Doctor Who: Ultimate Treasure (3 page)

'Hah! Eluded me in the fog - a plague upon them! Doubtless the scurvy knaves feared my steel!'

'Did you turn on the fire alarm?' the Doctor asked.

'I did indeed, sir. It seemed a little distraction was called for.'

By this time Peri had recovered her voice. 'Sorry, but just who are you?'

The man resheathed his sword and made a bow as low as his bulk allowed, doffing his cap with a flourish. 'Sir John Falstaff at your service, mistress.'

Peri found herself temporarily speechless once more. The Doctor filled in the gap.

'Really. And how did you arrive so conveniently... Sir John?'

'Why, I had entered surreptitiously through the rear portal after the proprietor some time previous, having certain confidential matters I wished to discuss with him, but found the premises already infested with the three varlets you have already encountered. I was preparing to set about them when you made your own entrance. Naturally I could not risk a confrontation with a lady present, so conceived a strategy involving the alarm panel situated in the passage here. But, I pray, stay further expositions for the nonce. What of Hok? Did he depart with the others?'

Peri looked about at the shambles of the shop interior. 'I guess he must have - oh...'

A tentacle protruded from under an overturned cabinet.

They rapidly heaved the debris aside, but it was clearly too late for the little alien. There was a bullet hole in the middle of the chest segment of his body shell - the plastron, as Peri remembered the analogous part was called on Earth animals.

Hok's tentacles were twitching feebly, and the eyes in his wrinkled parody of a human face were beginning to lose their focus. From the Doctor's look of sad resignation she knew there was nothing they could do for him.

Overcoming her queasiness, she took one of the outstretched tentacles in her hand, offering what comfort she could. It felt cold and already lifeless.

With a wheeze, Falstaff knelt beside Hok. 'Did they get it, Hok, did they get it? It is I, Falstaff. Is there a duplicate? Tell me and I shall be your avenger... Speak man...'

'Leave him alone!' Peri protested.

But Hok was struggling to speak. A hoarse whisper forced its way out with the last breath in his body, his words broken and barely comprehensible: '... ovans... reasure... 385.06 by 946.573

by 157.67 positive; 385.06 by 946.573 by...' The figures became less audible and gradually trailed away as Hok lay still.

Falstaff was scribbling on the back of his shirt cuff with a pen.

Peri looked at the Doctor in dismay and confusion. Suddenly they became aware of a chatter of voices and shadows at the windows.

Falstaff rose with a grunt. 'Please stay by the poor fellow. I shall secure the rear door.' And he disappeared into the back of the shop, moving very quietly for such a big man.

A head peered cautiously in through the half-open door.

'Can you call the police, please,' the Doctor asked its owner crisply. 'There's been a murder.'

Within ten minutes the broad walkway outside Hok's premises was cordoned off and ringed by emergency-service vehicles, its shadows starkly illuminated by coloured flashing lights. The interior of the shop was being examined and Hok's body photographed prior to removal. Astroville Seven's police, Peri discovered, were as varied in form as the throng in the main concourse. While something resembling a small mobile fir tree with eye stalks took statements from passersby, a creature with a sticklike body and a head as smooth and almost as featureless as an egg questioned them. All the two had in common were badges pinned to silver -and -green sashes, and a certain world-weariness that Peri decided must accompany police the universe over.

'So you cannot add any more to your descriptions of the three intruders,' the egg-headed constable said.

'The place was pretty dark and they had some sort of smoky masks on,' Peri pointed out. 'Anyway we only saw them for a few seconds before the rumpus started.'

'Did they call each other by name?'

'As my friend says, there was hardly time,' the Doctor said.

'Perhaps Falstaff knows who they were. He obviously knew the victim.'

'Ah, yes, the third human who turned on the shop's alarm.'

Peri was looking about her. 'Say, Doctor, where's he got to anyway?'

'He went to secure the back door...' the Doctor trailed off with a frown, then added, 'Oh dear.'

'He's dumped us, hasn't he, Doctor?'

'I'm afraid it looks that way.'

'Which leaves nobody else to substantiate your version of events within the shop,' the constable pointed out meaningfully.

