Doctor Who_ Wetworld - Mark Michalowski [61]
The Doctor shook his head. ‘Too small. Much too small. And too simple, judging by how few parts were involved.’
‘Maybe it naturally has the ability to fire bits of itself out there,’ Ty suggested. ‘There are a few plant species that do that, you know. The stage trees, for example, and the Krynoids, and the comet flowers on Besseme. Maybe this thing does too.’
‘It’s possible,’ considered the Doctor. ‘But remember what it said about Pallister – that the information he contained “would facilitate its reproduction”. I don’t imagine Pallister was a secret expert on building a giant space catapult –’ He stopped suddenly. ‘What was Pallister’s speciality?’
Henig pulled a gruff face.
‘He was a jumped-up little nobody, that’s what was so special about him. That thing sticking its fingers in his head was the most special thing that happened to him in his life.’
There was a murmur of discontent from the assembled settlers.
Whatever anyone had thought of Pallister whilst he was alive, they didn’t like hearing ill spoken of him now.
‘What?’ said Henig, rounding on them. ‘Don’t pretend that you lot didn’t think the same? He weaselled his way to the head of the Council, we all know that. And not one of us had the guts to stand up to him and put him in his place.’ He scowled. ‘If you ask me, that thing and him were made for each other – no wonder it chose him.’
‘Yes,’ said the Doctor. ‘That’s what I was getting at: why did it choose him?’ He scratched the back of his head. ‘It might just be that it saw some sort of kindred spirit in Pallister, I suppose, or that it recognised him as your leader and thought that he’d make the best figurehead. So what did he do – before he became head of your Council?’
‘He was a technician,’ said Henig.
‘What kind of a technician? Where did he work?’
Henig’s eyes suddenly went wide. Ty was a step ahead of him already. ‘He worked in the power station and helped set up the refinery,’
she said. ‘The ore refinery.’ The Doctor’s shoulders fell. ‘Don’t tell me,’ he said heavily. ‘ Uranium ore. For that beautiful uranium-powered spaceship of yours.’
Ty nodded, her mouth suddenly dry.
‘And a man that knows all about how to refine and use uranium,’
said the Doctor slowly, ‘is now dangling from the end of that creature’s tentacles. If we thought things were bad before, I have a terrible feeling that they’re only going to get worse. Much, much worse.’
‘Why?’ barked Henig, frowning. ‘The ship needs more than power to get it off the ground – it needs a miracle. It needs parts and repairs and –’
‘You’re thinking like a human„’ the Doctor interrupted, his face becoming grimmer by the second. ‘If you lot wanted to leave Sunday, you’d need a ship. Slimey out there, on the other hand, doesn’t. And you can do a lot more with refined uranium than just power a spaceship. . . ’
He caught Martha’s eye. It took her a few moments to catch up –
and even then, she didn’t quite believe it. ‘You have so got to be kidding,’ she said eventually. ‘That thing is going to build a bomb? ’
The Doctor’s gaze didn’t waver.
Martha went on, hardly believing the words she was saying. ‘It’s going to use Pallister’s knowledge to build an atomic bomb – and blow itself into space? That’s what the settlers were making?’
Ty shook her head. ‘I might only be a zoologist, but even I know that setting off a nuclear bomb right under your ass isn’t just going to fling you to your next home.’
The Doctor gave a shrug. ‘It’s survived the journey to Sunday well enough, though – floating between the stars as a little blob on that asteroid. There’s a lot of very hard radiation out there, extremes of temperature.’ He drummed his fingers against his bottom lip. ‘In fact,’
he said, in that tone of voice that made Martha’s spirits sink, ‘that would make perfect sense. But I don’t think we need to worry about that. After all,’ he grinned, ‘to make a plan like that actually work, it’d need a shaft down into the planet – ooh, a few hundred metres deep, at least.