Doctor Who_ Wooden Heart - Martin Day [8]
They headed back the way they had come, past the dead guards and the rooms filled with slumbering equipment. It was horrible, Martha considered, but, with one identical corridor after another, she was starting to navigate by the bodies they passed. Just opposite Security Room B was a cadaver in a pale, tattered coat; it was conceivable that this person had been running from some assailant or threat. Left turn at the remains of a guard, slumped against a wall as if exhausted, then right at a corpse perched atop a metal stool with its skeletal hand still resting on the keyboard in front of it.
After a few moments they found themselves at the rounded hatch; it spiralled open and they stepped onto the walkway that encircled the prison area. Their footsteps seemed quieter and less obtrusive now that all the lights were blazing, but, even so, Martha kept glancing over her shoulder. At one point she was convinced she heard something clang somewhere, like a door slamming shut or something heavy and resonant hitting a floor. She glanced at the Doctor, who behaved as if he had heard nothing, striding powerfully towards his beloved TARDIS. In fact, he hadn’t really spoken since they’d left the room with the security monitors. ‘So,’ Martha ventured, ‘any ideas yet what happened to these poor people?’
‘Oh, I have one or two thoughts,’ said the Doctor with an attempt at breezy indifference, though he lapsed into silence immediately.
Martha waited, but nothing else was forthcoming. ‘Such as?’ she said eventually.
‘Oh…’ The Doctor sighed, slowing a little. ‘Something almost instantaneous – minutes rather than hours. And something that didn’t involve the ship itself – all the systems do seem to be working perfectly.’
‘So it must have been something like… a quick-acting virus.’
‘That would be one way of putting it,’ agreed the Doctor.
There was another long pause. Martha knew they must be nearing the TARDIS by now. ‘What I don’t understand,’ she said, ‘is why no one came to reclaim the ship. I know human life can be cheap, but surely this vessel itself must be worth a few quid to someone. And the families of the deceased must have been pestering the authorities to get the bodies back…’
‘Perhaps they tried,’ said the Doctor. ‘They tried, and failed, and so resigned this place to its fate. So they left it to float into eternity – a ghost ship on an endless voyage.’
‘You don’t think we’re infected, do you?’ asked Martha, suddenly panicked. ‘If the authorities put this place under quarantine…’
‘Don’t worry,’ said the Doctor. ‘The scanners would have picked something up – like they did with your ear!’
‘There’s nothing wrong with my ear!’ said Martha, though, now she thought about it, she did feel a slight pressure on one side of her face.
‘Anyway,’ said the Doctor. ‘I don’t think it was an illness as such.’
‘What then?’ Martha paused. ‘This creature?’
‘Possibly. The life signs were puzzling in the extreme.’
‘And we’re just going to wander up and say, “Hi, why did you kill all the people on this ship, and, by the way, do you mind if we just squeeze past you and get back to the TARDIS?”’
‘That’s about the size of it, yeah,’ said the Doctor.
They turned a corner and came to a halt at a rough metal door.
‘It should be just the other side,’ he said.
‘I don’t remember this door being here before,’ said Martha.
‘I’m not sure it was. Perhaps it’s only used during the day.’
‘Or perhaps something triggered it,’ said Martha, grimly.
The Doctor said nothing, but held up his sonic screwdriver. ‘Shall we?’
‘Go on then.’
The screwdriver flashed for a moment, and then the door slid open.
There was a long pause before either