Doctor Who

by David Solomons

  ‘Time we got going,’ said the Doctor, pushing Yaz ahead of her towards the transport capsule.

  The gulper’s flowers greedily probed the air, turning slowly to face Graham, Ryan and the Gardeners. Hoisting itself up on a ball of writhing roots, the plant skittered across the vault towards them. Two of the Gardener soldiers lay down covering fire, while Nightshade and the other soldier retreated up the ramp to the safety of their transport capsule.

  Under cover of the commotion, Ryan and Graham ran to join Yaz and the Doctor.

  ‘Quickly!’ shouted the Attendant, beckoning to them from the other transport capsule.

  The Doctor and her companions clambered aboard, and they blasted towards the shield wall. Just before they passed through it, Yaz glanced back to see the Gardeners fending off the gulper. On one hand she felt bad about unleashing it on them – but on the other they had tried to strangle her.

  The transport capsule hurtled back through the individual vaults towards the main entrance. The noughtweed had spread. Yaz counted seven vaults now infected, their walls crumbling, seed jars lying in glass splinters on the floor.

  As the Attendant brought them in to land at the transit station where they had first boarded, it indicated a small wooden box resting on the capsule’s controls. ‘Open it,’ it instructed the Doctor.

  She lifted the lid to find a single bluebell flower inside.

  ‘The location of the three keys hidden by the Time Lords is encoded in this flower. Your timeship will be able to read the information.’

  The Doctor picked the bluebell up carefully by the stem. The flower was the same shade as the TARDIS.

  An alert sounded from the capsule’s control panel, and the communication screen lit up with an incoming message. Nightshade. He and the other Gardeners, it appeared, had made it out in their capsule, though it looked as if one of them had lost an arm to the ravenous gulper. A centipede squirmed out of Nightshade’s nose and across one cheek as he spoke. ‘The thirteenth vault will fall, Doctor. The Genesis Seed will be mine. These things are as inevitable as autumn turning to winter.’

  ‘On Dracorus 805-U, they only have one season,’ said the Doctor. ‘So, you see, what’s inevitable for you isn’t necessarily so for the rest of the galaxy.’

  ‘All leaves will fall,’ intoned Nightshade. ‘The soil must be turned.’

  With that he cut the communication, and the screen went dark.

  The Doctor popped the navigational bluebell in one of the many interfaces on the TARDIS’s console. ‘There, the TARDIS should be able to read the information.’

  ‘I still don’t understand why we’re rushing about looking for magical keys,’ said Graham. ‘We’ve got a time machine, right? So, why not just travel back in time to the Galactic Seed Vault before the germinator and his pals got in there and wrecked the place? We could stop all this before it even began. Begins?’

  The Doctor nodded. ‘Grammar – the first casualty of time travel.’ She stepped round the console. ‘But you make a good point.’

  ‘I do?’ Graham didn’t hide his surprise.

  ‘Of course, you’re not right, but don’t let that take the shine off.’ She held up three fingers. ‘There are three reasons why we can’t fix the problem as you suggest. One: the possibility of generating a time paradox. We’re already active in this timestream, so going back in time like that would run the risk we’d bump into different versions of ourselves. And, trust me, you don’t want to meet yourself. Especially not you, Graham. Two: there are fixed points in time which cannot be altered. I suspect that the death of the Galactic Seed Vault is one of those points.’

  She turned back to the console and began flipping switches.

  ‘That’s only two,’ said Graham. ‘What’s the third reason?’

  The Doctor minutely adjusted a dial, peered at it, then stepped back, apparently satisfied. ‘Going back in time and preventing almost certain catastrophe with ages to spare?’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Where’s the fun in that?’

  With a final flourish, she set the TARDIS in motion.

  ‘Okay, let’s find out where we’re going.’

  * * *

  —

  The blue box vanished, its wake kicking up a whirlwind of snow that showered the watching Attendant. The beetle looked out at the white plateau it now stood on. It hadn’t been outside for longer than it could remember, and it was old now – a great deal older than its shiny carapace would suggest. It shook off the coating of snow and turned back to the skiff that had brought them out here.

