Doctor Who_ Last Man Running - Chris Boucher [69]
Chapter Nine
The signal from the distress beacon was picked up by an unmanned ore freighter on its way in from the asteroid cloud and automatically boosted and relayed to the First Planet signal clearing centre. From there, it was routed to emergency assessment, where it was identified as an OIG-registered unit. The signal was then reboosted and relayed to the Second Planet clearing centre, which directed it to the OIG headquarters in Trikaybel City, where the Director himself was eventually informed.
Dikero Drew, known to his subordinates as Skinny-dick, was not pleased. For a slightly built man in early middle age he had a deep voice and a huge capacity for rage. ‘Tell me this is not the disaster that I think it is,’ he roared at the Deputy Director (Operations).
The DDO was used to being bellowed at; he didn’t like it but he was used to it. In a way it was a compliment. There was none of that patronising firster-toody politeness between them. ‘I don’t know what it is,’ he said calmly, ‘not yet.’ He looked at the magnificent views out across the city from the Director’s rooftop office suite. ‘I’ve activated search-and-retrieval. They’re powering up a ship even as we speak.’
‘I want two ships,’ Drew snapped. ‘And a backup standing off.’
‘One up, two down? Are you serious? It’s a minimum-strength patrol. There were only seven of them on the ground to begin with.’
‘You heard me!’
Most of the building heard you, he wanted to say, but bit his tongue. ‘This could just be a bag-and-tag lift. There could be more ships than there are survivors.’
‘We owe our people the best!’
Since it was unlikely that Skinny-dick was developing a social conscience at this late stage, the DDO made a mental note to check out the personal links between the Director and the members of that patrol. Family, sex or money, one or all of them had to be involved there somewhere. He said, ‘Have you found a new source of funding that I don’t know about, Dikero, because Operations hasn’t got the budget for that.’
‘I’ll cover it from the contingencies fund. Just do as you’re told.’
‘You are going to personally authorise this?’
‘No, you are going to personally authorise this. You’re the Operations Director after all. You don’t want me undermining your position, do you?’
‘But you are going to personally authorise the budget in advance of my rush of blood to the head. Right now would be a good time.’
Drew smiled. Not the open, handsome smile that looked so good on the interworld newslink screens, but the small amused smile of the schemer the DDO knew him to be.
‘What makes you so suspicious, Feerlenator?’ he asked.
‘Working for you, Dikero,’ the DDO said, smiling back.
The Doctor had reasoned that the complex was circular, so ultimately it would make no real difference which way they walked, but the guide pulses were obviously controlled and whoever was controlling them was putting increasing pressure on them to go the other way. As far as the Doctor was concerned, that meant they were moving in the right direction. He was slightly bothered that there might be a series of these circular complexes all over the planet and that they might be linked together. Without any clear points of navigational reference, he and Leela might wander off line and possibly lose themselves in a never-ending labyrinth of glowing passageways and galleries.
With her unnerving instinct for recognising the Doctor’s unspoken doubts and voicing them as thoroughly irritating questions, Leela asked, ‘Are you sure this is the right way?
We have been walking a long time and nothing seems to have changed.’
‘No, I’m not sure,’ the Doctor said grimly. ‘My feeling is that we have been walking round a circular perimeter.’
‘Your feeling?’ Leela asked incredulously.
‘The centre of which,’ he went on, indicating with his left hand the curvature of the circumference, ‘is somewhere in there. If we can find a way in we should reach the control areas.’
‘You feel as though we have been walking in a circle?’
Leela said.
‘Don’t you?’
‘It does not mean we have.