‘I’m combat section,’ Kari replied, almost automatically. ‘I don’t read charts.’
Nyssa was engaged in what she believed would turn out to be a no-hope mission... but then it was the Doctor who had asked for it, and she had more than enough reasons to be grateful to him.
The area at the back of the control room was cluttered and shadowy, with tall banks of equipment and racks of electrical relays taking up most of the space. She stood in the narrow gap between two of these and took a deep breath. Just as she thought that she’d more or less recovered, she’d get an all-over tremor and her stomach would try to do a flip. She closed her eyes and waited it out, and in a few moments it passed. It wouldn’t do to let the others see; they had problems enough already. By the time she’d checked out the area behind the racks, she’d be back to normal. It was on the way to do this that she almost fell over Olvir.
He was sitting on the floor in a shadowed area, hugging his knees like a child hiding in a closet. He looked up sharply when Nyssa called his name, but then he turned his face to the darkness again.
She crouched by him, and tried not to make it sound as if she was talking to a child. That would be all that it would take to finish off his damaged pride.
‘Come and talk to the Doctor,’ she urged.
He wouldn’t even face her. ‘Forget it,’ he said.
‘We’re dead.’
‘You can’t be sure.’
‘This place is full of disease. We’re
breathing
it.’
‘It’s not hopeless. We need your help.’
Nyssa waited, and after a moment Olvir unwound a little. He said, hesitantly, ‘Is Kari there?’
She nodded. He thought it over for what seemed like an age, the turmoil running through him like a blade. Then he started to get to his feet.
The Doctor and Kari were still hunched over the display screen at the navigation console as they emerged from the racks. Both looked up in surprise as Olvir said loudly, ‘Whatever you’re planning, forget it.
There’s no escape.’
Kari frowned, as if she was in the habit of disbelieving news that made any situation out to be hopeless. She said, ‘I’ve never heard of any Lazar disease.’
‘There are more polite names for it,’ Olvir said as he came around the end of the control desk.
The Doctor said, ‘How much do you know?’
‘My sister died of it. We sold everything to send her to the Terminus, but she died before she made the trip. Terminus Incorporated wouldn’t return the money. We were ruined.’
Kari seemed genuinely shocked. ‘I thought that was because of the fire storms on Hagen.’
‘You don’t advertise the Lazar disease,’ Olvir said grimly.
The Doctor tapped the edge of the console thoughtfully. ‘And what
is
the Terminus?’
‘They talk about a cure. But I never met anyone who came back.’
But if it’s such a shameful process, they’d never tell you
, the Doctor was thinking, but instead of saying so he moved aside so that Olvir would be able to see the navigation screen. ‘Tell me what you make of this,’ he said.
‘I’m combat section,’ Olvir started to reply automatically, ‘I don’t...’ but the Doctor waved him down.
‘All right. It’s an expanded chart showing the position of the Terminus.’
Olvir did his best to appear interested, but he couldn’t keep it up. The screen showed a vague, cloudy sphere made up of points with individual details too small to make out. At the centre of this pulsed the red point that had marked the Terminus from the beginning. He shook his head and said,
‘Don’t waste your time on that old hulk.’
The Doctor rarely became impatient, but he seemed to be getting close to it now. He said, ‘We don’t know what kind of technology may be preserved in that “old hulk”.’
It was Nyssa who defused the argument before it could begin. ‘But, Doctor,’ she said, stepping through for a closer look at the illuminated chart, ‘if that’s what I think it is...’ The Doctor was nodding, encouraging her. ‘Then it means that the Terminus is at the exact centre of the known universe!’
‘It’s all going wrong.’
‘
The Doctor still lives?
’
‘I haven’t even seen him yet. I’m trapped with one of the others.’
‘Because you disobeyed me.’
‘
I know. I’m sorry.
’
‘A poor beginning to your service.’
‘I never killed anybody before.’
‘
There are weapons all around you. Keep one close to
hand. Make them trust you and then, when it is least expected,
strike.
’
‘I will.’
‘
You know the rewards for success. I have other rewards for
your failure.
’
The light in the cube began to die, as Tegan’s voice came echoing through the shaft to him. ‘Turlough? Is something wrong?’
