Doctor Who_ Beyond the Sun - Matthew Jones [30]
Michael lived in the city now. Red Zone. Travel between zones was forbidden. Scott hadn’t seen him in . . . too long.
The hard slope was wet under his feet, turning the dust between his toes into a film of thin mud. Ursu had been a very different place then. Another world. A better one.
He shivered: the air by the reservoir was cold. The chill reminded him why he had made the journey. If a ship had crashed into the lake there wasn’t any trace of it now. Staring out across the quiet waters, Scott wondered if perhaps it really had just been the dream preying on his mind.
He was about to leave, feeling as if the trip had been a mistake. But there was something troubling him, something different about the place, which was just at the very periphery of awareness.
He walked down to the edge of the reservoir to wash his feet – and then it hit him.
The concrete bank was wet but there were no waves or wind. Nothing to have caused the water to travel this far up the slope. He walked back up the gentle bank. The water stain ended close to the top. It would have taken a colossal wave to have caused the water to reach this far.
He remembered the muffled thunder he had heard. A ship hitting the water? He stared back at the lake, imagining a tidal wave crashing down on the bank.
And then he saw something floating in the centre of the reservoir. A small rounded curve on top of the flat water. It hadn’t been there a moment before. He watched the little rounded platform bobbing in the lake for a few minutes before his curiosity got the better of him. Scott tugged off the uniform and waded into the water a little way, in just his shorts, before diving in and swimming towards the object. He was a strong swimmer and cut through the dark water with sharp, clean strokes. It took only a few minutes to reach the object. It was a thick circle of metal, two metres across, slightly domed, like a piece of a giant eggshell.
The metal was warm under his fingers. The water was chilling. His teeth chattered as he traced the edge of the platform, treading water as he moved around it. The curved metal was part of a machine of some kind. There were instruments built into its surface. A small red light blinked on and off, and the edge was filled with indentations. He pulled himself up on his elbows to examine the surface of the strange object, his legs still dangling in the water. There was a series of symbols etched into the metal. Scott was surprised to discover that he recognized the words: EMERGENCY HATCH 3. Something cold nudged his foot in the water. Cold and hard. He gasped, gripped by fear and terrible childhood images of sea monsters and tentacles. Instinctively, he tried to swing his legs on to the platform. As he did so a huge, unyielding hand closed around his ankle and pulled. There was nothing to grip on to on the surface of the airlock hatch and his fingers squealed against the metal as he was drawn violently down into the water. He caught his head painfully on the edge of the platform as he went over the edge and yelped, inadvertently swallowing a mouthful of foul-tasting water as the reservoir closed over his head.
Tameka stood by the smoking capsule, smoking one of her last cigarettes in the darkness. There were three creased cigarettes left in the packet. She’d left her other packet in the living quarters of the ship. The idea of going without cigarettes was almost as terrifying as the idea of being stranded on a prohibited world with only Emile for company.
The boy was still in the capsule messing about with the ’puter. Probably playing games. She was about to take another drag when she realized that in the darkness she had already smoked the cigarette down past the filter. Reluctantly, she dropped it into the cracked earth and ground it out with a booted foot.
The lifeboat had come down in a field. It was neatly bordered with scrawny bushes. The night air was hot and sucked the moisture out of her mouth.