Doctor Who

by Mike Tucker

  His eyes never leaving the doorway, the Doctor pulled the lever, closing the doors and shutting out the raging storm. And whatever else was out there.

  ‘What the hell is going on down there? Our instruments are going crazy!’

  The Doctor ignored the question. ‘I’ve got Baines. You can bring us up.’

  Bill craned her neck to try and get a better view of what was going on, but there were simply too many people crowded into the control room.

  The TARDIS had reappeared in the hangar a few moments ago, the huge winches slowly spinning to a halt, and the heavy airlock doors shutting out the raging winds of Saturn with a clang that had made her ears ring.

  Seconds later, the hangar depressurised and, to Bill’s huge relief, the Doctor’s tousled head peered out through the police box doors.

  ‘Are you all just going to stand there and gawp, or is someone going to give me a hand with him?’

  Bill hopped out of the way as Delitsky, Jo Teske and a tide of engineers surged into the hangar. Bill slipped in behind them, watching as the crew helped the Doctor to manhandle what looked like a massive metal diving suit out of the TARDIS and onto a complicated-looking gurney. Jo and Jenloz started connecting a bewildering array of equipment to sockets hidden beneath flaps on the suit’s surface.

  ‘Is he alive?’ Concern was etched onto the Rig Chief’s face.

  Jenloz nodded. ‘We’re getting life readings.’ He tapped a monitor screen with a stubby finger.

  ‘Yeah, but I don’t like those readings.’ Jo looked even more anxious than the Chief. ‘We need to get him stabilised and up to the med-bay, pronto.’

  Bill made her way through the crowd of technicians to the Doctor’s side. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Bit busy at the moment.’ The Doctor pushed past her, helping Jo with another connection.

  A bit hurt by his abruptness, Bill opened her mouth to complain, then realised how selfish she was being. He was trying to save a man’s life.

  She was suddenly barged out of the way by someone behind her. Furious, she turned to see the company suit, Nettleman, and his creepy little associate, Rince. Whilst she would put up with some rudeness on the part of the Doctor, she certainly wasn’t going to take any nonsense from them.

  ‘Hey, watch who you’re shoving!’

  The two men ignored her.

  ‘Dr Teske,’ snapped Nettleman. ‘I need this man conscious so he can tell us what happened down there.’

  The medic didn’t look up. ‘This man is in no condition to say anything to anyone at the moment.’

  ‘I’m afraid that I have to insist.’

  Jo Teske looked up angrily. ‘You can insist as much as you like, Mr Nettleman, but it isn’t going to make a blind bit of difference. This man has just spent twenty minutes floating in free orbit outside this rig. That is an unprecedented occurrence in nearly fifteen years of continuous operation. I have no idea what he has been exposed to, I have no idea what side effects we can expect, so I am taking him to the medical bay for further examination. Now, if you have some previously undeclared medical experience that you can bring to this situation then please do tell me, if not then stop wasting my time!’

  Bill’s admiration for the medical officer went up by several hundred per cent. Nettleman couldn’t have looked more surprised if Jo had slapped him in the face with a wet fish. Even the Doctor looked taken aback. The crew, Delitsky included, made no attempt to hide their amusement and approval at the second smack-down that Nettleman had received. The man was definitely not popular.

  Without giving him another moment of her attention, Jo turned and started to push the gurney across the hangar towards the lift.

  Nettleman rounded on Delitsky practically shaking with rage. ‘All right, Chief Delitsky. I have had enough of this insubordination. I want to see you, your senior engineer and your chief security officer in the meeting room, right now.’

  With that, Nettleman started to push his way roughly through the crowd of suddenly sombre technicians and engineers. Rince followed in his wake.

  ‘All right, people.’ Delitsky gave a weary sigh. ‘Let’s start trying to get things back to normal here.’

  As the crew started to disperse back to their usual stations, the Doctor caught Bill’s eye, indicating that they should make use of the moment to follow Dr Teske. Bill nodded, and the two of them hurried towards the service lift.

