Doctor Who_ The Blue Angel Part 7

But this was a strange and unknown s.p.a.ce.

The presence of these Corridors, etched in mesmerising blue on the viewscreen, s.h.i.+fted the usual perceptions of time and s.p.a.ce into unforeseen dimensions. Really, none of them knew what they were dealing with yet.

But the Federation should have been in contact by now.

'Garrett?' In desperation Blandish turned to his second-in-command. 'What can we do?'

The other members of the bridge crew looked askance. Never had they seen their Captain without a plan or a scheme up his sleeve.

On the viewscreen, the vast and demoniac Sahmbekart mother s.h.i.+p loomed up.

Then it fired off its opening salvo.

Impact was virtually instantaneous and, even with the toughest, least penetrable s.h.i.+elds up, the Nepotist Nepotist rocked in its...o...b..t, sending everyone aboard flying across the room. rocked in its...o...b..t, sending everyone aboard flying across the room.

Blandish leapt to his feet. 'Garrett!' he shouted at the impa.s.sive science officer.

There was a second blast then from the Sahmbekarts and the Nepotist Nepotist lurched again, more violently. lurched again, more violently.

Tai-Nur's voice crackled over the comm. 'The s.h.i.+elds are going, Captain... we...'

Garrett marched straight up to the command chair.

'It's quite easy. We use the Nepotist Nepotist itself. We take ourselves out of the firing line and we do the most damage we can.' itself. We take ourselves out of the firing line and we do the most damage we can.'

'How?' Blandish whispered. 'How do we do that?'

Garrett was inhumanly cool. 'We switch off our s.h.i.+elds. And then, quite simply, we crash through the Corridors. We take the whole lot with us. And then, finally, we crash-land on Valcea.'

The bridge crew were silent at his words, until the s.h.i.+p was. .h.i.t again, and the last tatters of their force-s.h.i.+eld were stripped off them like tin foil and the Sahmbekart moved in easily, so easily, for the kill.

Chapter Thirty-Two.

Even Aboard the Bus...

Even aboard the bus it wasn't plain sailing.

The Doctor drove on through the Corridor and gradually the buildings pressing in around him grew larger and more ornate.

They lost sight of the blue ca.n.a.l and the landscape was taking on a different aspect a mismatched one.

It was a weird melange melange of alien architectures, as if these were buildings s.n.a.t.c.hed at random from all times and places and rea.s.sembled in haste to line the bus's route in sinister fas.h.i.+on. of alien architectures, as if these were buildings s.n.a.t.c.hed at random from all times and places and rea.s.sembled in haste to line the bus's route in sinister fas.h.i.+on.

The Doctor drove on relentlessly, refusing to be deterred from the route he had determined would lead him back to Valcea.

He drove with an air of mock cheeriness which clearly irritated Compa.s.sion, who was watching him narrowly from the gangway. He could feel her presence at his back and wished she would make more small talk. But no. She wasn't that kind of girl, he knew.

He fumbled through the loose ca.s.sette tapes in Iris's glove compartment. 'She usually has quite a selection. Shall we have some s.h.i.+rley Ba.s.sey? Abba?'

'No,' said Compa.s.sion.

'Dusty Springfield!' the Doctor cried, and jammed the tape into the deck. As Dusty swept into 'I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself,' he went on, ignoring his companion's simmering silence: 'When I was exiled on earth in the 1970s, I met Dusty Springfield once, you know. She was hired incredible though it might sound privately by UNIT to go undercover in Memphis. There'd been abductions and whatnot. Anyway, I was called in and met her. She'd been kidnapped herself by then and I had to free the poor girl. She was lovely. Quite charming.'

He was shouting over the rattle of the engine, glancing over his shoulder now and then and tossing his hair out of his eyes. Suddenly Compa.s.sion lost all patience with him.

'Doctor, you're babbling at me.'

His face fell. 'I am?'

'It happens when you get nervous or overexcited. It's very distracting.'

He blushed. 'Babbling? No one else has ever complained,' he lied.

'You ramble on about nothing when there are more important things to discuss.'

'Ah.' He grinned and tapped his nose. 'I don't think you've cottoned on yet to the incredibly sophisticated way in which I operate.'

'Yes I have. It's wasteful and ostentatious.'

'Right.' With a sudden burst of energy he pulled the bus into an emergency stop, switched off the music and jumped out of the cab.

'You, madam, are stepping out of line. You've not said a decent word to me yet since you... um, rescued me. In fact, I'd go so far as to say you rarely have a decent word to say to anyone at all!'

Compa.s.sion tutted. 'I'd agree with that.'

'But that's awful!' He grabbed her elbows and found himself shrugged off. 'You have to give people more time. Look at Fitz... He's really not Kode, you know. He's a new man well, his old self, I suppose.' He sighed. 'If you tried a little harder, I'm sure you'd see he's all right, actually... he's a good man...'

'He's dead anyway. I told you. And that woman. Iris.'

The Doctor shook his head firmly. 'I don't believe it.' He smiled. 'See? I've got intrinsic faith in my friends.'

'Then you, Doctor,' said Compa.s.sion, 'are a fool.'

He paused, fixing her with a cold glance that she found she couldn't shake.

Very slowly he inclined his head towards hers, until their noses were only an inch or so apart.

'I would suggest, Compa.s.sion, that you make just a tad more effort with your social superego. Your manners are appalling. And what's more, I should like to point out just how tactful I am being in not demanding to know, right here and now, exactly how you found me.'

