Doctor Who: Terminus (14 page)

Contrary to Eirak’s hopes, Nyssa had been giving them a hard time.

She’d already made one attempt to run as they’d escorted her to the storeyard, and but for the fact that she turned into a blind alley between two fuel tanks, they’d have lost her. Sigurd cursed himself and kept a tight grip on her from then on. Some day soon Eirak might be selecting someone else to lose his Hydromel supply, and Sigurd didn’t want to be the next in line.

They had a procedure for tethering rebellious Lazars in the storeyard, although it was more often used for those who were dazed and liable to wander if not watched. Sigurd warned his companion to hold onto Nyssa as he set off the subsonic signal and then prepared the manacle that would lock her to the supporting strut until the Garm arrived. When he turned around, his companion was on the floor and Nyssa was running again.

She wasn’t at her best, but neither were they.

Sickness slowed her, and heavy armour slowed them.

The gap widened as she ran for the tarpaulin and ducked under. Almost immediately, Nyssa bounced back with the breath knocked out of her.

The Vanir with whom she’d collided helped them to bring her back, but for the moment she had no fight left. They lifted her and closed the self-adjusting pressure catch of the manacle around her wrist, and only then did Sigurd release his hold on her. Two bad moments like that were enough to ruin anybody’s day.

He signalled his thanks to the Vanir who had helped.

‘Who’s team are you on,’ he said, ‘Gylfi’s?’

The Vanir inclined his head in agreement, but further conversation was prevented as Sigurd’s companion called for their attention.

‘It’s Bor!’ he said. ‘The Garm found Bor!’

The Garm came striding from the Terminus with Bor held out before. They ran to the yellow line to receive him, and when the Garm had been relieved of the body he stepped back to wait.

Bor was lowered to the floor. ‘Most kind,’ he was mumbling, ‘most kind...’

‘The armour’s ruined,’ Sigurd’s companion observed. The Vanir who had arrived in time to help with the capture of Nyssa stayed well back.

Sigurd said, ‘We’d better get him to Eirak while he can still talk. Otherwise they’ll think we stole the best parts.’

Looking at Bor now, it was difficult to see why anybody should want his armour – but Sigurd was taking no chances. He undid Bor’s makeshift sling and they each got an arm around their shoulders to carry him away, feet dragging along the floor. ‘Stay and watch her,’ he said to the other Vanir as they passed, and a few seconds later they were gone.

The Garm was still waiting. The Vanir turned to Nyssa and said, ‘Let’s see that chain.’

He reached for the manacle. Nyssa tried to push him away with her free hand. It wasn’t what he was expecting. He took a surprised pace back, and then he quickly removed his radiation helmet.

‘It’s me, Nyssa!’ Olvir said.

When he’d realised what was happening he’d tried to follow and rescue her from the drone, but by that time she was already being handed over to the Vanir.

He’d dodged around corners twice to avoid Sigurd on his way to and from the collection of the Hydromel, and then when he’d arrived on the receiving platform it had been just in time to see the elevator dropping away. He’d followed it down by the stairs and catwalks, and stayed in the shadows as he tried to get some idea of how the Terminus was being run. His observations led him to the unattended equipment store, and there he’d been able to assemble for himself a disguise that would allow him to move around unchallenged.

The Garm was starting to move towards them.

‘You’d better make this fast,’ Nyssa said.

But it wasn’t going to be easy. The manacle had been closed by some kind of sprung clip. It would take a lot more strength to open it than Olvir could muster.

‘Don’t worry,’ he reassured her, ‘I’ll stop him.’ He took a couple of steps back, reaching under his Vanir cloak as he went. He brought out his burner and levelled it at the Garm. He set it for low heat and high energy, the brick-wall effect that came out in a single concentrated zap.

It might have been a paper cup full of water. The Garm didn’t even slow down. Olvir switched to a concentrated burn – humane impulses were all very well, but the situation was getting away from him – and tried again.

Nothing. He had to end the burn abruptly because the Garm was too close to Nyssa and she was at risk.

The thing must have had skin like a rock. It reached out and sprang the manacle in a single easy gesture, and then swept Nyssa off the ground before she could even react.

He was carrying her away, into the Terminus.

There was nothing that Olvir could do about it.

