‘Romance?’ repeated Clara.
Laker gestured to the holoviewer again. ‘Endless night. Nothing more romantic than that.’
‘Or terrifying,’ said the Doctor. ‘How long until we reach the wormhole?’
‘Well, we should reach maximum speed very soon. The approximate location is about fifty light years outside the galactic rim, so at a rough guess we could be there in another couple of hours.’
‘How do you plan to find it?’ the Doctor asked. ‘You said the location is approximate.’
‘That’s where Jem comes in,’ said Laker. He gestured towards the front of the flight deck.
Positioned almost beneath the hologram viewer was a long, low seat – almost a couch – surrounded by a cluster of instruments. Lights flickered across control panels and a profusion of wires led from the top of the couch to a transparent dome. Sitting under this, like a woman in an old-fashioned hair salon, was the most delicate-looking person Clara had ever seen. She had milky-smooth skin and elfin features and was dressed in a close-fitting overall with a high collar. Her large, almond-shaped eyes were wide open and completely white. Despite this, Clara got the distinct impression that they saw more than most human eyes.
‘Our astrogator,’ said Laker. He spoke softly, as if he didn’t want to disturb her concentration.
‘An augmented clone?’ The Doctor didn’t look too happy.
‘Hello,’ said the occupant of the couch. Her voice was quiet but musical. ‘You must be the Doctor. And you are…Clara. I’m Jem 428. Pleased to meet you.’
‘Hi,’ said Clara, a little surprised. She didn’t recall being introduced.
‘I read your minds,’ Jem explained with a smile. ‘Don’t worry – I’m only a very low-level telepath. Surface details only – no big secrets.’
‘Well…that’s good.’
‘Jem’s a clone, genetically engineered to be ultrasensitive to the space-time continuum,’ said the Doctor. ‘They can hear what the universe has to say. At least, that’s what they claim.’
‘And she’s also right here,’ said Clara pointedly.
The Doctor frowned and then realised what she meant. He knelt down suddenly so that he was level with Jem 428’s head. ‘I’m so sorry. Hello, Jem. Tell me: what can you hear?’
Jem’s perfectly white eyes stared straight ahead into the darkness of the holoviewer. ‘I can hear the song of the stars and the distant whispers of the furthest galaxies…’
The Doctor glanced back up at Clara. ‘She means she can sense the minute fluctuations in the gravitational field that exists between dark matter.’
‘OK,’ said Clara, taking a deep breath. ‘While we’re at it: dark matter?’
‘It’s invisible and makes up most of the universe, along with dark energy,’ explained the Doctor. ‘It’s really only detectable by its gravitational effect on other matter. An astrogation clone can seek out the axion strings and nodes that exist only in dark matter and make it into a sort of mental map.’
‘I think I prefer “the song of the stars”,’ said Clara.
‘Suit yourself.’
‘I can hear the call of the Phaeron Roads,’ Jem breathed, still staring into the void. Clara noticed that her eyes never seemed to blink.
The Doctor frowned deeply. ‘Can you, indeed?’
‘Fairy what?’ asked Clara.
‘Phaeron Roads,’ repeated the Doctor, standing up. He looked at the view screen, his eyes boring into the depthless night. ‘It’s an old term. The name for a vast network of ancient wormholes that stretch across the entire universe.’
‘You mean like the one we’re heading for?’
‘Exactly.’ He looked thoughtful, his eyebrows knitting together. His long, craggy face was drawn, and Clara thought it would be easy to mistake his expression for anxiety if it weren’t for the gleam of intense curiosity in his eyes.
‘It might be best if Jem was left alone for a while,’ said Laker. Clara had almost forgotten he was there. ‘She finds it easier to work in the peace and quiet.’
The Doctor flashed the pilot a look that Clara couldn’t quite understand. Was it discomfort? Disappointment?
‘I think Mr Balfour wants everyone in the common room,’ Laker said evenly. He held his hand out towards the exit. ‘One deck down. You can’t miss it.’
The Doctor looked again at Jem 428, lying prone in her couch beneath the transparent dome. ‘All right,’ he said, turning to leave with Clara. ‘But we’ll have words later, Captain.’
