Tegan leant forward but the ship moved again and she felt herself pulled back from the edge. "Leave it!" ordered Stoker. "Or you"ll go with her!"
"I can"t leave her!" Tegan turned back. "Nyssa! Are you OK?"
There was no answer, save the cracking and groaning of the starship"s hull bending under its own weight.
"What"s happening?" the Doctor"s voice crackled over the radio. "Have you got.. flare?"
"Doctor!" Tegan yelled into the mike. "The ship"s collapsing and Nyssa"s fallen somewhere inside. She"s not answering me!"
"...orry, didn"t quite... that. Say again."
"I said -"
"Never mind... isn"t any time to... ust have the zenesium fl... soon."
Tegan shook the little radio furiously. "But you don"t understand!"
"Getting darker..." the Doctor"s voice sounded strained.
"Please hurry..."
Stoker said, "I"ll go: I"ve got the flare. You stay here and see if you can help Nyssa."
Tegan nodded dumbly, tears in her eyes.
"Don"t do anything stupid; Stoker told her. "This place could fall apart any second."
Tegan watched Stoker go. "My whole life is spent doing stupid things," she complained.
Stoker clambered back through the Adamantium Adamantium and emerged from a large hole amidships, jumping down to the sandy ground below. She picked her way through the debris surrounding the crash site and headed back for the cave entrance. She didn"t understand what was happening, but the Doctor really needed the zenesium flare and it had sounded urgent. And it gave her something to do, something to fill her mind so she didn"t have to think any more. She didn"t have to think about Bunny Cheung. She didn"t have to think about Lawrence. and emerged from a large hole amidships, jumping down to the sandy ground below. She picked her way through the debris surrounding the crash site and headed back for the cave entrance. She didn"t understand what was happening, but the Doctor really needed the zenesium flare and it had sounded urgent. And it gave her something to do, something to fill her mind so she didn"t have to think any more. She didn"t have to think about Bunny Cheung. She didn"t have to think about Lawrence.
Her footsteps slowed as she made her way across the surface of the moon. It was very cold out here, colder than she remembered it. The chill seemed to have pa.s.sed straight through her clothes and skin, and penetrated every bone in her body. She shivered and then became aware of something else: the silence.
It had always been quiet on the surface, but now the quiet seemed unnatural, as if every sound had been deadened. It was the crisp, abnormal silence that followed a deep snowfall: the only noise she could detect were her own footsteps, strangely loud as they crunched into the sand.
Now she could hear her own breath, getting faster and faster.
Something made her look up at the stars.
Only there were no stars. The heavens had been dimmed along with all that she could no longer hear. To one side was the impenetrable blackness of the intergalactic void: but where there had once been the bright haze of the nearest star systems there was now only a dull, grey fog.
Akoshemon, a hard scab on the night sky, was now barely visible.
Stoker clutched the zenesium flare tighter and sprinted for the cave entrance.
Inside the s.p.a.ceship, Tegan leaned as far as she dared into the black s.p.a.ce that had been the stores section. The hull was badly torn and the decking had given away, but she couldn"t see a thing: she couldn"t even tell how far Nyssa had fallen. She hadn"t answered Tegan"s calls.
She could have been knocked unconscious or worse.
Tegan angled the beam of her torch down into the well of blackness again. She could see nothing but a tangled ma.s.s of metal and electric cabling and an awful lot of shadow.
"Nyssa?" she called again. "Are you OK?"
Nyssa was hanging upside down, her legs caught in a ma.s.s of wires and power conduits. Luckily there seemed to be no power running through them. After a short struggle she managed to extricate her feet from the web of cables and tumbled to the ground.
It took a few seconds for her to realise that she was lying in sand.
She must have fallen right through the base of the ship, where the outer hull had been torn away. She shuffled around in the dark until she was able to determine that she was now trapped beneath the wreckage, enclosed on all sides by tangled metal and plastic.
But there was a breeze coming from somewhere; she could feel its cool breath on her face. Or was that actually someone breathing? Startled, Nyssa moved quickly away.
Then she glimpsed a light: a wavering spot of yellow, sliding over the sand and the fallen decking. Her heart leaped: it was the beam of a torch, probably belonging to Tegan or Stoker. They were looking for her.
Then she heard Tegan"s voice calling her. She sounded a long way off.
How far had she fallen? Nyssa picked her way through the debris, heading back to the spot where she had originally landed. But just as she was about call back, a large hand was clamped over her mouth.
She struggled violently but her a.s.sailant had the advantage of surprise. Nyssa felt herself forced down into the sand. The hand over her mouth smelled of cooked meat.