It was a second or two before she could even find her voice. When she did, it shook very slightly.

'I don't know what I did, Doctor. I don't know what happened at all...'

He nodded grimly. 'That's what I thought.' Then he went back to the driver's seat, turned Dusty back on, and they started off again.

The maze was becoming tighter and tighter. Fitz felt, as they stumbled and careered through the ash and slag, kicking up clouds as they went, that the walls of blackened volcanic rock were pressing in ever tighter and that soon he and Iris would be crushed.

Heedlessly Iris pressed on, slowly now, then galloping fiercely, and all the while the cries of the savage circling owls echoed above them.

'Iris!' he yelled over the choking fumes. 'We're causing a dust storm! They're bound to find us!' He could only imagine how conspicuous they would be from the air.

She reined her horse in. 'You're right.' And she jumped off again, slapped the creature's rump, and let it pelt off, back the way they had come. 'That should distract them.'

Fitz did the same and carefully unwound his borrowed scarf. 'Hey, we could use this to... like, if we unwound it... we could use it to find our way through the labyrinth.'

'It's been done before. I've seen the Doctor get through more scarves than Salome does fans during a dance. In fact, I saw Salome doing a fan dance with one of the Doctor's scarves once upon a time. Anyway, that old laying-a-trail ruse never comes off.' She set off again on foot. 'Come on.'

'I'll be bruised head to foot in the morning,' said Fitz ruefully. 'I never thought riding was such hard work.'

Iris snorted. 'You've never been riding with me before.'

'Quite.'

She turned on him with a raised eyebrow. 'Let's get this straight, sonny Jim. Any more of your double entendres and I send you home this minute.'

'I wish you could. Anyway, what do you mean, double entendres?'

'You know. You've been flirting away like mad with me, from the very first moment we met.'

She hurried on, pacing easily through the narrowing pa.s.sageways. Fitz felt through his pockets for his Woodbines and tried to keep up. 'I've done no such thing!'

'Pretending to be the Doctor and all. Oh, I know your game, my lad.'

'And?'

She whirled around to find him grinning and lighting a bent cigarette. She took a step towards him.

'And you, sweetheart, don't stand a chance.' She flicked dramatically at her hair.

'Oh no?'

'I'm out of your league.'

'Aren't we all travellers in the fifth dimension together?'

She laughed. 'What do you want, some interdimensional version of the Mile-High Club? We aren't the jet set.'

He smiled. 'I think that's exactly what you are.'

'Flattery.' Iris darted forward and kissed him suddenly, grasping his unshaven face smartly in both hands and forcing her tongue into his mouth for the briefest of instants. Then she let him go.

Fitz turned crimson and coughed.

'Don't tell the Doctor.' She grinned.

An owl screeched almost directly overhead and Fitz found himself dragged bodily, by Iris, around the next twist in the ravine.

'Come on!' she cried, as if it had been him holding them up.

The owl screeches became louder, almost deafening.

The birds were upon them now.

And as the two fugitives rounded the last corner they saw that they had arrived at the dead centre of the maze.

Here there was steam and a pool of black mud, popping with sulphurous fumes. In the middle of this expanse, like a trophy, was a vast green egg, gilded in gold and platinum.

And, guarding it, were the owls, ma.s.sed and resplendent in ivory.

Iris swore.

From behind them came the owls that had pursued them through the maze. They soared straight overhead, mission accomplished, and joined their mates.

'They've got us now,' said Fitz, gulping, as each pair of baleful eyes turned to stare in the newcomers' direction.

From the private journal of Captain Robert B. Blandish Where are the empirical laws of physics?

Call me prissy, pedantic if you like, but I do like to know where I am.

How can races and worlds a million light years apart be brought into the same arena like this? My Science Officer Garrett points out, not for the first time, that any alien technology, sufficiently advanced, will look, to the uninitiated, like magic. Well, I say: bulls.h.i.+t. We all live in the same universe, don't we? So we all have to operate by the same physical laws.

We do do all live in the same universe, don't we? all live in the same universe, don't we?

Even when we all went to that crazy alternative mirror dimension, years ago, where we found all our identical evil twin counterparts, even then things weren't that different. The world still made some kind of sense.

I don't think we've ever been anywhere as messed up as this.

As soon as we fired on the crackling loops of energy that were apparently Corridors, radiating from Valcea, which, according to Garrett, were Corridors stretching themselves through s.p.a.ce and time, the place all went to h.e.l.l.

The Corridors buckled and whipped around, las.h.i.+ng themselves against the hull of the Nepotist Nepotist, as if they were alive, like tentacles, and resisting the s.h.i.+p as it drove at them. I wanted to snap those bonds. I wanted to see what happened. I don't know what it was with me, but I still wanted to cause more damage.

But the more damage we tried to cause, the more we pitched the whole might of our vessel against the Corridors, the more we became ensnared.

It seemed that they really were alive, to some extent. Like creepers and vines they lashed themselves on to us and we were caught in the cat's cradle of this luminous tangle.

The Sahmbekart fleet hung still in s.p.a.ce, holding their fire power for now. A relief.

At least we had baffled them with our foolhardy attempts to cause more chaos and they had desisted from firing any more. We couldn't have taken much more of an a.s.sault.

But when we had caught ourselves up, ravelled ourselves thicker in the Corridor, what did the Sahmbekart leader do but contact us again?