Doctor Who_ Alien Bodies - Lawrence Miles [35]
Cogan practically jumped as he became the centre of attention. He addressed the other three, not Tchike himself. ‘Ahh... well. The Colonel was supplied with, ah, with both general and specific monitoring equipment, in addition to the camera. The readings were, were, were passed to me by the General a few days ago. I’ve had my people take a look at them. A good took. Ahem.’
‘And?’ Tchike prompted. Cogan was young for a man in his position, not much over thirty; with big stupid blue eyes and a floppy blond fringe, but he seemed to be practising to be an old English eccentric already. He’d be wearing wire-framed glasses next, the General decided.
Cogan cleared his throat. ‘Well. Well. Yes. We’ve found some very unusual things. Tachyon traces, for a start. Quite extreme tachyon traces.’
‘Tachyons?’ Dr Martinique looked startled, much to Tchike’s amusement. ‘Are you suggesting that box is a time machine?’
‘Ahh, no. The scan didn’t pick up any signs of, of, of internal technology. It seems to be exactly what it, ah, seems to be. A box. Not a vehicle of any kind.’
‘An escape pod?’ suggested Renault.
Cogan nodded enthusiastically. ‘Yes. Yes. I mean, I should think. But if it’s an escape pod, its chronometry... that is, it doesn’t seem contemporaneous with... what I’m saying is, I think it travelled through time to get here. And there are traces of Silverberg energy. Very, very surprising. Yes.’
Martinique leaned back in her swivel chair, and laughed. ‘Silverberg energy. Signs of psychic activity. Fringe science, Professor.’
‘No, no, it’s true,’ flustered Cogan. ‘In which case, the pod may not have needed navigational systems. It may have been guided by... well, by the mind of... of whoever was inside it. The same principle as a psyche-guided missile, but navigating through four dimensions. Very complex. Very complex.’
Tchike shifted his weight from one buttock to the other. The notion of time travel disturbed him. He had personal reasons for that, of course. Five years ago, he’d erased all the official records of the Doctor’s existence from the UN files. These days, nobody below the rank of Brigadier even knew the old interferer existed. The Time Lords were mentioned in The Eye-Spy Book of Alien Monsters, but that was all.
‘You see our problem, then?’ the General said, addressing the rest of the Conclave. ‘We have every reason to think the pod was occupied when it crashed. Now watch this.’
We’re seeing the walls of the hangar zip past. We’re seeing everything in flashes of khaki and gun-metal grey. A figure in sunglasses moves out in front of us, but the cameraman’s fist jumps into the frame, and cracks the man-in-black across the jaw before he can finish drawing his gun.
And we notice something else. The camera doesn’t stop moving, so we only see it for a split-second, but it’s there, no doubt about it. As we lurch towards the exit, we pass an open doorway, the entrance to a side-chamber. We glimpse the people at the threshold, looking up at the camera with surprised looks on their faces.
They’re dressed differently to the other personnel here. Not men-in-black, not technicians. They wear coveralls, so they look more like sanitation workers than anything else. There are four of them, and between them they carry a stretcher.
On the stretcher is a bag, a chrysalis of transparent plastic, sealed, tagged, and air-proofed. Inside the bag is a body.
The camera spins. The picture freezes.
There was a long silence.
‘What happened to Kortez?’ asked Martinique, finally. ‘I mean, I’m assuming he didn’t get out alive.’
Tchike laughed. Or at least, he grunted, which was as close to a laugh as he ever came. ‘Obviously he got out alive, Doctor. Or we wouldn’t be sitting here watching this. Would we?’
Martinique looked cynical. But then, she always did. She was on the brink of being an old woman these days, her hair the colour of steel wire, her suit making her look more like a company director than a xenobiologist. ‘He got out? From that place? With all those MIBs