As the Doctor stalked off the flight deck, Clara glanced back at Laker. For someone in charge of the best and most expensive spaceship ever built, he looked distinctly troubled.
Chapter
2
The Alexandria’s common room was a circular chamber located near the centre of the ship. Clara thought it looked more like a posh hotel lounge than the common room of a scientific expedition.
Raymond Balfour was standing at the front with his robot, Trugg, waiting placidly nearby.
Professor Vent sat on a low settee, sipping a hot drink from a mug. Opposite her sat a young man with thin, swept-back hair and a rather supercilious expression. He put both feet up on a low coffee table and winked at the professor.
There were two other people sitting in the room; a younger woman with glossy black hair and matching jumpsuit, and a pale-looking, rather nervous man with a computer tablet clutched to his chest.
‘Right,’ announced Balfour. ‘Now we’re all here, it’s time I introduced everyone properly.’
Clara sat down in an armchair next to the nervous-looking man with the tablet, but the Doctor stayed on his feet at the back of the room, where he could see everyone, leaning against the wall with his arms folded. Professor Vent muttered about what a waste of time all this was when she had important work to do. The man with his feet up smirked at her.
‘You all know me…’ Balfour began.
Clara hadn’t met him until a half an hour ago but she knew his type; young-looking, if not actually young, smartly dressed and extremely wealthy. He wasn’t bad-looking, in fact he was almost too good-looking, and she suspected plastic surgery or some futuristic equivalent. His teeth were perfect, his eyes were bright blue and he had a thatch of artfully tousled blond hair.
‘My full name is Raymond Rueun Balfour the Third. But you can call me Ray. Welcome to the Alexandria. Hopefully you’ve had time to dump your stuff and get used to the layout. It’s pretty straightforward. If you can’t find anything, just ask. I’d like to think we’re all friends here, or at least we soon will be. We’re going to be spending a lot of time together over the next few weeks, after all.’ He smiled happily, but his only reply was silence.
Not quite enough ice broken yet, Clara thought.
‘I’ve got mission datapads for you all,’ Balfour continued, and Trugg dutifully handed out a small tablet computer to each of them. ‘It contains the full Alexandria specs, the mission parameters and, perhaps most importantly, a research team and ship’s crew list and relevant biogs.’
Clara touched the screen of her tablet and a holographic display lit up. Icons floated in the air. She touched one, which turned out to be a list of the people on board:
FUNDING:
RAYMOND BALFOUR
RESEARCH TEAM:
TABITHA VENT – research team leader
MARCO SPRITT – archaeology
TANYA FLEXX – medic / exobiology
LUIS CRANMER – astrophysics
CREW:
DAN LAKER – pilot
JEM 428 – astrogator
MITCH KELLER – chief engineer
HARLEY HOBSON – engineer
‘I’m the least important person on that list,’ Balfour continued. ‘This whole thing, this entire expedition, is actually down to one person: Professor Tabitha Vent.’
Tabitha Vent gave an embarrassed wave as she was given a small round of applause. ‘Call me Tibby,’ she said. ‘Tabitha is only for when I’m being told
off.’
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Balfour said, ‘allow me to formally introduce the Emeritus Professor of Extraterrestrial Studies at the University of New Earth. The professor is a renowned expert – the leading authority, in fact – on the ancient Phaeron race, as I’m sure you’re all aware. Tibby was the lead translator on the Ganymede Stone project and she is responsible for finding and mapping the Phaeron Roads.’
The Doctor was listening intently, lips pursed in thought, his sharp eyes taking in every detail. Clara noticed the tiniest deepening of his frown at the mention of the Phaeron Roads.
‘Perhaps Tibby could give us a little background on that,’ Balfour said, ‘and introduce the rest of her team.’
‘I’m not much good at talking, to be honest,’ Tibby said, standing up. ‘I’m better with a pile of alien books and a translator program.’
She faced the room and the supercilious-looking man with his feet on the table eyed her carefully. It was quite clear that he appreciated what he saw.
