The Ark in Space

by Marter, Ian

  ‘What happened?’ croaked Harry at last, his throat parched with fear.

  ‘Just don’t move,’ whispered the Doctor. He had balanced his hat on the end of the telescopic probe he always carried, and was stealthily inching it up into the air above the edge of the console. At once came the shattering whipcrack from above them; the hat flew into the shadows beside the TARDIS and lay smouldering. The Doctor stared at it in anguish. ‘I’m afraid we’re trapped again, Harry,’ he sighed.

  ‘But what is it?’ gasped Harry.

  ‘That,’ said the Doctor, casting his eyes upward, ‘is an OMDSS.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘An Organic Matter Detector Surveillance System,’ answered the Doctor patiently.

  ‘A sort of electronic sentry,’ suggested Harry, suddenly catching sight of the shoe that had been blown off his numb foot; it lay curled up like a charred kipper. He shuddered.

  ‘Precisely,’ said the Doctor. ‘I must confess I was not expecting this – my repairs next door were a little too thorough.’

  At that moment Harry’s mind cleared. He craned his head to look into the adjacent chamber where they had just left Sarah, but he could not see the couch construction.

  ‘Sarah… keep away from the door,’ he called. There was no reply. ‘Sarah… can you hear me… Sarah?’ But the only sound from the other chamber was a faint humming. Harry glanced worriedly at the Doctor, but he was totally absorbed in jiggling the metal probe about in the air. Nothing happened.

  ‘Just as I thought,’ he muttered, ‘the system only reacts to organic matter in motion.’

  ‘Well that hardly helps us,’ said Harry. ‘We’re organic.’

  ‘Not under here we’re not,’ grinned the Doctor mischievously, his voice booming in the confined space. Harry watched blankly as the Doctor adjusted the sonic screwdriver and directed it at the joint between the console support-strut and the floor. The beam of ultra-high and ultra-low frequency waves soon unsealed the sonic welds…

  ‘… A little to the right… forward… steady now. One slip, Harry, and we’ll be charcoal.’

  On hands and knees, sheltered by the heavy console which they carried like a giant umbrella, the Doctor and Harry inched their way across to the opposite side of the chamber. The silence from the other chamber was ominous: what if Sarah had blacked out again? Or worse, what if she suddenly came stumbling through the opening, unaware of the glittering electronic ‘watchdog’ in the domed ceiling?

  Gradually they progressed round the chamber, the console swaying precariously in their combined grip. Even when they paused for a moment’s rest, they had to support the top-heavy ‘parasol’ by its single centre leg. Raw-kneed and breathless with effort, Harry decided that if this really was the Thirtieth Century, then it was an awfully long way to go just to play the fool.

  At last, the Doctor called a halt. ‘There it is, but it’s well beyond reach,’ he said, craning upward. Harry was beginning to resent always being several moves behind.

  ‘What is?’ he asked, exasperated.

  ‘The Surveillance System Cutout, of course,’ replied the Doctor, deftly fashioning his scarf into a lasso. He flung the loop up at the switches. There was the now familiar flash and crack, and the scarf fluttered down in two blazing pieces.

  ‘Bad luck. Good try though,’ whispered Harry admiringly.

  ‘This is not a game of cricket,’ snapped the Doctor.

  ‘Sorry,’ whispered Harry, chastened. ‘Mind you, if I had a ball I could jolly soon reach that switch.’ The Doctor silently produced a worn cricket ball from one of his many pockets. Swallowing his amazement, Harry took it. He polished it on his lapel. His moment had come at last.

  The ball, with a good off-spin to it, had scarcely left his hand than it exploded into a shower of carbon fragments. ‘Organic, of course,’ he muttered, crestfallen.

  The Doctor leaned forward, slipped off Harry’s remaining shoe, and handed it to him. ‘You don’t need this any more, do you, Harry?’ he said significantly. Harry was becoming more and more convinced that he was in the company of a madman, with no hope of rescuing Sarah or of ever getting back to reality. He opened his mouth to speak. ‘No. Good,’ interrupted the Doctor. ‘Now listen carefully,’ and he quickly outlined a simple plan…

  … A few moments later, at a prearranged signal from the Doctor, Harry flung his shoe high over the console under which they were still hiding. At the same instant, the Doctor leapt up at the switch; there was a rapid series of cracks, a smell of burning rubber, and then silence.

