Doctor Who_ Last Man Running - Chris Boucher [60]
‘I pressed that.’ Fermindor pointed at a dark patch about the size of hand on the wall beside him. ‘It brought you down from there.’ He indicated a place halfway up the wall. ‘You were stuck there, staring at nothing and talking to yourself.’
‘Talking to myself?’
‘Loudly. That’s how I found you.’
‘You were passing.’
‘Yes, and I’d like to get back to it.’ Fermindor grabbed the Doctor’s arm and propelled him towards the hole in the floor.
‘Stop confusing movement with action – that’s what you said, wasn’t it? Well stop confusing standing still with surviving, that’s what I say.’
The Doctor allowed himself to be pulled down into the hole, which was a tube lined with the same material that he had seen in the shaft in the rocks. The tube sloped down at a steep angle, and the Doctor noticed that the unexpectedly slow slide through it seemed to be controlled by extra but heatless friction.
The tube gave on to a larger, semicircular passageway brightly lit from below by a glowing floor. By the time the Doctor slid out and got to his feet, Fermindor was waiting impatiently to set off. ‘Why that way?’ the Doctor asked.
Fermindor shrugged and said, ‘I was following the light.’
As if on cue a pulse of extra-bright light moved along the floor and disappeared into the distance. The Doctor glanced back in the direction from which it had come. It was definitely darker that way. ‘How far have you walked?’
‘I don’t know,’ Fermindor said. ‘And before you ask, “I have no idea” is the answer to your next question, whatever it is. I woke up in a heap somewhere back there, feeling worse than I’ve ever felt in my life. Walking in that direction –’ he pointed in the direction the pulse of light had gone – ‘makes me feel better. Walking in that direction –’ he jerked a thumb over his shoulder – ‘makes me feel worse. I am walking in that direction.’ He pointed and started to walk. ‘I see no virtue in feeling crappy,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘You must make up your own mind. But do it quickly. Things keep changing round here and none of them seem to be for the better.’
The Doctor put his hand inside the tube from which they had just emerged. It was getting warmer and softer to the touch and it was already narrowing. After thinking about it for a moment or two, he could find no compellingly logical reason to go in the other direction so he set out to catch up with Fermindor. He had the strong feeling that this was what he was being encouraged to do, but he would need more to go on before he could decide if and why this might be.
‘Fermindor,’ he called. ‘I have one or two more questions that maybe you can answer.’
Chapter Eight
A towering pillar of rock pushed steadily up in the middle of several square kilometres of wind-carved and dust-blasted open desert ground, and settled in place with titanic groans and shudders. In the centre of the pillar, the modified unit rose through a narrow shaft and emerged high above the surrounding country. Once the device was in position the access shaft narrowed to become a wire-thin link with one of the smallest of the power sources far below the planet’s surface. The unit’s control programme had been adapted to uplink with any available orbiter, as well as to scattercast direct pulse-plasma signals. Its power had been boosted to the limit and all its signals were stronger and more coherent than specification. Once it had been activated it would be only a matter of time before a search-and-retrieval ship responded to this second-hand, standard-issue distress beacon and came looking for the OIG team led by CI Serian Kley and consisting of ACI Monly, SI Sozerdor, SI Fermindor, and Investigators Belay, Pertanor and Rinandor.
Leela found the voice of her captor ingratiating and threatening in equal measure. Bullies like that were common enough in her experience, wheedling and intimidating by turns, and she had never had any trouble ignoring their attentions. Avoiding this one was more of a problem, though, since he had hidden himself in the darkness and someone had bound