Doctor Who_ Original Sin - Andy Lane [114]
The punishment . . . ’
‘Powerless Friendless?’ Bernice hissed. ‘Where the hell are you?’ The spongy walls of the Skel’Ske absorbed the sound of her voice, deadening it, stripping it of the tension that she felt and leaving it sounding flat and almost bored.
There was no answer. Bernice moved farther down the corridor, sweat cool-ing her brow, continually swivelling her head to check that none of the sleek bots were creeping up on her or lurking around the curve ahead. Everything was curved in this ship; there wasn’t an angle or a flat surface anywhere in sight. Question: why did the Romans build straight roads? Answer: so that the Saxons couldn’t hide around corners. She wished she had a gun. Cancel that; she wished she had a big gun, one of those ones that took two hands and a shoulder strap to carry, and was linked by a big curly cable to a power supply so huge that it had to follow along behind on caterpillar tracks. Alternatively, she wished she had the Doctor there. Better than any gun. Not quite as impressive to the casual glance, but far more effective, and didn’t need reloading. Just shutting up occasionally.
She stopped for a moment and took a deep breath. The tension was getting to her. Even her thoughts were babbling. Think calm, Bernice. Gently lapping waters. Birdsong. Chocolate mousse.
As her heartbeat slowed to a level where she could actually distinguish the separate beats, she sank against the wall, resting her back and her hands against its moistness. It gave slightly beneath her weight. Perhaps it was her 194
imagination, or perhaps she was just picking up her own pulse, but she could have sworn the wall throbbed slightly beneath her palms.
Like huge, bloated flies, her thoughts kept circling around a particular notion. What if, somewhere deep inside her brain, a, vein of fire was beginning to glow? What if she was already being driven mad by the icaron radiation from the Skel’Ske’s engines? What if it was already too late?
Then again, what if she’d just stayed on Earth and joined Spacefleet? What if she’d never gone to Heaven and met the Doctor? To think of all the things she would have missed, all the glorious sights she never would have seen . . .
She shook her head slightly. Never say die, that’s what the Doctor had told her the last time she had thought about giving up. Never say die.
She remembered finding a book of poems in the TARDIS library, during her period of moping after Ace had left. The poems had been written by a man named Dylan Thomas. According to the introduction, he had been something of a drinker. That’s what made her read on. A man after her own heart. A phrase still echoed in her mind from one of those poems, a gauntlet flung in the face of the universe.
‘Rage, rage against the dying of the light.’
Never say die.
She pushed herself away from the wall. If she was going to go as mad as a Dalek in the middle of a universal battery shortage she’d do it standing up and cursing, thank you very much. She had a job to do, and she’d better get on with it.
They had split up on entering the ship. They had agreed that, with hunter-killer robots on the case, the important thing was to search the ship to ensure that nobody else was aboard, and then try and find some way of taking off and getting the hell out of there. Forrester and Cwej had headed towards the engine room; Bernice had volunteered to make for the control room with Powerless Friendless.
But by the time this had all been agreed, Powerless Friendless had vanished.
‘Powerless Friendless?’ she hissed again, just in case he was around.
‘Bernice?’ The voice was loud, and came from just above her head. Bernice remembered to clap a hand over her mouth before screaming against her clammy palm.
‘Did I startle you?’ Powerless Friendless asked. She looked up. His mollusc body was attached to the ceiling with mucus and his eyestalks