The Romance Of Crime Part 21

She was accompanied by Pyerpoint, who looked convincingly cowed. Eddie leapt forward but Xais raised a forbidding hand.

'Leave him. He may still be of use.'

She flung her head back and a small liquid noise of disapproval issued from the back of her throat. 'Must I spend my time rounding up prisoners that you allow to escape?'

Eddie waved Flarkk and Gjork forward to watch Pyerpoint.

The computer room shook once more. 'The engines have been interfered with.' Xais pushed Charlie's raised fist aside and strutted over to the navigation console. She consulted the diagnostic systems and grunted at their response. 'Somebody has sabotaged the control linkage.'

'But we've got a couple of the lads posted at the engine room.' Eddie leaned forward and flicked the security channel of the display screen to the relevant camera.

A monochrome picture flashed erratically through belts of static. Charlie's eyes bulged. 'Who the h.e.l.l is that?'

There was a man inside the engine room and some sort of robot with him.

'No!' Xais cried. Her silver face whirled to face Charlie.

'Your Ogron servants are pathetic. All the Normals should have been killed!'

Charlie's fingers tightened around the grips of the knuckleduster. 'What did you just say?'

Xais pushed his arm aside. 'Idiot! There's no time for such puerile distractions!'

The console clicked. The display screen sent up reams of navigational data and suggested emergency routines. Xais ran her eyes down the list and snarled.

'If the linkage is damaged,' Pyerpoint shouted over, 'there's no way to right the asteroid.'

Eddie whispered in his brother's ear, 'Why don't we kill her now?'

Deep rumbles issued from Charlie's stomach as the acids of his digestive system reacted to his confused loyalties. 'Soon,'

he croaked.

Xais slammed her hand down on the console. 'Useless! The orbit will decay and we will impact with the surface. We have less than an hour.'

Eddie had a suggestion. 'Why don't we just transmat down?'

'We couldn't risk it,' Charlie replied. 'When this rock crashes it'll smash the planet apart anyway. Eleven's got a weak crust.'

A frustrated scream burst from Xais's s.h.i.+ning lips. 'No! I will not be cheated of my vengeance!' Behind the eyeslits of the mask an orange glow started to build up. 'There must be another way. We could travel on in your s.h.i.+p, circle in s.p.a.ce, and return to Eleven when the damaged area has stabilized.'

Charlie shook his head. 'No point. It'd take us a good hour to load the mining gear back aboard.'

Beams of hate sizzled from Xais's eyes and struck the security screen. The gla.s.s fractured.

The Doctor gripped the bra.s.s handle of a courtroom door as the corridor on level nine swayed again.

'Somebody needs driving lessons,' he said and righted himself. His head banged a concrete pillar. 'Definitely a refresher course at the very least.' The Rock shook up and down and he was flung up to the ceiling and then jerked back to the floor. 'Maniac! The s.p.a.ceways aren't safe nowadays.'

The door of Pyerpoint's office was ahead. He steadied himself, waited for the shaking to stop, and then ran for it. It was locked. He fiddled in his pockets, whipped out the sonic screwdriver, brought it to the mark, and gained entrance.

An instinctive movement and his nose and mouth were covered with one end of his scarf. The air had been contaminated by thick yellow vapour. He coughed out the small amount caught in his throat and dabbed the tip of his tongue at the solid residue that stained his teeth. The substance was sharp with corrosive chemicals.

He backed away and was about to leave the office when he saw the fingers of a pale hand through a clearing patch of gas.

The hand belonged to Stokes. The Doctor propped up the heavy body and searched for a pulse. Fortunately the fellow had not been exposed for too long.

The gas was thickest on the other side of the room. The Doctor reasoned it must contain the source. He tightened his grip on the end of the scarf pressed to his mouth and dived into the dense heart of the cloud. The chemicals in the vapour irritated his eyes and gritted tears stung each time he closed his eyelids. His eardrums popped as he advanced.

