Doctor Who_ Placebo Effect Part 2

'Translation?'

The Doctor nodded. 'Well, basically, Micawber's World is an artificial planet, built around a tiny asteroid, tripling its size. It's one of the Leisure Planets, and according to Professor Thripstead's Guide to Having Fun in the Milky Way , it's one of the most sought-after holiday locations in the galaxy.' He screwed his eyes up a bit.'It hovers just between Pluto and Ca.s.sius and -'

he reached out to the switches and twisted and twiddled a bit more - 'in the time frame we want, it is owned by Carrington Corp.'

The Doctor reread the invitation, then the scrolling text above them. 'Ah, good timing, Stacy.' He smiled at Sam. 'It's playing host to the Galactic Olympic Games right now.'

'Right now being?'

'Late July, 3999.'

'Earth time?'

'Ah, you see, by now Earth is the centre of the Galactic Federation and so, without too much bother, the rest of the galaxy has adopted Earth's dating system. Most places even operate on the basis of a traditional twenty-four-hour clock.'

'Who set up the Federation then?' Sam thought this was quite interesting. A hint that peace had finally been realised, even if it was a few thousand years too late for her liking.

'Oh, you'll enjoy it, Sam. Set up by Earth, where the central administration is based, overseen by the rather pompously named Guardian of the Solar System.'

'If it's a federation, why does it need a guardian as well?' Sam smiled as the Doctor put his hands behind his back. It was a sign that he was about to go all teacherly on her and pa.s.s on his wisdom and impart his knowledge. A couple of years ago that would have annoyed her, too much like 'old Pain'

in her maths cla.s.s, but now Sam found it quite endearing.

'Consider it similar to the United Nations on Earth. The Galactic Federation is there to protect, preserve and serve, while attempting to bring all the planets under one common roof. But the Guardian is like, say, your American President, Billy: he's a.s.sociated with the Federation but Guardian of a subset, in this case your solar system.' Sam could see he was enjoying his own lecture as well. 'And rather like President Clinton,' he continued, the Guardian has his fingers in many pies around the place, making him slightly more important to the galaxy than, say, the Admin-proctor of Earth or the Colonial Deputy of the Mars colonies, who are more akin to the Thatchers, Chiracs and Mandelas of your time. Are you following this?'

'Oh absolutely, Doctor. It's fascinating. Please tell me more.' The Doctor gave her a look through half-closed eyes, as if daring her to poke fun more obviously, so he could be sure of her irreverence. "The Federation's headquarters are on lo, which has become a wonderful sort of interspecies university. The whole kit and caboodle is based on the idea of people spending all their time just being awfully nice to each other. Shall we go?'

'Sounds delightful, Doctor. Give me chance to find something splendid to wear and I promise not to catch the bouquet when Stacy chucks it away.'

The. Doctor smiled at her. 'Of course. Be there in, oh, ten minutes?'

'Give me twenty. Got to look my very best if we're going somewhere where everyone is "awfully nice to each other", OK?'

'Are you scared of the dark?'

Cartwright sn.i.g.g.e.red.'Yeah, and I put it on the application form. That's why I'm here.'

But Salt was serious.'Some people are just frightened of it. Some are frightened of heights. Or spiders. Or hypos. Irrational fears -everyone has one.'

Cartwright eyed his companion with a mixture of sardonicism and impatience. 'You're weird, Ed. Real weird. C'mon, we Ve some mapping to do.'

Ed Salt shrugged, and stepped aside as Cartwright shoved past him.

Cartwright nipped down the slender rock pa.s.sage, slapping one halogen lamp against both sides of the wall every five metres, just as he'd been doing for three hours now. With a shrug, Salt aimed a tiny instrument at each one as he pa.s.sed, rotating his body with practised movements in the confined s.p.a.ce, activating each one remotely, testing its eight-year battery source. Naturally, each one lit up and stayed lit as he followed Cartwright.

s.p.a.ce Security Force halogen lamps never went wrong. s.p.a.ce Security ensured that no piece of equipment, no matter how large or small, ever became faulty. It just didn't happen. Procedures ensured that nothing left Stores without being given a one-hundred-percent guarantee of lifetime success - it was the way things worked in s.p.a.ce Security.

So both Salt and Cartwright were somewhat surprised when a couple of the halogen lamps some way behind them went out.

'Hey, Jaypee, did you see that?'

Cartwright shrugged. 'Maybe they fell off the walls. Perhaps we Ve been given the wrong type of magnetic clamps.'

Salt pulled one of the lamps out of Cartwright's satchel, examined it and shook his head. 'Nope. The right design for the iron ore in these walls.' He looked back and sighed. 'Guess we'd better try and refit them or the techs will be whinging for the next three weeks.'

Cartwright grunted knowingly.'Yeah, and we'll have the unions bleating as well.'

The two men slowly trudged back up the tunnel, heads bowed as it was too small to stand comfortably upright.

'I hate this work, Ed. Have I told you that?'

'A few trillion times, JayPee, yeah.'

