Doctor Who_ Beyond the Sun - Matthew Jones [22]
‘Bernice . . .’ Tameka began.
‘The answer’s still no, I’m afraid.’
‘Oh.’
V15 turned out to be a forgotten system which sat midway between Apollox 4 and Dellah. Bernice couldn’t believe her luck when she discovered that tucked away in its planetary system was a world listed as Ursu. However, her luck was not to last. For the large desert planet was a prohibited world. This was not good news. Prohibited worlds were usually off limits because they were prison colonies, reported sites of new diseases or local war zones. According to the available information, no one had travelled to Ursu since before the Galactic War. It was one of several hundred planets with which contact of any kind had been lost during the conflict. In the years since the war had ended, governments and companies were working hard to re-establish communications with these lost worlds. It was a slow process – leading the societies back out into the light after so many years in the darkness of isolation. Many of the worlds had fallen back into a new barbarism. Bernice had heard the stories. Ugly stories.
However, the injunction around Ursu had been in existence since way before the war. Although the reason for its being struck off the trade routes was now lost. Prison? Disease? Local conflict?
Oh, I’m really looking forward to this, Bernice thought to herself.
There was a tiny moment after the gravity of Apollox 4 had let go of them and before the artificial gravity of the ship kicked in, when everything in the passenger room of the ancient haulage ship weighed absolutely nothing. All of the scattered papers, food cartons and other debris lifted gently away from the floor and the furniture and started to glide about the room. Bernice had to bat away a curry carton which was heading towards her and got a streak of cold curry sauce in her hair for her troubles. The artificial gravity in the ship began to tug at her and then the air was no longer filled with cartons, papers and cutlery. The debris rained down on the floor with the clatter of a sudden hailstorm.
Relieved that she wasn’t going to go floating off, Bernice unclipped the harness and slipped down from the couch, picking her way carefully across the room.
‘Can we talk about personal hygiene?’ Tameka growled as she glanced around the rest area.
She’d already released herself from her hammock and was inspecting the only communal space in the whole of the ship. Bernice grimaced inwardly as she looked around the living space. The room was dimly lit from a series of thin glass tubes which snaked across the extremely low ceiling. She kept banging her head on the tubes, which were surprisingly hot. The air was warm and smelt of oil. It made the back of Bernice’s throat dry and she found herself swallowing frequently and uncomfortably. Probably due to a cheap recycling unit, she thought to herself. The whole experience was like being shut up in a poorly maintained ventilation system.
‘You’ll get used to it in a couple of days,’ Errol had muttered, when he’d noticed her discomfort.
His welcome aboard had consisted of pushing a stack of import/export documents on to the floor to create some sitting space in the tiny common room. ‘Best thing is to try and not move around too much.’ He chuckled to himself and ducked to avoid a light fitting. ‘It’s not as though there’s anywhere to go.’
Errol was right. The living quarters of the ship consisted of three main rooms, of which the common room was the largest. The ‘bridge’ was a tiny transparent bubble which protruded from the front of the vessel, with barely enough room for two people to sit at the pilot and navigator stations. Errol’s stateroom was nearby, but had, thankfully, not been included in the tour. Bernice had shuddered when she had glimpsed the sanitary facilities: they were not good. The rest of the ship was inaccessible during space flight, and was made up of a series of large, unpressurized, cold-storage bays.
As well as owning the ship, Errol was the pilot,