"Don"t tell me," groaned Stoker. "It"s a tomb. We"re trespa.s.sing on the ancient burial sites of Akoshemon. Any second now we"ll be cursed for eternity."
"It"s not a tomb," said the Doctor. It"s a table."
The anticlimax was almost physical; Stoker felt herself shudder with relief.
"It"s thick with dust, too," added the Doctor, drawing a line across the table top with one finger. "Someone"s been neglecting the housework."
"And look over here," said Bunny. "A chair."
"This is hopeless," complained Tegan. "We need some proper lighting down here."
"First sensible suggestion I"ve heard all evening," Stoker grumbled.
"You"re right," said Bunny. "I"ll go and organise some lamps."
"I"ll come with you," said Nyssa. Her voice sounded strained.
"Nyssa? Are you all right?" asked Tegan.
"I don"t know. I don"t feel very well..."
"Doctor?" Tegan sounded unsure.
"Go with her, Tegan," ordered the Doctor. "She"s still recovering from the explosion. Stoker and I will carry on down here."
"Righto, Doctor."
As Tegan and Nyssa headed for the dim rectangle of the entrance, Stoker shivered. The temperature seemed to have dropped suddenly, and she wasn"t sure she entirely liked the way this was going. Somehow the Doctor had taken charge, and it rankled. The truth was she found all this creeping around in the dark very disturbing. She could feel the primal anxiety of not being able to see properly building up to panic.
But panic was something she refused refused to do. to do.
"Over here," said the Doctor. "I think I"ve found another chair. Only this one"s on its side."
Stoker gritted her teeth. "Do we have to skulk around in the dark like this? Can"t we just wait for Bunny to come back with some decent lights?" Too late, she realised that she had asked the Doctor for guidance and, in doing so, placed him fully in control.
She heard a metallic sc.r.a.pe as the Doctor righted his chair. "You can go back if you want," he said. "I"m staying here."
Alone, she thought. "Aren"t you frightened?" she thought. "Aren"t you frightened?"
"Not until I find something to be frightened of, no." Stoker found his dry, confident voice strangely rea.s.suring. "At the moment," he continued, "all we"ve got is a room, a large table and a couple of chairs. Not quite the Hammer House of Horror, is it?"
Tegan had led Nyssa out into the antechamber at the foot of the stairs. Jim and Nik were waiting in the semi-darkness, talking to Bunny Cheung.
"What did you find?" asked Jim.
"So far, a table and some chairs," said Bunny.
"This could be the find of the century."
"I"ll get onto the major news networks straight away," said Nik.
"Oh belt up, the pair of you. Come and help me find some spare lamps."
"Can someone help me, please?" said Tegan. "My friend"s sick."
They took Nyssa back up into the main cavern and sat her down on a packing crate. The heat generator was still throwing out its merry red light, and Nyssa huddled closer to it, shivering. Jim found her a blanket and draped it over her shoulders before going off for the lamps.
"How are you feeling now?" asked Tegan.
"Better," said Nyssa. She a.s.sumed that she was suffering from shock, a delayed reaction of some kind to the explosion.
"I just needed a little air, I think."
"It was pretty stuffy down there."
"You"d best get back to the Doctor," Nyssa said. "You know the sort of trouble he"ll get into if someone doesn"t keep an eye on him."
"You"re sure?"
"Of course."
"I don"t know, Nyssa. You still look a bit wobbly if you ask me."
"Please, I don"t want to be a nuisance. I just need to sit for a while."
"Do not concern yourself," said a soft voice. They looked up to see Vega Jaal standing there. "I shall sit with your friend, if she will permit me."
Nyssa smiled weakly. "That"s kind of you."
"OK," said Tegan, getting up. "Thanks. I"ll go and help Bunny and the others"
Vega Jaal watched her go, and then sat down next to Nyssa. "We are kin, you and I."
Nyssa frowned. "We are?"
"We are both more sensitive than these humans."
Nyssa pulled the blanket tighter. "I"ve never really thought about it."
"You don"t need to think about it," Jaal said. "You can feel it."
But Nyssa did think about it. It was what she was trained to do, after all, as a scientist. "Down there, I felt cold... but cold inside. inside. Somewhere inside my head. As if I could sense a great void on the edge of the darkness, something I couldn"t quite see but I Somewhere inside my head. As if I could sense a great void on the edge of the darkness, something I couldn"t quite see but I knew knew was there. Like the emptiness of s.p.a.ce, all around us. Oh, I"m not making any sense." was there. Like the emptiness of s.p.a.ce, all around us. Oh, I"m not making any sense."
