This was Sigurd’s least favourite part of the whole operation, lifting heads and looking into one pair of dead eyes after another. As they moved along the lines he reported symptoms and made estimates on the chances of each Lazar making it as far as the zone.
Some of them wouldn’t even leave the tank alive. The other Vanir dutifully noted everything on a clipboard.
‘I want to speak to somebody in charge,’ one of them said suddenly as they came level. If Sigurd recognised Nyssa, he didn’t show it.
‘Speech centres untouched,’ he dictated, ‘could be a remissive.’ The other Vanir made a note.
‘Please listen,’ Nyssa said, and reached out for his arm.
Sigurd caught her hand and tested its flexibility.
‘General weakness,’ he said, ‘poor grip. But make a special note for Eirak.’
He straightened up, and the two Vanir moved on.
Nyssa sank back, weak and defeated.
‘You’ll get nothing out of them,’ the Lazar next to her whispered. ‘They’re not interested.’
Nyssa looked around in surprise. She’d come to believe that none of the Lazars was capable of speech, but the one alongside her was lifting back with difficulty the cloth that covered its head. This revealed a girl, a pale blonde of about Nyssa’s age. She wasn’t as far gone as any of the others, but the disease was surely squeezing the life and strength out of her.
‘The only thing they care about,’ she said, keeping her voice low so the Vanir wouldn’t hear, ‘is the drug that keeps them alive.’
‘What are they going to do with us?’
‘There’s supposed to be a secret cure. But I think they’re going to let us die.’
Nyssa was about to speak, but the girl stopped her.
A moment later, the two Vanir walked by. They collected their helmets and left the tank. The door closed behind them with the solid clunk of metal on metal.
Nyssa said, ‘One of them told me he was just a baggage-handler.’
The girl nodded. ‘And we’re the baggage.’
Nyssa summoned up her strength and tottered over to the door. She was amazed that her energy was seeping away so rapidly. The door operated on a simple key, but that was enough to ensure that she couldn’t get out. She returned to her place.
‘Might as well face it,’ the girl said.
‘No,’ Nyssa said with determination.
‘We’ve been had. There’s no hospital and there’s no cure. It’s hopeless.’
‘That’s not what the Doctor would say.’
‘There are no doctors here.’
‘He’s one of a kind. What’s the forbidden zone?’
The girl said, with grudging admiration, ‘You don’t give up, do you?’
‘Not until I’m beaten. Well?’
‘I only know what I’ve heard. It’s where the radiation gets too strong for them. They have to keep on this side of the line or they’ll die even sooner.’
‘And what’s the Garm?’
‘You’ll find out soon enough.’
‘I need to know now.’
The girl sighed. Talking was wearing her out, and she obviously believed that Nyssa’s determination was going to be wasted. She said, ‘It’s some kind of animal they brought in to work in the zone. They operated on its brain, but it’s still half wild.’ She turned to Nyssa, as much as she was able, and gave her a hard look.
‘Just wait a little while longer,’ she said, ‘and you’ll see for yourself.’
Sigurd came upon Eirak in his corner of the tank that was the Vanir’s headquarters. The watch-commander was at his desk with the Hydromel case open before him, and he was making notes. Logging-in of the phials of honey-coloured liquid was always a priority duty.
Sigurd dropped his clipboard on the end of the desk, and said, ‘Lazar assessment from tank three.
How’s it going?’
Eirak looked up at him. He wasn’t smiling. He said,
‘I was right. They’ve reduced the supply. Half of these are just coloured water.’
For a moment, Sigurd didn’t know what to say.
Finally he managed a strangled, ‘But why?’
‘Obviously they think we can get by on less. Or else we’ve not been performing well enough.’
‘That’s impossible.’
Eirak leaned back wearily, contemplating the glassware before him. ‘I don’t know how they get their information. Spies, perhaps.’
‘Bor’s gone,’ Sigurd said with sudden inspiration.
‘Won’t that help?’
‘Not enough. We’d have to lose at least one more.’
‘Then there’s no way out of it.’
‘I just told you the way out,’ Eirak said with quiet seriousness.
