Doctor Who_ Relative Dementias - Mark Michalowski [60]
Ace broke the surface with a shock of bright relief, taking in huge lungfuls of air as if she’d been deprived of it on the journey up from the ship. As droplets streamed down the faceplate, she began treading water, trying to orientate herself. She rotated around as best she could, looking for the land that she knew was there. As her arms started to tire and the suit restrained her movements, she began to panic. Having escaped from Sooal, was it only to drown, out here in sight of land?
She wondered if she should try to get out of the suit, but remembered how complicated it had been to put on: trying to take it off in the water would be even harder. The air in it offered her some buoyancy, but it wasn’t enough to prevent her sinking every time she stopped treading water. It gave her an idea, and she fiddled with the air controls. A faint hiss reached her ears as the suit slowly swelled out around her. Gently, her legs swung out from beneath her until they lay flat on the waves, her face looking up at the vacant bowl of the sky, grey and dreary.
Great, she thought as she turned her head inside the helmet.
I might not drown, but there’s a good chance I’ll die of boredom.
John watched Alexander turn his find over in his hands, feeling strangely proprietorial about it. He took a last drag on his cigarette and stubbed it out in the saucer he was using as an ashtray.
‘So we do nothing, then?’ Alexander said. ‘We just carry on with the survey as if nothing has happened, as if you hadn’t found that?’
‘Stop being such a drama queen,’ John said, setting it down on the table. ‘We’ve got another two weeks out here. Let’s just get on, get it out of the way, and then we can sort this thing out.
If you want to use the tent radio to tell someone about it, then fine. But I can’t see them sending out a rescue party.’
He reached for his cigarettes again. Alexander raised a disapproving eyebrow. ‘You’ve only just put one out.’
John ignored him and lit up again, pointedly/ ‘And how, exactly, do you suggest we finish the survey? Moby’s knackered, the compass won’t stop spinning, and every other electronic instrument we have has died on us. We can’t do much of a survey without any equipment, can we?’
‘What’s to survey? As far as we can tell, the only things left around here are barnacles and seaweed. Just write that down, add a few charts and you’re done.’
John sighed. ‘That’s easy for you to say – it’s not your PhD
we’re talking about, is it?’
‘Hey, don’t get at me.’ Alexander raised his hands defensively
‘I didn’t have to come and help.’
John snorted, blowing out a bluish cloud of smoke. ‘Yeah, and a great help you’ve been so far.’
‘Thanks a lot, John. If I hadn’t come – and remember it was Mother’s idea, not mine – you’d have had to find someone else, and if I recall correctly, they weren’t exactly jumping at the chance of accompanying you back at uni, were they?’
John looked away, staring at the metal lump on the table. He suddenly wanted to chuck it back in the sea: it – and that dome-thing – had well and truly screwed up this trip. Two weeks it should have taken. Two weeks of taking fish samples, checking the quality of the water and working out whether sunken German ships were polluting the sea, and they should have been on their way back to write it all up. And what had they got?
Sweet FA.
Alexander fanned the smoke away from his face and stood up. ‘I’m going up on deck for some fresh air,’ he said, glowering at John.
His brother watched him go. ‘Don’t fall over the handrail,’
he called after him sourly.
‘There’s something out there!’ Alexander shouted down the steps just seconds after he’d gone on deck.
‘What?’
Alexander didn’t answer. John could hear him clattering about above, running along the deck. With a throaty roar, the engine started up, sputtering and coughing. The metal object rattled on the tabletop, vibrating its way steadily towards the edge: John grabbed it and