mon!’ admonished the Doctor, as if he was amazed that neither of them had spotted something that was glaringly obvious. ‘Don’t tell me you can’t see it?’

  Hobbo scratched her head and looked puzzled. ‘It sure looks familiar. I dunno why ’cos I ain’t ever been here before. I can swear to that.’

  ‘I know you’ve never been here before,’ the Doctor said. ‘None of us have. But you’ve been somewhere very similar.’

  Hobbo looked around her, mouth hanging open as realisation dawned. ‘You knew?’

  ‘I thought it was obvious!’ he said, perplexed.

  ‘When did you know?’

  ‘As soon as we saw the obelisk. It was the only thing that made sense.’

  ‘Well I’m not sure about makin’ any sense,’ said Hobbo. ‘But you’re damn right, I shoulda seen it already. I only wish Mitch was here to see it too.’

  ‘See what?’ asked Jem.

  ‘This whole ruin,’ explained the Doctor, ‘is not the ruin of an ancient building. It is the ruin of an ancient spacecraft.’

  ‘The passageways, the corridors…’ said Hobbo. ‘The obelisk. I knew I recognised the markings on the wall! They were sub-control panels and data ports. It was
an auxiliary airlock – or the remains of one at least.’

  ‘Calcified and covered in lichen and grime and the solidified dust and dirt of millennia,’ the Doctor agreed. ‘Barely recognisable – unless you’ve spent your whole life in spaceships.’

  Hobbo wiped at the surface of one wall, scraping away at the dirt. Bits crumbled and fell into dust, revealing something shiny and metallic beneath.

  ‘Allow me,’ said the Doctor, brandishing the sonic screwdriver again. He pointed it at the wall and the tip glowed bright green. The rough surface cracked and then flaked away, resonated into dust by the sonic pulses. More metal was revealed, reflecting the green light brightly. ‘This isn’t just any spaceship, either,’ he said. He swept the beam of the screwdriver along the wall, and a huge section of it crumbled way, clattering to the floor to reveal a large, engraved plaque which read, simply:

  CARTHAGE

  Chapter

  17

  ‘The Carthage!’ Hobbo touched the inscription as if she needed physical confirmation that it was actually there. More grime fell away under her touch to reveal a series of rusted ideograms.

  ‘This is the ship Marco was looking for,’ said Jem. ‘The one captained by his mother.’

  ‘It has aged millions of years but the basic structure is still intact,’ said the Doctor. He pointed at the ideograms. ‘We’re now standing in what was the connecting corridor to the data core.’

  ‘But how did the Carthage end up here?’ Hobbo asked. ‘Like this?’

  ‘It never made it to the Andromeda galaxy at all. It must have broken out of the wormhole and crashed on this planet, just like the Alexandria.’

  ‘So it’s been sitting here for millennia, caught in the time fields,’ realised Jem sadly. ‘Just crumbling away…’

  ‘If this is the mid-level access corridor,’ said the Doctor, thinking aloud, ‘then the data core will be right around the corner. Hobbo, do you think it could still be intact?’

  ‘These old ships had slow-decay astronic power cells threaded right the way through the superstructure. Cheap an’ cheerful – but above all, long-lastin’. It ain’t impossible.’

  ‘What have you got in mind?’ wondered Jem as they worked their away further along the corridor.

  ‘He’s thinkin’ about accessing the ship’s computer memory banks,’ Hobbo realised. ‘Check the flight recorder – find out exactly what happened to the crew of seventy-seven. Isn’t that right, Doc?’

  ‘Among other things, yes.’

  They turned the corner and passed through a broken, rectangular hole in the wall that might have once been a subsidiary airlock. On the other side was a tall, circular chamber, its high walls overgrown with dank, fibrous weeds and cobwebs. The Doctor used his sonic screwdriver to illuminate the area, the bright green light sending thin-legged spiders hurrying for the shadows.

  Lying on the floor in the middle of the room was Clara Oswald.

  ‘Typical,’ said the Doctor. ‘We’re busy making the discovery of the century and Clara’s snoring on the floor.’ He poked her with the toe of his boot. ‘Oi, come on, sleepyhead. Up you get.’

  ‘What’s she doin’ here?’ Hobbo asked. She began to search the darker corners of the room. ‘Where are the others? Where’s Balfour?’

  Clara groaned and Jem helped her to sit up. ‘It’s OK, Clara. We’re here. You’re safe.’

  Clara squinted up into a brilliant emerald light as the Doctor scanned her with the sonic screwdriver. ‘I know this is such a cliché – but where am I?’

  ‘You’re on board the Carthage,’ said the Doctor. ‘You’ve missed everything. Now get up, there’s nothing wrong with you apart from the usual.’

  ‘The usual?’ Clara winced as Jem and Hobbo helped her to her feet.

  ‘Well you can’t expect miracles at your age, Clara.’

  ‘How are you feeling?’ Jem asked.

  ‘Cold and aching, but otherwise OK, thanks.’

  ‘That’s the spirit,’ nodded the Doctor. ‘Never mind the years, just keep battling on.’

  Clara looked around with sudden, hollow-eyed urgency. ‘Where are the others? Where’s Tibby?’

  ‘We don’t know. We’ve just found you here alone. Have you seen Balfour? Or Tanya and Marco?’ asked Jem.

  Clara closed her eyes on a painful memory. ‘Tanya’s dead. She was…killed in the jungle.’