‘I’ll think of something else,’ he called after her.

At least, he would try.

‘Nothing,’ Turlough said as he threw the last of the switches. With a few inconsequential exceptions, none of them had any effect. They could lower the control room lights or boost the air-conditioning, but they could neither get out of the ship nor let others in.

Tegan said, ‘Everything’s routed through the automatic pilot.’

‘So we’re stuck here until that box decides to let us out?’

‘We don’t have any choice.’

‘I think we do,’ Turlough said, and Tegan sensed that he was finally getting around to explain what had been bothering him for some time. ‘I think there’s a way we can get back to the TARDIS.’

‘It would be more practical to find the Doctor.’

Turlough shook his head. ‘Not at all. It would be more practical to recreate the door we came through.

Wait here.’

He walked out of the control room with an obvious sense of purpose. Confused, Tegan watched him go.

Whatever was going through his mind, he didn’t seem ready to share it.

As soon as Turlough was certain that Tegan wasn’t following, he took the communication cube from his pocket. He was fairly sure that he couldn’t be overheard.

The Black Guardian came through immediately.

‘
You have not destroyed the Doctor
,’ the cube pulsed, the ferocity of its glow an accusation.

‘I haven’t found him yet.’

The cube gave an intense, spasmodic surge, showing a capability Turlough hadn’t been aware of. He tried to resist the wrenching pain that came with it, but he couldn’t prevent himself from crying out.

‘
Kill the Doctor
!’ the Black Guardian urged, and the agony stayed for several seconds longer. Turlough fought not to cry out again. Tegan might hear and come to see what was happening. If she did, and if his secret was uncovered, he knew what the cube’s next order would be.

‘I’ll do it,’ he gasped as the glow died and the pain receded. ‘I have a plan.’

‘
You have nothing.
’

‘I do. But I need to get back to the TARDIS.’

‘
Why
?’

‘Trust me,’ he pleaded, knowing that he had little chance, and it was then that he heard Tegan calling.

She must have heard something. Quickly, he went on,

‘How do I recreate the door?’

‘
Fail me again...
’ the Black Guardian said ominously, but Turlough did his best to put a confidence into his voice that he didn’t feel.

‘I won’t, I promise. But how do I get back?’

‘
You have skills, use them. Look beneath your feet.
’

Underfoot? What could he have seen under the floor that would give him a clue to the way back to the TARDIS? He tried to think through the stages which had led to the creation of the door: the breakup, the emergency programme set to home in on the distinctive radiation waveform of a passing ship...

Tegan was coming around the corner. He realised that he still had the communication cube in his hand, and he quickly pocketed it.

He thought he had an answer.

Tegan was looking puzzled. She’d been expecting to find him in some kind of trouble. ‘What are you doing?’ she said.

‘I need you to help me. We’ve got to find the place where the door to the TARDIS appeared, and then we’ve got to find a way of lifting one of the floor panels.’

‘But why?’

‘I’ll explain when we get there.’

The catwalks deep inside the Terminus were considerably different to those that had been added by the Vanir and by their immediate predecessors; these had been built for bodies with dimensions that were decidedly non-human. It wasn’t as difficult as the Doctor expected to find the lines that Bor had identified as power and control cables, because his tracks were fresh in the dust. It seemed that the Garm kept to his own areas, and they didn’t include anywhere above floor-level.

The lines and cables were colour-coded, and they ran parallel to the walk. Kari couldn’t understand why they were following – literally – in Bor’s footsteps at all.

‘But what’s the point?’ she said. ‘He’s crazy.’

‘Crazy to think he could make an effective radiation shield out of junk, yes,’ the Doctor conceded. ‘But he knew what he was talking about.’

‘I wish I did.’

‘They’re using a leaky containment drive as a kill-or-cure, that’s risky enough. If we don’t get out of here soon, we’ll glow in the dark for the rest of our lives.’

The Doctor was hardly exaggerating. With access to the facilities in the TARDIS, he was confident that he could reverse the effects of mild radiation contamination. It was a fairly simple case of rigging a low-power matter transmitter with a discriminating filter between the two ends. But when the contamination had been around for long enough to cause actual cell damage on a detectable scale, there was no way of reversing the process.

