Doctor Who_ Sleepy - Kate Orman [14]
‘And that’s you,’ said Zaniwe, dumping an armload of firewood in the centre of the camp.
‘The initial planetary surveys didn’t find anything, did they?’
Zaniwe shook her head. ‘Nope. Unless someone was fudging — there’s no way they’d allow colonists on the planet if there was evidence of an alien civilization. Even just remains.’ ‘You mean someone might have found the temple, but kept it quiet so the colonization could proceed?’ ‘This happened on Nephelokokkugian two years ago,’ said Jenny.
‘There was a furore.’
Benny had become completely tangled up in her tent.
She threw the half-folded thing down on the ground in disgust. ‘Any inscriptions?’
‘Not much,’ said Zaniwe. ‘A few symbols on the temple, or they might just be illustrations. I’m surprised Professor SmithSmith even let us come out here again. She thinks this is all a waste of time.’
Benny aimed a kick at her tent. ‘I wonder what they were like...’
Couldn’t get the canopy open.
‘Are you ill?’
Chris looked at Roz in surprise. ‘No, no, I’m fine!’
The small, hot sun was just starting to disappear into the trees. They were walking through a field, along a track in the grass made by passing machinery. Their boots squelched in the damp soil.
‘You’re very quiet.’
‘I was just thinking. That’s all.’
‘What about?’
‘Stuff,’ he said. ‘It occurred to me that if you had a gene for psi powers, you’d probably know about it.’
The sun was behind him, making her squint up at him.
‘What?’
‘Wouldn’t your family pedi... um, history mention something like that?’
‘It doesn’t,’ she said shortly. ‘But think about it. These genes are recessive, and rare. Like one-in-a-million rare.
They could be passed down through a family for generations before they showed up in someone.’
‘They can’t be all that rare. The Doctor says that the proportion of affected colonists is levelling out around fourteen per cent.’
‘Makes you wonder about how they selected them, doesn’t it?’ Roz shrugged. ‘I don’t know a damned thing about abnormal genetics.’
‘I don’t know if that’s the right word,’ mumbled Chris, and suddenly he had drawn his blaster and was pointing it at a bush. ‘Come out of there!’ he yelled.
Roz was half a second behind him ( Damn, that was fast! ), in time to train her weapon on the tiny creature who emerged from the foliage. Terrified eyes above a hideous black snout. She shivered when she realized it was a little girl. Even she could have burned the kid from this distance.
They lowered their weapons. The child hovered for a moment, then bolted, running up the path towards a small silver dome.
‘She can lose the filter mask,’ said Chris, looking shaken.
‘Don’t these people read their e-mail?’
‘Let’s see if we can convince Mummy and Daddy.’ Roz strode up the path after the girl.
There was a forcefield around the dome, marked with small flashes of light at eye level at two-metre intervals. They looked like tiny candle flames circling the house, warding off evil spirits.
Roz found a comm screen outside the forcefield. She tapped at its call button for a couple of minutes.
‘There’s no sign of the kid,’ said Chris, who’d jogged around the house.
‘Nobody home,’ said Roz, giving the comm screen a final thump. ‘They’ve made a run for it.’
‘No,’ said Chris, ‘they’re here...’ He squinted at the house, as though in intense concentration.
‘Are you trying to have an idea?’ said Roz dryly.
‘We just need to get their attention.’ Cwej drew his blaster again, and pumped a single shot into the forcefield.
It absorbed the shot, sent its energy spinning around the field as flashes of blue and violet light. He waited for the blast to dissipate, and was raising his gun for a second shot when the comm screen bleeped.
‘What? What?’ shouted a man, his face distorted by the flat surface of the screen. He was very blond. A filter mask hung around his neck.
‘Mr SmithSmith?’ said Roz.
‘Don’t try to breach the forcefield,’ he said. ‘I’m willing to defend my home with deadly force.’
Roz rolled her eyes at Chris. ‘Mr SmithSmith, have you