But there was no one to listen; the Stranger had all but disappeared. The last thing the Doctor saw was him tipping his ridiculous straw hat, and then he was gone. "And I was rather hoping I was going to improve with age," muttered the Doctor dismissively.
The blue sky had gone now to be replaced by a representation of the controlling computer system: a 3-D image of the processing intelligence that operated the cryogenic systems. It was totally shut down, security measures had been activated, and the Doctor found himself under attack by defensive bolts of pure energy being unleashed by the CPU. He grabbed a pa.s.sing byte and hitched a ride. The defensive strikes bounced off the byte and the Doctor redirected it to a cache where he was able to use some stray data to construct an ID for himself. Now he was able to approach the CPU himself where he played a logic game with the firewall and, after a little processing time, defeated it.
In the real world, the Doctor yanked off the helmet and brushed the sweat from his brow. He really was very hot, he discovered. He found Tam and Freedom looking at him with concerned expressions.
"There, that should do it," he said with a smile. "Sorry about the delay. I just, er, confused myself a little. Took a little longer than I expected."
"Longer!" echoed Dee. "You"ve been in there three hours. We were beginning to get worried."
The Doctor bounded up from the seat. "Well, no harm done.
All systems ship-shape. Let"s get on, shall we?" he said, hurrying across to a console and flicking some switches with a new authority.
There was a mechanical noise and something began to move in the main cryogenic chamber. Through the gla.s.s panel, the three of them watched as a metal frame moved on a series of horizontal and vertical rails in search of a particular colonist. Soon it located the subject and the frame was projected forwards around the cryogenic coffin. Locks slid into place, and when the frame moved backwards it now contained the selected cabinet. Slowly the frame moved back towards the ground level and then twisted so that what had been an upright box was now a horizontal one. A robot droid on tank-like tracks rolled up to carry the coffin on to the next stage in its journey. A panel in the gla.s.s door slid up, releasing a blast of ice-cold air into the control room, and the robot emerged with the cabinet, which it placed, with a considerable degree of care, on to one of the recovery beds.
The robot retreated into the storage area and the door slid shut behind it. Freedom, Dee and the Doctor gathered round the coffin. The gla.s.s lid was frosted and the Doctor wiped at it with the sleeve of his jacket. Inside the box they could just make out the still, pale outline of a human figure.
"Now what?" asked Freedom.
The Doctor found a chair and sat on it cross-legged, letting the chair swivel on its single leg. He looked like a pixie. "Now we wait," he explained.
Veena was getting a bit fed up with waiting. All her experience suggested that the exciting stuff tended to happen during visits to planets rather than during the tedium of deep s.p.a.ce travel, so she was particularly frustrated by the slow pace of events on Axista Four.
Marines from the ECSV were searching an ever-increasing area, looking for the people responsible for the attack on the Plymouth Hope medical facility. Cartor was skulking about playing his cards close to his chest and she was stuck playing nursemaid to the strange girl who had appeared on the colony planet shortly before their own arrival.
Veena looked through the plastiglas observation window into the room where Zoe had been placed after her operation.
According to the readouts, she was sleeping unaided, her recovery expectation at a high ninety-three per cent and rising, the viral infection she"d picked up on the planet all but ejected from her system. But there was little danger of her recovering consciousness quite yet. Veena decided to seek out her commanding officer and get some answers to the many questions that were running around her head.
She found Cartor in his ready room, the compact office s.p.a.ce that could be reached directly from the bridge. He was busy with something, concentrating on some readings on his desk as the ship"s sensors patiently scanned the planet below. Veena knocked and, when he finally grunted a command, entered.
After a moment"s silence she decided to risk his anger and make an enquiry.
"Are you searching for something in particular, sir?" she asked casually, as if enquiring whether he"d lost a sock recently.
"Perhaps," answered Cartor without looking up from the readout on his desk. He made a note of something on his datapad, the input pen issuing a small whine of complaint as he did. He really should get that checked out, thought Veena, but she knew better than to suggest it. The datapad and the captain went back a long way and he was superst.i.tious about it; he was prepared to put up with its idiosyncrasies if it meant he could hang on to it. He wasn"t prepared to let anyone else near it, not even to fix its faults. So Veena and anyone else in earshot had to put up with its annoying scratching sound. She imagined it must have been similar for the ancients having their words of wisdom scratched into stone.
Feeling bold, or perhaps just p.i.s.sed off enough by the noise of his input pen not to care what mood he was in, Veena pressed on with more questions.
"Is there anything I don"t know about this planet, sir?