  As the lift doors closed, Bill caught a glimpse of Delitsky’s drawn and haggard face. She didn’t envy him the meeting he was about to have with Nettleman. She didn’t envy him at all.

  Nestled in the middle of the mining platform, the med-bay was small, well equipped and – after the noise and bustle of the control room – refreshingly calm and quiet. One corner of it was dominated by a huge gleaming cylinder, the words ‘DEPRESSURISATION CHAMBER’ stencilled in red on its doors.

  The Doctor helped Jo manoeuvre the gurney into an alcove set into the wall alongside the chamber, and it locked into place with a satisfying click. Immediately the medical mainframe took over all monitor and life-support functions, relaying readings to the dozens of monitor screens scattered around the room. A low, soft rhythmic beep filled the air, adding to the calming atmosphere. Jo hurried over to her desk, shrugging off the jacket of her duty uniform and slipping on the ubiquitous white coat worn by all medical professionals instead.

  Standing at the Doctor’s elbow, Bill peered curiously at the bulky armour lying incongruously on the starched white sheets. ‘There’s no visor.’ She frowned. ‘How does he see out?’

  ‘He doesn’t,’ said the Doctor somewhat unhelpfully. ‘This –’ he rapped the metal with his knuckles – ‘is designed to stop the occupant being crushed to a pulp by atmospheric pressure. A visor would be a weak spot.’

  ‘The armour has an internal holographic Head’s-Up Display,’ explained Jo. ‘Sensor readings from the mining bell and the rig are relayed to the miners by the control team.’

  Bill frowned. ‘So the miners just float around in these things plucking diamonds out of the air?’

  ‘Not exactly. The mining is done from a semi-automated pressure bell, lowered from the rig the same way that we lowered your … spacecraft. The armour is a backup system, a failsafe in case something goes wrong with the bell.’

  ‘So why did he climb out of the bell?’

  ‘I’m not certain he climbed out. He thought that …’ Jo hesitated.

  ‘He thought that he heard something outside.’ The Doctor completed her sentence.

  Bill’s eyes widened. ‘Something dragged him out?’

  Jo shrugged helplessly, obviously not knowing what to believe. ‘Right before we lost contact with him, he was convinced he could hear something. Something moving on the hull. But he couldn’t have. It’s impossible, isn’t it?’ She looked at the Doctor questioningly. ‘Surely it has to be a freak weather phenomenon, or some electric disturbance due to the storm.’

  The Doctor just stared at her silently.

  ‘Well, why not just open this thing up and ask him?’ Bill returned her attention to the armoured figure slumped on the gurney.

  Jo shook her head. ‘Because we can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because Baines has operated a failsafe protocol.’ It was the Doctor who answered the question once more. ‘I’m guessing that there is a highly complex, and extremely robust, set of safeguards whereby the occupant of this armour can lock it down from the inside, ensuring that the environment within cannot be compromised.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Jo nodded. ‘It has to be released from the inside.’

  ‘But why would he do that?’ asked Bill in bemusement. ‘Why trap himself inside his own suit?’

  ‘Because he was scared.’ The Doctor’s face was grim. ‘So scared of whatever was outside the bell that he did the only thing he could, and locked it out.’

  Chapter

  8

  Delitsky closed his eyes and tried to keep his temper. Nettl
eman had been yelling at them for nearly quarter of an hour now. Satisfying as it had been to see Teske rip him a new one, it had only served to put the Kollo-Zarnista executive in a truly foul mood. Things weren’t being helped by Rince, who egged him on like a schoolboy in the playground urging on a bully to go further and further.

  ‘Do you have any idea how much money we have lost on this shift alone?’ yelled Nettleman.

  Delitsky knew exactly how much money. Rince had spelled it out often enough. ‘I am well aware—’

  ‘Nearly three million dollars,’ said Rince, just to drive the point home. ‘That’s assuming we can get production back on track by the end of the day.’

  ‘Three million dollars. Not to mention any compensation payments that Baines may ask for. Those figures are not going to look good for this rig, Chief Delitsky. Not for you, and not for the bonus payments for your crew.’