  The skiff hadn’t been used for millennia, but everything about the Galactic Seed Vault had been built – or, more accurately, grown – to last. It had started without a murmur, whisking them effortlessly from the transit station and out across the snowy wastes. Like the vault itself, the technology was reliable beyond the measure of most civilisations.

  The Attendant’s gaze settled on the angular shape at the foot of the now-distant mountains. Its duties lay back there, protecting the secret in Vault Thirteen – perhaps the greatest secret in the universe. Such a responsibility, and the source of endless bad dreams. It shivered, and not from the cold.

  The Curatrix was waiting inside the skiff’s cabin. The AI’s presence wasn’t limited to the vault, so long as there was some kind of carrier for its brain – in this case, the vessel’s systems. It projected its glowering humanoid presence, clipboard in hand, tapping its foot in irritation. The Attendant held up a foreleg to stall what it knew the Curatrix was about to say. It wasn’t a gesture typical of its species, but it had seen the humans do something similar. It didn’t help.

  ‘You stridulating, compound-swivel-eyed liar.’ Evidently the Curatrix had been waiting for the visitors to leave to lay into its colleague. ‘Ten million years we’ve been together, and only today do I find out about Vault Thirteen?’

  The beetle rubbed a hind leg nervously against its side. There was no point in mounting a defence. The Curatrix was right. Yes, the Attendant had only been following orders laid down by the vault’s original creators, but that didn’t change the fact of the deception. While it let the Curatrix pour out its vitriol, it sat in the pilot’s seat, fired up the skiff’s engines and lifted off, swinging the nose of the craft round to point back towards the Galactic Seed Vault.

  As they sped across the snow, the Attendant considered the past and the future. The vault had always been protected by one Attendant and one Curatrix. The two of them were only the latest in a long line, mere youngsters in comparison with the age of the vault itself. The Attendant watched its fiery companion sadly. They would, it now appeared, be the last.

  The midday sun glared off the curved surface of the city of Dorm’s protective dome. Outside the sealed environment of the city, the pitted surface of New Phaeton stretched for thousands of miles in every direction, dry as dust and nearly devoid of life.

  In the central control room of Dorm’s science department, one of the operators cycled the lock at the southern gate. The heat crackled at the widening gap, and out swarmed a squadron of tiny quadcopter drones. As they emerged from the shadow of the dome, on-board cameras began to stream video.

  Back in the control room, the two operators watched the video feed on a bank of monitors, as they did every day, on high alert for intruders. Aaron (student number 357) observed his junior colleague Lalitha (student number 428). It was her first term in the control room, and she displayed the typical eager-to-please attitude that he recalled once possessing. He was older by two years, but his authority was undermined by what others referred to as his ‘baby face’. The others didn’t take him seriously, always assuming he was a lower year than he was. This was Aaron’s last term, and tomorrow he would graduate with the rest of his cohort. The first graduation in the school’s history, it was a big step into the outside world. By the end of it, they would all be dead.

  One of the drones stopped broadcasting an
d its slaved monitor went dark. Aaron punched a few buttons, trying to determine what had gone wrong. He assumed from experience that it had either flown into a dust storm or, more likely, simply malfunctioned. Like the rest of the equipment in Dorm, the drones were held together with string and prayers. With no access to replacement parts or new kit, it was a constant battle to keep them flight-ready.

  With a spark, another drone’s monitor shorted out. At the same time, the screen next to it showed activity on the horizon.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Lalitha.

  The drones were programmed to detect movement and home in on it. One of them had locked on to a target and was tracking its progress. Aaron sharpened the camera’s focus. The target appeared to be a small, spinning blue box with a flashing light on the topside of its hull.

  ‘Is it a Spectre?’ asked Lalitha.

  Aaron shook his head. ‘Not like any I’ve seen before.’ He plotted the box’s current course. ‘If it continues on this trajectory, it’s going to crash against our shield.’

  ‘There’s nothing we can do,’ said Lalitha. ‘We can’t lower it.’