‘But you think there’s an even bigger danger than that?’ Kari said.

‘Bor seemed to think so. Follow these lines, and we’ll find out why.’

They carried Bor into the Vanir’s converted storage tank and laid him on one of the bunks. He was weak, and he was starting to become delirious again after a brief period of lucidity. Someone was sent to get Eirak, and Sigurd crouched by the bunk.

‘You hear me, old man?’ he said.

Bor stared at the ceiling. ‘Sigurd?’

‘Why did you do it? You knew you wouldn’t last.’

‘Worth a try... the pilot’s dead, you know.’

‘Which pilot?’

‘Pilot of the Terminus.’

Now he was definitely rambling. The Terminus hadn’t moved under its own power or anything else’s for generations. Sigurd said, ‘The pilot’s dead and long gone.’

‘Oh, no,’ Bor insisted, ‘he’s still there. But he’s going to fire up the engines, and they won’t take it.’

There was a noise from behind. Sigurd looked up to see Eirak on his way over from the door. He came and stood by the bunk, and glanced from one end to the other. ‘Where’s his helmet?’ he said making no attempt to lower his voice.

‘He didn’t have it.’

Eirak inspected Bor’s ruined armour critically. ‘Did he say why he went into the zone?’

Sigurd shook his head. ‘I can’t make sense of it.’

‘Well...’ Eirak straightened. ‘One less on the rosters.’

Seeing that the watch-commander was about to leave without further comment, Sigurd said, ‘But he needs Hydromel!’

The answer was harsh and direct. ‘There isn’t any to spare.’

‘But he’s dying!’

‘So why detain him?’ Eirak said curtly, and he walked away.

The Doctor and Kari had followed the control cables to their end; they led to the control chamber of the Terminus ship.

It wasn’t easy to get in. The floor and the ceiling had been built on a slope, so there was hardly enough headroom. A recess had been cut into the slope for the central control couch, and all of the controls and displays had been packed into the available space around this. It didn’t leave much space to move around.

Not that the pilot needed any. He was most definitely dead.

The suited body in the couch was half as big again as a man, its contorted alien face half-hidden by the tinted bubble of a pressure helmet. As the Doctor crouched and moved across for a closer look, he could make out only a few details by the lights of the live instrumentation. They gave the alien the look of the screaming skull design that had been painted on the outside of the Terminus ship’s hull.

It seemed all wrong. The place didn’t have the feeling of long-ago disaster that he’d been expecting.

Something had gone wrong – the dead pilot and the damaged reactor globe down in the engine section were evidence of that – but from what he could see around him, the Doctor would have guessed that all of this had happened only hours before. And that, of course, was impossible.

Kari seemed fascinated by the dim vision of horror that could be made out through the alien’s visor glass.

Squeezing himself between units for a closer look at a part of the console, the Doctor said, ‘Do you remember Bor telling us that one of the Terminus engines had exploded?’

‘Did he?’ Kari said, only half-aware.

‘Look at this panel.’ he pointed, and Kari had to shake herself to concentrate. The Doctor went on,

‘The Terminus was once capable of time travel.’

She stared. The layout meant nothing to her. She was combat section. She said, ‘So?’

‘To push a ship of this size through time would take an enormous amount of energy.’

‘What are you getting at?’

‘Think about what we’ve learned. The Terminus seems to be at the centre of the known universe.

Imagine the ship in flight. Suddenly the pilot finds that he has a vast amount of unstable reaction mass on board. What would you do?’

Kari didn’t have to think it over. ‘I’d jettison. It’s the only answer.’

‘And a perfectly normal procedure, under more conventional circumstances. Unfortunately, this pilot ejected his fuel into a void.’

‘And it exploded.’

‘Starting a chain reaction which led to Event One.’

It took a moment for Kari to grasp what was being said, but then her eyes widened in amazement. ‘The Big Bang?’ she said. ‘But why wasn’t the Terminus destroyed?’

‘As Bor said, it was protected. The pilot used a low-power time-hopper to jump the ship forward a few hours, leaving the unstable fuel behind to burn itself out. He obviously thought it would be a localised reaction and no danger to anybody. Unfortunately, the chain reaction just got bigger and bigger... the shockwave must have caught up with him and boosted the ship billions of years into the future.’