But when she reached the console room, there was no sign of the Doctor. Martha – wincing slightly as the straps of the sandals cut into her feet – bent down to peer through the floor grille, wondering if the Doctor was doing some more repairs. But there was no sign of him.
‘Doctor?’ Martha called, straightening up. No answer.
Then she noticed the door: it was ajar. The reason she hadn’t noticed it before was that, as far as she could see, it was dark outside. And that couldn’t be right, could it? Not if they were going to breakfast. Not unless he’d landed her in the middle of winter at about 7am. In which case, a lilac silk evening gown and strappy sandals might not be the most practical outfit.
Maybe the TARDIS had landed indoors. Or in an alleyway. Yes, she thought, more confidently this time. That must be it. Excitement skipping in her heart again at the thought of the glamorous treat to come, she bounded over to the door.
Only…
It was wrong. The darkness outside the TARDIS was decidedly wrong. It was as if something flat and dark and watery-looking had been pressed up against the open door. Martha peered closely. Away to one side, she could vaguely see light – dim, murky, brown light. And in the darkness, if she peered really closely, she could see tiny grains, swirling and twisting.
Martha reached out her hand gently – and found herself touching the darkness. Only it wasn’t quite solid. There was a bit of give in it, like some sort of transparent rubber membrane. Delicately, she pushed at it, and it stretched away from her. Weird. She pulled her hand back and noted how the stretchy surface rebounded, becoming perfectly flat again.
‘Doctor!’ she called, wondering whether he could even hear her through this strange browny-blackness.
Martha put out her hand to it again, and felt the firm, textureless surface give. Gritting her teeth, she pushed again – and suddenly, her hand and arm were through it. For a moment, she froze, feeling a cool wetness soak through the silk to her skin.
Water, she thought instantly. It’s wa—
And before she could even complete the thought, something powerful and muscled wrapped itself around her wrist. Her mouth was still open in an unfinished scream as she was dragged into the death-dark waters…
TWO
The Doctor could do nothing but stare blankly at the spot where the TARDIS had vanished. The only thing to mark where she had stood were some scuffed, flattened roots sprouting from the bank.
His first thought had been for Martha – but he suspected that she’d be fine. The fact that just a few air bubbles had broken on the water’s surface showed that either the door had closed before it had fallen in, or that the TARDIS had activated its force field. If the entrance to his ship had been completely open, this whole area would have been draining away by now. The cavernous interior of the TARDIS would be soaking up the water like a huge sponge.
But that didn’t help him with getting it back.
He needed help. He could try diving down into the lake, but the water looked filthy with mud and silt, and even though – given time – he could probably find it, he wasn’t sure he could hold his breath long enough to actually get inside.
Yes, he needed help.
For the first time, he turned his attention properly to his surroundings. What he’d assumed was a river probably wasn’t: the water was still and flat. Maybe a lake. The TARDIS had landed on a blunt promontory, sticking out into it. The air was thick with damp although his clothes were starting to dry out a little under the influence of the baleful orange sun. There wasn’t much of a breeze, and away in the distance, in the thick trees and bushes behind him and on the other side of the lake, he could hear chirpings and twitterings and rustlings. Twilight was approaching fast, and with it, the Doctor knew, the planet’s animals would be coming out to feed.
Get some perspective, he told himself firmly.
And within seconds he’d managed to clamber up one of the nearby trees. Like cupped hands reaching skywards, the branches spread out, thin and silvery, forming a loose, circular cage. Numerous shoots provided plenty of footholds, and soon he was perched precariously in the tree’s upper reaches, swaying from side to side as he shifted his weight. A small, grey and red bird twittered and took to the sky, clearly outraged at his intrusion, ignoring his apology.
Clinging on for dear life, he scanned the forest: green, green and more green, broken only by the occasional silver-grey trunk of a taller tree. And, like cracks in crazy paving, zigzags of open darkness where he suspected more rivers or lakes lay.