  Aaron knew she was right. To lower the defensive shield would go against everything they’d been taught since their first year of school. It was drilled into every child in the colony: keep the shields up and the Spectres out. But in that moment something possessed him. A wild impulse to break the rules. Maybe the blue box was a rescue ship? Maybe the outside world hadn’t forgotten about them, after all? For years, he had been taught to trust only the Faculty. Now, though, he decided to trust himself.

  He lowered the south shield.

  ‘Aaron! Are you mad?’

  Ignoring Lalitha’s objections, he watched as the blue box maintained its approach. It would reach safety in less than ten seconds, then he could re-energise the shields.

  Another monitor caught his eye. To an inexperienced operator the image it displayed would have appeared to be nothing more than the shimmer of heat haze.

  ‘Spectres inbound,’ said Lalitha, who’d recognised the threat at the same time as Aaron. ‘Quadrant four.’

  Spectres. They were always out there, but not even a practised controller like Aaron could predict when they’d attack. The planet’s native life forms, they were not consciously hostile to the inhabitants of Dorm; much like the earth’s predatory sharks that children were taught about at school, the Spectres were only doing what came naturally. In the flesh, they looked more like jellyfish than sharks. Atop gelatinous bodies with trailing tentacles, their bell-shaped heads pulsed with light, each flash illuminating rows of needle-like teeth.

  The incoming Spectres swarmed towards the gap in the protective dome. Aaron silently gave thanks that he couldn’t hear their shrill and rasping voices. On his first day in the control room, he had accidentally left the drones’ audio switched on, and the terrible noise still invaded his dreams.

  ‘You have to raise the shield,’ Lalitha urged.

  He had to time it just right. If he reactivated the shield too soon, the blue box would smash against the electromagnetic barrier and in all likelihood be destroyed. Too late, and the Spectres would gain entry to Dorm.

  He counted down in his head.

  Three, two, one…

  * * *

  —

  ‘Textbook landing,’ said the Doctor, patting the console. ‘Not that I’ve read it.’

  Plan A had been to materialise inside the city, but the TARDIS’s navigation systems had proved characteristically erratic, forcing the Doctor to make a more conventional approach through the planet’s atmosphere. That had been Plan B. It could’ve been worse. Usually, they were lucky if they reached the heady heights of Plan F.

  ‘So, where are we?’ asked Ryan.

  ‘Third planet in the Librae system,’ said the Doctor. ‘Its inhabitants call it New Phaeton. Gravity is point nine of earth’s, and the planet is home to a colony who’ve been here for a little less than ten years.’

  ‘What about the key?’ asked Graham.

  ‘If you’re expecting a big arrow with a sign that reads “Impossible Key This Way”, you’re going to be disappointed. We’ll have to search for it.’

  She consulted the external sensors, double-checked the atmosphere and, having confirmed that it was safe to breathe, opened the door. The TARDIS had landed close to a wall.

  ‘This thing should come with sensors,’ said Ryan.

  ‘It does,’ said the Doctor. ‘Long range, short range, pan-dimensional.’

  ‘Yeah, but not parking sensors,’ he said, squeezing through the narrow gap.

  They were in some kind of control room, and it was in chaos. An alarm wailed, and the hot smell of fused wires was overpowering. Smoke drifted from an open panel at which a young woman was directing a fire extinguisher. A baby-faced young man sat at a bank of monitors, desperately slapping buttons and spinning dials. They both wore threadbare survival suits that looked like they’d once been white but had faded to an indeterminate grey. The suits’ rubber seals had perished long ago. They looked like they had been through a dozen owners.

  Curiously, at their necks, the young woman and man both sported striped blue-and-white ties. Neither seemed to have noticed the TARDIS – or, if they had, they were too embroiled in their urgent tasks to pay it or the new arrivals any attention.

  ‘We’re fifteen seconds from a breach,’ the young man shouted over the din.

  The Doctor didn’t wait to be invited to help. ‘Your shield – is the technology gravity-based or electromagnetic?’

