Cold Fusion - Lance Parkin [96]
‘I’ll get you back to the ship: there’s a transmit on board. We’ll beam to a hospital.’
‘My injuries are too severe,’ he whispered. Primitive transmits were often unable to copy serious wounds – if they tried to teleport Chris then there would be tiny duplication errors: chromosomes resequenced, nerves and neurons missing.
‘I’ll get those medical supplies. Then I’ll signal for help.’
Chris didn’t reply.
The hovercopter swept over the frostlands at the speed of sound. The navigation computer told the pilot to head for the crater nine kilometres south of their starting position.
Above them, the clouds were growing and flickering like time-lapse photography.
The Doctor prised out a small silver box and smashed it against the side of the wreckage.
‘Well, that’s seen to the distress beacon.’
Tegan held up the first aid kit that she had just found. It had broken open. It must have come down in the rockfall.
‘What do you make of this?’ The box was filled with metal tubes that looked a bit like deodorant cans.
Tegan turned to get the Doctor, but he was already bounding over. He examined the contents of the box.
‘You know, there are times when I wish I used expletives,’ the Doctor concluded.
‘Could you tell me what they are, please?’ Tegan said. ‘I hate not knowing what I’m panicking about.’
The Doctor was running his sonic screwdriver down the full length of one of the tubes. ‘These are neutronic charges: fusion bombs.’ He handed the cylinder over to her and pulled out another one.
‘Grenades?’ They looked a bit like stick grenades. She weighed it in her hand. It was light, almost as if it was hollow.
‘Well, in a manner of speaking,’ Adam said, coming over. ‘Each one of those can destroy a city.’ Tegan’s fingers went numb.
The tube slipped from her fingers.
It tumbled through the air, end over end.
Tegan flinched, her throat dry. There was a pulse at the back of her neck, a hindbrain instinct that told her to think nothing, to do nothing but push hard with her heel, to get away from the danger.
It hit the rock floor, bounced once and came to rest. It didn’t detonate.
‘Jesus! Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ!’
‘I don’t know why you flinched – a transmat wouldn’t have been fast enough to get you out of the blast radius,’
Adam chuckled.
Tegan was still shaking. ‘I’m surprised you can be so calm about it.’ Quint was signalling his agreement.
‘Well, I saw the Doctor disarm it with that magic wand of his, so I guessed we’d be safe.’
‘You absolute–’
‘Tegan! Is that you?’ It was a girl’s voice, coming from about fifteen feet above them.
Tegan looked up. ‘Nyssa?’ she said. The Doctor finished disarming another of the bombs and glanced up.
‘Yes, Tegan, it’s me. Is the Doctor with you? I need him.’
The Doctor had the sonic screwdriver in one hand, a fusion charge in the other. ‘Yes. We’re coming up.’
They clambered twenty feet up the scree. The ground shifted, but was stable enough to carry their weights.
Between them, the Doctor and Tegan could support Patience’s medical gurney, the antigravity device did the rest. Tegan reached the top after the Doctor. The sky was horror-film dark, thick with black clouds. Twenty feet away, Nyssa was kneeling over a wounded man. Both were wearing close-fitting dark grey spacesuits. As the Doctor approached, Nyssa stood, brushing the snow from her legs.
‘I like your outfit, Nyssa.’
The young woman looked Tegan up and down. ‘I prefer yours.’ She managed a short laugh, and the two hugged. It felt odd: inside their insulated outfits they couldn’t feel the heat of each other’s bodies, or the softness of skin. They parted a little clumsily.
The Doctor was bending over the fallen man. ‘Don’t worry, I’m the Doctor.’
The man paused. ‘No you aren’t,’ he concluded sadly.
There was an embarrassed silence.
‘He isn’t,’ the man insisted, using precious energy doing so.
Tegan knelt down. She knew some basic first aid. The most important thing in these cases was to keep the patient conscious. This man was