He narrowed his eyes, and raised his free hand to shelter them from the sun, now just touching the tops of the trees along the horizon. Wherever he was, it was obviously a planet that spun quickly on its axis. A quick bit of guesstimation put the day’s length at no more than twelve hours. So definitely not Arkon.
Just a couple of kilometres away, a lazy drift of smoke snaked up into the sky out of the green.
‘Seek,’ he whispered with a smile, ‘and ye shall find…’
Whatever it was, thought the Doctor, wavering unsteadily, it was certainly worth a second look. Overhead, clouds were beginning to gather, obscuring the orangey disc of the moon. Rain was on its way.
‘Candy’ Kane hated her nickname. Really, really hated it. But like sticky-out ears or goofy teeth, she’d found it impossible to get rid of without some sort of drastic surgery.
Born Candice Margaret Kane to parents who hadn’t had the common sense to think ahead and thus save their only daughter from years of torment at the hands of the other kids, Candy had made a fatal mistake. On her first day at school she’d lied that her name was actually Kathryn. A lie she’d been caught out in straight away, which only served to signal to everyone that there was something wrong with ‘Candice’. And within days they’d started calling her ‘Candy’.
Coming to Sunday had seemed like a good idea – not only would she be starting an exciting, brand-new life, but she’d have the chance to ditch the ‘Candy’ once and forever. And all at just sixteen! The arrival, three days after planetfall, of a hypermail from her aunt – addressed to ‘Candy Kane’ – trashed those hopes good and proper.
All of which might well have accounted for the fact that, whenever she could, Candy chose to work on her own. Whether it was scouting along the banks of the lakes and rivers that had drowned the first settlement, looking for washed-up debris, or out hunting for water pigeon eggs, Candy preferred to go it alone. She didn’t care that the other settlers thought she was aloof. She was aloof. And that was the way she liked it. It was easier to get around quietly on her own. Professor Benson was about the only one she felt happy going out into Sunday’s swamps with. Even though she was old enough, Ty Benson didn’t pretend to be a mother figure to Candy; she didn’t keep asking her ‘how she was finding it’, or ‘how she was fitting in’. She didn’t go on about how Candy should make ‘more of an effort’ to be friendly with the other teenagers. She just let her be, and trusted her to know what she was doing.
Candy adjusted the straps on her backpack, feeling the well-padded water pigeon eggs (all three of ’em!) shift around inside. The size of Earth ostrich eggs, they weren’t just a delicacy, but each one could feed a family of four for a day. Food wasn’t short for the settlers – the bewildering variety of plants that grew in and around the swamps saw to that. And before the flood they’d had fish galore from the nets that they’d strung up across the river mouths. But it was always a treat to tuck into one of the rich, brown eggs with their double yolks.
She checked her watch and the bloated orb of the sun as it sank towards the tops of the trees. The thickening clouds were painted orange and purple. Sunday’s sunsets were beautiful, but short-lived. Dusk came quickly, and the settlement was a good half-hour away. Candy didn’t mind being out after dark: there were few dangerous predators on this part of the planet. Out of the water, at least. Deep in the swamps were a host of unpleasant aquatic beasties, ranging from tiny worms that would bury themselves into
your skin, right through to some nasty little fish that had the habit of sinking their razor-sharp teeth into you and refusing to let go, even if you chopped their heads off. And then there were the ‘gators – five-metre-long things that were a cross between an alligator and turtle. You really didn’t want to be on the wrong end of one of those!
But she hadn’t seen many of them since the flood. Fish had been in short supply too, which was worrying some of the Sundayans. Anyway, she knew that if she kept away from the water, she’d be fairly safe. The only sizeable animals that travelled through the forest were the otters, and even they didn’t tend to move far from water and their nests. And according to Professor Benson they were veggies anyway.
Suddenly, she stopped. Ahead of her, somewhere away over to the right, she heard a noise: it sounded like branches snapping.
