Barbara reached out and touched Vicki’s hand.
‘Off we go then,’ the Doctor said brightly, operating the door lock mechanism and setting the controls to prepare for dematerialisation.
Vicki looked up sharply as if startled at the suddenness of everything. She moved her mouth to say something about the rescue ship, but it was too late. The Doctor had initiated the dematerialisation sequence.
The central control column started its solemn rhythmic rise and fall and the TARDIS wobbled and shook, groaning and rumbling with its customary noise of protest and indignation.
Like some strange ghost the image of the TARDIS
slowly vanished from the darkened cave. For a few moments the noise of its engines continued to echo eerily around the enclosed space, and then that too was gone.
Within minutes it was as though the TARDIS had never been there.
From the radio panel in the main compartment of the
Astra
Nine
, Trainee Oliphant’s disembodied voice was repeating a terse call: ‘Seeker
Mission Craft to
Astra Nine,
do you copy?
Seeker
Mission Craft to
Astra Nine,
please respond... Rescue
Craft to
Astra Nine...’
On the radio scanner the tuner arc was sweeping round and round its glowing centre and the echo signal of the TARDIS pulsed with a shrill bleep on each circuit.
Suddenly there was a muffled movement outside. Then the two silver figures loomed in the open hatchway and bent their tall heads so they could squeeze themselves into the wreck.
They stood silently watching the radar pulse and listening to the radio transmission. They watched the echo pulse of the TARDIS slowly fade and then disappear altogether. They turned slightly to one another as if exchanging a telepathic dialogue.
The taller figure moved forward, reached towards the radio panel and passed its hand in front of it. There was a dull bang, a small puff of black smoke and Oliphant’s voice died away into a rush of static.
Then the taller figure turned to the panel containing the transmitter for the locator beam which Vicki had switched on before leaving the wreck with Ian and Barbara.
It passed its hand again across the machine and there was another dull bang and another brief curl of black smoke. Again the two silver figures turned their heads briefly towards each other.
Then they turned round and strode out.
Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Trainee Oliphant walked into the dimly illuminated navigation capsule with its myriad flashing displays and slumped into his seat. He touched a few keys on the communications panel and ran the playback on the response disc. It contained a number of routine messages from Earth and other colonial planetary settlements. But from
Astra Nine
there was nothing.
Frowning with irritation he checked the automatic transmitter disc. It appeared to be operating satisfactorily, sending out his recorded call every few seconds. Swinging his chair around, he checked the locator beacon receiver.
Nothing. There was not even a homing signal being transmitted from those damn castaways.
With a shrug, Oliphant activated the hologram table. He was depressed to see how little of the cubic word puzzle he had completed. He stared at the clues and selected one which already had a few letters in place.
‘Forceful cosmic umbrella arrangement? Four and four,’
he murmured.
The relevant positions were buried deep in the shimmering cube. ‘ – T – R – A – –,’ he spelled out like a child learning to read.
He shrugged again and lost interest. He yawned and made an effort to check out the alternative radio frequencies that the
Astra Nine
castaways might use if their power reserves were really very low. But the different channels yielded nothing. All that could be heard was the endless static of deep space.
Suddenly the shutter swept open to admit Weinberger and Commander Smith. Before Oliphant had time to switch off the hologram table the American had leaned over his shoulder, chewing his inevitable wadge of gum.
‘Star Wars,’ Weinberger said, stabbing the trainee in the back. ‘Simple.’
Oliphant stared at the puzzle. It fitted. Or at least the letters fitted. ‘Could be,’ he said non-commitally as Weinberger moved over and dropped into his seat. Smith reached down and switched off the hologram table. ‘Your watch report please, Mr Oliphant,’ he ordered coldly.
Oliphant gave his companions the brief and gloomy details.
Weinberger reached over and checked the locator beacon receiver. ‘Hell, those goddam castaways couldn’t even stir their asses to send Santa a letter,’ he said.
Commander Smith calmly inquired about the rendezvous arrangements and Oliphant informed him that the
Astra Nine
beacon should have been transmitting by now.
‘Perhaps the power cells have failed, sir,’ Oliphant suggested. ‘Their last transmission was very weak and they reported an increasing loss of power.’
