Doctor Who_ Terminus Part 8

It was time to check the liner, and to collect their consignment of Hydromel from the control room. It would be packed into a metal case that fitted into a slot in the automated unit by the windows. Any attempt to remove it before the brief period between disembarkation and stage-two sterlisation, and the locks would go on. They moved towards the liner, but their way was blocked.

One of the drones had managed to come up with another Lazar. It was still gripping her wrist as she stood there, wide-eyed and scared. She looked almost alert, but Valgard knew how deceptive appearances could be. The best way to keep your sanity in the Terminus was to forget that these things had ever been human. Then when the company's radiation-resistant trained mule took them off into the zone, you were safe from any worries about what lay ahead of them.

Now time was getting short. Valgard said that he'd take care of the Lazar if Sigurd went in to get the Hydromel. Sigurd agreed, and as he disappeared through the air-seal Valgard half-dragged and half-carried the girl across to the returned elevator there was no point in expecting a Lazar to understand you or manage for itself.

Inside the cage, Nyssa grabbed the bars to stop herself from falling. She felt as if she'd stumbled into somebody else's nightmare without knowing the aims of the plot or the story so far. Her new jailer entered after her and stood blocking the way out, but this seemed to be incidental he obviously didn't expect her to run anywhere, and for Nyssa's part she couldn't immediately think of anywhere to run.

He was wearing dark armour and a cloak, but for the moment he'd removed his helmet. He seemed weary, a gaunt and haggard man with thinning hair that hung almost to his shoulders. Nyssa took a deep breath and said, 'Where are you taking me?'

Valgard looked at her sharply. 'They don't usually speak,' he said.

There was a coldness in him that Nyssa didn't find encouraging, but she pressed herself to go on. 'I'm not one of the Lazars.'

'You should see yourself. The drones are programmed to recognise the symptoms, anyway.'

It took Nyssa a long moment to absorb this. She'd had no illusions about the dangers of infection, but to learn that it had already happened to her... It had arrived so fast. What kind of disease could it be? And why this was a fleeting thought that she was later to wish that she'd given more attention why didn't her new jailer seem worried by being so close to it?

She said, 'Are you doctors?'

'Doctors?' Valgard was bitterly amused. 'We're baggage-handlers. We just receive and pa.s.s on.'

'But I have to know what's happening to me.'

'You'll be given to the Garm,' Valgard told her in a tone which suggested she'd already used up more of his patience than she had a right to expect, 'and he'll take you into the forbidden zone. And that's the last that anybody here will see of you.' And then he half-turned away to watch the liner for Sigurd's reappearance.

Garm? Forbidden zone? Whatever lay ahead, it sounded grim. And her hand was starting to hurt. She held it up and saw a spot of blood lying as fat as a bead on her thumb. It must have happened as she'd tried to ease her breathing in the liner corridor. She'd felt the jab, but she only remembered it now.

Valgard was watching her out of the corner of his eye, and he was getting suspicious. He couldn't tell for sure whether or not she was trying to conceal something in her hand. He said, 'What are you doing?'

Nyssa turned to show him. 'I cut my thumb,' she said. 'Look.'

She put out her hand for Valgard to see, and he automatically leaned closer. It was then that she changed the gesture into a fast upward sweep with the heel of her hand that caught the Vanir on the point of the chin.

He staggered back, and Nyssa ran from the elevator.

The platform outside was small, and there were only two choices: a metal runged stairway that she could see over to one side and which probably served for access if the elevator wasn't working, and the liner itself.

Inside the liner were the Doctor and the TARDIS; it was really no choice at all.

In the doorway, she paused just long enough to take a look back. Valgard was emerging in pursuit, and he didn't look pleased. If she could keep her lead (and ignore the weakness that-was already beginning to pull her down) she could perhaps lose him in the complex of internal pa.s.sageways. She turned, and ran straight into Sigurd.

He caught her wrist easily, and held her fast. 'Come on,' he said. 'Valgard's not that that ugly.' ugly.'

Nyssa could only struggle weakly as she was taken into the elevator for the second time. Valgard was looking embarra.s.sed, and Sigurd said, 'Are you getting old?'

'No, just gullible.' Valgard glanced at the familiar metal case in Sigurd's free hand. 'Did you check through all the levels?'

'You're joking. If there's anybody left, the drones can flush them out.'

The cage door was closed, the interior switch was thrown. There was a lurch, and they started to descend. Within a few metres, Nyssa was getting her first real view of the Terminus.