He returned the cube to his pocket and leaned out over the drop. ‘I’m on my way,’ he called in reply, and he reached for the first of the rungs to begin his descent.
When he reached the bottom of the shaft, Turlough emerged into an underfloor area that was hardly different from the one that they’d left behind. Tegan was already trying alone to raise the overhead grille, but she didn’t seem to be having much success. She gave up as Turlough sat beating the dust from his clothes, and said, ‘What kept you?’
‘Out of practice,’ Turlough said, and he glanced at the grille. ‘Any luck?’
Tegan shook her head. ‘Solid. I don’t even think that two of us could move it.’
‘Well, give me a minute and I’ll...’
But Tegan was suddenly gripping his arm so hard that he stopped before he could finish. The intent to warn was obvious. She was staring upward, and he followed the look.
The corridor above seemed no different from any other that they’d seen, with the exception that the lights were brighter down at the far end. It was a part of the liner that they hadn’t covered – they knew as much because it was two or three decks down, and until the discovery of the shaft they hadn’t descended at all. Now, Turlough could make out what Tegan had seen.
The lights were brighter because the corridor ended in a door to the outside. The door was open, and somebody was coming in.
He was Death.
The image occurred to Tegan straight away, and it persisted even as he strode towards them and overhead. It was impossible to tell if he was a man or a machine under the weight of the dark armour that he wore. What appeared to be the lines of bones and sinews were moulded into its surface like old brass, and around his shoulders was a heavy cloak that almost reached the ground. They could feel a cold downdraft as it swept across the grating above. He carried a metal staff that lightly touched the floor with every other step. It sounded like the polite tap of the undertaker, with the carriage and the black-plumed horses waiting outside.
Both Tegan and Turlough huddled down and tried to make themselves as small as possible. They didn’t even dare to breathe; dust was still thick in the air, and a single sound would have given them away. The terror of the Lazars had been bad enough, but now
this
...
There was a drone waiting at the other end of the corridor. They saw the dark man bend to touch some kind of code into the machine’s front display panel, and when he straightened they heard him speak, a single word as harsh as a saw cutting through skin:
‘
Sterilise
.’
Then he turned and headed back for the door, and they closed their eyes tight as Death passed over. Again they felt the downdraft, again the slow tapping like the hammering of the Calvary nails.
‘It can’t get worse,’ Tegan whispered; feeling as if she would burst, ‘it
can’t
.’
Turlough put a reassuring hand on her arm. He did it without thinking, and he surprised himself.
Friendship was no part of his orders, and he’d kept it firmly out of his mind... but such things, it seemed, were not open to conscious control.
And as he tried to pass on strength that he wasn’t even sure he had, Turlough was certain of only one thing. Tegan was wrong. It could get worse and, if his controller had his way, it would.
In the meantime, they had to keep moving. ‘Come on,’ he said, and he looked around for a new route through the crawlspace.
‘If it’s about my running away,’ Olvir began, but Kari cut him off.
‘Forget that. It’s them.’ She looked over to where Nyssa and the Doctor were standing by the navigation screen, discussing the possible implications of the expanded star-chart. ‘They can’t be trusted. They teamed up and took my gun away.’
‘You’ve got it back.’
‘That’s not the point. Stick with your own kind and tell them nothing else.’
‘My own kind?’ Olvir said with some incredulity.
‘It’s our own kind who cut loose and dumped us here.
You’d do the same to me now, if you got the chance.’
‘No, I wouldn’t.’
Olvir looked at her suddenly, with searching interest and some hope. ‘Really?’ he said.
‘Of course I wouldn’t,’ Kari said, trying not to appear as uncomfortable as she felt.
Olvir watched her a moment longer, and then shrugged. ‘You’d say that anyway,’ he said.
The star-chart on its own was of no use. Both the Doctor and Nyssa agreed that it was an interesting curiosity which told them nothing. It was a clue, not a solution, and they didn’t even know the true nature of the problem. As far as the Doctor was concerned, this argued the need for the analytical resources of the lost TARDIS. Nyssa was worried about the prospect of taking the danger of infection back to Tegan and Turlough, whom she assumed to be safe and waiting inside, but the Doctor believed that the danger had begun the moment that the door to the liner had opened.