'But you can't think we had anything to do with the actual murder!' Peri said. 'We only came here to buy a souvenir. We never saw this Hok person before in our lives.'

'That we shall have to determine, madam. Meanwhile I'll have to ask you to accompany me to headquarters.'

'Are we under arrest?' the Doctor asked.

'Not at all, sir. Merely helping with the ongoing investigation.

This way please,' he indicated one of the police cars.

'Has this sort of thing happened to you very often?' Peri inquired grumpily, as they took their seats in the back of the police car and the door had closed with an ominously solid thud.

'From time to time,' the Doctor admitted.

'But things always work out OK in the end?'

'Oh, always... well, almost always.'

'Terrific!' said Peri heavily.

Arnella Marri Jossena te Rosscarrino was bored.

She had been bored with her cabin on the
Newton
, which was cramped and utilitarian. She had moved to the ship's small common lounge until she had become bored with that. Finally she had taken to pacing the ship's main corridors with a scowl disfiguring her fine features, until it seemed she reached a state of total dissatisfaction with every deckplate and bulkhead door.

Arnella was intelligent enough not to be board if she put her mind to it. The ship's microlibrary alone was sufficient to provide a lifetime's entertainment and diversion, and she was only trying to fill a few hours. But her mind was not at rest. Everything about her surroundings only reminded her that she should be staying at the Stellar Grande, Astroville's five-star hotel, in between shopping for a new wardrobe, jewellery, and perfumes.

Instead of which, after a single brief excursion into Astroville proper, her uncle had ordered her to remain on board the
Newton
. Partly, this was for security, and partly for more practical considerations that, currently, she did not care to dwell on.

And so she continued to pace the corridors, determinedly encouraging boredom to mask the deeper, darker despair that lurked within. On perhaps her twenty-fifth circuit she almost ran into Willis Brockwell.

As usual, his tall gangling form was ill-concealed behind his multipocketed utility smock, slightly frayed at the edges. He was carrying a complicated piece of machinery trailing several loose wires. His hair was awry and there was a smudge of grease across one cheek.

'Oh... Ms Rosscarrino... sorry.' He shuffled awkwardly aside to let her pass.

'Ms Rosscarrino' wasn't the correct form of address, but her uncle had suggested they shouldn't encourage use of her proper title for the moment. Besides, it would have sounded false coming from Brockwell's lips. Brockwell, she had decided some time back, disliked rank and titles and all that went with them.

He betrayed it by the way he flushed and stammered and then retreated into a sullen silence in her presence. Well she couldn't help his common origins. She might like him better if he had the courage to speak his mind.

Arnella flashed him a look of mild contempt and started to stride past him. Just then the indicator over the main airlock, which was situated a little way down the corridor, blinked, and the inner pressure door swung open.

Her uncle and Professor Thorrin stepped inside. She saw the look on their faces and knew they had been successful. Her uncle's careworn eyes were sparkling and his mouth twitched with the effort of containing an unseemly grin of delight. Thorrin was beaming openly, his normally distracted and impatient manner temporarily masked behind an upsurge of benevolent good humour.

'Congratulate us, Will,' he said heartily, holding a data capsule aloft like a trophy. 'At last, we have it!'

'That's wonderful, Professor,' said Brockwell.

'But... you're sure it's genuine?'Arnella asked her uncle.

The Marquis to Rosscarrino recovered his composure. 'I am certain of it, my dear,' he said with calm authority. 'All the details I expected were there. With a little work we shall finally learn the truth!' And he caught and squeezed her hand in a rare display of emotion.

'To the navigation table!' Thorrin said eagerly.

And the two men strode off down the corridor to the control room, leaving Arnella and Brockwell alone once more. Brockwell mumbled something about getting the ship ready and set off in the other direction, his long legs moving with their usual jerky gait.

Arnella felt light-headed, hope and apprehension mingling within her. Was there really a chance to regain what they had lost? The future promised relief from the fate she dreaded, yet here would undoubtedly be risks, perhaps danger. After all they had already suffered, was it worth further sacrifice? She put down the thought as unworthy. She had a duty to fulfil. Yet she was also acutely aware of her own helplessness in the face of destiny. There would be no time for boredom now. Would she find herself missing it in the days to come?

