The Ark in Space

by Marter, Ian

  When the vibrations stopped, a second panel opened in the opposite wall, revealing a long straight tunnel bathed in soft greenish light. Another moving track carried them smoothly and swiftly along it.

  ‘This must lead to the central hub-structure,’ said the Doctor eagerly. He continued to mutter to himself, gesturing from side to side at the fluorescent systems-displays which lit up one by one as they passed. Harry struggled to keep upright as they glided along, his head whirling like a stone at the end of a long string. Without warning, the Doctor put out his hand towards the wall of the tunnel and the conveyor stopped moving. Harry all but fell flat on his face.

  The Doctor was staring at a large, complex display marked:

  NEURO ADVANCE/RETARD PULSORS

  The display consisted of a mass of regularly arranged, tiny neon lamps with illuminated connecting circuits. Some were pulsing weakly, others were inactive, and a few were flashing strongly with a long slow rhythm. The Doctor’s eyes widened: ‘Harry, do you realise what all this is?’ he said excitedly, removing his hand from the wall and setting the floor in motion again with a jerk. ‘It’s a complete Cryogenic Suspension System inside a converted Navigation Satellite.’ But Harry scarcely heard; he was still clutching his aching head. The Doctor stopped the conveyor every few metres to examine the complex displays of coded circuitry which lit up as if by magic. He grew more and more animated. ‘There’s not the slightest doubt…’ he cried… ‘Fascinating…’ Harry could only manage a groan of pain and confusion.

  When they reached the far end of the softly-lit tunnel, they were confronted with yet another panel. It bore a stencilled identification:

  The Doctor immediately took out his ear trumpet and placed the horn against the bulkhead frame. He listened intently for a while. ‘We’re in luck, Harry,’ he said at last. ‘The release-lag relay has operated – we can go in.’ Harry was not at all sure that was a good thing, but he was in no condition to protest.

  They entered a ‘fat’ crescent-shaped chamber, much larger than those they had already seen. One entire half of the straighter wall was patterned with a multi-coloured chequer-board of tiny coded panels. On the other side of a large access panel in the centre of the wall, there was a series of semi-circular observation ports emitting a faint, bluish light. Opposite, set into the inner wall of the crescent, was a couch, identical to the one in the Control Chamber from which Sarah had disappeared, except that this one was covered by a curved transparent shield. Control consoles, elegant flat structures supported on single struts, were grouped all round the chamber. The subdued lighting gave the chamber a solemn, church-like atmosphere.

  ‘We’re getting warm, Harry,’ said the Doctor, striding over to examine first the couch, then the control consoles.

  Harry shivered; on the contrary, it seemed to him to be decidedly chillier in here. He tottered over and leaned against the chequered section of wall, still feeling the effects of the Decontamination Chamber. He stared across at the empty couch. ‘Well, she certainly isn’t here,’ he said.

  Totally absorbed, the Doctor darted over to peer through the observation ports: ‘Balaenoptera musculus,’ he exclaimed, his eyes brightening.

  ‘The Blue Whale,’ Harry translated mechanically. Then he froze.

  Something had touched him on the shoulder from behind, and pushed him firmly away from the wall. He staggered forward, mute with terror, and collapsed in a heap. The Doctor glanced round. His enormous eyes opened wide. He leaped over the spreadeagled Harry with a cry. Harry dared not turn his head.

  ‘Just look at this,’ the Doctor shouted delightedly. One of the little coded panels had sprung open, revealing itself to be a long narrow drawer, packed with what looked like miniature tape cassettes. The Doctor quickly opened several others. ‘Everything they considered worth preserving,’ said the Doctor slowly. ‘Architecture… Electronics… Agriculture… Music… the sum of human knowledge… here.’

  ‘Who… I mean what for…?’ muttered Harry, hauling himself to his feet.

  ‘Posterity?’ shrugged the Doctor, wandering thoughtfully round the chamber. He suddenly stopped directly in front of Harry. ‘What’s missing, Harry?’ he demanded. Harry was about to point out that for one thing Sarah was missing, when the Doctor seized him by the arm and marched him over to the observation ports. Harry screwed up his eyes and peered into one marked ANIMAL AND BOTANIC.