‘OK, very quick history lesson,’ Tibby began. ‘Millions of years ago there was a race called the Phaeron. They’re completely extinct from the universe now, but we know they existed because of what they left behind: ancient ruins on a variety of planets throughout the galaxy, plus various bits and pieces of fossilised technomics. All evidence of what appears to have been a very advanced civilisation. Certainly they had space travel, that much is obvious, but the Phaeron were pretty much unique in that they got around the universe entirely by the use of wormholes. What’s particularly interesting is that the Phaeron drew up a map of all these wormholes, a vast interconnecting network of space-time conduits spread throughout the cosmos. No one has ever known how to find them before because the Phaeron were very careful about keeping them secret.’
‘How did you find them?’ asked the Doctor.
‘As Mr Balfour said, I worked on the Ganymede Stone. That’s a Phaeron monument, or what’s left of it, we found on the Jupiter moon ten years ago.’
The Doctor nodded, as if Tibby was simply confirming something that he already knew. ‘I’ve been there.’ He hunched up his shoulders and gave a shiver. ‘Chilly.’
‘Very. We found the monument under about a kilometre of polar ice. There was an inscription in the stonework: Phaeron runes from the height of their powers, perfectly preserved. It was a translator’s dream. I worked on it for six years once we’d dug the thing out. We found a ton of stuff: Phaeron biological data, technological plans, you name it, they left it.’
‘And a map of the wormholes.’
‘And a map, yes.’
‘Convenient,’ said the Doctor.
‘Not really. Most of the wormholes were dead. Some kind of natural singularity collapse that caused a chain reaction across the galaxy, closing the conduits down one by one over the course of a million years or so. Put simply, they don’t exist any more.’
‘Except for this one,’ said the Doctor. ‘The one we’re heading towards right now.’
‘That’s right,’ said the young man with the sardonic expression. He swung his feet off the table and turned around in his seat to face the Doctor and Clara. ‘And that’s where I come in.’
‘And you are?’
‘Marco Spritt. You’ve probably heard of me already.’
‘No. Should I have?’
Marco frowned. ‘The search for the Carthage?’ he prompted.
Clara looked from Marco Spritt to the Doctor. ‘What’s the Carthage?’ she asked.
Marco looked aghast. ‘You mean you’ve never heard of the Carthage?’
‘We’ve been away from Earth for some time,’ Clara said.
‘At least half an hour,’ the Doctor muttered.
‘Well, as I was saying just before,’ Marco said, ‘this is where I come into the picture. The Carthage was the deep-space exploration vessel that famously disappeared over a century ago. It was charting the fringes of the galaxy when it simply vanished from space. It had a crew of seventy-seven, and every one of them was lost.’
‘And you think it went into this wormhole thing?’ Clara asked.
‘Its last known location, based on the ship’s transceiver signal, puts it right where Tibby’s map shows the wormhole to be located. So yes, that’s exactly what I think happened.’ Marco sat forward, suddenly intent. ‘The history of the Carthage – what might have happened to it, where it went, is really important to me.’
‘Why is that?’
‘The captain of the Carthage was Caitlin Spritt – my mother.’
‘Ah,’ said the Doctor, ‘and it’s not impossible that if your mum accidently flew the Carthage into the Phaerons’ old wormhole, it could have ended up in the Andromeda galaxy. The crew of seventy-seven might be alive and well.’
Marco nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘So the combination of the professor’s wormhole map and your interest in the Carthage’s disappearance have led you to…Raymond Rueun Balfour the Third?’ The Doctor frowned. ‘Not sure I see the connection.’
‘We couldn’t fund a mission like this ourselves,’ Tibby admitted. ‘The Phaeron are considered something of a backwater in galactic prehistory. The Carthage, while famous, is something of a pet project for Marco.’
Marco bristled at the words ‘pet project’. ‘It’s a bit more than that, actually.’
‘But you do have a very personal interest in it.’
‘I heard about Tibby’s research into the Phaeron and Marco’s interest in the Carthage quite separately,’ Balfour explained. ‘So it was me who brought them together – and me who decided to fund a mission that might help both of them.’