Curious – but with the blonde hairs on her arms pricking up into goose bumps – Candy crouched lower behind a fallen tree. Reaching into her backpack, she pulled out her monocular and raised it to her eye, thumbing the switch on the barrel that would bring up the light enhancement. The blood-lit gloom sprang alive in shades of yellow and ochre. She caught a glimmer of movement, a flexing lemon crescent that rose from the forest floor and swooped up into the canopy. A water pigeon, perhaps. Maybe a curver – or a sea-wader. Candy let out the breath that she didn’t know she’d been holding in and stood up. Maybe it was Orlo, blundering around in the forest like he did. A year or so younger than her, Orlo was a big, clumsy lad – quite the opposite of Candy. He was cheerful and good-natured and sometimes went out with her on night-time rambles. But, like Candy, he also enjoyed his own company, and many a time they’d come across each other in the dark, scaring each other in the process.
Candy fished in her backpack and pulled out her torch. Aiming it towards the source of the noises, she flashed out a quick ‘Hi!’ in Morse code. If it was Orlo, he’d signal back: the two of them had learned Morse code together from an old manual in the One Small Step’s shipbrain on the trip to Sunday, just for fun.
Candy peered into the dark, waiting for the reply.
‘Hi,’ it came back a few seconds later, although the light was colder and more bluish than she remembered Orlo’s torch being.
‘What’s up?’ she sent back.
Orlo must have been practising. The reply came back quickly: ‘I’m lost.’
Lost? How could he be lost? He knew this bit of the forest as well as she did. Was he winding her up?
‘Yeah,’ she flashed back. ‘You’ll be out here all nite then.’
Quick as anything, Orlo sent back: ‘That’s not how you spell night.’ What was he on about?
‘What?’ she started to send back – but before she could finish the ‘t’, a pale, thin face leaped up out of the bushes just a few yards away, right in the beam of her torch.
‘Excuse me,’ said the man, his eyebrows raised, ‘I think you’ll find that correct spelling is the mark of an educated mind.’
Candy stumbled backwards and tripped, smashing her backpack against the trunk of the tree behind her. With a wet crunch, the eggs inside it shattered. She looked up frantically, waving her torch around until it connected with the man’s face.
‘Or is it the mark of someone with nothing better to do…?’ He frowned, shrugged, and stepped out of the bushes into the full glare of her torch. He wore a strange two-piece brown suit, half fastened up the front. His hair was matted with water and dirt, and a daft and slightly scary grin and mad eyes peered out through a mud face-pack. In one hand was something that looked like a metallic pencil. Candy realised that it must have been him that had been signalling to her, and that was his torch.
‘Ohhhh,’ the man said, raising his free hand. ‘Sorry! Not a good habit, that, creeping up on people. I don’t know my own stealth, that’s my problem.’
He paused and turned the volume control on his smile down from ‘manic’ to ‘friendly’. ‘Sorry,’ he said again.
‘Wh-who—’ began Candy.
‘Who am I?’ The mad grin returned, and Candy took a step back. The nutter slipped the torch into his pocket and stuck out a grimy hand. Candy glanced down at it, and so did he.
‘Oops, sorry,’ he apologised again, wiped the hand on his trousers and thrust it out towards her again, dirtier than ever. ‘I’m the Doctor.’
Candy just stared at him.
‘Ooooo-kaaaaay,’ said the man, dropping his hand and backing away slowly. ‘I think you’d be happier if I went and stood over here.’ And he took a dozen paces away from her – and squatted down, wincing a bit at the sogginess of the ground.
‘Where are you from?’ Candy found herself asking, watching his every move.
‘Me? Oh…’ The man seemed to consider the question for a moment. ‘Just about everywhere, really. Well, that is, apart from here. Not from here. Definitely not. Where exactly is here, by the way?’
‘The Slim Forest,’ Candy found herself saying.
‘Ah… the Slim Forest. I take it there’s a Not-So-Slim Forest around here somewhere then? And maybe a Rather Stocky Forest too? Or has that one been renamed the Big-Boned Forest?’
‘What?’
‘Sorry – oh, I’m doing it again, aren’t I? Sor—’
And then he shook his head as if in frustration at himself.
‘It’s just that I’ve lost a friend of mine – back in the swamp. And I’m just the teensiest bit eager to find her and make sure she’s safe.’
