Doctor Who_ Set Piece - Kate Orman [2]
She had hovered for a moment, eyes adjusting to the brighter lighting.
Holographic video games flickered and danced in the air. Deckchairs were scattered about at strategically random locations. The smell of chlorine came from the Olympic-sized pool.
It was a beach, a five-kilometre, sandless beach. The crowd was a beach crowd, tipsy and aimless. Reassuringly normal. Unlike the view.
One entire wall and the roof of the observation deck were transparent. It looked as though the entire area was open to space. Ms Cohen stood gaw-ping at hyperspace until she started to feel self-conscious. No-one else was bothering with the view. Blinking, she moved into the crowd.
It was like jumping off a cliff and discovering a mattress at the bottom.
Hyperspace was just a black blur, not even any stars. Unless you looked at it for long enough. Then you started to notice . . . the black had colours in it, sort of . . . blurring and jumping and . . . doing the thing they were doing, whatever it was. Ms Cohen had no words to describe it, so she stopped looking at it.
She had a swim and joined a game of shuffle and drank cocktails with some of her acquaintances. She wished she had a friend with her, someone she could discuss her work with. She couldn’t even keep up with the jour-nals; communications travelled more slowly than the ship. There’d be a lot of catching up to do after planetfall.
She stood with a Martini in her hand, slowly scanning the crowd, looking for a single upturned face. Nobody cared. When someone worked out how to put non-Euclidean images onto postcards, the passengers wouldn’t bother even to come up here any more. In five kilometres, she found one man looking at the sky.
Had he seen the other ship as it dived towards them, moving thirty-two times as fast as light?
6
The crowd on the deck had swelled as the word passed around the ship.
There was a long streamer of light in hyperspace, like a smudged line on a blackboard. It was beautiful, a tinsel comet, following them through the night.
There was no announcement, no sirens. Just a lurch in the pit of her stomach as they dropped back into normal space. And a second lurch as she saw the huge ship looming above the deck, dwarfing the Cortese. It didn’t look like a ship. Its shape was curvy and irregular. It looked alive.
She had been one of those sensible enough to get off the observation deck.
When the other ship had crushed the viewing wall, a thousand people had found themselves riding a tornado out into space.
Life support failed an hour later. The last thing she remembered was hiding under the bed in her cabin, her unprotected arms just beginning to freeze to the floor.
His name was Meijer. His uniform was crumpled and stained. It looked comfortable on him, as though he’d been wearing it for a hundred years.
‘The Ants,’ explained Meijer, ‘are collectors. Some species go about the galaxy collecting minerals, or slaves, or exotic foods. The Ants collect minds.
That’s my theory. We’re certain of this much: they siphon off knowledge and thought patterns and use them in the construction of new Ants.’
An Ant was watching them. It was four foot high at the shoulder, made of some reflective metal, silver with bronze highlights. Its eyeless head was festooned with antennae and jointed tools that pivoted and twitched, like a Swiss army knife brought to life. Why was it metal when the ship was flesh?
‘The Ants claimed five hundred and six people from the wreckage of the Cortese,’ Meijer was saying. ‘They’re in cold storage now. Thirty-nine have been processed, and processing is continuing.’
Ms Cohen’s head spun with questions she was too scared to ask. Is that why you’ve thawed me out? Does anyone know you’re doing this? Why are you helping them? Did you build the Ants? Or are you working for them? What happens to the people who are processed? Why me? Why is this happening to me?
When she didn’t speak, Meijer went on. ‘We need your help with subject 24,’ he said. ‘We know you’re