  After a long pause, the Doctor’s head appeared slowly over the top of the control desk, followed, after another long pause, by Harry’s. Cautiously they both stood up. ‘That foxed you,’ said the Doctor pulling a face at himself in the mirror surface of the OMDSS. He wandered over to retrieve the remains of his hat and his scarf, calling brightly, ‘It’s all right now, Sarah, you can come out.’

  Harry picked up his two melted shoes. ‘The Brigadier will never believe a word of this,’ he thought.

  Suddenly the Doctor’s voice sounded urgently from the other chamber. ‘Sarah… Sarah, where are you…?’

  With a shoe in each hand, Harry padded over to the opening. The Doctor was standing alone beside the couch. All around, the chamber lights were beginning to flash on the instrument panels, and a multitude of quiet humming sounds enveloped them. The chamber seemed almost to be coming alive. The Doctor turned to Harry, his face filled with anxiety.

  ‘Sarah’s not here,’ he said.

  2

  Sarah Vanishes

  SARAH TRIED TO scream, but the only sound she heard was a distant murmuring which grew gradually louder and more distinct. It was repeating over and over again a hypnotic refrain. ‘Welcome, Sister, welcome to Terra Nova… Welcome, Sister, welcome to Terra Nova…’

  Finding herself suddenly free of the invisible hands that had seemed to tear at her body, Sarah struggled feebly to sit up. At once the mysterious voice spoke firmly but gently. ‘No, Sister, do not move. Do not attempt to leave the Tranquiller. Remain in contact with the Biocryonic vibrations.’ Too weak to disobey, Sarah lay back and stared listlessly about her. She was too exhausted even to be afraid.

  All she could remember was a terrifying sense of suffocation, then a brief moment of relief with the Doctor and Harry bending over her, followed by the sounds of a violent struggle and Harry’s cry of distress, and finally the sensation of being slowly dismembered. The couch on which she was lying seemed familiar, but she did not remember it being encased in the translucent, glass-like canopy which now confined her. As she stared at it, the surface of the curved shield appeared to be in constant motion, just like the surface of a soap bubble. The harder she stared, so the patterns changed until they began to resemble huge, eerie shadows cast by something moving about on the other side of the glass.

  The soothing voice began again, scarcely audible, and for a moment Sarah imagined that she could hear the Doctor and Harry talking, and that it was their shadows playing over the canopy. She tried to call out to them, but still she could make no sound. Panic-stricken, she attempted to hammer on the glass to attract attention, but found she could not raise her arms from the couch. She was trapped.

  As before, the strange voice grew more distinct. It had a slightly mechanical tone, and echoed around her as if she were inside a vast cathedral. ‘Sister, the principal phase of your Biocryogenic Processing is about to commence…’ Cryogenic… cryogenic… the word reverberated in Sarah’s mind. She tried to remember; what was it? Something to do with freezing… yes, freezing… the theory of tissue preservation for long periods of time… from the Greek word for frost… She fought hard to keep hold of her train of thought, but the trance-like voice went inexorably on – ‘… If you have any message that you wish to be conveyed to the members of your Community, you may record it at the end of this announcement. Please preface your message with your Personal and your Community Identification Codes…’

>   During the pause which followed, the space around Sarah began to fill with a white vapour that chilled her body. As it grew thicker and thicker, she felt her skin tightening and growing numb. The more she gasped with the coldness, the more the freezing vapour pierced her lungs. As it filled the capsule in which she was trapped, it seemed to solidify into a gelatinous mass; Sarah lay like a fish imprisoned in ice. She felt her blood running literally cold, her veins and arteries contracted around the chilling fluid as it coursed through her. She felt her heartbeat slowing and labouring. Her body appeared to merge into the cold jelly surrounding her. Shattering ripples burst through her as the substance began to vibrate at an ever increasing frequency. Within a few minutes, Sarah had lost all sense of her physical reality. She was aware only of her failing consciousness, and of the sound of a new voice, the quiet, authoritative voice of an elderly woman.

