Doctor Who: Shada (24 page)

Suddenly a ghost appeared in front of her.

She knew he was a ghost because she could see right through him, and also because he was wearing a nightgown and nightcap and held a ghostly flickering candle in an antique holder. He was a very old ghost, in his late seventies at least, and Clare caught herself thinking sadly about how awful it must be to linger on Earth for all eternity when you’re way past your prime.

The ghost opened its mouth to speak. Clare was expecting a spectral howl or shriek of revenge.

‘Well done, young lady,’ said the ghost. ‘Very well done.’

The ghost took a pair of spectacles from inside its nightgown and hobbled over to the brass control panel. It reached out one transparent hand to a particularly large golden knob. To Clare’s astonishment, its hand did not pass right through it but connected with it, firm and solid.

The ghost shimmered. A wave of solidity passed up along the hand and through the ghost’s body, until he was concrete and corporeal and no longer a ghost at all. He was a small old man with a heavily lined face.

He turned back to her and smiled broadly. ‘Tea?’ he asked.

‘Yes please,’ said Clare. She could think of nothing nicer, and whoever he was, this ex-ghost seemed like such a nice old man.

‘May I ask who you are?’ she heard herself say as he shuffled towards the kitchen in threadbare checked slippers.

The ex-ghost turned at the door. ‘Certainly you may. What delightful manners you have, young lady.’

‘Thanks,’ said Clare, her head still spinning. ‘So who are you?’

The little old man puffed out his chest proudly. ‘I was, I am, and thanks to you I hopefully will be, Professor Chronotis,’ he said.

Chapter 41

CHRIS STARED THROUGH the open shutters of the ship’s forward screen and marvelled at the infinite universe. He was heading away from Earth, from everything he knew, out into the stars. It was his boyhood dream come true, in a way he had never expected. He gave a sigh of satisfaction.

‘Will you stop doing that?’ asked the Doctor. He was sat cross-legged on the floor next to K-9.

‘Sorry,’ said Chris. ‘I didn’t know I was doing anything.’ He gestured to the stars. ‘Look at that. Just look at that.’

‘I am looking at it,’ said the Doctor as another star system flew past. ‘And I don’t like the look of it. We’re going a bit casually for my liking. Bit of a Sunday service, if you ask me, though I suppose it
is
Sunday.’ He called out loudly, ‘Ship! How long will this journey take?’

‘Thirty-nine astrasidereal days,’ said the Ship primly.

‘What!’ the Doctor exclaimed. ‘That’s nearly three months!’

The Ship sniffed. ‘That is at full warp drive. And we have hundreds of light years to cover.’

‘Hundreds of light years,’ said Chris. ‘In three months. That’s an incredible speed!’

‘Yes, it’s incredibly slow,’ said the Doctor. He pondered for a moment, then called, ‘Ship, do you have the power to adjust your own inner circuitry?’

‘Yes,’ said the Ship, ‘yes, I can do that.’

‘I thought you might,’ said the Doctor. ‘Being created, as you were, by someone with an interest in Gallifreyan technology.’

‘Yes, my precious lord Skagra,’ sighed the Ship. ‘I do miss him, you know.’

‘We all do,’ said the Doctor. ‘Right then, Ship. Stop!’

‘Please clarify,’ said the Ship. ‘Stop what?’

‘Stop,’ said the Doctor. ‘Cut all engines. Halt!’

The faint vibration of movement died away, and Chris watched as the stars outside slowed and then fixed on one beautiful image, a nebula of unimaginable size and variety of colour.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Chris, stifling another sigh of wonder.

‘I’m going to introduce this ship to a few new concepts,’ said the Doctor. ‘Fortunately it’s halfway there already.’

‘I have accomplished your request,’ said the Ship.

‘Good,’ said the Doctor. He cleared his throat.

‘Now, Ship, please regrade your deoscillation digretic synthesisers by ten points.’

The Ship gasped. ‘I cannot do that! The drive will explode!’

‘Nonsense, it’s perfectly safe,’ said the Doctor.

‘Master,’ said K-9 warningly.

The Doctor huffed. ‘What now, K-9? Nobody asked for your contribution—’ He cut himself off. ‘Wait a minute. Did I just say ten points?’