And he meant every word of it, Sigurd thought with horror. He’s actually contemplating shutting one of us out. A name struck from a roster somehow didn’t seem to carry the same charge of outrage as the death of a human being – but it was the rosters that were Eirak’s reality. Sigurd was trying to think if he’d ever given Eirak a reason to single him out, but he could think of nothing that didn’t apply to every other Vanir in the Terminus. Eirak won all the arguments, but still everybody griped. So it was really a question of who had offended him most recently.
As if in answer, Valgard burst into the tank.
‘We’ve got trouble,’ he said immediately. He was helmetless and in an obviously agitated state. The rest of the off-duty Vanir took an instant interest and started to come through from the bunkroom area.
Eirak looked up at him. ‘What do you mean?’ he said.
Valgard pushed his way through the growing crowd and leaned heavily on Eirak’s desk. ‘I saw two people down in the storeyard, a man and a girl. They went off into the zone.’
‘Were they Lazars?’
Valgard shook his head. ‘No, they weren’t. They were talking about reconnaissance, and they were armed.’
‘Company spies?’ Sigurd hazarded.
‘Perhaps.’ Eirak obviously wasn’t going to commit himself until he’d heard it all. He said to Valgard,
‘Why didn’t you stop them?’
‘I tried, but they teamed up on me.’
‘That’s got to be it,’ Sigurd insisted. ‘The company sent them.’
But Eirak was still keeping his reserve. ‘For what reason?’
‘It’s obvious,’ Sigurd said. ‘We’ve been here too long, and we’ve absorbed too much of the background radiation. Look what it did to Bor. They don’t think we’re giving them full value anymore. Unless we do something about it, we’ll be making way for a new workforce. One that can do the job better.’
There was a general murmur of concern. Valgard wasn’t convinced that they could act to help themselves. He said, ‘But they’re in the zone.’
‘So we need a brave volunteer.’ Eirak said, and he stared directly at Valgard. ‘Don’t we?’
There was a silence as realisation came to Valgard.
Although he already knew the reason, he said quietly,
‘Why me?’
‘Because I know you’ll succeed.’
‘This isn’t fair,’ Sigurd started to say, but Eirak raised a hand to silence him.
The watch-commander’s eyes didn’t leave Valgard.
‘Fairness doesn’t come into it,’ he said. ‘There isn’t enough Hydromel to go around, so I’m making a little bet with Valgard.’ He reached out and closed the Hydromel case, twisting the small key in its lock. He’d already added a chain with a trembler alarm to ensure that no one would be able to interfere with the supply whilst it was unattended. He went on, ‘He’s had his last shot. But if he can put right his mistakes, he can have my supply.’
Valgard stared at him stonily. Then, without another word, he turned and walked out.
There was an overpowering feeling of relief in the tank. The Vanir broke up into a number of excitedly chattering groups. Only Sigurd stayed by Eirak.
‘He’ll die,’ he protested, but Eirak was unruffled. In fact, he seemed pleased with himself.
‘He hates me,’ he said. ‘He’ll succeed.’
‘And you’ll give him your own Hydromel?’
Eirak gave him a pained look, one that said
how
could you be so naive?
It was no more nor less than Sigurd expected.
‘Come on,’ Eirak said loudly as he stood and reached for all the boards with the Lazar assessment forms, ‘we’ve got Lazars to move.’
They were out.
After spending so long in the dark spaces of the liner that it seemed as if they’d take residence, Tegan and Turlough had managed to make their way into the duct system that fed air directly into the corridors.
Turlough improvised a crowbar from a metal strut and used it to pry loose one of the covering grilles, and then completed the job by kicking it out two-footed.
They crawled out into the corridor, grimy and streaked.
The TARDIS had faded away. Barring some fluke, the Doctor and Nyssa were either dead – which Turlough suggested but which Tegan wouldn’t accept
– or else they’d been forced outside by the sterilisation process. With this in mind, Tegan wanted to find the liner’s control room. Perhaps there would be some way of opening the outside door from there.
They’d formed some idea of the liner’s structure from their tour inside the walls, but it was still going to be a fairly haphazard search. It was further complicated by the fact that this seemed to be the time set aside for the drones to carry out their heavy maintenance work.
They crouched by a corner and listened to the sounds of welding, just out of sight. Occasional flashes threw long shadows across the intersection.