The sonic screwdriver was still in his hand. He fumbled with the tiny controls on the side and extended the device into the cloud. It bleeped, leading him to the nozzle set in the side of the globe. Thin streams of the vapour poured from the tiny opening. A precisely directed channel of ultra-modulated sonic waves welded the concealed innards of the globe and the hissing ceased.

The Doctor staggered back to where he remembered Pyerpoint's desk to be and searched for the office's environment controls. He thumbed the air conditioning b.u.t.ton and slats in the wall clattered open. Emergency vents started to suck the unfamiliar matter from the atmosphere.

The arms of one of the big chairs embraced the Doctor's aching body. Its back, solid and upright, soothed his spine. He took his hat from his pocket and wafted the gas away from him. 'Well done, Doctor,' he managed to say. 'Yes. Very well done, Doctor. How awfully clever and heroic of you.'

'Well done, Doctor,' said a familiar voice from beneath the desk.

He peered down. 'Romana! What on earth are you doing down there?'

She sat up and stretched, her long blonde hair falling immaculately over her shoulders. 'Being ga.s.sed and looking at your boots.'

Stokes moaned and raised his head. 'Ah. The errant Doctor.

I've heard so much about you since our last meeting.' He climbed slowly to his feet, wiping yellow stained fingers on his coat. 'Now, let me guess. You've dispatched Xais, the Ogrons, and the Nisbett brothers, and we're safely on our way home.'

The Doctor gave a broad toothy grin. 'No,' he said.

'Disappointing, isn't it?'

'Pyerpoint locked us in here and turned on the gas,'

Romana said. She examined the inert globe. 'Do you think he suspects us of being in league with Xais?'

The Doctor swung his feet up on the desk and popped his hat on his head. 'I very much doubt it,' he said matter-of-factly. 'Because, of course, he's in cahoots with her himself.'

'What?' Stokes spluttered.

Romana perched on the desk and said, 'What do you mean, "of course"? You had no more idea of that than anybody else.'

'Well, no,' the Doctor admitted. 'But I enjoyed saying it, anyway. A man has to have his simple pleasures.'

He pushed the hat from his face and continued, 'I think that before we do anything else, we ought to try and work out exactly what's going on here. Eh? That safe looks interesting, for a start.'

Romana picked up her cap and started to rearrange her hair.

'What safe?'

The Doctor leapt from the chair and swept a row of books from the shelf. Beneath was a metal hatch protected by a combination lock.

'Ah,' said Romana. 'That safe.'

'Imperative we return to TARDIS and vacate,' K9 said as he and Spiggot hurried down the corridors leading away from the engine room. 'Destruction of this environment is now certain.'

'Ah, what's the point?' Spiggot stopped. 'You know as well as I do that we haven't a hope.'

K9 swivelled to face him and beeped impatiently. 'Urgent.

We must return to TARDIS.'

'I never thought it'd end like this, K9,' Spiggot said wistfully. 'Well, we all have to face it, you know. And this is it, K9. The big one. The final curtain.'

He took out his wallet and flipped it open. Inside was a colour photograph of Angie and the kids. 'I'll never see them again. Funny, but I always thought I'd die a hero's death. I used to dream about it as a kid. But life's not like that, is it?

Don't really know if this qualifies. Yeah, I suppose I'll be taking Xais and the Nisbett brothers with me. You could call that glory. But what's the cost? Is it worth it, eh?'

He looked back at the photograph. 'h.e.l.l, I just couldn't say no, could I? Maybe it had to end this way. Eh, K9?'

He looked up but K9 had gone.

In his place was an Ogron.

Spiggot yelped and jumped.

A wide red beam shot the Ogron in the back and it toppled heavily down. K9 trundled forward.

'You will accompany me to the TARDIS,' he said angrily.

'Thanks,' said Spiggot. 'Hey, you're the best partner I never had, K9.'

