Doctor Who_ So Vile a Sin - Ben Aaronovitch [50]
‘The console room,’ said the Doctor. ‘We’ll need to find some transport first. It’s going to be a long trip.’
Roz stopped near one of the claws. She just stood there, feeling the switch inside her head snap back off and the size of the thing come crashing down on her conscious mind. The size of the comet. Ship. TARDIS.
‘Holy shit!’ she said.
The console room was surprisingly small. Roz wondered how large the crew had been. Thousands, scattered through the ship?
Six people, one for each panel of the hexagonal console? A single pilot?
They’d got here partly by more lifts and partly in a sort of chunky buggy, meant to carry cargo and not passengers, judging by the suspension. Roz hoped it was still working for the journey back – they must have travelled fifty kilometres through the angular white corridors.
117
The Doctor had sealed the area and reinstated the atmosphere.
When he was sure it was safe, he pulled off his bulky spacesuit and walked around the console in his ordinary clothes and stockinged feet, muttering.
When his head didn’t explode, Roz took off her helmet, unsealing it beneath her chin and letting it hang down her back.
After a while Iaomnet took hers off as well.
‘Doctor,’ said the intelligence agent, ‘how can you work this machinery?’
‘My people built this,’ he said.
‘OK,’ said Iaomnet, ‘I accept that. But I couldn’t operate a spinning jenny. How do you know how to operate these controls?’
‘Our technology isn’t like yours. What’s the word I want?
Stagnant springs to mind.’
‘You mean your technology hasn’t changed in ten million years? You mean the people who built this are still around?’
‘They don’t venture out very often,’ said the Doctor. 'Not these days. And of course the technology has changed. But only in the sense that the old technology has been refined.’
‘Miniaturized,’ said Roz.
The Doctor looked up at her over the panel he was fiddling with. ‘This isn’t an oversized version of my TARDIS,’ he told her. ‘It was meant to be this large. It carried the bow-ships.’
‘The what?’
‘During the war between the Time Lords and the Great Vampires.’
‘Great Vampires, uh-huh,’ said Iaomnet.
‘The war that the N-forms were built to fight,’ said Roz.
‘Yes. This TARDIS is wondering where everyone’s gone.
After it was damaged and its crew killed, it was captured by Agamemnon’s gravity and has been following its erratic orbit ever since. Sending out an equally erratic call for help in a tight beam. The beam is probably supposed to be aimed at a particular base or planet or what-have-you, but Cassandra’s wandering orbit means the beam is constantly twisting and turning all over the heavens. When that beam passes within range of a surviving 118
N-form, that N-form automatically switches to full combat mode.’
‘Hence the one I squashed on Fury. Without, I might add, having to destroy an entire city to do it.’
The Doctor gave her a look. Iaomnet was watching them both, fascinated. She was just soaking all of this up, believing every word.
‘The beam is twisting through time as well as space. At some stage, it must have passed through 1987.’ He patted the console, soothingly. ‘I think the poor old thing was desperate for some attention.’
‘Can you stop the beam?’ said Roz.
‘Yes,’ said the Doctor. ‘Iaomnet, could you press that red switch? Just under the yellow dial?’
Iaomnet reached for the switch. ‘Are you sure it’s OK?’
‘I’m sure,’ he said.
Iaomnet threw the switch.
‘That’s the beam taken care of. Along with a few other things,’
said the Doctor. ‘Suit up, it’s time to leave.’
‘You mean that’s it?’ said Iaomnet.
‘No,’ said the Doctor. ‘That will be it in forty-seven minutes and twelve seconds.’
‘Oh shit,’ said Roz, pulling on her helmet.
It didn’t take as long to reach the surface as it had to find the console room, mostly because the Doctor wasn’t flipping coins this time. The lift to the surface was still working, thank Goddess
– Roz had been having visions of having to make their way up the shaft without climbing equipment.
‘Look,’ said