‘Yes,’ said Chris.

‘Affirmative,’ said K-9.

‘You did, yes,’ said the Ship.

The Doctor wiped the back of his hand over his chin and swallowed. ‘Well, obviously I meant
minus
ten points. Otherwise the drive would explode.’

‘I am complying,’ said the Ship. There was a chatter of electronic activity.

Chris barely noticed. He was staring at the nebula, open-mouthed. The only thing that spoilt his perfect view were those three irritating red lights winking on and off in his peripheral vision, now ever so slightly faster.

‘Accomplished,’ said the Ship. ‘Deoscillation digretic synthesisers regraded by minus ten points.’

‘Good,’ said the Doctor. ‘Now, Ship, please realign your maxivectometer on drags so it cross-connects with your radia-bicentric anodes.’

There was another burble of electronics.

‘Accomplished,’ said the Ship.

‘Good,’ said the Doctor. ‘Now, here comes the difficult bit. Please switch your conceptual geometer from analogue to digital mode and keep triggering feedback responses until you get a reading of 75 dash 839.’

‘Accomplished,’ said the Ship. ‘And for your information, Doctor, that bit wasn’t so difficult at all.’

The Doctor took a deep breath. ‘Now. Let’s see if it works. Ship, activate all realigned drive circuits!’

Electronics chattered incessantly.

‘Ooh!’ said the Ship. ‘Something – something very strange is happening.’ She giggled. ‘Very strange – ooh –’

‘Don’t worry, my dear, keep going!’ insisted the Doctor.

Chris leapt out of his seat as the view on the forward screen suddenly shifted. The nebula blurred and was replaced by a shifting, whirling blue vortex. At the same time there was a sound not unlike the painful grinding of the TARDIS’s engines, though much softer and smoother.

‘Ooh!’ said the Ship, sounding to Chris like she was licking her lips. ‘Ooh Doctor! Ooh, ooh, ooh!’

‘Bingo!’ cried the Doctor, punching the air.

‘What have you done again?’ asked Chris, who was mesmerised by the swirling blue vortex but felt sure the Doctor wanted to explain how clever he’d been in more detail.

The Doctor smiled. ‘I’ve only gone and constructed a primitive form of relative dimensional stabiliser by remote control.’

‘Oh good,’ said Chris.

‘So any journey, however far we go, will only take a couple of hours’ relative time.’ He beamed. ‘Pretty clever, don’t you think, everybody?’

‘Very,’ said Chris.

‘Affirmative, Master,’ said K-9.

When the Ship spoke again she had a slightly different, warmer tone. ‘For a dead man, Doctor, you are extremely ingenious.’

‘Yes, well let’s not harp too much on that aspect, shall we?’ said the Doctor.

‘Yes, well done,’ said Chris. ‘I just wish you could turn those red lights off, they’re very irritating.’

‘What red lights?’ asked the Doctor.

‘Those ones,’ said Chris, pointing them out. ‘They’ve been annoying me ever since I came in here but I didn’t want to mention them, as it’s probably nothing.’

The Doctor vaulted over to the panel where the red lights flashed. ‘Ship, please explain the significance of these lights.’

‘How should I know?’ said the Ship. ‘My lord Skagra activated that panel shortly before his departure. It is outside my schematics.’

The Doctor beckoned K-9. ‘Here, boy. What do you make of this? Come on, I’m asking for your contribution.’

K-9 extended his probe and scanned. ‘Alert, Master. This ship has been timed to explode in precisely one point four three minutes!’

‘What?’ cried the Doctor and Chris.

‘The ship has been primed to explode,’ repeated K-9.

‘Skagra wanted to cover his tracks,’ surmised the Doctor. He called upwards. ‘Ship, please disable the explosive mechanism. Now!’

‘Now how can I do that?’ asked the Ship coyly. ‘I’ve got no interface with those particular circuits, as decreed by my gracious lord Skagra.’

‘Your gracious lord Skagra wants to blow you to atoms!’ called the Doctor.

The Ship paused. ‘I cannot believe that, Doctor. I am his truest and most trusted servant.’