In the meantime, they were getting no closer. Olvir and Kali finished their conversation and came over.
Kari said, ‘Any progress?’
‘Nothing,’ the Doctor said, and he indicated the console with its scattering of useless memory blocks alongside. ‘If there’s a map of the liner, it isn’t here.’
Olvir looked down for a moment, and then said,
‘Why not try some of the others?’
The Doctor frowned. ‘What others?’
Olvir indicated the equipment stacks where he’d been hiding. ‘Those little blocks,’ he said. ‘There’s a rack full of them back there.’
Bor had taken a walk.
Valgard had seen him go and had been able to do nothing about it. Once he’d passed the crude yellow line that marked the beginning of the forbidden zone, he was as good as lost. Valgard had called to him, but Bor had only hesitated briefly and shouted something that sounded like
It’s still climbing
. His helmet was off and he was looking worse than ever, a ragged scarecrow of a man who was obviously unwell and feverish.
Valgard stood at the line in the middle of the storeyard and watched as Bor disappeared into the shadows that began on the far side of the area and stretched away into the depths of the Terminus. He wasn’t the first to walk off into the zone, and he probably wouldn’t be the last. For a moment Valgard saw another figure in place of Bor, and its face was his own.
Perhaps it wasn’t too late. Perhaps something could be done before Bor was overpowered by the fast-acting sickness that gave the forbidden zone its name, and he could be brought back... back to suffer the slow, creeping deterioration that no amount of armour or drug control could fully prevent.
All of the Vanir were dead men – Bor, Valgard, Eirak, all of them. Perhaps a walk into the forbidden zone was the most that they could look forward to, release from the endless workload of Lazars that arrived in increasing numbers and went... well, nobody really knew where they went. It was the Vanir’s job to ensure that they got from the liners and into the Terminus. Once they’d been taken into the zone, that job ended.
For as long as it took these thoughts to go through his mind, Valgard hesitated. Letting Bor go the way of his choice might, in the end, be the kindest thing to do. Except that Valgard couldn’t bring himself to do it.
He went to speak to Eirak.
The watch-commander of the Vanir was to be found in the corner of a converted storage tank that he used as an administrative office. Here he would sit and puzzle over worksheets and shift allocations as he did his best to handle the inflow of Lazars with an ailing labour force. If the throughput was slowed, Lazars died on his hands; and Terminus Incorporated had its own way of punishing such inefficiency.
Eirak hadn’t long returned from giving the sterilisation order to the current liner’s drones – and at the same time, although he couldn’t know it, he’d given Tegan one of the biggest scares of her life –
when Valgard burst in.
‘Eirak,’ he said, even before he’d removed his radiation helmet in the comparative safety of the tank,
‘We’ve got a problem.’
Eirak rubbed his eyes wearily. Without his helmet he was nothing like the monster that Tegan might have expected. He was simply a tired bureaucrat, and problems tended to form long queues for his attention.
‘Really?’ he said.
Valgard advanced on the desk, and set his helmet down with a thump. It partly covered the chart that Eirak had been studying, but Valgard didn’t seem to notice. ‘It’s Bor. He just turned around and walked off the job. He went straight into the forbidden zone.’
‘Why?’
‘No reason. Nothing obvious, anyway.’
Eirak frowned. ‘That’s all we need,’ he said, part-way lifting Valgard’s helmet and pulling the chart free.
‘I’ll have to revise the entire roster.’
Valgard waited for a moment, but Eirak was already reabsorbed in the graph. He couldn’t stay silent for long. ‘Is that all you’re going to say?’
‘I’ve got a shipload of Lazars just arrived, we’re under-strength and most of the men are too sick to work more than a half-shift. What do you expect me to say?’
‘There must be something you can do.’
Eirak sighed. ‘Like what? Grow up, Valgard.’
Valgard took an angry step around the makeshift table. ‘You’ve got a responsibility...’ he began, but Eirak suddenly thrust a handful of the papers before him, almost crumpling them before Valgard’s eyes.