  ‘Greetings, Sister Volunteer. On behalf of the World Executive, I, the High Minister, salute you who are about to make the supreme sacrifice. In a moment you will pass beyond life. Lest there should remain any doubt in your mind or fear in your heart, remember; you take with you not only your own, but all our pasts. We, who remain to perish here, will live again in you. You are our only future… our only hope…’ The voice finally faded into silence, and with it, Sarah lost consciousness. After a while, the white substance thinned and finally vaporised and disappeared. When it cleared, the couch was empty.

  ‘Harry, I am an idiot.’ The Doctor and Harry were bending anxiously over the couch on which, five minutes earlier, they had placed the semi-conscious Sarah. While they had been fighting their duel with the OMDSS in the other chamber, Sarah had apparently disappeared into thin air. Having satisfied himself that there were no more concealed panels through which she could have gone, the Doctor had removed a part of the upholstered section of the couch, and exposed a honeycomb of small cells, each about the size and shape of the reflector in a bicycle lamp. The cells were inter-connected with fine coppery wiring embedded in a perspex frame.

  Harry was relieved that, just for once, he was not to blame for what had happened.

  ‘Fortunately it’s only an internal relay,’ said the Doctor, glancing up at one of the instrument displays set into the circular wall.

  ‘A what?’ Harry looked from the couch to the instrument panel and back to the Doctor.

  ‘A short-range Matter Transmitter,’ snapped the Doctor, striding back into the main chamber. Harry padded after him, still clutching the remains of his shoes.

  ‘What on earth does that mean?’

  ‘It means,’ called the Doctor, stepping through another panel in the main chamber which opened automatically as he approached it, ‘that Sarah can’t be very far away. Do come along, Harry.’

  Slithering on the smooth metal flooring, Harry followed. As he entered the long tunnel-like passage leading from the chamber, he was amazed to see that the Doctor had already reached the other end and was waiting impatiently for him. All at once, Harry’s feet were swept from under him, and he found himself sitting on a moving track running down the centre of the tunnel. It carried him smoothly with a faint hum to the far end. Just as he scrambled to his feet, convinced that he was about to crash headlong into the bulkhead at the end of the tunnel, the track slowed and stopped. Harry had no time to express his astonishment; the Doctor was already disappearing through a panel he had opened in the bulkhead wall.

  They found themselves at a ‘T’ junction, where the tunnel joined at right angles with a spacious gallery which curved away out of sight in both directions. The Doctor motioned Harry to stay where he was, then advanced cautiously into the middle of the intersection. All the surfaces of the gallery were made of the same highly reflective metal, and a harsh white light flooded everywhere from a concealed source. Along the outer wall of the gallery, at intervals of a few metres, were set large ovoid window panels of tinted glass, through which a brilliantly clean night sky blazed. It was clearer than Harry had ever seen it before.

  ‘I say,’ he breathed. ‘It’s beautiful…’ The words faded from his lips as he realised with a start that the billions of stars were moving slowly but unmistakably across the panels. He felt momentarily unsteady, as if a ship’s deck were heaving beneath his feet. ‘We’re… we’re moving,’ he said, his eyes wide.

  ‘This is no time for star-gazing, Harry,’ called the Doctor, setting off briskly to the left. When Harry finally tore his eyes away from the splendid panorama through the observation panels, the Doctor had already disappeared round the curve.

  ‘This must be the size of a running track,’ panted Harry, as he hurried to catch up.

  ‘Naturally.’ The Doctor grinned over his shoulder. ‘We are now in the Cincture Structure.’

  ‘The what?’ Harry skidded in his stockinged feet.

  ‘The outer wheel,’ called the Doctor. ‘We appear to be inside an old Centrifugal Gravity Satellite, shaped rather like a doughnut with an eclair stuck through the middle and connected to it by several chocolate fingers.’

  Harry rather resented the Doctor’s oversimplified explanation. ‘I suppose we are now walking round inside a doughnut,’ he remarked. But his sarcasm was lost on the Doctor.

  ‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘Of course it has been converted to a more sophisticated Electrostatic Field Gravity System, but it still revolves on its axis because there’s simply nothing to stop it.’