They were dropping through a complex of catwalks that ran all around the open shaft. Nyssa's immediate impressions were of darkness, bare metal, oil, and steam, but then the steam cleared and she was looking out into an immense interior s.p.a.ce. It was like the inside of a gutted whale, or perhaps some bizarre parody of a cathedral under restoration. The best-lit areas were far below; elsewhere the lights were strung out and temporary-looking, and the presence of a large amount of what appeared to be scaffolding and tarpaulin sheeting only added to the makes.h.i.+ft effect.

Behind these layers of evidence of human activity was the dark presence of the Terminus itself, overpowering all attempts to create brightness, and making them small.

Nyssa was glad of the bars to hold onto. Something out there was being prepared, just for her.

'We can't have missed it,' the Doctor said, perplexed and frustrated. They'd covered their own part of the liner and had no success at all. The same was presumably true of Olvir and Nyssa, since they hadn't radioed.

Kari said, 'How about the other explanation?'

'What?'

'It's disappeared.'

But the Doctor shook his head. 'There was a book lying on the floor,' he explained. He couldn't know that the biotechnical text from the TARDIS's library was at that moment being flash-burned in the liner's incinerator along with a bagful of beads and several kilos of discarded bandages, all collected in the drones'

anti-litter campaign. 'It would still be...' The Doctor tailed off. In looking at the floor he'd seen something else, and he moved over to pick it up.

It was a piece of material, a part of Nyssa's skirt. In the bad light they'd almost missed it. 'There's blood,'

the Doctor said. 'Call Olvir. Quickly.'

Nyssa's first impression that the human activity in the Terminus was a recent overlay on some much older structure was confirmed when they reached the lowest level. The large tunnel structures that ran through the middle of the s.h.i.+p were original, as were the ma.s.sive fuel or liquid storage tanks that stood in rows on either side of these. The crudely cut doors which converted these tanks into rooms and the walkways that linked them, however, were obviously by some different hand. They'd been squeezed in wherever they'd fit, and the standard of workmans.h.i.+p was low.

Some of the tanks appeared to have been put to use as holding wards for the Lazars. Nyssa could see a few of the sick people, hardly more than bundles of bone and rag, waiting to be moved inside by the Vanir. The workforce showed no cruelty, but no tenderness, either. Valgard's description of them as baggage-handlers seemed to be as apt as any. They prodded and pushed where they had to, using their metal staffs as shepherds might. The Lazars, for their part, obeyed like sheep.

And I'm one of them, Nyssa thought. The thought didn't scare her as much as it should. She knew that it would get worse when the realisation hit her for sure.

Eirak watched the two Vanir unloading the girl.

Like all the others, he wore full armour for maximum protection out in the open areas of the Terminus.

When he moved towards Sigurd with his hand outstretched, there was no question about what he wanted. Sigurd handed over the Hydromel case.

Eirak hefted it expertly, testing its weight against his memory of countless earlier consignments.

'It's light,' he said.

Sigurd was taken aback. 'They can't cut us down again again,' he said.

'This stuff's expensive. They won't send us any more than the minimum.'

'We could all die, and they wouldn't even know it,'

Sigurd said bitterly.

'They'd know it,' Eirak a.s.sured him. 'They've got ways of knowing. Has anyone warned the Garm about Bor?'

This last question was mainly aimed at Valgard, but he stood with a tight grip on the arm of the last girl out of the shuttle and seemed to be making a point of ignoring his watch-commander. Sigurd said, 'I don't know. Why?'

'We'll need the body back for the armour. Valgard!'

So now Valgard couldn't help but turn and listen.

Eirak went on, 'It's your job. Sigurd can see to the girl.'

Valgard reluctantly released his grip, and Sigurd took over. 'It's just as well,' he said to Valgard in a lowered voice that wasn't entirely serious. 'She might take another crack at you.'

But it was impossible to make any kind of a private remark, not with helmet amplifications. 'What does that mean?' Eirak said sharply.

'Nothing,' Sigurd said, but the damage was done.

Eirak was needling him, Valgard was sure of it. He already had other duties, as Eirak well knew after all, he'd been the one who had a.s.signed them. Now in addition he had to go back to the storeyard, the very place where he'd seen Bor walk off into the zone, and there he had to call the Garm.