As her fear-widened eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, she was able to see the shape of a man bending over her. A. stray light, probably from Tegan"s torch, momentarily picked out his features: a charred, blackened head, teeth bared where the flesh of his jaws had been completely burned away. Bloodshot eyes gleaming red before disappearing into shadow as the torchlight pa.s.sed.
But Nyssa had seen enough.
She had recognised those painwracked eyes. And recognised the uniform.
It was the raw and blistered remains of Captain Lawrence.
Chapter Twenty.
The burnt figure leaned closer. It was Lawrence, Nyssa reminded herself. Captain Lawrence. How could he have possibly survived?
Nyssa could feel his breath on her skin; it smelled of ashes.
She heard the blackened lips parting, heard him trying to speak, but he couldn"t summon a voice that was anything more than a dry, incoherent rasp.
Eventually his hand fell away from her mouth and Nyssa gagged. She could see him more clearly now, even in the dark.
His burns were awful, the injuries incredible. His face was caked in blood, which had been boiled into a mask over the flesh beneath. There was very little skin left. His eyes were red and full of agony.
Tegan swore. She"d shone her torch as far as she could but found nothing. At one point she had thought she saw something moving, but she"d lost it. She"d called and called but Nyssa wasn"t responding. She must have been stunned by the fall.
Just stunned.
Hands trembling, Tegan tried the radio again. "D-Doctor?
Can you hear me? Come in! Come in, please!"
Static.
She shook the radio. "Doctor! Answer me!"
"...very faint. Speak up, Tegan!"
"Doctor! You"ve got to come and help! Nyssa"s fallen somewhere and I can"t find her."
"Sorry. Didn"t quite catch that. Say again."
"Nyssa"s in trouble!"
"Have you got the zenesium flare?"
"Oh, rabbits! Stoker"s got the rotten flare, she"s on her way back..."
"The wrong flare?"
Tegan tried describing it another way, to be met with a barrage of static and the remains of the Doctor"s response, "
...need for that kind of language, Tegan..."
Tegan was close to tears. "But Nyssa"s fallen. She"s hurt.
I"m going down to look for her."
The Doctor stared at the radio in his hand.
"Well?" Cadwell asked.
"I"m not sure," the Doctor said. He sat down next to Cadwell against the cave wall. "There was a lot of interference. There"s been some kind of problem."
"Have they got the flare?"
"I don"t know."
"So Plan B bites the dust, eh?" Cadwell rested his head back against the rock and closed his eyes. "Followed, no doubt, by us."
The Doctor stared into the gathering gloom. The cave was much darker now; he almost believed that he could see the deep shadows moving, thickening, creeping closer. He pulled his feet in. "Do you have to be so defeatist?"
"Sorry. What I meant to say was, "Not to worry, I"m sure the Seventh Galactic Fleet will touch down any moment now and rescue us in the nick of time". Is that better?"
"Sarcasm has never appealed to me, Cadwell."
"Like I care."
The Doctor tried the radio link again, but all he got was static. The shadows were edging closer. He turned to look at Cadwell, and was surprised to find him barely visible in the gloom. "How long do you think we"ve got?"
"How should I know?"
"You"re better informed about the Dark than anyone else, Cadwell. You must know something." The Doctor took out his pencil torch and switched it on. The narrow finger of light prodded the nearest shadows back a few feet.
"Like I said, Doctor, it"s impossible to know: the Dark isn"t of our universe. It"s not even subject to the same scientific principles."
The Doctor chewed his lip thoughtfully. "But in trying to exist in our universe, it has has to find some common ground. It must adhere to some of our physical laws, or it couldn"t react to anything." to find some common ground. It must adhere to some of our physical laws, or it couldn"t react to anything."
"My understanding is that it exists on many different planes at the same time," Cadwell said.
"Yes," the Doctor agreed. "It"s telepathic, so it has a mental presence. And I know for a fact that its mental presence can reach beyond the normal boundaries of s.p.a.ce and time. But it also has a physical existence, because we"ve seen the ashes and the blood that went into making it. A physical physical presence." presence."
"We"re talking about the Dark," argued Cadwell.
"Darkness. Shadow.
That"s not something you can put a bullet in or throw off a cliff."
"Or burn," said the Doctor.
Cadwell frowned. "What do you mean?"
"It was burned once, by your ancestors. To ashes. We"ve seen those ashes; we know it to be true. So it did did have a physical existence, once." have a physical existence, once."
"If you"re going to come to a point with all this, Doctor, then please do so quickly."