Doctor Who_ Longest Day - Michael Collier [27]
Felbaac looked directly into the older man's eyes.'Perhaps.'
***
The Doctor reached the part of the corridor with the hidden section, and aimed the sonic screwdriver at it, trying it on different frequencies until at last the door opened. He kept it in position by implanting a small loop of sonic oscillation in its opening mechanism.
All was as he and Sam had left it. The battered police-box shell of the ship stood in the corner. He wondered, not for the first time, if it had an aesthetically aware circuit that made it materialise in a tucked-away location each time, and smiled.
Cautiously he moved behind the police box. A few traces of a brown mucus-like material stained the wall in vertical streaks. Peering closely, he thought he could detect another hidden door in the wall, partially obscured by the hardened slime.
'A pressurised area between the forward and aft sections?' mused the Doctor. 'Fascinating theory, Doctor. Oh, do you think so, Doctor?
Absolutely, Doctor.' He sighed noisily. 'This sort of thing is lonely without a companion.'
Turning back to the door, which was still open, the Doctor made some rough measurements, just like an artist trying to gauge perspective with his thumb. Then he walked outside and stretched out his arms either side of him in the wide corridor, before walking back, apparently satisfied, opening the TARDIS doors and going inside.
A short time passed, then there was the roar of an engine igniting, subsiding to a steady purr.
The Doctor drove his purple Volkswagen Beetle from the TARDIS. Popping out to close the ship's doors, he happily patted the car's roof and then clambered back in. He drove round the corner and along the corridor towards the control room.
***
Vasid asked himself almost constantly what he was doing and why he was doing it. And he kept coming to the same basic answer - he had no idea what else he should do.
So he rummaged through Yost's belongings. Nothing particularly dodgy, no filth. He picked up a glass frame that held a vidprint of Vost and what was presumably his family, enjoying a few moments of celebration and happiness in an endless loop. Sneering at the scene, Vasid threw it to the ground, where it shattered.
So much for authority, he thought. So much for Vost.
There was a grey plastic diskette holder on Vost's desk. Vasid dropped it to the ground and stamped on it. Then he began to throw out anything that wasn't fixed down against the floor. He pulled off the sheets from the bed, threw clothes around the room in a tantrum and smashed a huge mirror, panting harder and harder and feeling tears well up inside him.
There was no one to stop him doing whatever the hell he liked. He could do anything. No one cared. No one was there to stop him.
He felt sick.
Rubbing his eyes, he glanced up at the broken mirror.
Behind some of the fragments still fixed to the wall there was something taped - a small package. He pulled it from the wall, a shard of the glass cutting into his thumb. He cried out and sucked it.
This whole place must've stood out like... that was what the Doctor had said.
Shivering, he opened the parcel. Data disks.
Vasid started up the machine on the desk, too worked up even to register the cheery TCC start-up tune with the usual cringe, and inserted the first of the small pile. The disk's tinny datavox announced that the first file had been created just four months ago.
Within a second graphics filled the screen. Vasid just stared. Then a chill ran through him.
PRIORITY K'ARME
THIS MESSAGE PROPERTY SPECIAL K'ARMEAN HUNTDOWN
DIVISION.
The message was from the Most High Commissioner of the House of Beckal. It held confirmation of some kind of transaction.
For a time Vasid did nothing but stare. Then, involuntarily, he looked around at the mess he had made of the room. Without thinking, he began clearing things up, hands shaking but making small piles of half-broken objects.
He didn't want to think how powerful Vost's allies must be.
***
The Doctor could hear the beeping