Doctor Who_ Last Man Running - Chris Boucher [93]
The Doctor said, ‘Not exactly. They probably won’t know that they’re decoys.’
‘Search-and-retrieval would have dropped anyway,’
Fermindor commented. ‘All it takes is a distress beacon.’
‘Would they have landed for a beacon?’ the Doctor asked.
‘Yes. They’d have to be sure.’
Leela asked, ‘Would they have been armed and wary?’
As soon as she said it, they knew that was the reason but Kley said it just to be clear. ‘They would be heavily armed and very wary.’
‘If it wasn’t us and it was remotely threatening,’ Rinandor said, ‘they’d blast the everlasting crap out of it. They don’t call search-and-retrieval “the death detail” for nothing.’
Leela had put her fingers back on the control surface and the Doctor noticed that the bay seemed to be expanding slowly so that the figures and the landscape were getting larger. They were almost full size now and Kley and the others found themselves standing awkwardly close to the virtual representations of the copies of themselves.
Strangely, there was no discernible change in their relative positions so that for a brief dizzying moment they were unsure whether the images were getting larger or they themselves were getting smaller. There was no change in the sounds, either, so that closeness was not closeness. But the awkwardness intensified as they strained to understand the detail of what the Kley copy was saying.
‘Lead One, Lead One, this is Kley,’ the figure said. ‘Drop-zone coordinates are specified and acquired. It looks wide, Lead One. Is there a reason? I repeat drop zone has overextended error margin. Reset.’
In the unnatural stillness of the baking desertscape, the voice of the navigation coordinator on the orbit ship was just about audible over the communicator channel.
‘Serian Kley, this is Lead One. Be advised we are briefed for a double-drop lift-out. Orbit drop two is in fifteen. Reset.’
Pertanor whispered, ‘They sent two ships for us. Maybe three if Lead One’s a stand-off.’
‘Isn’t it good to feel wanted?’ Rinandor murmured with a wry smile.
‘How did they justify that, do you suppose?’
‘Not how,’ Kley said quietly. ‘Who!’ She looked at the Doctor and nodded her acceptance of what he had told them.
Fermindor was nodding grimly. ‘When we find out who it was who sent them,’ he muttered, ‘we’ll know who we’ve got to deal with.’
‘Why are you whispering?’ Leela said. ‘You are not with them. They cannot hear you.’ She took her fingers from the pattern of crystals, which were by this time recognisable only to her.
The Doctor watched her staring intently at the virtual figures. She seemed completely absorbed by the vision of them standing in the thin dust outside the desert cave. She unsheathed her knife. Was she finally losing contact with her own reality? She examined the knife carefully and then she returned to gazing at what the control bay was showing. Was it the machine that was dictating her behaviour now? He tried to see precisely what she was looking at.
‘Leela?’ the Doctor said. She did not seem to have heard him. ‘Leela,’ he said more loudly.
She glanced at him. ‘They are in the cave, Doctor,’ she said, pointing into the starkly contrasted darkness. ‘I cannot tell how many of them there are.’
They all peered at the cave. Fermindor tried to shift to a new position to get a better look, but found that nothing at all had changed. Pertanor shaded his eyes before realising how pointless the effort was.
‘I can see them moving,’ Belay said, suddenly excited.
‘There must be dozens of them.’
‘Dozens of what?’ Kley demanded.
‘Dozens of me,’ Leela said flatly.
‘Probably that’s why Belay can see them,’ Rinandor snorted, ‘and we can’t?’
‘Probably,’ the Doctor agreed, absently. ‘Semi-sentient telepathic machines are strangely selective sometimes.’ He had just noticed something that Leela had undoubtedly been aware of for some time. The Kley copy had a sidearm. ‘The TARDIS can be quite arbitrary under certain circumstances.’
He did a quick check. None of the people with them had guns.
‘The TARDIS? That would be an alien artefact?