Doctor Who_ Enlightenment - Barbara Clegg [37]
12
The Prize
The Doctor, Tegan and Marriner lay on the deck, completely winded. Even Marriner’s body had responded to the sprint as though it were human.
‘Just in time,’ the Doctor murmured. The wood of the deck felt warm under his hands and he relaxed. He could even have gone to sleep, if Marriner had not started talking. He was the first of the three to recover, and as he got up, his eyes sparkled with interest.
‘Fascinating!’ he said. ‘For an Ephemeral to outwit an Eternal!’ He was almost speechless with admiration for a moment. ‘I would have thought it an impossiblity!’
Rage restored the Doctor, more than any amount of resting would have done. ‘An impossibility?’ he exclaimed, leaping to his feet. ‘Not at all!’
Marriner looked at him as though he were a clever pet of some sort. ‘We have complete control over matter,’ he said, in a voice that practically patted the Doctor on the head.
‘Had you merely imagined the Focus as being jettisoned out there in space, I could have converted the image into reality. We would not have needed to expend so much physical effort.’
‘Why didn’t you do it, then!’ Tegan snapped.
‘Because he didn’t think of it.’ The Doctor dismissed Marriner with a look, and turned back to Tegan. ‘They’re far more dependent on us than we are on them,’ he said.
‘Without us, they’re empty nothings!’
His eyes had their old look of self-reliance again. He had found the Eternals’ measure. But suddenly he lifted his head, almost like a horse sniffing the air. Marriner seemed to sense something too. They stood motionless for a second, neither of them speaking.
‘What is it?’ Tegan whispered. She knew there was something different, but she could not quite place what it was. Then she realised. Everything was still. The pennant at the masthead had stopped flapping. The sails hung limp.
‘The wind,’ the Doctor said softly. ‘It’s dying.’
In the ion chamber the beam of darkness had disappeared and the whole room had grown lighter. Wrack still stood at the centre of the grid, but seething with anger. When she spoke again, the voice that came from her lips was her own, but it was venomous.
‘Striker’s ship is still whole,’ she spat.
It was not until that moment that Turlough realised which ship she had been about to destroy. He should have known, he told himself. Watching her, almost sick with relief, he felt that she could actually sense the other ship’s existence. Just as a moth can detect the presence of a female of its kind up to thirty miles away, from a molecule of its scent in the air, so Wrack was aware of the other minds aboard that ship. If her plan had succeeded, they would have flashed the images of their own destruction to her, and then their messages would have ceased completely. But the living picture-show was still going on, and she knew that she had failed.
The door burst open and Mansell hurried in. ‘Captain –’
was the only word he managed to get out, before she rounded on him.
‘I know!’ her eyes blazed. ‘Striker’s ship still exists.’
‘But becalmed! The wind has dropped.’ His voice was ingratiating, and it seemed to carry hope, for its effect on Wrack was immediate. With great effort, she relaxed and lifted her head. The poisonous twist of her lips was replaced by a smile.
‘Then I must make do with victory,’ she said triumphantly.
Turlough was nonplussed. ‘How can you win – if there’s no wind?’ he stuttered.
She looked at him with gloating power. ‘My sails can catch the lightest whisper of a breeze. The race is ours.
And the prize.’
Striker was beside himself. ‘Bosun... Bosun...’ he shouted down the speaking-tube. The helmsman cringed slightly as the Captain flung away from it in fury and strode towards him. But as he reached the man at the wheel, he turned again, and started to pace backwards and forwards, glaring round the empty room.
‘Where is everyone?’ he ground out. ‘Victory is in sight and we idle here! Sails hanging limp!’
The First Mate hurried through the door and he rounded on him explosively. ‘Get the men aloft, Mr Marriner! And crack on!’
Marriner did not move.