suddenly measured, cautious. 'You have found my Achilles
heel, as it were. Clever. You know far too much about us. Far
too much.'
Silence continued to shoulder in on the scene. Everyone
held their breath.
Still keeping the long arrow in place, Frank/Freddie
Force continued to make his way crabwise to the bulkhead;
his astonished men, unsure of what was happening, but
understanding that they were all in serious danger, formed
a semicircle around him. He reached the ship's inner hull
and spread himself against it. His men followed his example
Then, to Amy's utter surprise, the Antimatter Men and their
leader slowly turned into hazy outlines of pink and white
and faded from sight into the bulkhead until they vanished.
The arrow shot at Frank/Freddie by the Doctor clattered
to the metal floor. Captain N'hn ran back towards his bridge,
yelling orders to his crew with the Doctor and Amy following
rapidly in his wake.
The centaur flung himself into his big bucket seat and threw
every lever and switch, turned every dial on his boards, until
a high, musical whine filled the ship. She bucked forward
under more pressures than she had ever been designed to
stand, putting a great many parsecs between herself and
the pirates, while General Frank/Freddie Force and his men
turned once more into candy-striped ribbons of energy and
fled through the void in an effort to get to safety before the
emergency batteries in their pseudo-skins' power packs gave
out. The captain whinnied with amusement, though he kepi
his eyes on the screens and continued to check the distance
between his tanker and the disabled pirate craft.
'Well done, Doctor,' Amy cried. 'How did you know he
was bluffing?'
Captain N'hn shook his head. 'He wasn't bluffing! He
wasn't bluffing! What I want to know is how you knew where
the power for his faux derm was coming from, Doctor.'
'It had to be an implant point and it had to be protected
as much as possible by fat. Logic! And eyes. I used my eyes.
The rest was hoping I could aim decently while he was
distracted.'
'Will he try again?' Amy wanted to know.
'I'm certain he will. Probably not immediately. He's taking
quite serious risks already. And we're letting ourselves gain
momentum as the black hole draws us in.'
'What on earth could he want with that awful hat? And
why pinch it twice?' Amy peered at the screens. General
Frank/Freddie Force and his followers were well behind them
at last. All she could see were the faint and distant stars.
'I don't think he did pinch it first. He wouldn't need two
goes at it once he had it in his hands. So someone else must
have made the first attempt They might have been working
for Force and Co. It's hard to say. If Lady Peggy Steel, the
Invisible Thief, was with him... As far as I know, this is the
first time he's risked coming so far away from that black
hole. That hole is the core of our universe, as an even denser
one exists for the whole multiverse. Both lie at the centre of
our universe and Frank/Freddie Force's antimatter universe.
Don't worry about it. OK? He's taking extraordinary risks -
chancing suicide with every move he makes out here. Even
to go a little way into such a completely alien environment
takes either a lot of courage... Or considerable desperation.
The Doctor shook his head. 'What does that hat represent?'
The door opened and Mrs Banning-Cannon stood there.
'About two million bluebacks,' she said. 'Some believe no
one's ever paid so much for one of Diana's hats. She refused
to sell it. I told her how I wanted it for the prizegiving in
Miggea, and she relented. But that silly little man surely
wouldn't have gone to such lengths just to steal a hat for
ransom or to give it to a lady friend. The materials are worth
a great deal, of course. It contains living organisms. Could
the hat contain a rarer precious stone or metal than even
Diana knew about when she sold it to me? I inspected it
thoroughly, of course, the moment it was in my hands again.
It did, I will admit, look a bit like a dead spider. But I found
nothing. I was indeed a little disappointed when I examined
the materials. In artificial light it appears rather tawdry.
Mere platinum and a few rare stones. Oh, all the usual junk.
I suppose her artistry lies in what she does with them. All
ruined now of course. Once a hat has shown its furniture I
fear it has become unwearable. Still, the principle remains.'
Mrs Banning-Cannon sighed deeply. 'I came to thank
you, Doctor. There are few men who would so readily take
such risks as you did to defend a lady's honour. Ah, if there
were only a planet where men and women of courage could
retire... some Old Barsoom brought back to life.'
The Doctor cleared his throat. 'Well, er, I - that is, I'm
sure...'
Amy gave Mrs B-C her best and most winning smile. 'He's
like that,' she said. 'Chivalrous. Impulsive. A bit of a Don
Quixote. That's why I'm just happy sometimes to be his little
Sancho Panza.'
'Is that a sort of secretary or PA?' asked Captain N'hn,
who took little interest in ancient texts.
'Something like that,' agreed Amy showing her teeth.
Chapter 12
That Old Spaceship Shuffle
'I SAY, DOCTOR, THAT was a smashin' bit of shootin',' said W.G.