‘We shall establish bipolar orbit as arranged. The planetary day is only thirteen hours, so we shall be able to scan the entire surface reasonably rapidly from a thousand kilometres out.’ Smith stared at the maze of sophisticated instruments for a while in silence, his thin greyish hair glinting in the soft light. ‘Let us hope we can soon send appropriate seasonal greetings back to Earth on behalf of those poor devils down there,’ he murmured.
Weinberger grunted. ‘I’m not sure I can face another microwaved frozen turkey so soon after Thanksgiving,’ he growled, continuing his checks. ‘Anyhow, we’ve still to rendezvous and establish orbit. So far there’s no guarantee this heap of Reaganium is gonna get us there.’
As Commander Smith turned to Oliphant to ask how successful the course correction had been, the young trainee suddenly pointed at one of his displays. ‘There it is again!’ he exclaimed. ‘Monopole field in the immediate field, increasing exponentially...’
Weinberger clicked abruptly into his automatic routine.
‘Check run,’ he ordered.
‘Checked and confirmed A operational,’ Oliphant rapped out, touching keys and glaring at screens. ‘Field closing in.’
‘Maximise inertia shield.’
‘Maximised but not holding, sir.’
Weinberger glanced at the Commander standing beside his seat. ‘This is a carbon copy, Commander. Same routine as last time.’
Next moment the instruments and screens went haywire with a dazzling strobing display of random graphics and digital sequences. Alarm bells started sounding.
Smith’s face went white under the brilliant reflections of multicoloured lights. ‘The inertia shield has just been totally revitalised,’ he gasped. ‘But that would require an enormous monopole field...
Then everything went blue.
They all stared dumbfounded as a filigree tracing of sapphire sparkles stretched across the capsule behind them like an electric net.
Suddenly Oliphant jumped out of his seat, as he received a shock like the lash of a steel whip.
Weinberger got out of his seat, his skin feeling dry and brittle. He pointed at something behind the set of sparks.
The sparks vanished abruptly to be replaced by a dazzling blue image.
‘There it is!’ screamed Oliphant, staring goggle-eyed at the shimmering shape.
Then with a series of violent turbulent spasms the thing vanished as though it had never been there. The bluish glow faded.
Smith, Weinberger and Oliphant stood in the pale green light of the navigation controls, staring at one another incredulously.
Then Weinberger pulled himself together. ‘Cancel alarms. Check all circuits,’ he said automatically, sitting back in his seat. ‘Resume operations as soon as instruments are clear.’
Oliphant stood still, rooted to the spot. ‘It was like a ghost... like some kind of mirage...’ he croaked, staring at the empty space before him.
Smith tallied his thoughts and turned to cast an eye over the systems as Weinberger quickly checked them out. It was as if they were pretending that everything was proceeding perfectly straightforwardly. ‘I don’t know,’
Smith replied hoarsely. ‘Why would it appear in here?’
Oliphant turned and sat at his console and resumed his check procedures as if in a dream.
‘There was some similar interference reported by
Astra
Nine,
’ Commander Smith reminded them. ‘Perhaps the survivors will be able to shed some light on our own experiences in this neighbourhood.’ He put his hand on Oliphant’s shoulder. ‘Mr Oliphant, kindly log the galactic coordinates for those two emissions for future reference.
We will need to be able to chart our positions very accurately and compare them with
Astra Nine
’s experiences.’
Smith left the module and the shutter whispered shut behind him.
Oliphant tried to concentrate on the tasks allotted him but he could not banish the inexplicable events of the past few minutes from his mind.
‘Chinese!’ he suddenly blurted out, screwing up his eyes as he tried to recapture the alien image that had hovered among them for a few seconds.
Weinberger was too preoccupied to hear.
Oliphant turned to him. ‘The Chinese have been experimenting with image projection,’ he said excitedly.
Weinberger glanced up. ‘Image projection? At this distance?’ he laughed. ‘Don’t press my button!’
Oliphant winced at the American catchphrase. ‘I am not,’ he retorted indignantly. ‘You forget the Chinese have a mission investigating Geldof Eight. That’s less than a light year away.’
Weinberger leaned forward, suddenly interested. ‘Yeah, I guess that thing did look a little oriental...’ he recalled.
‘Maybe you’re not such a fool after all.’