Cartor glanced at her, grinned and then looked back at the data.
"I don"t know, Lieutenant," he replied. "That really depends on what you do do know." know."
Veena decided to be more direct. "Are the colonists and our people the only life on the planet? Or is there something else down there?"
"What had you in mind, Myles?" Cartor retorted. Giant desert worms? A sentient sea? A hidden Dalek army?"
Veena bristled. "Frontier myths? Of course not. But there is something going on here, something real, not imaginary, isn"t there? Is that why the Federation Administrator is here?"
Cartor regarded her steadily. "That is cla.s.sified information," he told her coolly. "But since you ask, I"ll tell you this much."
"I agree with the Doctor. I don"t think a human was responsible for that attack."
"So what was?" demanded Veena, reasonably.
"That, of course, is the sixty-four-thousand-credit question..." Cartor was smiling again, but without warmth.
"What indeed?"
Dee couldn"t put her finger on the exact point when everything changed; it was more gradual. The excitement of getting into the cryogenic chamber, and activating the ancient equipment, slowly evaporated to be replaced by an underlying tension, even fear. As she monitored the life signs, rising in strength on the readout before her, she became more aware of what it was that they were doing.
If everything worked as it should, they were shortly to be joined by Kirann Ransom herself. A woman who had been there when this project had first been announced. A woman who had been intimately involved in selecting and preparing the original group of colonists. A woman who had once been a contemporary of Dee"s own great-grandparents but who would now awake apparently the same age as Dee. She felt an overwhelming sense of responsibility and glanced over at the Doctor. What if the stranger was wrong about all this?
As the cryogenic system shut down the casket began to warm up. The exterior frosting had already melted away and it was now possible to see the features of the sleeping woman inside. She looked peaceful and at rest but strangely absent; the same way a dead body looked. Dee swallowed hard, worried that she might be brain damaged or something. She pulled her eyes back to the readouts and was momentarily relieved - all seemed well. But then, right before her eyes, something began to go wrong. The levels of the various readings began to drop. A red light began to flash beneath the panel she was studying.
"Doctor," she called urgently but Freedom and the Doctor (who had been looking around at some of the other equipment) had already heard the urgent bleeping of the alarm.
"She"s losing vital signs," Dee told them, directing them towards the readouts.
The Doctor quickly took in all the details and then scurried across to the cabinet. He began searching for the release catch but it was eluding him.
"Help me get this open," he cried to Freedom.
Freedom went to the other side of the casket and made a quick search with his hand, running it along the length of the lid. There was a click and the curved gla.s.s suddenly popped up. The Doctor pulled it right over, letting it dangle down the side of the casket and hurried round to look at the girl. He held her wrist and felt for a pulse.
"Oh my," he exclaimed, "we"re losing her.
The machines suddenly emitted a loud, flat tone. On the readout screens what had been erratic jagged lines were now flat and steady. Too steady.
"Her heart"s stopped," Dee translated. "Do something!"
The Doctor scrambled on to the casket, straddling the woman, and began to give CPR, pressing his hands down on her ribcage and counting. Dee continued to look at the screens but they still showed the same flat lines.
"It"s not working," Freedom told the Doctor. "She"s dead!"
EPISODE FOUR.
Chapter Ten.
Dee looked on in horror; this was the one thing they had always feared. Again and again the colony had discussed trying to rouse the sleepers, always aware that for true viability the group needed to be larger, but each time cowardice had won out. The arguments were simple: while they were asleep they were still alive and the possibility of a revival, at some unspecified time in the future, was a reality; but if they made an attempt to wake the sleepers and it went wrong, they would be committing murder and there would be no way back, no get-out clause. No wonder, then, that year after year the suggestion had been quashed. Until today.
Until us, thought Dee. And now we"ve gone and killed Kirann Ransom, the last, best hope we had.
The Doctor, however, had not given up hope; he was tearing around the room looking for something, anything that might still save the day.
"We have to restart her heart," explained the Doctor. "Can you find me a defibrillator?"
Dee and Freedom looked blank. The Doctor felt foolish - of course they wouldn"t have anything like that, would they?
Back to Basics and all that. Make do with what you"ve got, that was the Plymouth Hope way. But that wasn"t going to help Kirann Ransom, though, was it? All he needed was a shock to get the heart going. and all that. Make do with what you"ve got, that was the Plymouth Hope way. But that wasn"t going to help Kirann Ransom, though, was it? All he needed was a shock to get the heart going.
