Doctor Who_ Enlightenment - Barbara Clegg [10]
‘Can’t we get back to the TARDIS?’ Turlough asked, looking round nervously.
‘Not till we’ve found Tegan,’ the Doctor answered. But before either of them could move a step, their skin prickled to the sound of a blood-curdling scream. Somewhere there was a man in mortal terror.
The same cry halted Tegan. She had just been helped up from a companionway by Marriner, and she stopped dead, tense and alarmed.
‘What was that?’ she gasped. Marriner’s expression never changed, and his tone was as calm and pleasant as usual.
‘One of the crew going aloft. It sometimes affects them that way, especially when it’s the first time.’
Tegan was horrified. ‘The first time! You mean you’re sending a completely inexperienced crewman aloft? In a race!’
‘They soon get used to it,’ Marriner smiled at her. He moved on quite unperturbed, but Tegan was not to be put off.
‘Now wait a minute –’ she said, as she caught up with him. She meant business, by the sound of her voice, but it died away in disbelief as she caught sight of something in the corridor ahead.
‘Wet suits!’ she exclaimed, rushing forward to examine them. There they were, hanging in a row on pegs, with shelves of other equipment below. ‘What are wet suits doing on an Edwardian sailing-ship?’
Without a word Marriner took her by the arm and hustled her along the passageway to a door at the end, flung it open and hurried her through into what was clearly the wheel-house. The whole place seemed to be glassed in, and to Tegan’s surprise it was pitch dark outside. Somehow she had expected a race to start in daylight. But before she had time to comment, or to do more _than glance at the polished brass of the nautical instruments round the walls, there came a curt command from the far end of the room.
‘Mr Mate.’ It was Striker, standing by the helmsman at the wheel. Excusing himself briefly, Marriner hurried to the Captain’s side.
‘Are you all right?’ she heard the Doctor’s anxious voice asking. He and Turlough had just hurried in and were looking very relieved to see her. Tegan rushed across to them, her words tumbling over each other.
‘You’ll never guess what I’ve seen! Wet suits! In one of the companionways! Underwater gear – like scuba-divers wear!’
‘On an Edwardian ship!’ Turlough was scathing. But there was something about Tegan’s certainty that was convincing.
‘Wait a minute,’ said the Doctor. ‘This might tell us where we are.’ He had caught sight of a chart spread out on one of the tables. Tegan and Turlough hurried over to join him and in a second the three of them were poring over it.
Turlough was the first to give up.
‘It doesn’t make sense!’ he said in disgust.
But Tegan had a feeling she was on the right track. ‘It’s to do with the race, I’m sure,’ she said. ‘Marker buoys! It shows the positions of the marker buoys!’
‘Marker buoys? They’re considerably more than that –’
The gravity in the Doctor’s voice startled them. But before he could explain, Striker was calling out authoritatively, ‘Mr Mate – we’ll look at our cornpetitors, please.’
Marriner pressed a brass lever and the polished wooden top of a fitment opened, to reveal a bank of switches. A touch on one of them produced a gentle humming noise and a large panel in the wall slid slowly upwards.
‘Electronics!’ exclaimed Tegan, her mouth dropping open. ‘What date is this ship?’
She and Turlough stared at each other in bewilderment, but the Doctor only had eyes for what the panel revealed. It was a huge screen, like a gigantic scanner.
‘Look!’ he said urgently.
It was not sea which surrounded them; there were no waves, no long swell, no distant horizon; there was nothing but a vast blackness, spangled with far-away stars.
‘We’re in space,’ the Doctor said.
Into view glided a square-rigged eighteenth-century frigate, so close they felt they could almost have touched her. Beyond were the tall lines of a clipper; beyond her, a galleon; beyond, a shape that was older still,