"It doesn"t matter," said Jaal. "Sense and reason are secondary to the things we feel."
Nyssa was confused. She was doing her best to a.n.a.lyse all this, to apply a logical thought process to her feelings. But all she could sense were the phantoms of oppression and doom, like the memory of a nightmare. "What"s going to happen to us here?"
Vega Jaal shrugged. "Soon, I will have to go down there too, and feel the coldness you have felt."
At that moment, Nyssa couldn"t imagine anything more awful. "Why?"
"Because," and here Vega Jaal smiled gently, "your friend the Doctor will ask me to."
Tegan found Bunny Cheung in the comms area. He was replaying the holographic message from his daughter.
"...Kooka"s arm needs fixing again. It"s come right off this time." time." Bunny smiled sadly and flexed his hand. The image of Rosie froze midsentence, Bunny smiled sadly and flexed his hand. The image of Rosie froze midsentence, "So long as you fix him as soon as "So long as you fix him as soon as you come -" you come -"
"Are you OK?" Tegan asked quietly.
This time he didn"t jump. He just wiped one ma.s.sive hand down his face and beard, as if to clear his mind. "Still a long way from home," he said.
"This business is going to delay things even more, isn"t it?"
"I should say so."
"We"d best get a move on, then."
Bunny stared for a moment longer at the glowing statue of his daughter. Then he made a fist with his hand and the hologram vanished. "I downloaded her from the hypernet earlier," he explained, waggling the large ring on his middle finger. "Easier to carry with me. I"m supposed to be sending her a message, but..."
Tegan just nodded, not really knowing what to say. Jim and Nik had arrived anyway, with a hover trolley loaded up with portable lamps. "Won"t we need some cable?" asked Tegan.
"Nah," said Nik. "These have remote power units. They get their juice transmitted directly from the generator. Nice bit of kit"
"Right then," said Tegan. "The Doctor will be waiting for these. Let"s get cracking."
The Doctor and Stoker had made some progress. By now their eyes had become accustomed to the very limited light available, and they were able to pick out some more objects in the silvery gloom. In addition to the table and four chairs, they had discovered two large wall-mounted cabinets and a series of knee-level storage units ranged against one wall.
The doors to these all appeared to be locked.
Stoker was holding a torch for the Doctor, who was squatting down to examine the locking mechanism on one of the units. "You"ve done this kind of thing before, haven"t you?"
The Doctor didn"t reply straight away. Something had caught his attention. "These locks are electronic!"
"Aren"t all locks electronic?"
"Well, probably, in this period," the Doctor conceded.
"So?"
"So these locks are still operating. There must be a live current going through them"
Stoker frowned. "Are you sure? But that would mean..."
"There"s some kind of power source here, and it"s still operational."
"That"s the lot," said Bunny, placing the last of the disc-shaped lamps onto the stack.
"That didn"t take too long," Tegan said, feeling a little flushed with all the exertion. "I wonder how the Doctor"s getting on?"
She turned to call through the black hole that was the doorway, but to her surprise found the room beyond suddenly flooded with light.
The Doctor was standing on the far side of the room, one hand resting on some kind of wall panel. Stoker was standing next to him her eyes screwed up against the harsh electric glare.
"We, er, seem to have found the light switch," said the Doctor, managing to sound both apologetic and self-satisfied at once.
"You mean we"ve just lugged all those wretched lamps down here for nothing?" Tegan tried to glare at him but she couldn"t compete with the brilliance of the overhead strip-lights.
"Not to worry" said the Doctor. "The exercise will have done you good, if nothing else. Now come and see what else we"ve found."
Tegan stepped through the doorway into what might once have been some kind of workshop or laboratory Apart from the large central table and chairs and a few lockers on the walls, it was spa.r.s.ely furnished. The surfaces were functional metal, with what she guessed were a couple of computer workstations. Small lights flickered on various control panels, and a quiet rushing noise alerted her to the presence of an air-conditioning unit in the ceiling.
"It"s amazing," said Bunny Cheung. "No one can have been here for years, but it"s all still functioning."
"There must be another room through here," said the Doctor, indicating a wide door at the rear. "At least we won"t have to cut our way through. With the power back on... aha!"
He pressed a switch and the door slid smoothly open.