The Doctor let out a cry: Of course!" Freedom and Dee exchanged worried looks as the Doctor jumped off his patient and went in search of his jacket. He started going through his pockets, pulling out an impossible collection of objects: a half-eaten apple, a catapult, a bicycle bell, a couple of spotted handkerchiefs both with knots tied in the corner, a tennis ball, a pair of binoculars, a bundle of King William 10-Euro notes, a Betamax video ca.s.sette marked Hanc.o.c.k"s Half Hanc.o.c.k"s Half Hour Hour and a handful of sweet wrappers, until finally he produced what he was looking for. Dee thought it was some kind of electronic toothbrush with a concealed head; Freedom guessed that it was a tool but it was like no other tool he had ever seen. and a handful of sweet wrappers, until finally he produced what he was looking for. Dee thought it was some kind of electronic toothbrush with a concealed head; Freedom guessed that it was a tool but it was like no other tool he had ever seen.
The Doctor was making adjustments to it, his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth as he concentrated hard, as if trying to thread a needle. "This is going to be very tricky. Too little charge and we"ll have no effect at all, too much and we will definitely kill her..."
Dee glanced back at the telltale vital signs. "Doctor, hurry,"
she said, worried by the time that had pa.s.sed since Kirann"s last heartbeat.
Without any further words the Doctor hurried over to his patient, the bizarre tool held in his hand. He reached over the woman"s chest, as close to the heart as he could judge.
"Clear," he commanded, although neither Freedom nor Dee was anywhere near the cabinet. The Doctor activated the device and the body of Kirann Ransom twitched as if pulled by an invisible puppet-master. Dee checked the screens - still flat-lining. The Doctor pressed the tiny stud a second time.
Again Kirann"s body twitched.
"Oh dear, oh dear," muttered the Doctor agitatedly.
Dee was still shaking her head. The Doctor thumbed the control - do or die time. This time the body nearly fell out of the cabinet but at the same moment the jagged line of the heartbeat monitor reactivated.
All eyes were on the monitor as the steady "blip-blip" of a regular heartbeat re-established itself. The Doctor let out a huge sigh and Dee realised that she too had been holding her breath.
"Is she going to be okay?" she asked.
The Doctor was examining his patient. The girl in the cabinet was beginning to take on a more normal hue: her skin getting less grey by the second. And then her eyelids began to flutter.
The Doctor returned to the readouts, checking that the system was intravenously feeding the correct blend of stimulants into the waking woman. All seemed to be going right; nevertheless, the Doctor felt it necessary to cross his fingers behind his back before he answered Dee"s question.
"Yes," he said finally. "I rather think she is..." Freedom and Dee exchanged excited looks.
"It"s amazing," said Dee. "It"s as if Kirann Ransom was a time traveller, stepping out of the last century into today."
The Doctor smiled, amused by the thought. "Yes, I suppose she is in a way. I do hope she likes it here..." he added.
Jamie and Billy Joe were examining every inch of the building they had been locked in. It had three rooms, all plainly furnished, but no other external doors. Billy Joe looked deeply unhappy. Used to the openness of life in Plymouth Hope, he was finding the experience of being locked up rather claustrophobic. Jamie, of course, was an old hand at being locked up in places, but this didn"t diminish his eagerness to get out.
"I can"t believe they"re treating us like this," complained Billy Joe, as they continued their search for some alternative exit.
"The Realists not quite what you were expecting, eh?" asked Jamie.
Billy Joe nodded sadly. "I thought they were misunderstood. Despite what happened with my dad. But maybe it was me that was getting it all wrong. I should have listened to what people said..."
"What happened to your father?" Jamie asked.
Billy Joe sighed and sat down. "He died," he said simply. "He had a row with my grandpa about something and went off to the wreck. It was just a few weeks after the Big Split. And that"s when the Realists made their first big raid. My dad got caught up in the middle. I"ve always blamed Grandpa - you know? If he hadn"t rowed with Dad he might never have been there... but now -" Billy Joe looked away, but not before Jamie had seen the tears on his face. "I guess everyone was right. The Realists killed my father."
Jamie wasn"t sure what he should say.
"We need to get you back to your grandfather," he said finally.
Billy Joe nodded and sniffed, wiping his face on his sleeve.
"Come on, then," he said, getting to his feet. Suddenly he stopped and looked up. Jamie stopped too, wondering what he had seen. "If we can"t get out through the walls, maybe we can get out through the roof," Billy Joe speculated. "Let me get on your shoulders."