‘Er, if it is a bomb, shouldn’t we defuse it, Doctor?’ asked Chris.

The Doctor whipped out his sonic screwdriver, adjusted the settings and ran it swiftly along the side of the panel, cutting a smoking square through the smooth white material. ‘Sorry if it hurts—’

‘Ow!’ cried the Ship.

‘No time to be gentle,’ said the Doctor. He wrapped his hand in one of the ends of his scarf and wrenched aside the burning plate. Beneath the panelling, Chris saw a maze of thin, interconnected fibres, like a bowl of dry vermicelli. Red light throbbed from somewhere underneath the tangle.

‘Time to detonation now fifty-four seconds, Master,’ said K-9.

‘Thanks for that, K-9,’ said the Doctor. He held the glowing tip of the sonic screwdriver above the fibres. ‘Which one do I cut?’

‘How should I know?’ said Chris and the Ship at the same time.

‘Time to detonation now thirty seconds, Master,’ said K-9.

‘What?’ spluttered the Doctor. ‘It was fifty-four seconds a couple of seconds ago!’

‘Does it matter?’ said Chris. ‘Just cut them all! Do it!’

The Doctor stared at Chris, apparently rather struck by his sudden hot temper. ‘Good idea!’ he said – and he jabbed the sonic screwdriver down into the mass of fibres.

There was a crackle of energy and a sound like popping corn. The fibres twanged and split.

‘Well?’ called the Doctor in the sudden silence that followed.

‘Crisis averted, Master,’ said K-9. ‘The detonation sequence has been aborted.’

The Doctor mopped his brow and switched off the sonic screwdriver. ‘Well, there we are.’

Chris was trying to piece together what had just happened. ‘So Skagra set the ship to explode,’ he said.

‘More than just the ship,’ said the Doctor. He indicated the burnt ends of the tangled fibres. ‘There was enough thermal energy generated by that thing to destroy an entire planet.’

‘He was going to wipe out Cambridge?’ Chris was horror-struck. ‘All the colleges? The Backs, the railway station… the pubs?’

‘Plus the entire planet,’ said the Doctor gravely.

Chris flared up. He found himself squaring up, his nostrils flaring in anger. ‘He was going to kill Clare?’ The words burst out of Chris’s mouth before he had a chance to think about what they told him about his subconscious.

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. ‘And all the other lovely girls. Plus the lovely boys. He must have considered it safer, just in case we’d sent off a message to the Time Lords.’ He sighed. ‘Which we perhaps should have done.’

‘No way,’ said Chris. ‘They would probably have come and torched the place anyway.’ He frowned. ‘You know, before today I always thought Earth was a safe kind of a planet.’

The Doctor raised his other eyebrow, as if Chris had said something incredibly stupid. ‘Anyway, not to worry,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘Thanks to me, the ship is safe, and we’re on our way.’

‘I can’t accept that, Doctor,’ said the Ship. Her voice was tremulous, as if she was on the brink of bursting into tears. ‘My lord Skagra is infallible. If he wished me –’ She paused, gulped, and gathered herself. ‘If he wished me, his truest servant, to be – destroyed… Well then, I must have been destroyed.’

‘If that’s the way you want to see it,’ said the Doctor cautiously.

‘It’s the only way I can see it,’ said the Ship bravely. ‘You were already dead of course, Doctor. Now we all are.’

‘This is ridic—’ began Chris, but when he saw the Doctor’s hand raised as if to clamp over his mouth again he stopped.

‘I’ve exploded,’ said the Ship.

The Doctor patted the open panel. ‘Of course you have, dear. There, there.’

Chris looked grimly out of the forward screen and into the vortex. ‘Worrying, isn’t it?’

‘Which it in particular?’ asked the Doctor.

‘Well,’ said Chris, nodding upwards, ‘what else isn’t she telling us?’

In the small generation chamber deep in the bowels of the ship, the newly formed Kraag stirred.

One rocky claw clasped the edge of the tank and it hauled itself upright.

Chapter 42

KRAAG AFTER KRAAG after Kraag marched from the generation chamber into the observatory. Romana, her head bowed, stood beside Skagra, who was manipulating controls at the central console. The sphere sat on top of the cone, burbling to itself.