Doctor Who: Terminus (17 page)

‘And if I fail?’

‘Don’t fail.’

The Garm positioned itself with a hand clamped over the handle and its back against the rear wall of the control room. It overshadowed the dead pilot, making him seem like some grotesque doll. First it tested the resistance of the control. Unsatisfied, it shifted position slightly. Then it threw all of its strength into a single, powered effort. There was a sound like old leather creaking, like bundles of cane being twisted together, and the Doctor quickly slid around in order to get to the contacts that were under the console surface.

There wouldn’t be any time for elaborate work, and even if there had been the Doctor lacked the necessary familiarity with the design. What he intended was a more precise version of what Bor had tried to do.

Bor’s mistake had been in trying to disconnect the controls when the process was already too far along to be reversed. First the main handle had to be returned

– which was why they needed the Garm – and then the contacts could be broken so that the engines could never again be returned to their dangerous state.

But the handle wasn’t moving.

The Garm seemed to have stopped its descent, but that was all. The Terminus was vibrating again, an earthquake that rippled through the floors and walls and echoed in all the open spaces. Stopping the handle just wasn’t enough.

‘You have to push harder,’ the Doctor said.

Without wavering, the Garm raised its head. Its bright eyes fixed on the Doctor. ‘It’s the only way,’ he said quietly, knowing that he was asking the Garm to go to the limits of its strength and beyond. He also knew of the savagely unfair advantage that possession of the subsonic control had given him.

‘Please,’ Kari said.

The Garm bent its head, and made another and greater effort.

The handle started to move.

It was slow at first, but then the Garm started to pour on the power and make the most of its success.

The Doctor waited as long as he dared and then started to pull out handfuls of wiring; he’d already chosen the areas that he wanted to disconnect, and he hoped that the flashing and the smoke from under the console wouldn’t make him miss anything.

‘That’s it!’ he said at last. The Garm had been holding the handle hard against its backstop. For a moment, it seemed unable to release itself from the strain. Then, with the suddenness of a collapsing fire, it fell back.

The handle didn’t move. They listened. The Terminus was still.

‘Have I served you well?’ The Garm was exhausted.

‘You certainly have,’ the Doctor told it.

‘Then do something for me.’

‘Name it.’

‘Destroy the box. Set me free.’

The Doctor didn’t even need to weigh the arguments for and against. He dropped the signal box onto the floor and stepped on it, hard. It made a satisfying crunching noise under his heel.

‘Rest,’ he told the Garm. ‘You’ve earned it.’ And then he glanced at a relieved-looking Kari and indicated that they should leave the control room.

‘Now what?’ she said on the approach walk outside.

‘We finish what Bor started. If we break the control lines, we’ll be making double-sure that this can’t happen again.’

But it wasn’t going to be so easy. They knew as much when they saw Valgard at the far end of the catwalk, grinning like a madman. Olvir’s burner was in his hands, and it was covering them.

‘Look,’ the Doctor said, ‘whoever you are, we haven’t got time for this.’ Kari said nothing; she was staring at the burner, wondering what its loss might imply for Olvir.

‘Just carry on down,’ Valgard said, and he used the muzzle of the burner to usher them towards the descent.

‘You’re taking a very narrow view of this,’ the Doctor told him as they reached the base level and moved over towards the main tunnel, but Valgard wasn’t impressed.

‘I want to stay alive,’ he said. ‘If that’s a narrow view, then you’re right.’

They moved down the broad walk with shadows all around. The overhead lights mapped out the way ahead, a series of isolated pools. The Doctor said, ‘And you’re happy to see things go on as they are?’

‘Happy?’ Valgard echoed bitterly. ‘This is the Terminus. Nobody’s happy here. Staying alive is all that counts.’

‘Things could change,’ the Doctor suggested, but he wasn’t too hopeful. All of Valgard’s mind was concentrated on his own survival, and he wasn’t open to any new ideas that didn’t appear to fit in.

It was over in seconds. There was a shout from somewhere in the darkness, Valgard spun around to cover himself against a possible attack, and Olvir rammed him squarely between the shoulders from behind. Valgard toppled like a broken statue, and the burner skidded out of his hands to land almost at Kari’s feet. She had it levelled in less than a second.