The flying eye found a niche in the shadowy angle of a stanchion and attached itself to the metal with suction pads. It had followed Rosscarrino and Thorrin all the way from Chocky's Inn, merging easily with the other maintenance bots that constantly flitted about the station engaged upon their single-minded mechanical business. Unseen, it had ridden the same passenger tube as its targets up the docking tower until they had disembarked at the bay in which the
Newton
was berthed. It had hovered silently while they passed within. Now it had a vantage point from which it could observe anybody entering or leaving the
Newton
's airlock, and it settled down to wait.

Qwaid hesitated before the expensive real-wood door of Mr Alpha's penthouse office apartment. Though they had what he had sent them for, they were late returning and had left behind potential witnesses to their disposal of Hok. It was an untidy piece of work and Mr Alpha hated untidiness. Steeling himself, Qwaid knocked. The door slid aside, and he and Drorgon and Gribbs stepped cautiously inside.

Beyond was a room only slightly smaller than a power tennis court. The distant walls were hung with precisely lit original tridees and actual brush paintings. Between them were sculpted forms on pedestals and environmentally controlled cabinets of tinted glass that held books bound with both paper and animal skin over a thousand years old. The far wall was taken up with a panoramic window, which framed the glowing streamers of the local nebula. This spectacle only served as a backdrop to a massive matching chair and desk, constructed of leather and more richly grained real wood, both carefully polished until they seemed to glow with an inner life. Alpha himself sat facing away from the window, as if to say: I can not only afford such a luxury, but I can afford to turn my back on it. This position, combined with the room's angled lighting, had the effect of placing him in silhouette to anybody who stood before the desk. This was not chance. Very little around Mr Alpha ever happened by chance.

Qwaid could see Alpha's distinctive outline behind his desk even as the three of them crossed the silent, thickly carpeted floor. The nebula light glinted off a hairless dome of a head as he bent over a document laid out before him, powerful square shoulders hunched forward, a carefully manicured hamlike hand with a suggestion of purple in its flesh reaching out to a key panel inset in the desktop, thick square-tipped fingers tapping the contacts with surprising delicacy. Except for the tint of his skin and a certain peculiarity about his eyes, Alpha seemed outwardly human. Qwaid had never learnt where he actually came from and suspected it would be unwise to inquire.

Alpha did not look up as they halted before the desk, but merely said, 'I trust you have the item, Qwaid?' His words were precise, his voice its usual level grate - the tones of an erudite but self-educated man.

'Uh, yes, boss.' Qwaid handed the capsule over and Alpha inserted it in a viewer. As he scanned the information, Qwaid thought he heard his breath quicken, and he saw one powerful hand clench as it rested on the desk, then slowly relax. For Alpha that was the equivalent of a shout of wild elation.

After a minute Alpha nodded ponderously. 'Yes, this is the genuine article, Qwaid. Most... satisfactory.' Again Qwaid sensed that Alpha was controlling himself. Whatever the capsule contained, Qwaid realised, it had to be something Important.

'And Hok?'

'He was trying to double-cross you like you guessed, boss. So we had to snuff him.'

'I see. Were there any problems?'

Qwaid swallowed uncomfortably. He didn't like to admit what had gone wrong, but it was always safer to tell Alpha everything -

well, almost everything.

'A couple of tourists crashed the party, boss,' he explained.

'Hok had been going to open up and must have pulled the lock remotely and they just walked in. They started a ruck, but we could have taken them out too, only then somebody set off the fire alarm. I knew we couldn't hang around then, so we finished Hok and got out before we drew a crowd. I'm sure nobody saw us, boss. We kept the place eyeballed after we got clear, and saw some big stooge slip out the back way. Gribbs thinks he's seen him before up in the docking tower while he was working on the
Falcon
- he must have a ship there, too. Then the cops started arriving and we faded out. But I'm sure Hok's out of it, and we had our masks on all the time, so the gads couldn't have got much of a look at us.'