by Doctor Who
Django smiled again, brushing some of the hair from his face, and he leaned forward in his throne.
'Oh yes, Doctor?' he said. 'And what is this "something bad"?'
"The star,' said the Doctor. "The Star with the Green Tail, or whatever it is you choose to call it... The one that's in the sky right now? That star is a comet. It's called Schuler-Khan. It is a ball of rock and ice about five hundred metres in diameter, and it is heading straight for us. By my calculations, it will hit this world in less than a day's time, and it will kill everyone and everything here. You included.'
Django sat back once more. He smiled, and then he clapped his hands together with glee.
'Ha! Doctor... This is what you have to tell us? This is the heresy for which you will risk your life? Do you think we have not been told these lies before?'
The Doctor frowned. 'I'm sorry... What do you mean?'
'The Sittuun. The grey people from the sky. Messengers of the Bad. They came here and they
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told us the same. And do you know what I said to them?'
'No.'
'I said to them, "Prove it." I said, "If what you tell us is true -
that we are all from some other place, and that this star is coming to destroy us - prove it." And they couldn't. They showed me images, pictures on a screen, and they spoke of numbers, but these things prove nothing. We have been here for thousands of years. Our stories are as old as the sky. How could they not be true? So I say to you, Doctor... If what you are saying is true... Prove it.'
'What? Now?'
'Yes, Doctor. Here and now, prove that we are from this other place.'
'Well... If you would let me into your tower, maybe I could find-'
'Nobody goes into the tower.'
'Well, then... how am I supposed to pro-'
'Prove it here. And now.'
'But... that's just... Django, that's not possible. I can't prove it here and now, but if you just gave me the chance to-'
'Do you see?' said Django, grinning at Tuco and the other humans gathered in the chamber. 'See how the lies of the Bad are exposed! You heard him! You heard him say the words: "I can't prove it." He can't prove it. You can't prove it, Doctor, and neither could the Sittuun. They told us they had 102
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come to destroy the Earth. To save it, they said. Yes... Save it, from the star they call "comet".'
'And they were right!' the Doctor shouted, allowing his frustration to show for the first time. 'They were telling you the truth, Django. They were trying to help you.'
Django shook his head, still smiling. 'No, Doctor. They weren't. And we killed them for their lies. The star is not
"comet". These are the lies of the Bad. The star is Gobo.'
'What? What? Are you out of your mind?'
"The star is Gobo, Doctor. The star is here to take us from the Earth, to the land of El Paso.'
The Doctor sighed and closed his eyes, his shoulders slumping. He looked down at the ground. What could he do?
There were hundreds, maybe thousands of humans living in the city. Thousands of lives, and no matter how ignorant or savage they were, no matter how badly they had treated him, he couldn't bring himself to let those lives be extinguished because of one man's insanity.
'Please,' he said. 'Django, I am begging you... You have to listen to me. I have a ship... It's in the valley where your men found me. It can take you anywhere. There must be children here. At least let me save them. I can take them to another planet, somewhere safe. Or... or...'
He pulled at his hair, thoughts racing through 103
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his mind at such a rate he struggled to keep up with them.
'Maybe I could... maybe there's some way we could use the TARDIS to...'
'They will be saved, Doctor! said Django, rising from his throne and glaring down at him. 'When Gobo has come, they will be saved.'
'No!' the Doctor cried. 'They will be killed. You will be killed. All of you.'
Django turned to Tuco. 'He is a heretic! he growled. "The penalty for heresy is death. Take him to Lake Mono.'
With a dismissive gesture of one hand, Django walked out of his throne room, a coterie of guards following closely behind. From the platform Tuco looked down at the Doctor and laughed.
'Ha ha...' he said tauntingly. 'No need to worry about
"comet" now, Doctor. You are going to Lake Mono.'
The Doctor chewed his lip and gazed up at Tuco with a grimace.
'And I'm guessing that's not a good thing...'
Tuco shook his head, still smirking maliciously.
'Oh no! he cackled. 'Mono is a lake of acid, in which nothing can survive. Guards... Take him away.'
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10
So this is it, thought Amy. I'm going to die here in this horrible place, and nobody will know. Everyone back home will just think I've run off to somewhere far away and exotic, like Thailand or South America, and the worst thing is, I won't be anywhere. Not for them. I won't be anywhere for another two hundred and fifty thousand years. I'll just be gone. Vanished.
Her entire body ached, a throbbing pain that grew more intense with every passing second. She had managed to wrap some of the vines around her arms and legs, but they were slippery with slime, and she wasn't sure how much longer she could hold on, or how much longer the vines would hold. All she knew was that she didn't want to let go.
Looking up she saw the comet, Schuler-Khan.
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It appeared even larger now than the last time she had looked at it.
Maybe, she thought, if I'm lucky, that thing will hit this place before I fall.
The thought made her shudder. Would that really be preferable? She hated thinking that way, but could see no other way out of this. What if she let go, and the canyon was even deeper than she could imagine? Deeper than any canyon on Earth? What if it was almost literally bottomless. She could fall for hours, days maybe. Her hands gripped the vine a little tighter than before, and another spasm of pain shot through her muscles.
