Doctor Who_ Enlightenment - Barbara Clegg [14]
Venus was nearer still, and the churning belt of clouds surrounding her was getting ominously close. All eyes in the wheel-house were fixed ahead. Striker’s attention was so concentrated that he answered the Doctor’s questions almost absently. Perhaps, indeed, he would not otherwise have answered them at all, the Doctor thought; so he pressed on while he had the opportunity.
‘Why are you doing this?’
‘The race?’ Striker murmured in an abstracted voice. ‘As a diversion.’
The Doctor felt his anger rising, but with great control kept his voice as even as possible. ‘And the crews for the ships... You’ve collected them from their different time zones. Just as a diversion, too?’
Striker did not reply for a minute. He sounded bored.
‘They are Ephemerals.’
‘Ephemerals?’ the Doctor queried.
Striker’s contempt was clear. ‘Beings like yourself,’ he said.
The Doctor could contain himself no longer. ‘You had no right to do it!’ he burst out. ‘Those crews are human beings! They’re real! Living, breathing flesh and blood!’
His fury had not the slightest effect on Striker, who simply turned away, indifferent. For a second. Then he swung round, his face alive and intent, and interested.
‘Wait! You are a time-dweller – no –’ It was almost as though he could hear the Doctor mentally correcting him.
‘You travel in time – a Time Lord –’
‘You can read my thoughts!’ It came to the Doctor in a flash and he wondered why he had not tumbled to it before, it explained so many things. But the Captain was continuing, disdainfully, ‘A Lord of Time! Are there lords in such a small domain?’
‘Small? Where do you function?’ the Doctor asked.
Striker turned cold distant eyes on him. ‘The endless wastes of Eternity.’
For a second the Doctor’s heart seemed to freeze under that icy stare, and then all was bustle and confusion, and a voice was shouting urgently, ‘Marker buoy, sir! Marker buoy!’
They turned.
Venus now filled the entire port, or rather a portion of the planet did, growing larger and larger and closer and closer every second. They seemed about to hurl themselves into the sulphurous fog around her.
‘Marker buoy!’ The shout was more frantic still.
‘Coming up on the starboard bow!’
5
One Down!
The same excitement caught Tegan and Turlough as they hurried back along the companionways to the wheel-house.
The bosun’s pipe started shrilling urgently, and there was the noise of running feet and shouting. Then, as they rounded a corner, they came upon a surprising scene. A queue of men, wearing what looked like wet suits, was moving towards one of the companion-ladders. At the foot of it sat an officer, doling out ‘rum’ from a large cask. As each man in turn took his tot, he downed it in one, slammed the jigger back onto the cask, lowered a transparent cover over his face, and was then shoved on his way up by another officer. Even as they arrived, a scuffle broke out. A man had reached the foot of the ladder and jibbed, struggling and refusing to climb. It was Jackson.
And it took the combined efforts of Collier and the officer to get him up.
‘Of course,’ Turlough said softly, almost to himself. ‘He doesn’t drink, – he hasn’t had his tot.’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’ Tegan asked.
‘They’d never get them up there without it!’
‘Up where?’ Tegan still did not understand.
‘Up into the rigging,’ Turlough said, impatiently.
Tegan was completely taken aback. ‘The rigging!’ she exclaimed. ‘In space! It’s mad! This ship can’t function like a real sailing-ship!’
‘Never heard of the solar wind?’ Turlough asked. ‘Ten protons per centimetre moving outward from the sun at 440 miles a second. That’s a supersonic velocity, and if it can deflect the tails of comets, it can move us as well!’
‘Take in the top gallant.’
Striker stood by the helmsman, totally in command.
Marriner, relaying his orders, shouted down the speaking-tube.
‘Get them aloft, bosun. Take in the top gallant.’
‘A point-and-a-half to starboard, helmsman.