Grace, the Bearded Lady and the best whacker on the team,
resting her arm over her beloved antique bow-case and letting
her spare hand lift a cup of Assam to her hirsute lips.
At this rate you'll become a pretty useful second-best
bowman, eh?' Bingo winked at his new friend.
'Don't overdo it, chaps,' added Hari, 'or his head will swell
until we're able to use it for a target.'
By now the boys of the First Fifteen were bonding like
billy-o, all differences forgotten over a pint or two of tea
and a fruit bun at the temporary mess reserved precisely
for this function. Within hours they had joined in the old
debate concerning broadswords. Bingo thought they should
remain at a metre wide and about a third of a metre long.
Hari felt they should be shorter. The broadswording event
required extraordinary skill but was not a sport popular
with spectators. There was talk of dropping it from the
programmes in future. Others wanted to change it. Donna
Bradmann fried sausages over a single-burner portable heat
canister. The Doctor rather enjoyed the sensation of retreat
into an Edwardian school story. He was getting the kind of
rest he needed, but soon he would have to sleep and think.
Meanwhile, Amy was enjoying the non-players' company,
with not quite as much tea being consumed and a little more
Vortex Water, as issues of the day were discussed, such as
whether Allardyce had any chance against Preston in next
year's intergalactic home game. Flapper wondered what the
council. Seventy-eight members were up for ejection in the
coming year. Amy was fascinated. She had not realised that
the galaxy was actually democratic.
'If you can call it democratic,' said Flapper bitterly and
launched into a long and somewhat parochial attack on a
great many people with unpronounceable names whom she
assumed Amy knew.
'... and Mummy's paying far too much for the old ones,'
she complained.
'The old ones?'
'Yes, the ones being ejected. That's how you pay for the
new ones' campaigns. By selling off the previous incumbents
who then have to work for a person rather than the people.
They're called lobbyists.'
'I'm only buying fifty this time,' declared Mrs Banning-
Cannon. 'The last lot were a complete waste of money.'
She frowned. She was still trying to work out what Frank/
Freddie Force had wanted with her hat. But she was full of
praise for the Doctor, whom she declared to be a knight in a
shining armoire. Which, for Amy, brought up the image of
the Doctor attired in a natty French wardrobe.
She smiled. 'Did you actually buy that hat on Peers™, Mrs
Banning-Cannon?'
'I ordered it when we stopped on Loondoon for the Heart
of the Blitz re-enactments. Diana herself was there - a woman
of extraordinary beauty - and promised to send the hat by
Gbot to Peers™, where I could pick it up at her branch in the
Forest Mall. Which, of course, I did, planning to wear it for
the Highest Tea ceremony.'
'Gbot?'
'You know, one of those warpers that make holes in
space. The kind of holes which form vortices and kill human
messengers.'
Amy deduced she was talking about a robot courier. 'And
it was never out of your possession until it was stolen?'
'Exactly.'
'But it was made in Loondoon?'
'So I understood. You don't suppose Diana or one of her
staff used my hat to get through customs on Peers™, do
you?'
'That's a thought,' said Amy. 'Suppose something was
smuggled in the lining - something that Frank/Freddie Force
and the rest wanted badly, but which someone else stole.
That would mean your hat no longer carries the contraband
but that the thief now has it. And the thief's on this ship.'
'Why do you assume that?'
'Because Frank/Freddie Force detected what he was after
and assumed that the hat still had its secret intact.'
'Ah, of course. Well, I have to admit that the hat was
returned to me in poor condition. The great central arc sagged
a little. And the decorations were all over the place.'
'Could it be possible that part of your hat has come adrift?'
Amy was still a little vague about her theory. She wished she
were bouncing ideas off the Doctor.
But the Doctor was still bonding, swapping tall stories with
his new buddies, and scoffing crumpets and teacakes. That
is to say, their tales were tall and his happened to be true but sounded tall. Everybody knew about the legendary Daleks
who had once sought to invade and inhabit the galaxy. But
few had heard the stories he had to tell. Not that anyone
believed him, which was why they admired him.
'You ought to be writing for the Vs, Doctor,' roared W.G.
Grace, slapping her not inconsiderable thigh-
'Rather!' declared Donna, detaching another crumpet
from her toasting fork and handing it to W.G., who delicately
wiped crumbs from her magnificent face foliage.
'You can tell 'em all right Doctor,' declared Denise
Compton, the Second Fifteen's second-best whackswoman.
'You've done some space travelling in your time, I'd guess.'