‘If Tibby and Marco are the drivers behind this little trip,’ said the woman in the shiny black jumpsuit, ‘then Luis and I are the hired help. Hi. I’m Dr Tanya Flexx – that’s double X by the way – and the life and soul of the party here is Luis Cranmer.’
Cranmer nodded uncertainly and licked his lips without saying anything. He noticed Clara smile and immediately looked down at his datapad, scrolling through the hologram without seeing anything.
‘If anyone’s space sick, then I’m your best bet,’ said Tanya. She looked at Cranmer and added, ‘You’d better stick close to me, Luis.’
Cranmer gave her a weak smile but said nothing.
‘And what about you two?’ Tanya said, looking at the Doctor and Clara. She tapped her datapad with a well-manicured fingernail. ‘You’re not listed on here.’
‘I thought they were the inflight entertainment,’ Marco smirked.
‘Entertainment?’ repeated the Doctor, horrified.
‘Well, you know…the clothes and whatnot. You look like a magician or something.’
The Doctor glanced down at his black frock coat and narrow trousers. ‘I keep telling everyone – it’s minimalist!’
‘All right, keep your lovely curly hair on, sweetheart.’ Tanya smiled mischievously. ‘So who are you?’
‘I’m the Doctor – but not your kind of doctor.’
‘Are you a specialist?’
‘Like you wouldn’t believe. And this is Clara Oswald, my assistant—’
‘Not his assistant,’ said Clara.
‘Not my assistant,’ the Doctor corrected himself. ‘My…’
‘Friend?’ Clara suggested.
‘Associate.’
Clara raised an eyebrow at him for this, and the Doctor gave her a well-what-else-could-I-say shrug.
‘Now that we’re all introduced and properly under way,’ announced Balfour, ‘I propose a toast. Trugg?’
‘Sir.’ With great delicacy, the huge robot held out a tray of champagne flutes towards Clara.
Startled, but nevertheless delighted, Clara took one of the glasses. ‘Thank you.’
Trugg moved around the lounge, proffering the tray to each in turn until everyone had a glass of champagne.
Balfour raised his glass. ‘To the Phaeron Roads, and the last voyage of the Carthage.’
They all clinked thei
r glasses together and drank. Clara noticed that Tanya Flexx downed hers in one gulp and gestured to Trugg for a refill. Luis Cranmer barely touched his. In fact he looked distinctly unwell.
Trugg recharged Tanya’s glass and she took another sip of champagne. ‘So what is your interest in all this, Doctor?’
The Doctor began to stalk slowly around the circumference of the room. ‘What’s my interest in all this? Well, I’m fascinated by the history of the Phaeron, of course, and certainly intrigued by the fate of the Carthage. But to be perfectly honest with you…neither matters one tiny jot.’
There was a sudden, difficult silence. The Doctor paused, his startlingly clear eyes looking at each of them in turn. ‘I’m an expert in space-time travel. In fact I’m an expert in everything from Venusian aikido to yo-yos. I don’t know if any of that stuff will come in useful. But I can tell you that I am here to protect you from dangers as yet unknown. Because whatever lies at the other end of that wormhole –’ and here the Doctor jabbed a long finger in an apparently random direction that Clara suspected was the exact direction of the wormhole – ‘it won’t be good. In fact, it will be both deadly and monstrous.’
‘What?’ Balfour almost choked on his champagne.
‘Rubbish,’ said Marco Spritt.
‘He’s not a magician,’ said Tanya Flexx. ‘He’s a lunatic!’
Clara felt awkward. The Doctor could be so embarrassing at times. ‘What the Doctor means is that…well, he’s very experienced in matters like this. He’s met…lots of monsters.’ It was lame and she finished by biting her lip to stop herself saying anything more.
‘You’re both lunatics,’ said Tanya.
‘You didn’t mention anything about monsters when you asked to join the team, Doctor,’ said Balfour, sounding a little peeved. ‘You told me that the wormhole was unstable. You warned me that there would be an element of danger. You didn’t say anything about monsters. You just said that you were an expert in space-time travel and could act as scientific adviser to the expedition.’
‘I did, yes. And it was true. I left out the bit about monsters because I didn’t want to put you off.’
Deep Time Page 2