Doctor Who_ Longest Day - Michael Collier [14]
'So,' said the Doctor, doing his best to disguise what was clearly great unease. "This is some kind of reception lounge. I imagine this computer is used to order up occasional supplies and that strip outside gives any cargo ferry something to land on, probably bringing new personnel every now and then. Skeleton crew I'd imagine, given we've only seen one person.'
'Doctor,' began Sam, realising what had been puzzling her on their journey here,'why would a skeleton crew need such a lot of space?'
'Hmm?' said the Doctor, still staring out at Hirath.
'Well, all those long corridors. You'd think they'd want something pokier to get about faster.'
'Well, maybe they like a bit of space to get away from one another at times,'
reasoned the Doctor. 'Running an operation like this, they're probably highly trained and intelligent.
Bound to want their own space at times. Bound not to get on on occasions.'
***
'Stay away, Vasid,' Anstaar called out, her voice rising with panic,'or I'll break every last bone in your body and cut off -'
'Shut up.' Vasid's thick slur of a voice came out of the darkness. He was much closer than she had thought. She had heard him padding softly about straining her ears and eyes for some clue as to what he was up to, trying to remember where the matter transmit was. It was used only occasionally for beaming down the test probes and instruments to check for temporal stability, atmospheric abnormalities, and other little matters affecting all life on the planet. It was large enough to hold a child. Or maybe a person. Just.
She could think of better ways to travel than being dissolved into thin air and transmitted through space and several hundred thousand units of temporally ravaged atmosphere on to a schizophrenic planet.
There had to be a way out of this. Talking to him had achieved nothing. He had clearly hit the narcomilk hard -how many bottles she didn't want to think. As well as heightening strength and aggression, the stuff made you hideously paranoid. Several times now, in the darkness, she had theorised that Vasid had just fallen into a drunken sleep or lost consciousness. But then a tiny sound had given him away, or a tiny movement of shadow cast by the faint flickering blue of the faulty monitors.
By the sound of his voice, Vasid was still at the other side of the central console, just about. If he kept moving round, and provided she didn't bump into anything or trip, she stood a chance of making it to the far door before he could stop her. Then she could reason with him in the light - or see her way while she was running, if he still wouldn't listen. Wait for him to collapse into a stupor. Talk to him sober and make him tell her what in the deity's name was going on.
But a panicking voice at the back of her head gibbered and gabbled at her that she wasn't going to get the chance to do any of these things. She was going to die. Or be sent out of here, out of the safety - safety? - of the base, out of the warm, electronic, artificial world she had lived in for so long to go down there. Down to Hirath.
Tears welled up. No, she told herself, don't show you're scared. You'll inflame him - excite him, even. You know what he's like. Think about it, work it out, stop him - you can do this -
Her choked sob burst out into the blackness, and she heard Vasid snigger.
***
With a few acrid wisps of smoke, a glutinous screen dissembled from the side wall of the murky vessel. A circular icon, bleary and pulsing, appeared in the middle of a shimmering grid. Small dots of light appeared around the flashing circle, and a short list of alien symbols began spelling themselves out next to each of them.
A towering figure stamped across the command area to the navigation