The storeyard was exactly what its name implied, an area where the leftovers and spare units of the builders'-yard junk that cluttered the Terminus had been heaped. It had been set up by whoever had carried out the conversion a long time before. In those days the boundary to the zone had been a lot further away, but it had since been redefined to run straight across the middle of the yard's open area. It was to this spot that they brought the Lazars when it was time for them to be taken into the zone. n.o.body visited the place otherwise from the radiation point of view it was too 'hot' to be comfortable for long unless it was to perform a periodic check on the zone monitoring gear, as he and Bor had been doing, or to call the Garm.

There was a switchbox bolted to one of the girder uprights near the edge of the zone. Valgard pa.s.sed his hand before the sensor plate and felt the gut-trembling hum of the subsonic signal as it went out. The Garm would be with him soon. It didn't have a choice.

The Garm was Terminus Incorporated's answer to the difficulties of deploying any kind of workforce in the zone. It wasn't that they had any moral hesitation over the matter. If the company thought that it could make the system pay, the Vanir would be ordered in and some strategy would be devised to force them to obey. But the fact was that it would be uneconomical: working just outside the hottest areas with their symptoms held in check by drug control, they could last for years; inside the zone they'd be dead within days.

It was for this reason that the Garm had been brought in. It was an animal from some planet where the background levels of radiation were naturally high, no doubt from some suicidal war somewhere in its past. The Garm was already adapted to zone-like conditions, and Terminus Incorporated technicians had gone in with their conditioning techniques and a spot of supporting surgery in order to get maximum compliance and obedience out of it.

It was a while before Valgard realised that he wasn't alone. For all its size, the Garm moved in silence. And it kept to the shadows even now Valgard could only just make out its ma.s.sive dog-headed outline and the dull red gleam of its eyes in the darkness.

'Garm!' he said. 'Can you hear me?'

The Garm inclined its head slightly.

'One of the Vanir's gone missing. He walked across into the zone. When you find his body you're to bring it back here, you understand?'

Again, the slight movement of a.s.sent.

Valgard lowered his voice a little. 'Apart from that, we've got more Lazars for you to move. Big surprise, eh?'

The Garm showed no response. Back in the early days they'd argued over whether the Garm had any intelligence or not, but the consensus had been that anything working in the zone without complaint and for no reward would even make Skeri look bright.

Skeri had been the first of the Vanir to take his own life. Looking back, perhaps he hadn't been so dumb.

Well, Valgard had a job to do. He turned and walked away.

Intelligent or not, there was something in the Garm's presence that had always made him uneasy. He was glad to leave.

'There,' the Doctor said, pointing, 'another drop of blood.'

Kari couldn't understand it. Nyssa had left an inadvertent trail and recently, too, from the look of it that diverged wildly from the pattern that had been laid down. Now they were being led down the stairs to the next deck of the liner. 'But why here?' she said. It didn't make any sense.

'Try them again,' the Doctor urged. Kari's first attempt with the radio had produced no response. She raised the handset and switched it on, but frowned at the pulsating interference she heard.

'There must be a radiation leak somewhere around here,' she said. 'It'll clear if we move.' She was about to switch off, but the Doctor seemed interested. He held out his hand for the radio, and she gave it to him. He waved it back and forth, using the interference as a crude means of detection.

'That's the wave pattern the TARDIS homed in on,'

the Doctor said. 'But it's weak...'

'Can't that wait?' Kari said, and the intuitive leap that the Doctor had been on the point of making had to be postponed.

'Yes, of course,' he said, and bent again to check the direction of the trail. Downward and outward it was starting to seem as if Nyssa had been making purposefully for the exit as it had been shown in the computer layout.

Some distance away, Tegan and Turlough were straining to listen.

'It's him,' Tegan said, 'I'm sure of it.'

Turlough frowned. The freak echo was too distorted for him to be sure. Misleading voices and wrong identification had already drawn them into one mess.

They had escaped the full effects of stage-one sterilisation by the coincidence of two near-disasters.

High-pressure fumigating gas had been pumped through the below-decks areas without warning, a choking yellow cloud that threatened to poison them if they breathed it and suffocate them if they didn't.

They'd been saved by the presence of a vent which funnelled the gas away instead of letting it stay around as a poison cloud. The vent was the hole through which Turlough had come close to falling.

Now they'd found an exit from the service core, but they were really no better off. They'd simply exchanged the crawls.p.a.ces for the ventilation system. As a means of getting around it ranked about equal; as a means of transmitting and distorting sound, it was full of surprises.

Back on the lower deck, the Doctor had stopped speaking. Kari looked at him to find out why, and then after a moment turned to see what had caught his attention.

Fog was boiling out of a side-corridor and spreading towards them.