  Dim shapes hung in the cobalt gloom. For a moment Harry thought he glimpsed an elephant – or rather two elephants – and something that looked very like a palm tree. He backed away, rubbing his eyes. ‘Please, Doctor,’ he implored, ‘the straightforward human mind isn’t capable of…’

  ‘Exactly,’ the Doctor smiled. ‘Man – The Human Species is quite conspicuously absent.’ He sat down and gestured around him. ‘If we assume that some catastrophe occurred on Earth and that, before the end, this Satellite was converted to function as a Cryogenic Preservation System…’

  ‘A sort of Noah’s Ark,’ said Harry. The Doctor nodded…

  ‘… The missing element is Man himself. What has happened to the Human Species, Harry?’ The Doctor fixed Harry with a penetrating stare and leaned back on the instrument panel, his elbow depressing a series of touch-buttons…

  From behind the reflecting surfaces of the chamber walls came the subdued clatter of relays operating. With a sonorous humming, a section of the wall slid slowly aside. The space beyond was filled with a faint, iridescent glow quite unlike anything Harry had ever seen. A wave of coldness enveloped them, as if a long imprisoned breath had been released from the phosphorescent depths with an almost audible sigh. It was as if the chamber beyond were whispering to itself.

  Awestruck, Harry followed the Doctor over to the opening, and stood at his shoulder. They were on the threshold of an immensely tall chamber composed of three semicircular bays arranged around a broad shaft rising through the centre. At its widest, the chamber was at least thirty metres across. Alcoved sections, each containing a covered pallet, were grouped side by side around the bays. The rows of recessed pallets were ranged in storeys stretching out of sight into pitch darkness above them, and each storey was surrounded by a narrow gallery connected to the circular central shaft by catwalks. The criss-cross of glinting metal tracery reminded Harry of the framework of an airship stood on end.

  The phosphorescent light filling the chamber came from the translucent shields protecting the pallets; each shield was moulded to the contours of the human form. As their eyes became accustomed to the alien half-light, the Doctor and Harry discerned the outline of a human body suspended in each alcove. In the cold silence the effect was like that of entering a huge mausoleum.

  ‘What a pl…’ began Harry. His voice rang and reverberated round the chamber. He went on in an abashed whisper, ‘What a place for a Mortuary. Look, Doctor, there must be hundreds of them.’

  The Doctor advanced a few paces, craning upwards with an air of respect. ‘This is no Mortuary, Harry. Quite the reverse. It’s an old principle, but I’ve never seen it applied on this scale before.’

  As they began to walk slowly round, staring up at the seemingly endless array of bodies, Harry tried to conceal his unease beneath an air of professional detachment. ‘When you’ve seen one corpse you’ve seen them all,’ he shrugged.

  The Doctor wandered into the shadows of the next bay, peering through the shields as if examining exhibits in a museum. ‘These people are not dead, Harry, they’re asleep.’ He continued to speak, his voice rising and echoing majestically around the vast vaults. ‘… Homo Sapiens… what an indomitable species… it is only a few million years since it crawled up out of the sea and learned to walk… a puny defenceless biped… it has survived flood, plague, famine, war… and now here it is out among the stars… awaiting a new life. That’s something for you to be proud of, Harry… Harry! What do you think you are doing?’

  The Doctor had made a complete circuit of the chamber, and come upon Harry examining the pupils
of an occupant whose shield he had managed to prise open. Harry pointed to the slim, fair-haired young man lying there inert with open, staring eyes. He was dressed in a simple white uniform with green identification flashes. There was no colour in his face, and his skin was waxen and cold.

  ‘There you are, Doctor,’ said Harry triumphantly, ‘not a flicker of life.’

  ‘Suspended Animation,’ retorted the Doctor, pushing Harry aside and quickly closing the shield.

  ‘But there are no metabolic functions at all,’ protested Harry. ‘Even in the deepest coma you will find that the…’

  ‘Total Cryogenic Suspension, Harry,’ the Doctor interrupted impatiently. ‘You can’t survive ten thousand years in a coma.’

  Harry stared at the shrouded figure. ‘Ten… thousand years?’ he said. ‘That’s impossible…’

  ‘Oh, ten thousand… fifty thousand – the time is immaterial. Provided, of course, that no one interferes with the systems,’ the Doctor added pointedly. Harry glanced wildly about at the ranks of inert human bodies, his mind reeling. The Doctor spoke in an almost reverent hush. ‘The future of the entire human race in one chamber.’