Zoe opened her eyes cautiously and sniffed suspiciously at the air. It was clean, oxygen-rich but ever so slightly stale; a sure sign that it was a heavily recycled atmosphere in a closed system. A s.p.a.ce station or a s.p.a.ceship, she guessed.
She felt better and flexed her leg muscles experimentally. The bruises she"d gained in her desperate rush to find a hiding place appeared to have healed. Impressive.
She sat up and looked around the room. It was, she suspected, a standard recovery suite in a fairly high-tech medical facility. Similar to, but slightly more advanced than, the level of technology she had seen in the crashed ship where they had landed. The thought of the TARDIS gave her a warm glow - funny how something so strange and alien could have become such a familiar home - but then she immediately thought about the Doctor and Jamie and the moment pa.s.sed to be replaced by a general anxiety. Where were they? Where was she, come to that?
She swung her legs out of bed and stood, a little gingerly, not quite able to believe that she was back to full health. Her legs seemed to take her weight without any trouble, however, and she quickly crossed the room and found her clothes in a locker. Dressed in her silver-foil catsuit, she felt more herself.
She waited for a moment to see if her activity had been noticed but when no one came looking she concluded that any surveillance equipment was faulty or inactive. She checked the door and was delighted that it opened when she pressed the control. Zoe stepped out into the corridor to explore.
The s.p.a.ceship was huge, she soon discovered, but fairly spa.r.s.ely populated. The few members of the crew that she did come across were wearing Earth Federation Military uniforms but there must have been non-military personnel on board because no one gave a second glance to Zoe"s idiosyncratic garb.
Administrator Greene splashed some water on his face and stood up. He was in the cabin Cartor had a.s.signed to him, having just enjoyed a short power-nap. The stress on his body of frequent bouts of suspended animation gave him a tendency to tire easily but, now refreshed, he was ready to return to the matter in hand. He wanted to see whether the mysterious young woman had recovered consciousness; he had some questions for her.
He had sent a report to his superiors about the unexpected complications that he had found on Axista Four, in particular the mysterious man who called himself "The Doctor". The result had been spectacular to say the least. On a direct video link, that had been so multi-rerouted that the image was barely discernible as a human face, Executive Officer Wilhems had given him a specific warning. The man codenamed "The Doctor" was a known agent, an independent operator who had a ma.s.sive file dating back centuries. There were many conflicting views as to his appearance, suggesting that the name was really some kind of rank or honorific t.i.tle handed down the generations, an explanation that made the fact that there were records of him from as early as the twenty-first century a little bit more palatable. Whoever the individual behind the name was, however, Earth Gov considered him a Cla.s.s A Interloper. And Greene had one of his travelling companions aboard this ship. Which struck him as an advantage that he should use.
When he reached the Medical Centre, however, he was disappointed. The girl, Zoe, was no longer there. Furious, Greene was about to hit an alarm signal and put the entire crew on alert but then he had a second thought. It would be much easier to locate and capture a fugitive who wasn"t aware that anyone was looking for her. Pulling his hand away from the intercom, he turned on his heels and set off to locate Major Cartor. Officially he was only here as an observer, alter all; Cartor was meant to be the one getting his hands dirty. This way might take longer but it would be more efficient in the end. And he had the time, didn"t he? Where was she likely to go?
Zoe was frustrated. The computer console that she had found was resolutely resisting her attempts to access it. She"d tried everything but it was clear that there was some kind of bio-security device locking it: a retina-scan or pheromone-recognition system. Despite her natural talent with computers and data systems Zoe just couldn"t get in.
There had to be a way; some kind of back door, she thought. It was annoying because a quick ferret around the ship"s computer systems might be really useful. For a start it might give her the edge she needed to locate the Doctor. Zoe pushed herself away from the console that she had been trying to hack into and slipped off the chair. She"d have to find something else.
The girl blinked and then coughed roughly.
"Here, take a sip," suggested the Doctor, raising a plastic bottle of water to her lips.
Kirann opened her mouth and took a drink. First a little sip, and then a little more, then she took the bottle from the Doctor"s hands and finished it all.
"Thank you," she said, wiping her mouth with her sleeve.
"What time is it?"
Freedom and Dee looked at each other. Had she suffered brain damage in the Deep Sleep?
"I think you mean what year is it, don"t you?" said the Doctor gently.
"You know what I meant," snapped the woman, a little more iron in her voice. Freedom stepped forward. "It"s the year two thousand five hundred and thirty four. You"re on the wreck of your father"s colony ship on the surface of the planet Axista Four. My name is Val Freedom, this is Dee Willoughby, and that is the Doctor who was responsible for reviving you today," he told her quickly.