  ‘This has been an unprecedented situation, but now that the rescue operation has been—’

  ‘And that’s another thing,’ Nettleman interrupted. ‘How the devil did a convicted diamond thief take charge of your rescue operation?’

  ‘Um, he’s not actually convicted,’ Laura Palmer corrected him, and Delitsky winced.

  ‘Oh, really Captain Palmer,’ Nettleman sneered at her. ‘You catch a man in the vault with one of our diamonds in his pocket and you don’t think he’s guilty? You think that he just found it and was putting it back, perhaps?’

  ‘No, sir, I’m just saying—’

  ‘How the hell did he get in there? In that ridiculous box of his, I suppose!’

  ‘Actually, that’s very possible,’ piped up Jenloz, his shrill voice sounding almost cheerful. ‘I’ve been doing some calculations, and if you look at the gravitic readings that I was getting from the box, and them compare them to—’

  ‘I don’t give a damn about your readings!’ Nettleman exploded. ‘All I care about is getting this rig mining again. Chief Delitsky, can you give me any good reason why you cannot resume mining operations immediately?’

  For the briefest of moments Delitsky wondered if he should tell Nettleman about the conversation that he had had with Baines just before the accident, but the look on his boss’s face left him in no doubt of what would happen if started talking about an unidentified ‘something’ in the atmosphere of Saturn. Far better to wait until he had had a chance to question Baines and work out exactly what had happened.

  ‘We still need to evaluate damage to the primary mining bell, but we can have the secondary bell in place and calibrated within the hour.’

  ‘Another hour?’ Nettleman looked pained. There really was no pleasing the man.

  ‘Approximately an hour, yes.’

  ‘Then you’d better get on with it.’ Nettleman waved his hands at them dismissively. ‘Get out of here, all of you. I’ve got to prepare a report that explains this mess to head office.’

  Holding back the urge to punch the man, Delitsky nodded, then rose from his seat and filed out of the room with Palmer and Jenloz.

  As soon as the door to the meeting room closed behind them, Palmer turned to him with a grimace. ‘Nice to see that he still has his open and approachable management style.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Delitsky grunted. ‘But unfortunately he and Rince are the ones calling the shots at the moment, and they can make our lives very unpleasant if they want to, remember that.’

  ‘Yes, Chief.’

  Delitsky sighed. ‘Look, Palmer, whilst I’m grateful to the Doctor for getting Baines back for us, Nettleman’s right: we’ve given him a really long leash without knowing a damned thing about him. See what you can find out from him, OK? Something, anything that will get those two off my back. Otherwise I’m going to have no choice other than to press some kind of charges.’

  ‘On it, Chief.’ Tucking her hair under her cap, Palmer hurried away.

  Delitsky turned to the little Cancri standing alongside him. ‘Come on Jenloz. Let’s see if we can light a fire under the repair teams and try to get this place back to some kind of normality.’

  Even as he said it, Delitsky had the strangest feeling that it would be a long time before things approached anything remotely resembling normal again.

  Satisfied that Baines was as comfortable as he could be under the circumstances, Jo turned her attention to the Doctor, whose forehead was still dotted with the sensor pads that she had attached earlier.

  ‘Come over here and I’ll get those off for you.’

  She led him across to her desk, pushing him into a chair and pulling out a bottle of rubbing alcohol.

  ‘So, your bio-readings were … unusual.’ Jo didn’t make eye contact with him, concentrating instead on removing the small self-adhesive circles from his skin.

  ‘Not unusual where I come from.’

  ‘Ah …’

  ‘Which isn’t anywhere local, as you’ve correctly surmised.’

  ‘And her?’ Jo nodded towards Bill.

  ‘Oh, no, she’s just a plain old pudding brain, same as you.’

  Bill stuck her tongue out at him.

  ‘Right, and the two of you are just …?’

  ‘Friends. Travelling together.’

  ‘In an old box.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Doctor …’ Jo placed the bottle back onto the desk and stared straight into his eyes. ‘Did you see anything? Down there. In the clouds. It’s just that your adrenalin rates …’

  ‘Yes,’ said the Doctor calmly. ‘I think that I did see something.’