  He whirled round, his eyes wide with surprise. ‘Who are –’

  ‘Which one?’ she demanded.

  ‘Electromagnetic,’ he blurted.

  The Doctor whipped out her sonic screwdriver, made an adjustment and then, scrutinising the equipment, found the section she wanted and plunged in. The sonic fired. ‘This will temporarily boost the signal.’

  There was a brief pause, then the young man watched the power-management readout on his display tick upwards. ‘It’s working,’ he muttered in amazement.

  On the monitors, the protective dome sparked repeatedly as Spectres slammed against it. With each collision, the shimmering beings dispersed in a flash of heat and light.

  ‘Thank you,’ he mumbled.

  ‘I have a feeling I should be thanking you,…’

  ‘Aaron,’ he said, completing the Doctor’s sentence. ‘And this is Lalitha.’ He gestured at the young woman, who was still holding the fire extinguisher and scowling at him.

  ‘Well, Aaron, first off, commiserations on having parents who couldn’t be bothered making it past page one of The Big Book of Baby Names. Second, and more importantly, according to the settings on these controls, someone lowered the shield to let us through safely.’ She smiled her thanks and pocketed the sonic. ‘Also, your generator core needs a service. One big hit and the whole thing will collapse. I can take a look at it, if you’d like. Oh, and have you seen a key?’ She spread her thumb and forefinger apart. ‘About yay big. Opens a secret vault from the beginning of time.’

  ‘Uh…’

  ‘No rush. Have a think.’

  ‘What were those things trying to get in?’ asked Yaz.

  ‘We call them Spectres,’ explained Aaron, clearly still reeling from their sudden arrival. He stared past them in wonder at the TARDIS. ‘How did you –’

  ‘Some kind of energy-based life form,’ the Doctor said to Yaz, cutting Aaron off. ‘Judging by their interaction with the protective shield out there.’

  Aaron nodded. ‘They drain the life force of whatever they come into contact with.’

  ‘Space vampires,’ mumbled Ryan.

  ‘They try to enter Dorm, and we keep them out. It’s been this way since the first intake.’

  ‘Be careful,’ warned Lalitha, her eyes darting to a camera nestled high in one corner of the room. ‘You shouldn�
�t be talking about such things without permission.’

  ‘Doc,’ Graham called. ‘Take a look at this.’

  On the wall next to the TARDIS, half obscured by it, was a sign in English that read: SS PHAETON – DECK 12.

  Graham frowned. ‘This is some kind of ship.’

  ‘The Phaeton left earth in the year 4018,’ Aaron said. Something about these visitors – and especially the woman who had fixed the shield – gave him the confidence to speak freely.

  Yaz couldn’t hide her surprise. ‘This is an earth ship?’

  Aaron nodded. ‘We were heading for the Avolantis System, but encountered a solar storm and crashed here. Ever since then we’ve been trying to contact earth. It’s been ten years.’

  The Doctor frowned. ‘But there was no distress signal. The TARDIS would have noticed.’

  ‘That’s impossible,’ blurted Lalitha.

  ‘Trust me,’ the Doctor said. ‘There isn’t a single man-made radio wave coming off this planet. You’re not so far from some of the main space shipping lanes, but a vessel could pass within a thousand miles of your atmosphere and not know anyone was down here.’

  ‘But that can’t be.’ Aaron looked confused. ‘Why would the Faculty lie?’

  Yaz offered a consoling smile. ‘People in charge sometimes fudge the truth when the situation is too terrible.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Graham. ‘We can get you off this rock. I could fit sixty kids on an old Wrightbus, and the TARDIS can take a lot more than that. How many of you are there?’

  ‘The roll stands at a little over five hundred students,’ said Aaron.

  ‘And adults?’ said the Doctor.

  ‘Not a single adult survived the crash,’ said Aaron.

  ‘You mean apart from the Faculty?’ said the Doctor.

  Lalitha and Aaron exchanged looks. ‘The Faculty is not like you,’ he said.

  They were interrupted by the sound of a musical chime, then a soothing voice issued from a public-address system.