But what was that? She could hear something, from above the canyon's gaping, crooked maw. A heavy whirring. Was it the buggy? No, it was a different sound, almost like a helicopter. Daring to open her eyes once more, she looked up.
The sound was getting louder.
She looked across to the far side of the canyon and saw something emerging from above the crest of a jagged plateau.
It looked almost like a spaceship of some sort, but it was smaller, perhaps no bigger than the buggy. The craft rose up high above the narrow, twisting gully through which they had travelled, and then dipped down towards the canyon, sweeping from side to side like a mechanical bumblebee.
Only as it drew closer could Amy see the pilot in its cockpit.
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It was Charlie.
The tiny flying craft came down into the canyon, its small body kept aloft by twin blades. The canopy swung open on hinges, and Charlie leaned out.
'Amy!' he shouted. 'I'm going to come in close, but I'll need you to jump. Can you do that?'
Though she knew she shouldn't, Amy looked down into the abyss once more and felt a lurching sensation in her stomach. She looked up at Charlie and nodded.
'Right... OK...'said Charlie.
With the canopy still open, he pulled the joystick just a fraction of an inch. The flying craft drew closer, turning in mid air so that it was now only a few metres away. Amy could feel the downdraft of wind from its rotors. Her arms and legs were in agony now, and her hands were numb. Charlie was reaching for her from the cockpit, but the distance between them could have been miles as far as she was concerned.
'OK, this is as close as I can get,' said Charlie. 'You have to jump. On the count of three. OK? One...'
Amy closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
'Two...'
She opened them again and nodded.
'Three!'
Amy jumped, and for just a fraction of a second she was neither clinging to the pipe nor safe inside 107
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the cockpit, but floating, floating above the black void of the canyon. A single thought raced through her mind, but it was a thought built on so many others.
I can't believe this is actually happening.
Just seven words, in all, but each one loaded with meaning.
She couldn't believe she had jumped. She couldn't believe she was jumping onto some kind of spacecraft. She couldn't believe she was jumping onto some kind of spacecraft on an alien world light years from Earth, at some point in the very distant future.
That was what she was really thinking, when she thought those seven words and so, when she landed in Charlie's arms, and he held on to her tight, her first instinct was to laugh. Charlie closed the canopy and steered them up out of the canyon's jaws, and they were flying now over the swamp of swaying plastic tubes. Looking down, Amy saw Sollogs, perhaps hundreds of them, scuttling through the swamp. It was then that she started to cry.
Charlie brought them down a little way past the swamp, on the edge of the great salt flats.
'We can't fly much further, or we'll be spotted,' he said.
The cockpit was cramped with the two of them, its confines clearly designed for just a single pilot and no passengers, but Amy didn't mind. It felt
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like she had spent an eternity clinging to that pipe, staring down into an infinite space. The experience had left her far from claustrophobic.
'What happened?' asked Charlie. 'Where are Slipstream and Ahmed?'
Amy wiped the tears from her eyes.
'Ahmed's dead! she said. 'And Slipstream... Slipstream just left us there.'
'I'm not surprised! he said. 'There's a lot Slipstream didn't tell us.'
Charlie looked out through the window at the glittering white desert before them and closed his eyes.
'Ahmed's dead?' he asked.
'Yes. I'm sorry.'
Charlie took a deep breath and then sighed.
'We have to go back! he said. 'My father is setting off the Nanobomb. He's going to take Slipstream's ship.'
'What? But we can't... The Doctor.. !
Charlie hunched over in the pilot's seat with his head in his hands. 'I knew you were going to say that.'
'Well I'm not going without him. He's my only way home.
No... It's more than that, actually. He's my friend. I'm not leaving him here.'
Charlie sighed. 'OK. Look... The Nanobomb's detonation sequence lasts one hour. It's designed to allow you time to get to a safe distance. If we go
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now, we might just have time to go to the human city and get him.'
'Really?'
Charlie nodded, but now he was looking back across the salt flats at the towering black hulk on the horizon. Amy followed his gaze and saw the flickering orange lights in the watchtowers.
'Only trouble is! said Charlie, 'we have to find a way in. But I think I have an idea...'
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11
Without a doubt, the Gyre was the ugliest world he had ever visited.
He had seen the manure oceans of Caranexos and the living, breathing, continent of Mrag on Hellion D, but nothing compared to this.
Everything about it was aesthetically distasteful. The landscape was a barren wasteland of twisted metal and spilled chemicals. The plant life consisted largely of spiky green shrubs and things with thorns. And as for the wildlife...
Dirk Slipstream's once immaculate silver spacesuit was now soiled, from his collar down to his ankles, with the viscous remains of almost every Sollog he had vanquished in the swamp. Those disgusting creatures had insisted on bursting almost every time he shot them, showering him in 111
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a green slime with the consistency of tar. Still, once he had killed the first six, the others had learned their lesson and run away.