  ‘Jungle?’

  ‘Long story. There was a time flux – two of them. We all ended up here after the last one. We were all together when we got here, I’m sure of it, but I passed out…’ Clara rubbed at her eyes. ‘I don’t know why, I’m sorry. I’m not usually the fainting kind.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ Jem said gently. ‘We’ve all been through a lot. We lost Mitch.’

  ‘Oh no.’ Clara looked to the Doctor, who simply nodded sadly and shook his head. Clara turned to look at Hobbo, who was still pacing around the room, checking the wall panels, scratching the dirt away from one section after another. Losing Mitch, however it happened, must have hit Hobbo hardest. It looked as though she was keeping herself busy in order not to think about it.

  ‘Balfour and Tibby were with me when the last time flux occurred, I’m sure of it,’ Clara said. ‘And Marco too. He tried to kill me in the jungle.’

  ‘Kill you?’

  ‘He tried to throw me into some plants that spat a kind of goo. The same plants that killed Tanya. It was horrible.’

  ‘Then where is Marco now?’ asked Hobbo.

  The Doctor’s frown intensified dangerously. ‘We’re on the Carthage. There’s only one place he’ll go.’

  —

  Marco dragged Tibby down a long corridor into a hallway with steep, sloping walls. They climbed through a narrow gap where a heavy sliding door had got stuck halfway about a million years previously and was now rusted and cultivating a thick layer of mould. The floor crunched beneath their boots as they moved. Tibby guessed generations of rats had lived and bred and mutated and died here, leaving behind a carpet of hardened dung and tiny, misshapen bones.

  ‘What is this place?’ she asked.

  ‘This is the stasis deck,’ he said. He walked slowly along one side of the hallway, examining the walls that sloped up and away from him at forty-five degrees. Every so often there was a recess or cutting in the wall, full of matted vegetation and crawling things.

  ‘You knew exactly how to get here, didn’t you?’

  ‘Once I realised where I was, yes. I’ve made a study of the Carthage, remember. I’ve pored over the specifications and history. I know every centimetre of this ship.’ Marco stopped at one section of the wall and squatted to examine the base. He pulled away a web of thin, dry roots that had grown with infinite patience in the dark, tracing the edge of the floor and rising like slow, explorative, fingers up the wall. He yanked them aside and brushed at the dirt beneath. Metal shone dully.

  ‘The Carthage had stasis tanks for every crewmember,’ he explained. ‘It was a deep-space exploration vessel, and sometimes the crew would go into hypersleep for the longer voyages between the most distant stars.’

  Tibby shivered. The hallway was long. If this was where the stasis chambers were, surely the crew couldn’t still be in them?

  ‘The Carthage has decayed and aged,’ said Marco, ‘but there’s still low-level power in some of the basic operating systems.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  He looked up at her with a scornful expression. ‘Hello? Look around you! See anything?’

  Tibby could see the other stasis tanks, leaning back in the walls, row after room. ‘Just the tanks.’

  ‘But you can see them. So: light.’

  With a start Tibby realised that he was correct. Along the ceiling and top edge of the walls were softly illuminated panels, barely noticeable except for the faint, even light they shed. It was a dirty, yellow light, but they were working nonetheless.

  Marco scraped at the surface of the tank. ‘The Carthage was built to last. The sta
sis tanks should still be functional, doing what they were designed to do – keep the crew alive.’

  ‘But they must be ancient now,’ Tibby said. ‘They can’t be working after all this time, surely?’

  ‘Why not?’ Marco frowned at the thought. ‘Look.’ He pointed to the section of the deck where he’d been working. At the base was a metal panel, pitted and rusted, but with one slowly blinking light now revealed. ‘Minimal power but enough to maintain the stasis field inside the unit.’

  ‘This is a particular unit, isn’t it?’ Tibby was staring at the metal panel. There was a screen built into it, misty and dull, but there were some digital figures still visible:

  Caitlin Spritt, Capt. 77389-89

  ‘You shouldn’t do this,’ Tibby said quietly. ‘You really shouldn’t, Marco.’

  He glared at her, his eyes full of determination. ‘Why not? This is what I came for. What I joined the Alexandria mission for! I’ve found the Carthage, Tibby. And now I’ve found her.’

  Marco traced the edge of the stasis tank with the tips of his fingers, almost lovingly, perhaps reverently. ‘Captain Spritt,’ he breathed. ‘It’s time to wake up.’

  He thumbed a sequence of controls on the base panel and lights flickered on all around the unit, stretching right up into the wall. Similar lights began to flicker on all the units, creating a strobing illumination along the hallway.

  As Tibby watched, she saw Hobbo and Clara come running through the airlock and felt a huge rush of relief.

  ‘Tibby!’ cried Clara, rushing forward. Behind her came the Doctor and Jem.

  Marco stood up and pulled a small, tubular device from his spacesuit pocket. He pointed it at Hobbo as she approached and the engineer pulled up warily. ‘Whoa. That’s an ion bonder, and it ain’t yours, pal.’

  ‘I know. I found it in the engineering section on the Alexandria. You should have been more careful with your tools.’ Marco kept the ion bonder trained on Mitch, but in the relatively narrow confines of the stasis hallway he could cover all the others.

  ‘What’s an ion bonder?’ asked Clara.

  ‘Fixin’ tool,’ said Hobbo. ‘Not much of a weapon, but enough at close range.’