‘Just freeze,’ she told Valgard, and he abandoned any idea of resistance.

Olvir picked himself up, and Nyssa came forward out of the shadows. The Doctor’s relief and delight at seeing her safe was evident.

‘I’m fine,’ she assured him, ‘but listen. I’ve discovered something. They’re using crude radiation to cure the Lazar disease.’

‘I suspected something like it.’

‘But the system they use is nearly as dangerous.

There’s got to be some way of making the Terminus company understand.’

‘You’ve thought of a better way?’

‘Ask the Garm. He’s used to handling radiation, but they just treat him like a slave. You know he can’t do anything of his own free will?’

The Doctor was about to tell her that the Garm had been released from the influence of the subsonic generator, but Valgard beat him to it.

‘She’s sick,’ he said. ‘She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.’

Nyssa turned to him, making her point with such force that he flinched. ‘With changes the Terminus could work,’ she insisted. ‘It could be a decent hospital.’

Valgard shook his head, wearied by what he considered to be her excessive optimism. ‘The company isn’t interested.’

‘No? And what about you? What about the other Vanir?’

‘That doesn’t make any difference. We can’t do anything without Hydromel, and the company controls the supply.’

‘But if you could get it from somewhere else, you’d be free of their control, wouldn’t you?’

Valgard stared, awe mixing with a tiny dash of hope. She means it! he thought.

Bor would swing from one extreme to the other. A moment ago he had been incoherent, but now he was lucid.

‘Am I dead yet?’ he said. He sounded puzzled.

Sigurd returned to his side, a half-filled cup of water in his hand in case Bor should need it. ‘No,’ he said.

‘Funny. I could have sworn...’ Whatever he was going to say, Bor put it from his mind and brightened up a little. ‘Still, it’s a relief. I’m hoping for something rather better on the other side.’ He frowned. ‘Sigurd?’

‘Try to sleep.’

‘Sleep! It’s all I can do to... stay awake for more than a minute...’

Sigurd stood, and looked down at Bor with sad compassion. This will be the end of us all, he was thinking. Thank you, Terminus Incorporated. Thanks for nothing.

There was movement on the other side of the curtain, people entering the tank. Probably Eirak and the others taking a shift break. Sigurd went through, and came face to face with Valgard.

He motioned to Sigurd to be quiet. He was slightly flushed and his eyes were like flinty points, certain signs of a Hydromel high. He said, ‘I’ve got some people with me.’

Sigurd watched, bewildered, as a line of strangers came trooping into the converted tank. The Doctor was first in line, and he went straight to the Hydromel case. Nyssa, Kari and Olvir gathered around him. ‘I assume this is it,’ he said.

‘Now, wait a minute,’ Sigurd said, pushing his way through the group, but Valgard’s hand landed on his shoulder and held him back. The Doctor was already crouching for a closer look at the trembler alarms.

‘They say they can free us from the company,’

Valgard told him.

‘You believe that?’

‘You know anybody harder to convince?’

The chains were already off, the alarms disabled.

‘Burner, please,’ the Doctor said, and Olvir,handed the weapon over.

Sigurd said. ‘If this is just some madcap scheme for getting back at Eirak...’

The lock of the Hydromel case was vaporised in a moment, and the Doctor lifted the lid. He removed a phial and handed it to Nyssa.

‘You’re the expert,’ he said. ‘What do you think?’

She inspected it against the light, and then twisted off the glass seal and gave a cautious sniff. As she was doing this, the Doctor turned to Kari and said in a low voice, ‘While we’re sorting things out here, perhaps the two of you would like to go back and finish Bor’s work on the control lines.’

Kari nodded, Olvir retrieved his burner, and the two of them left in silence. Nyssa, meanwhile, had completed her brief inspection of the Hydromel.

‘It’s crude stuff,’ she said. ‘Probably organic.’

‘Can you synthesise it?’ the Doctor asked.

‘I can probably improve on it.’

Sigurd still wasn’t convinced, and he was determined not to be ignored. He said, ‘How’s this supposed to free us from the company?’

Nyssa explained it patiently, as if to a child.

‘Terminus Incorporated only control you because they supply you with Hydromel. But if you produced your own...’