  ‘But what?’ Jo’s eyes were shining with a mixture excitement and horror. ‘I mean it’s impossible! For something to live in that atmosphere, at those pressures. It must be totally …’

  ‘Alien?’ The Doctor raised an unruly grey eyebrow.

  Jo gave a short, nervous laugh. ‘Well, more alien than you are …’

  The two of them smiled at each other.

  ‘Doctor …’ Jo’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘My sister, my older sister, did her medical training at the Bi-Al Foundation, a Centre for Alien Biomorphology in the asteroid belt. She was seconded to a Professor Marius. She told me loads of really crazy stories over the years, but one of those stories concerned a man called the Doctor, a space traveller who helped bring a virulent viral infection under control. You look nothing like the man that she describes, but …’ She hesitated for a moment. ‘Are you that man?’

  The Doctor stared at her, suddenly transported back to another time, another life, to his battle with the Nucleus of the Swarm.fn1 He could see the family resemblance to Marius’s nurse, not just in her features, but also in the same earnest determination in her eyes. It would be so easy to tell her the truth, to say ‘Yes, I’m the same man, but in a different body’ and wait to see her reaction. So easy to ask how her sister was doing, to get back in touch with Professor Marius and tell him about all the adventures that he had shared with his robot dog. So easy to make a connection, to do something … human. So easy …

  If this had been any previous incarnation then the Doctor might just have done it, but not this one. Ever since he had started his new life cycle, ever since Trenzalore, he found it harder and harder to make those connections. Easier to keep himself shut away. To keep himself isolated.

  Besides, he had duties. He had made a vow.

  ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘No, I’m sorry, that wasn’t me …’ He shrugged. ‘Seems like there are a lot of doctors in the universe.’

  ‘Oh.’ The disappointment took all the sparkle from Jo’s eyes. For a second, the Doctor almost changed his mind, then a voice from the doorway destroyed the moment for ever.

  ‘Dr Teske, Captain Palmer would like to see you and the … er, other Doctor in her office.’

  ‘Well, I don’t particularly want to see her,’ snapped the Doctor, unsure whether he was angry with himself or with Sergeant Harrison’s interruption.

  Jo laid a gentle hand on his forearm. ‘If you want my opinion, it could be useful
for you to have a few more allies on this rig, and believe me, Laura Palmer is someone that you want to have on your side.’

  The Doctor considered this for a moment, then nodded, seeing the wisdom of what she was saying.

  ‘What about me?’ Bill had been watching the Doctor and Jo with interest from the far side of the room. ‘Does she want to see me too?’

  ‘There’s no need, surely?’ asked Jo. ‘Besides, it would be a huge help for me if Bill could stay and keep an eye on Baines.’

  Harrison frowned. ‘Um, I don’t know about that, Doc …’

  ‘Come on, Lynne. It’s not like I’ve got an entire medical team to help. It’s just me, remember?’

  Lynne Harrison still didn’t look convinced.

  ‘Look, the Doctor just risked his life to save him,’ Jo pointed out. ‘Do you really think he’d go to all that trouble just so Bill could put him in danger again?’

  Harrison shrugged. ‘I guess not.’

  ‘Good. That’s settled, then.’ Jo picked up a small black device about the size of a cell phone off her desk and handed it to Bill. ‘Emergency alarm. Baines is being constantly monitored by the mainframe, but if anything happens that you’re not happy about, use it.’ She turned and smiled at the Doctor. ‘You have to know when to trust people, don’t you, Doctor?’

  The Doctor was starting to like the station medic more and more. He shot an inquisitive glace across at Bill. ‘Can you cope for five minutes without me?’

  Bill glared at him. ‘Sorry to deliver such a crushing blow to your ego, but yes!’

  Stifling a grin, the Doctor followed Harrison and Jo from the medical bay. The Doctor was beginning to like his new companion more and more too.

  On the surface of Mimas sat COM-RADE 561. The machine was just one of hundreds of similar machines scattered on moons and planets throughout the solar system, part of the Federation’s subspace communications network.