The buggy had taken quite a beating, passing through the swamp. The towering plastic tubes had played havoc with its chassis, and one of the rear wheels had been punctured. Still, it was in good enough condition to get him across the salt plain, and that was what mattered.
The only problem was, he hadn't quite figured out a way to get back when he was finished, but he cast this moment's doubt to the back of his mind. Dirk Slipstream always found a way.
After all, he'd found a way out of Volag-Noc after six years of imprisonment there, and the judge at his trial had told him it was inescapable. He had found a way to steal the Golden Bough from its rightful owner. He had found his way to the Gyre with only hours to spare.
Yes. Dirk Slipstream would find a way.
As the buggy neared the human city, Slipstream heard the sound of drums and a fanfare of horns. He drove on until he had reached the gates, and then he climbed out. A human guard stood in one of the watchtowers, staring down at him.
'Good afternoon!' said Slipstream. 'I don't suppose you could be a gent and open up these gates for me, what?'
The guard grunted something, and then turned 112
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away, speaking to somebody on the other side of the outer wall. Seconds later the gates began to open, and a small army of guards spilled out onto the salt flat, all of them brandishing weapons. A handful of them set about attacking the buggy with their cudgels and blades, slashing at its tyres and denting its body, and one of them grabbed Slipstream and put a knife to his throat.
'Steady on, chaps,' Slipstream laughed. 'Not much of a welcoming committee, I must say. I suppose the phrase I'm looking for is "Take me to your leader".'
'So... The Beagle XXI. Your ship...'
'Yes?'
'Is that a Sittuun ship?'
Charlie turned to Amy, frowning. 'What do you mean?'
'Well... Was it made by the Sittuun? On your planet? It's just the name "Beagle". It's not Arabic like your names. It's an English word.'
They were still walking across the salt flat. They had been walking for what felt like an age, and the human city didn't seem any nearer.
'It's a human ship,' said Charlie. 'And it's European.'
'Right. OK. So do you guys work with humans a lot, then?
When you're not stuck here, I mean.'
'Yes,' said Charlie. 'Our company, IEA is a 113
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multi-world organisation, but right now it's mostly human and Sittuun.'
'Right. And you went to a university near Earth, yeah?'
'Ye-es. And?'
'Well... If you work with humans, and you went to university with lots of humans, what I don't get is why your Dad, and the others... why they have this big problem with humans.'
Charlie sighed. 'I thought we'd been through this.'
'Yeah, but it can't just be because we're superstitious and a bit, well, warmongery. I mean... Is that all it is?'
Charlie laughed softly. 'And "warmongery" isn't enough?' he said. 'No. For what it's worth, I don't think it's just that. But that's just my opinion.'
'So what do you think it is? If it's not just all the ghost stories and warmongering?'
'Earlier on, when I was telling you why we're called Sittuun, why we have Earth names, I told you we were first encountered by that Syrian crew, yes?'
'Yeah. I remember that bit.'
'Well... Think about it. That's when we were first encountered. By an Earth crew who had travelled through a wormhole using Earth technology. Humans were the first aliens we ever encountered.'
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Amy thought about this for a moment. They were both still walking, flakes of salt still crunching with every footfall. Then it came to her.
'You mean you guys had never been into space?'
Charlie nodded.
'So! Amy said, smiling now, 'you mean to say that humans were all, you know, spaceships and wormholes, and you guys were really primitive?'
'Er... we prefer the word developing.'
'But... why? Why weren't you travelling into space? I mean... You guys seem really intelligent. Way more intelligent than most of the humans I know. And you don't have any of the weird superstitions or... or... hang-ups that we have. My friend's grandmother still thinks you can tell somebody's future by looking at tea leaves. And you're telling me we're more advanced than you?'
Charlie shrugged. 'You know what I think?' he said. 'A part of me thinks it was your superstitions and your myths that got you there in the first place. We had nothing like that. We had our science and our history, but we didn't ask too many questions. We had no sense of mystery. On Earth you were making up stories about the stars and the planets hundreds, no thousands of years before you went there. And I think that made you want to go even more. This mad drive to answer all the questions, and then ask yourselves some more. The Sittuun
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don't like questions we can't answer right away.'
He stopped walking, and looked out towards the human city, shielding his eyes from the light of the comet, which seemed to grow brighter with every passing minute.
'I can see Ella,' he said. 'She's parked at the gates. And they've trashed her. Typical. Right... Do you remember the plan?'
Amy took a deep breath and let it out slowly. 'Yeah. I think so.'
'OK. Show me.'
Amy rolled her eyes, and then adopted a hunchbacked stance, twisting her face into a bestial frown. 'I have a prisoner!
she grunted.
Charlie laughed and shook his head. 'OK. That was a bit much,' he said. 'Do it again, only this time try and make it a little bit less "impression-of-a-caveman".'
Tutting under her breath, Amy adopted the stance again. 'I have a prisoner,' she said.
This time Charlie nodded. 'Yeah,' he said. 'Much better.'