‘It resembles a late twenty-first century Chinese revival style storage unit,’ Oliphant explained.
Weinberger watched him narrowly. ‘Did it really?’ he said, chewing violently on his gum. ‘Looked more like a ticket booth from one of those old Mississippi steam wheeler company offices to me. I recall seeing one in the Kyno Museum in St Louis.’
‘Why would the Chinese project an image like that?’
Oliphant demanded scornfully.
Weinberger chewed, lost for a reply. Then he grinned malevolently. ‘Perhaps they’re trying to get at us,’ he said.
‘Drive us crazy.’
Oliphant stared at the display which was showing them the course which would take them into orbit around Dido.
‘Or perhaps they don’t want us snooping around here,’ he murmured. ‘But that still doesn’t explain the monopole fields...’
Weinberger’s face was suffused with an eerie greenish glow from the navigation displays.
‘Just let ’em try and stop us,’ he growled. ‘Thirty hours to orbit.’
‘Just a bit of monopole turbulence in the space-time continuum, my dear,’ the Doctor said, patting Vicki’s arm reassuringly. ‘Nothing to worry about. We’ve stabilised again quite safely.’
Barbara and Ian exchanged rueful glances as the TARDIS stopped gyrating and they were able to stand up again without clinging to the edge of the control console.
Their departure from Dido had been more than usually bumpy and erratic and they had spent a harrowing few minutes watching the Doctor as he struggled with the controls to prevent his machine from materialising prematurely into some space-time no man’s land.
‘Very odd, very odd,’ the Doctor muttered to himself, fussing around the console. ‘Almost got caught up in a powerful artificial magnetic field... Probably the field generated by the plasma drive from a spacecraft’s propulsion unit... Confounded galactic traffic should look where it’s going...’
‘What was that about galactic traffic looking where it’s going, Doctor?’ asked Barbara, pricking up her ears and moving round next to him.
The Doctor looked startled as if he had not wanted to be overheard. ‘Oh, nothing, my dear young lady... nothing at all,’ he replied evasively.
Now that things seemed to have settled down again Ian was anxious to get some information out of the Doctor about events after he and Bennett had disappeared from the wreck. ‘So there were survivors among the inhabitants after all,’ he murmured, now seeing the mysterious silver figures in a completely new light. ‘Bennett hadn’t destroyed them all.’
‘Quite,’ the Doctor grunted, still preoccupied with the hoarsely humming control column. ‘Now they have their planet to themselves again and somehow I don’t think they’ll permit the rescue craft to land... They’ll want to be left alone in peace to rebuild their civilisation.’
‘So that was why you were so keen to bring Vicki with us!’
The Doctor smiled mysteriously. ‘Not really, Chesterton,’ he said quietly, glancing sideways at their nervous young guest. ‘I had all sorts of reasons.’
He wandered amiably around the console, making a few brief adjustments and then clapped his hands and rubbed them briskly together. ‘We’ll be materialising in a little while,’ he announced, strolling over and sitting in the armchair. ‘Perhaps this time we’ll be able to relax and have a nice little rest!’ Closing his eyes he lay back luxuriously in the chair and within a few minutes he had dozed off.
The others stared at him. ‘I do wish he wouldn’t do that!’ Ian muttered nervously. ‘It’s getting to be a habit!’
‘Are we still travelling?’ Vicki asked hesitantly. ‘We don’t seem to be moving at all now.’
Barbara gave an ironic little laugh. ‘Oh yes, we’re travelling all right, Vicki. We’re travelling further and faster than you’ve ever travelled in your life!’
Vicki stared round at the humming control room, still keeping one hand on the edge of the console— just in case.
She looked rather disappointed, as if time-travel was turning out to be much less exciting than she had imagined. ‘Well, it just seems a bit... a bit dull...’ she said with an apologetic giggle.
Ian and Barbara exchanged amused looks. They shook their heads and grinned wryly.
‘Just you wait,’ Ian warned her. ‘Travelling with the Doctor may get very confusing, but believe me, it’s never ever dull!’
Next moment there was a faint jarring motion and a sort of rumbling noise from under the floor. Vicki’s eyes popped wide open with apprehension and she gave the others a queasy smile. Barbara feigned indifference. ‘Oh, what an odd sensation...’ she said nervously.