Oh, dear God! thought Candy. There’re two of them.
‘So you see,’ continued the man, ‘if you could tell me what planet I’m on, I might have some idea of what to expect out there. I mean, I could go through all that “Red sun… narrows it down; point nine Earth normal gravity… narrows it down” malarkey. But it really would be so much easier if you could—’
‘Sunday,’ Candy interrupted him. ‘It’s Sunday.’
He narrowed his eyes.
‘Sunday the planet?’
Candy nodded.
‘Ahhhh!’ said the man, springing alarmingly to his feet. ‘Never heard of it.’ In the ruby gloom, his shoulders sank. ‘Looks like it’s back to the elimination round, then. Where was I? Oh yes, gravity…’
‘How did you get here?’
The man seemed thrown by her sudden question.
‘To Sunday? Lovely name for a planet, by the way: the day you arrived? Thank goodness it wasn’t Friday – that would have just been silly. Well, my spaceship landed back there. On the edge of the swamp. Before I knew it… splosh!’ The words were tumbling out of him almost faster than Candy could keep up.
‘What about your friend?’
‘She was inside the ship. Still is, hopefully.’ The man paused, and even in the gloom, his eyes suddenly looked incredibly gentle. Incredibly fragile. ‘Please,’ he said softly. ‘I need help.’
Candy thought for a moment.
‘It’s too late now – too dark. If your ship’s fallen in the swamp, you’ll need some serious muscle to get it out.’
‘And this serious muscle… Is there some around here? I mean, apart from yourself.’ He looked her up and down. Candy found herself grinning.
‘We’ll have to go back to the settlement. Tell them. Let them decide.’
‘Ah… the settlement. That’ll be where the smoke’s coming from, will it? Well, it’s a plan,’ the Doctor agreed with a nod. He gestured ahead. ‘Ladies first,’ he smiled, and then grimaced. ‘Ooh, that was terribly sexist of me, wasn’t it?’ And before Candy could take a step, he pushed in front of her.
‘Age before beauty,’ he called over his shoulder as she set off after him. ‘Pot before kettle.’
Behind them, unseen in the darkness, a dozen pairs of eyes watched them go. The final shreds of twilight of the sun caught in them, like the dying embers of a fire, burning softly…
THREE
‘So,’ said the Doctor after a few minutes of plodding through the darkened forest, illuminated only by the shre
ds of red moonlight shining through gaps in the clouds. ‘Tell me about yourself. What’s your name?’
Candy looked sideways at him. He’d kept a few yards from her, clearly aware that she still felt uncomfortable about him.
‘Candice Kane,’ she said.
‘Nice to meet you, Candice Kane.’ This time he didn’t stick out his muddy hand for her to shake. Both of them were jammed firmly in his trouser pockets. ‘So how long have you been on Sunday, Candice?’
‘Almost a year,’ she said.
‘That long, eh? And how many of you are there?’
‘Fewer than 400 of us now,’ Candy replied, wondering why he was asking. Surely he must know about the flood.
‘This settlement,’ he went on, gesturing ahead of them. ‘Have a name?’
‘The old one was called Sunday City – this one’ll be the same, once we’ve got it up and running again.’
‘Human imagination,’ he said with a grin. ‘Never underestimate it. And what year is this?’ he asked, before suddenly apologising again. ‘I’m sounding like a tourist, aren’t I?’
‘What year?’ She looked at him sideways. ‘You’re not one of those New Julian weirdos that want to go messing with the calendar and everything, are you?’
‘Oh no,’ the Doctor replied confidently. ‘Just space travel, you know: relativity, time dilation. All that stuff.’
‘Right,’ Candy said slowly. ‘Well round here it’s the usual 2108.’
‘Ah… The First Wave,’ he said thoughtfully as if to himself. ‘Anyway,’ he added briskly, as if he didn’t want her thinking about what he’d said, ‘you said “up and running again”. Problems with the first one?’
Candy took a breath and, knowing that they still had another half-hour’s walk to go, told him the story.
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