  Carefully he checked that the pallet Harry had opened was firmly closed and sealed again. ‘Come along, Harry,’ he said. ‘We must find Sarah, and then take our leave. We’re intruders here.’

  Anxious not to irritate the Doctor any further, Harry resisted the flood of questions rising in his mind and followed him towards the entrance. As he turned for a last look at the awesome spectacle, Harry’s heart missed a beat; his shoeless feet were suddenly held in a fierce grip that all but toppled him over.

  ‘Doctor, look,’ he breathed. He was stuck fast to another silvery trail snaking across the floor of the chamber. It was identical to the one they had found earlier. It disappeared into a grille at the base of the central shaft.

  The Doctor dropped to his knees and began tracing the sticky trail as it wound away into the shadows.

  ‘Perhaps it’s some kind of mould,’ suggested Harry.

  ‘But you said you saw something moving before,’ the Doctor reminded him. Harry shivered and looked uneasily around. He remembered the Doctor’s reference to giant snails.

  Something caught his eye in one of the pallets in the opposite bay. It looked different from the others. The Doctor was busy trying to scrape off a sliver of the tacky substance with the probe. On tip-toe, his socks still sticking slightly to the floor, Harry cautiously approached the pallet. As he peered into it, he thought he detected a swirling, vaporous movement. Glancing round to make sure the Doctor was still occupied, Harry eased open the magnetic shield…

  There, her skin like chalk and her body cold and rigid, lay Sarah Jane Smith. For a moment Harry was speechless, riveted by Sarah’s fixed, expressionless gaze. Then he gasped ‘Sarah…’

  The Doctor was at his side in an instant, ready to reprove him for his meddlesome ways. When he saw Sarah his huge eyes nearly popped out of his head. Very quietly he said, ‘There’s nothing we can do for her, Harry.’ Instinctively Harry moved forward to lift Sarah out of the pallet. The Doctor firmly gripped him by the arm. ‘We’re too late,’ he whispered. ‘She’s become part of the process. We’ll only harm her if we interfere now.’

  Harry stared at him in horror. ‘There must be something I can do,’ he cried.

  Shaking his head firmly, the Doctor started to close the magnetic shroud. ‘Sarah will remain like that for a thousand years at least.’

  ‘Not if I can help it,’ said Harry defiantly. Earlier he had noticed the outlines of coded inspection panels set into the central shaft. He gestured hopefully towards them. ‘Couldn’t we break into the works?’ he pleaded. ‘Reverse the process or something?’ But again the Doctor shook his head resolutely.

  On a sudden impulse, Harry darted across to the shaft and began clawing frantically at the smooth, sealed edges of the panels. Before the Doctor could restrain him, he had sprung open a hatch the size of a door. He found himself staring into a dark cubicle, and for a split second he caught a glimpse of an enormous locust-like figure with gigantic eyes, looming over him like an insect Buddha. Then, as he sprang backwards with a scream of terror, something toppled slowly past him with a sickening crunching sound. There was a clatter of brittle tentacles and antennae which fractured and scattered a gelatinous cobweb substance all over him.

  3

  Sabotage!

  HARRY STOOD WITH his back pressed against the curved wall of the shaft. He was trembling, and his face was beaded with sweat. He stared at the enormous ‘insect’ which lay crumbling at his feet. The surface of its segmented body was a glossy indigo colour; here and there were patches of twisted and blackened tissue, like scorched plastic. The six tentacular legs bristled with razor-sharp ‘hairs’. The creature’s octopus head contained a huge globular eye on each side, and each eye was composed of thousands of cells in which Harry saw himself reflected over and over again. The creature was fully three metres long from the top of its domed head to the tip of the fearsome pincer in which its tail terminated.

  At last Harry managed to speak. ‘At least it’s dead,’ he gasped.

  The Doctor calmly picked up a shattered length of tentacle which powdered and crumbled in his fingers. ‘Practically mummified,’ he nodded.

  ‘Just look at the size of its brain pan,’ said Harry, his fear gradually giving way to fascination.

  ‘Clearly a creature of considerable intelligence,’ murmured the Doctor, taking out his magnifying glass and probe. He knelt down beside the massive corpse.