  They were approaching another bulkhead. In the centre of its sealed panel there was a stencilled notice in green and maroon striped computer lettering:

  Just before they reached it, the Doctor darted suddenly through yet another automatic panel which opened silently in the inner side wall. He re-emerged immediately, much to Harry’s relief. ‘Well, Sarah’s not in there,’ he said, striding on towards the bulkhead barring their way. All at once a disembodied metallic voice barked at them: ‘STERILE AREA’.

  The Doctor paused in his tracks, and Harry leaped backwards as if he had trodden on a nail. All these hidden, automatic panels, electronic guards, hidden voices and moving floors made him feel as if he were trapped in a crazy maze at a funfair. However the Doctor seemed perfectly at home; he had rested his head against a small copper plate at the side of the bulkhead panel, and seemed to be meditating. After a few seconds the panel opened.

  ‘How did you do that?’ exclaimed Harry.

  ‘Alpha waves and things,’ the Doctor tapped his head. ‘It’s surprising what one can do with a little thought.’ He ushered Harry through the opening.

  ‘Do you think we should?’ asked Harry anxiously, remembering the curt, nightmarish announcement they had just heard.

  ‘Probably not,’ grinned the Doctor mischievously, turning to close the panel behind them.

  At that moment, Harry caught a glimpse of something moving, just at the point where the gallery ahead curved out of sight. Something appeared to slither quickly across the floor; he had a momentary impression of a pulsating cluster of fluorescent bubbles, and of a faint crackling sound like toffee paper. He froze, speechless with fright, then grabbed the Doctor’s sleeve.

  ‘Doctor, there’s something there,’ he whispered, pointing to the spot. The gallery stretched in a graceful arc, the bright stars gliding slowly across the observation panels.

  The Doctor looked doubtful. ‘Trick of the light, Harry,’ he shrugged.

  ‘No. I saw something moving,’ Harry insisted. He crept forward a few metres. Suddenly he found his stockinged feet glued firmly to the floor. He gave a startled yelp, and looked slowly down. He had stepped on a faint, silvery trail of sticky substance – about thirty centimetres wide – which traversed the gallery from wall to wall.

  The Doctor knelt down and examined it closely through his magnifier. ‘Fascinating,’ he exclaimed at last, ‘just like the track left by a gastropod mollusc.’

  Harry stared incredulously at him. ‘A snail? That size?’ He tore his feet free from the adhesive trail, leaving wisps of wool stuck fast to the flo
or. ‘That’s impossible, Doctor, and anyway, how could it have got through there?’ Harry pointed to the fine-mesh grille set into the base of the inner wall, into which the trail disappeared. The Doctor grunted, tracing the silver track across the gallery and up the outer wall where it disappeared into a similar grille set between two of the window panels.

  ‘A multi-nucleate organism perhaps?’ he said.

  Harry’s confidence began to return. Here was a subject about which he felt he knew something. ‘But surely, Doctor, such an organism would not be capable of moving that fast…’

  ‘Come on,’ interrupted the Doctor, ‘let’s find Sarah first. Ah, this looks promising.’ He strode towards a panel in the inner wall, a few metres along from the grating. As before, he knelt down and rested his forehead against the small plate set into the wall, frowning in profound concentration. Nothing happened; the panel remained shut. The Doctor stood up for a moment and mopped his brow, then he leaned forward and tried again, his face creased with effort. After a long pause, Harry jumped as the panel suddenly zipped open. Even the Doctor looked a trifle surprised.

  ‘That must have been some idea you had.’ Harry grinned admiringly.

  The Doctor shrugged. ‘Oh, just a little notion for a new opening gambit in four-dimensional chess.’

  They stepped into a small cubicle resembling a lift. The panel closed behind them. They stood awkwardly nose to nose.

  ‘Well, she’s obviously not in here…’ began Harry wearily. A rapid series of extremely uncomfortable sensations pulsed through his entire body, as if it were expanding to the size of an elephant and at once contracting to that of a flea, and then expanding again in quick succession.

  ‘Decontamination Chamber,’ said the Doctor, quite unaffected. Harry felt as if he were being shaken to a jelly. ‘Ultra high and low frequency oscillations,’ the Doctor added casually, ‘confuses the microbes – much more efficient than your old-fashioned antibiotics.’