Tegan said, ‘If they’re programmed to get rid of intruders, I don’t want to find out the hard way. Did you see some of the knives they’re carrying?’
‘Weapons all around us,’ Turlough said despondently. Tegan, of course, couldn’t know what he meant.
‘I suppose there are,’ she said. ‘Shall we move?’
They crept back until they felt it was safe, and then they started to walk. ‘Tegan,’ Turlough started to say, but he seemed uncertain how to go on.
‘What?’
‘Thanks for saving me.’ It came out all at once.
Tegan was nonplussed. Gratitude was so against Turlough’s nature – his
true
nature, as opposed to the polished and calculated exterior that he usually presented – that it had taken him a long time to get around to it. Which made her even more convinced that he was being sincere. Perhaps there was hope for him, after all.
‘Don’t mention it,’ she said, and they moved on.
After a while, they took a break. Neither of them had realised how near to exhaustion they were getting.
They sat on the steps of one of the inner-deck stairways, and Turlough said, ‘You really think they made it to the outside?’
Tegan was hugging one of the stair rails and looking into nowhere. ‘I know they’re not dead,’ she said.
‘How?’
‘I just know.’
There was a pause. Then: ‘Tegan...’
‘What?’
‘If ever you had to kill someone, could you do it?’
She looked at him, frowning. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Just supposing. Could you?’
‘No... I don’t know. I suppose if it was important, to save a friend or defend myself.’
‘But if it was in cold blood?’
Tegan took hold of the rail and pulled herself to her feet. ‘You’re weird, Turlough,’ she said. ‘What a subject to bring up at a time like this.’ And she started to ascend.
‘We’re just going deeper and deeper,’ Kari complained. ‘What are we looking for?’
‘Whatever it is that makes the Terminus special,’ the Doctor told her. ‘Something that could even cure the Lazar disease.’
They’d really had little choice over their route. The ribbed tunnel that they’d entered hadn’t offered them any interesting-looking diversions, and there seemed little point in returning when they knew that a hostile reception was guaranteed. Kari said, ‘There’s nothing here but radiation.’
The Doctor considered this for a moment. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘you’re right.’ And he switched on the hand-radio for a brief burst of the wave interference. It was much louder than before. ‘And we’re getting closer to the source.’
‘That doesn’t sound too healthy.’
‘It isn’t. How safe is an engine when it leaks that badly?’
‘You couldn’t use it. You’d blow yourself away as soon as you tried to open up.’
‘So,’ the Doctor said, letting his mind run along the speculative rails that events had presented to it, ‘why haven’t they just dumped the reaction mass and made the Terminus radiation-free?’
‘You think radiation’s part of a cure?’
‘I think there’s even more to it than that,’ the Doctor told her. What Kari had suggested seemed, from the evidence, to be reasonable. If the Lazar disease was caused by a virus or a similar organism with a lower radiation tolerance, a non-lethal dose might be enough to clean it out of the victim’s system.
Blanket secrecy and social shame would serve to keep this simple solution from becoming common knowledge. Whoever ran the Terminus – the
‘Terminus Incorporated’ referred to in the liner’s automated announcements – was obviously taking advantage of the old ship’s high incidental levels without either knowing or caring how they were caused.
And the possible causes were beginning to worry the Doctor even more than the disease itself. ‘We’re standing at the centre of the known universe,’ he told Kari. ‘Now, don’t you think that deserves some close consideration?’
But Kari was no longer listening to him. She seemed incredulous.
‘I can hear someone
singing!
’ she said.
Handling of the Lazars was conducted according to a plan originally devised by Eirak. Vanir responsibility for the sufferers technically ended at the yellow line when they were handed over to the Garm, but it seemed that the Company’s judgement of their success was based on the survival rate as it was calculated somewhere later in the processing. What happened beyond the line was something that they couldn’t know, but it was in their own interests to ensure that as many Lazars as possible arrived to face it alive.
Originally this had meant sending the sickest and least able through first. It looked good in theory, but in practice it was a disaster. They slowed up the whole process so much that even those who’d arrived able to walk on their own finally had to be carried to the handover point. Eirak’s answer to this had been the Lazar assessment, where estimates of the advancement of the disease were made and the fittest sped through first. Which was how he came to be looking at Nyssa.