  ‘But what is it?’ Harry asked, amazed at the Doctor’s apparently fearless curiosity. The Doctor always liked to have a ready answer for his insatiably inquisitive human companions, but this was one occasion when he found himself rather at a loss. He did not answer, but became totally absorbed in an anatomical investigation.

  Harry remained with his back firmly against the shaft, afraid to move. He looked across at Sarah. She seemed to stare straight back at him, her face an impassive mask. Harry imagined the open eyes of all the other humans ‘sleeping’ in the vast chamber, staring sightlessly at their own reflections in the polished surfaces, for perhaps thousands of years the Doctor had said, their bodies without heartbeat or consciousness, yet alive.

  Suddenly he felt a prickling sensation at the back of his neck. In one of the pallets the phosphorescent glow seemed to have intensified. It grew rapidly brighter until he could hardly bear to look at it, and the silhouette of the occupant appeared to undulate with the same rhythm as an eerie wobbling hum that filled the chamber and made Harry cover his ears. The glare and the vibrations overwhelmed him for a moment. When he came to, he saw the Doctor standing motionless in front of the pallet which was now quiet again. The shield was open. Harry moved cautiously round the central shaft to avoid the huge crumbling corpse, and padded across the chamber to join the Doctor.

  The pallet was occupied by a dark-haired woman in her thirties, wearing the same simple white uniform with green flashes as the young man Harry had examined earlier. But the young woman’s skin was glowing with healthy colour, and Harry noticed that her pupils were dilating and contracting. She lay with her arms at their sides, palms outward. In her wrist, Harry’s practised eye caught the beat of a regular pulse.

  Suddenly, her slim body arched in a spasm of pain; then it relaxed with a gasping intake of breath. She lay panting for a few moments, her head rolling from side to side. Then her eyes focused on the Doctor. A shadow of incomprehension passed across her face. Slowly she brought her hands together and stared at them. Then she looked up again at the Doctor, her fingers making urgent grasping movements.

  ‘Please do not be alarmed,’ the Doctor said gently. ‘We are friends.’

  ‘She wants us to help her up,’ said Harry, hurrying forward.

  ‘No, Harry. I think this is what she needs.’ The Doctor leaned across and took a small transparent container from a holder fitted to the inside of the pall
et cover. Visible inside the container were several coloured spheres, like billiard balls, and a gleaming instrument resembling a spray gun.

  ‘I shouldn’t have opened the shield,’ muttered the Doctor, watching intently as the woman eagerly took out the spray gun, and carefully fitted one of the small spherical objects into the base of the handle. She then pressed the star-shaped nozzle against her forehead and operated a button. There was a brief high-pitched whirr. The woman’s body convulsed, and then went limp. After a few moments, she rose gracefully from the pallet and stood motionless, fixing the Doctor and Harry with a piercing stare. She was fully two metres tall, and even the Doctor seemed a little disconcerted by her detached, authoritative air. She betrayed no emotion at her awakening.

  ‘Explain your presence here,’ she suddenly ordered in a toneless, clinical voice. She seemed neither surprised nor afraid.

  ‘Well, there’s very little to explain,’ began the Doctor amiably. ‘We are travellers in space and time like yourself.’

  The woman walked slowly round them. ‘That is not adequate,’ she retorted.

  Harry felt extremely uncomfortable under her cold, relentless stare. ‘My name’s Sullivan… Surgeon Lieutenant Harry Sullivan… and this… this is the Doctor,’ he mumbled.

  The woman’s eyes widened. ‘You claim to be Medtechs?’ The note of incredulity in her voice suddenly made her seem a little more human.

  ‘Oh, my Doctorate is purely honorary,’ said the Doctor with a conciliatory smile, ‘and Harry here is…’

  The woman raised her hand imperiously for silence. ‘My name is Vira. I am First Medtech,’ she announced.

  ‘How very fortunate,’ said the Doctor. ‘We have a dear young friend over there who needs your help desperately.’ He pointed across the chamber to where Sarah lay.

  For a moment, Vira stared at the Doctor, evidently on her guard. Then she walked gracefully across to Sarah’s pallet. She looked at Sarah without emotion. ‘The female is an intruder, like yourselves,’ she said icily. Vira turned abruptly away, as if losing all interest in them. ‘She was not among the Chosen,’ she said, looking round at the inert and shadowy forms surrounding them. She appeared to be listening, waiting – her eyes alert and shining.