‘Here on the Terminus,’ Valgard added, and Sigurd suddenly grasped the idea.

‘Is it possible?’ he said.

Nyssa gave him a pained look, as if he was doubting her abilities. ‘Of course. The company won’t be able to do a thing about it. Who’s going to risk coming here to argue?’

There was a groan from Bor, over on the other side of the tank. Sigurd glanced over, and then he grabbed one of the Hydromel phials from the case. ‘I’m with you,’ he said, and then he hurried over to attend to Bor.

Eirak had been a little perturbed by the shudders that had gone through the frame of the Terminus ship, but he’d thought them nothing new. Some of the liner dockings could be clumsy and rough, and would produce the same effect, and the same must be true of some of the so-called ‘clean boats’. Nobody amongst the Vanir knew what happened to the Lazars once the Garm had taken them away, but it seemed a safe assumption that an infection-free shuttle must dock at some other point to take away the cured... or the dead.

No, Terminus-quakes were nothing new. These were bigger than most, but Eirak was distracted by another preoccupation – the disappearance of the subsonic generator.

‘I want it found,’ he was saying yet again as he entered the headquarters tank, and a couple of the Vanir trailed along behind in the hope that he might be able to give them some practical suggestion on how to go about this. ‘Without it, there’s not a thing we can...’ He tailed off as he saw Valgard.

‘Pleased to see me?’ Valgard said. ‘I want you to meet some people.’

The Doctor and Nyssa nodded amiably. They stood one to each side of the Hydromel container. Eirak could see that it was open.

‘All right, Valgard,’ he said. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

‘I think you owe me something,’ Valgard said, and as he spoke Sigurd and Bor emerged from the bunkhouse section of the tank. Bor was sick-looking, but with the Hydromel’s help he could stand. He had a blanket wrapped around his shoulders.

Sigurd said, ‘We’d like to talk about the small matter of your position here.’

‘“Bring back the intruders”’, Valgard quoted, ‘“and my position is yours.” Remember?’ He gestured towards the Doctor and Nyssa. ‘Here they are.’

Bor said, ‘We all think it’s time for a little chat.’

Eirak looked from one to another, all around the room. He was beaten, and he was starting to perceive it. The Doctor said, ‘Before you start, perhaps one of you could show us the way back to the liner. There’s still a lot to be done.’

The workload that the Doctor had in mind included effective decontamination of both the TARDIS and its occupants, and repair of the damage that had projected them into this situation in the first place.

When this had been carried out, the Doctor intended to leave the decontamination gear for the Vanir to use.

There was no way that he could reverse the radiation damage that they’d already suffered, but at least he could slow its effects.

Olvir and Kari had already made their own plans.

They were going to take the next ‘clean boat’ out and start a search for the Chief.

‘Nobody ditches us and gets away with it,’ Kari said.

There was one other issue to be resolved. But the Doctor knew that it wasn’t in his hands.

He and Nyssa were taken to the docking platform by Valgard. The liner’s door was still sealed, but Valgard took a complex metal shape from under his cloak and placed it on the outer skin alongside the air-seal.

‘It’ll be a relief to see the TARDIS again,’ the Doctor said.

‘And Tegan,’ Nyssa added. A flicker of doubt showed in the Doctor’s eyes. Through all of the trouble they’d experienced since their arrival, he’d at least been able to console himself with the thought that two of his companions were safely outside the danger area.

But why couldn’t he feel confident?

The door raised itself automatically, and Tegan stood before them.

She looked a mess. Her clothes were torn and she was smeared with dirt and grease from head to foot.

There were streaks across her forehead where she’d tried to wipe sweat away with an oily hand.

The Doctor’s worst fears had been realised. ‘What are you doing?’ he said, and he was obviously annoyed.

‘I was trying to reach you,’ Tegan said, scrambling to get her ideas together. One moment she’d been looking for a way of opening an impossible door, the next moment it had opened. ‘Turlough went back to the TARDIS on his own.’

‘I told you not to follow me.’

‘Doctor,’ Nyssa urged, trying to be conciliatory, ‘Say you’re pleased to see her.’

‘I
am
pleased to see her,’ the Doctor snapped, sounding quite the opposite. ‘But she shouldn’t have tried to follow us.’