'I like to travel,' the Doctor admitted. 'I have what you
might call an enquiring nature.' As if to demonstrate, he
became suddenly thoughtful. 'I was trying to work out how
they could disseminate long enough to cross space on a
photon beam. They expected to leave that way, though with
the hat, having taken horrible risks to acquire it. They had
less than a twenty-five per cent chance of survival, same as
they gave us. So what makes it so valuable?'
The company had become infected by his mood. 'By George,
that was the spookiest bally thing I ever saw in my life and all
of them dressed up like organ grinders' monkeys!' declared
Denise. She was still a little shaky from the encounter. 'Was it
an illusion, Doctor? I mean, if we looked around, would we
discover it was a bunch of your old mates putting on a show
to liven up this boring voyage?'
The Doctor allowed himself a smirk. 'I wish I had that
level of creativity.'
Somehow the subject got changed to archery techniques in
enclosed spaces and how you could rig up a perfectly good
quintain if you didn't mind using the casing of the ship's
nuker. A chap someone knew knew of a chap who had used
the cadmium rods at full draw to give him eighteen hits or
rolls. Sadly they'd blown up passing Kali 4.
At length, feigning tiredness, the hero of the hour made
an excuse and left musing for bed. Stooping uncomfortably,
he was met in the gangway by a slightly flushed and
cheerful Amy, whose unruly red hair stood on end as she
realised that they had both been wondering the same thing:
what could be worth risking the death of the universe for?
Because Frank/Freddie Force, the Antimatter Men and Lady
Peggy Steel, the Invisible Crackswoman, reportedly often in
his company, all wanted what was hidden aboard this ship.
'They gambled their own lives on it being here. And ours,'
said Amy. 'And if you hadn't happened to be carrying a bow
and arrows and acted with unusual presence of mind her
grin widened - 'who knows what would have happened?'
By now they were sitting in the makeshift gaming room
where a few other parties were playing virtual machines.
Some machines were so threadbare they were barely visible
to anyone but the users. The pair sat in the darkness, well to
the back, and talked quietly.
'It would have produced a totally chaotic effect swiftly
followed by a collapse into permanent stasis. Caused by
an in-turned war of the very forces evolved to maintain the
great multiverse in perpetuity,' the Doctor murmured. 'We're
going to need assistance from the Second Aether. Those
brawly boys are mad as moonbeams and as hard to catch
long enough to question and see if they'll help us.'
He'd already told her that only in those spaces lying
between the twin planes of matter and antimatter, Law and
Chaos, was this war understood and exploited in full. The
Second Aether was the realm between space and time where
the Famous Chaos Engineers performed their morphing
miracles. They called themselves names like The Secondaries
or The Preprincipleasures and lived in a dimension not even
Morphail's wizard scientists could explain. This environment
&n
bsp; was thought to be the legendary spaces of the inbetween, which
could be traversed by winding roads of energy and where
peoples of every species, race and creed walked between the
worlds. To some they were known simply as the Spaces, but
to the more romantically inclined, the Second Aether.
Home to the totally opposed immeasurable entities
generally known as the Spammer Gain and the Original
Insect, the Second Aether sheltered many a corsair tribe but
in the main the inhabitants left the real fighting, the blood
feuding and the empire building to their associates. They
took sides fighting for those they called the Principles.
The Doctor sighed and grimaced, his eyes opening wide as
another thought struck him. 'We know they don't side with
Law or Chaos, Matter or Antimatter, Reason or Romance.
But most of them will rally to a call. They need Law as life
needs death and as waking needs sleeping. I'll see what I can
do. It's risky, but it's worth a try. Meanwhile we're somehow
hosting a mystery beacon radiating to every millinery freak
for umpteen billion parsecs and we don't know where to
look for it. Desperate measures, Amy. What do you call those
odds?'
'Oh, be generous,' she said, her spirits rising. 'Fifty-fifty?'
'Let's make it more interesting,' he said, running through
his pockets until he found a live card, flashing and gaudy
in the light. 'Neither side will be happy with a tie in these
circumstances. Let's say fifty-one to forty nine, eh?'
'Don't tell me.' She was sardonic. 'You're the fifty-one per
cent?'
'Let's find out.' He leaned forward, smiling like a Fool,
and winked.
She took his proffered arm and quietly stood up. They
had barely reached their own section when the darkness was
split by bolts of the richest indigo, by zigzags of scarlet and
oscillating, impossible greens.
'At last!' The Doctor lifted his head like a predator detecting
a change in the wind, the sound of distant thunder. Amy half-
expected him to lift up one arm, the way a dog or cat might
lift a forepaw and sniff at the territory ahead. He helped her
brace against the gangway plates as they turned slowly so
she immediately recovered her balance.
'What is it, Doctor?'
He cocked his head a little to one side and grinned at her.
'The Fall!'
Dr. Who - New Series S1 Page 15