The robot dog whizzed off. 'Your input is unnecessary,' he said. 'Please conserve use of speech centres for relevant information!'

'That dirty little planet,' sighed Stokes.

Grubby blue chemicals whirled in stormy cl.u.s.ters over the surface of the ever closer Planet Eleven as observed through the porthole of Pyerpoint's office. 'One of the last places I'd have chosen to die.'

'Oh really?' asked Romana as she clipped her hair back into place. 'Where would you have chosen?'

He closed his eyes. 'Ooh, perhaps one of the pleasure centres outside this rotten system. Nothing like that here, of course. I've always found the people of these planets rather provincial in outlook. Tatty suburban tastes. They wouldn't know how to enjoy a pleasure centre if it leapt upon them. Not that it matters any more.'

He had managed to break open the drinks cabinet and retumed to his chair where a tumbler and a half empty bottle of Solturian Scotch were waiting to soothe him. 'Ah well.

After a few of these, perhaps I shan't feel the bullets when they strike. Or the dagger as it slits me. Oh, there must be something we can do instead of sitting here doing nothing!'

The Doctor looked up from a ma.s.s of charts and papers he had purloined from Pyerpoint's safe. 'You're the only one who's sitting here doing nothing,' he pointed out.

Stokes groaned. 'Today I have been attacked, robbed, jailed, ga.s.sed, and forced to run up miles of stairs. I hardly call that doing nothing. Not to mention being chased by those Neanderthal beasts.'

'That's hardly a fair comparison,' the Doctor said without looking up from his work. 'The Neanderthals were charming people. Much better mannered than their successors. And they could knock up a superb mammoth ca.s.serole.'

'Doctor,' called Romana from the porthole. 'I'm worried.'

'You're worried? Oh that makes me feel much better,'

grumbled Stokes. He felt like crying.

'Shut up,' the Doctor told him. 'What vexes you, Romana?'

'That planet. I've calculated our new trajectory and it looks like we've entered a decaying orbit. We're going much faster than we should be.'

The Doctor hurried over and looked out. 'There's really no need to check,' Romana said frostily.

'Goodness,' said the Doctor. 'Romana, I think you're right.'

'I know I'm right.'

He leapt back to the desk, cleared a s.p.a.ce among the papers and beckoned her over. 'Right. I think it's time for our little conference.'

'I suppose you're going to ignore me,' whined Stokes, pouring another drink. 'I shall just sit here and quietly go insane, shall I?'

'I shouldn't think you've ever done anything quietly,' said Romana.

'Now, Pyerpoint is a very powerful man,' the Doctor began. 'With access to all sorts of information. As High Archon he has contacts in administrative bureaux throughout the government and military of the Uva Beta Uva system. And as we now know he's crooked. A rotten apple, a bad egg.'

Romana was looking over the papers. 'He's been trading in that information for his own benefit. He owns huge stakes in these companies, all of which have been granted excessive public funds.'

'Oh, a great discovery,' Stokes snorted. 'It's called corruption, dear. Everybody's at it.'

The Doctor went on. 'I imagine that's how he started out.

But as he got more confident his ideas got bigger. Take a look at this.' He pa.s.sed Romana a sheaf of print-out he had taken from the safe.

She ran widening eyes quickly down the list of figures.

'He's running about a quarter of the major crime syndicates on Planet Five. He supplies the information, they do his dirty work, he takes thirty per cent.'

'Pardon my interruption,' said Stokes, 'but High Archon Pyerpoint is hardly the sort of person that the average gangster is going to conduct business with.'

'There's no need to carry out direct business,' said the Doctor. 'He probably uses codes and signals to establish the link. And if he needs his partners out of the way for some reason, well, they'll never know enough to implicate him. It's a very tidy little racket.'

'But why involve himself with a fanatic like Xais?'

Romana asked.

The Doctor considered this objection. 'Well, most fanatics never get past their front gates. Xais has the advantage of being very, very clever. Anyway, somehow they joined up.'