Salt reached down and picked up the nearest fallen lamp. He shone his torch at the back, trying to see why the magnetic clamp was faulty.

Nothing. No sign of decay or damage. No reason at all why it should fall off.

'Unless someone deliberately yanks 'em down, these things should stay up for years.' Cartwright said what was going through Salt's mind.

Salt nodded. 'Weird,JayPee.Well weird.'

Shrugging as if it really didn't matter, Cartwright shoved another dropped light back against the wall. It stayed tight.

And then, further on, where they had stopped a few minutes earlier, the last set of lights they had put up went out. Or fell off. Or whatever. Behind them, another load went out.

The two soldiers were in darkness bar the one light Cartwright had replaced and Salt's flashlight.

'Jean-Paul?' Salt spoke quietly. 'Jean-Paul, would this be a good moment to tell you I'm quite freaked out by this?'

But Jean-Paul Cartwright said nothing. He was listening, holding his hand up for silence. Salt frowned. He could hear it, too. A shuffling, sort of sc.r.a.ping sound.

From behind them and in front. Moving towards them. Boxing them in.

'I thought this place was deserted,' Cartwright said pointlessly.

Salt did not answer. He was pulling his night goggles from his satchel and holding them up to his eyes. And seeing what was making the noise.

Quartermaster-Sergeant Dallion waved impatiently at Agent Clarke.'Peter, how are things going?' she asked.

Clarke shuffled over, wearing the portable ma.s.s detector like a papoose on his chest and tapped on the tiny keypad. A hologramatic globe appeared to hover just above the PMD, a series of tiny white spots moving slowly under its surface.

'Bailey and McGeoch are in Sector Seven, Sarge. Smith and McKay in Sector Eight, with Morris and Pirroni in Four.' Clarke frowned suddenly.

"That's odd, Sarge.'

'What is, Agent?'

'Well, Cartwright and Salt ought to be in Sector Two, but they're not registering.'

Dallion shrugged. 'Two's right down near the core, Pete. Could well be s.h.i.+elded from the PMD.' Clarke nodded slowly. I guess so.'

Dallion took a long drag on her cigarette and leaned her chin on her hunched-up knees. She, Clarke and a couple of the others were pretty bored of waiting by the borehole entrances. It was all very well for SSS Admin to request them, but she wanted something to do. Sending her agents down tunnels to put lights up seemed a h.e.l.l of a waste of resources.

She and the others were well trained, forged together as a fighting unit. OK, so wars weren't exactly common these days, but nevertheless they'd spent a lot of time earning their famous black uniforms. Rummaging around tunnels didn't seem a productive deployment of human resources.

They were sitting on a ridge inside the planet, waiting by the first of five boreholes down which her men had gone. The ridge stretched back the way they had come and quite some way into the gloom in front. It was quite a wide ridge, and about four metres deep, which was just as well since the drop immediately in front of them had no visible bottom. And although Dallion knew it must have, she also knew it was a pretty hard one, far enough down to turn a falling human soldier into a red puddle.

As a result, she and the agents were pressed against the rock wall behind them. To her left Klein and McCarrick were playing chess, with holographic Mayorga versus Gamarra, while their cook, Carruthers, was adding boiled water to tiny capsules and still managing to make the food taste better than it did at HQ. That just left Fenton, who had gone back to the surface to radio HQ -their carrier beam was too distorted under the rock.

'Maybe it's like the radio,' she murmured. It was to herself really, but Clarke, nodding and fussing around his machine as if it was his own personal baby, disagreed. 'No, Sarge. This thing should work in any locale. Especially as the guys are all wearing tracers.'

He gasped suddenly."This is ridiculous!'

Dallion caught the tone of his voice and was beside the hologram globe in a second.'What now, Pete?'

'Well... well, I've lost Pirroni and Morris now.'

Dallion tapped her wrist communicator. 'Dallion to Pirroni, come in please?'

Nothing.

'Dallion to Pirroni. Dallion to Morris. Come in!'

Nothing.

Carruthers was there now. He tried his own. 'Carruthers to Pirroni. Marco, are you there?'

By now even Klein and McCarrick had given up their game and were trying to raise their comrades.

A curse from Clarke sent a s.h.i.+ver down Dallion's spine.'Who now?'

'Bailey and McGeoch.'

Klein adjusted his communicator.'Klein to Bailey. Are you there, Steven?

John, can you hear us?'

Two more lights winked out on the globe. Dallion didn't even ask.'Smith?

McKay?'

Nothing.

Klein shrugged. 'No one else is down here, surely?'

Clarke shook his head. 'If they are, they're not only s.h.i.+elded from the PMD, but they're s.h.i.+elding our guys too.'

'Is that possible?'

Carruthers was frowning. 'Surely the portable ma.s.s detector can't be blindsided?'

Clarke threw his hands up in despair. 'G.o.d knows. I mean, it's hardly top of the range equipment these days. Yeah, it's possible.'

'How?'

'Like chucking a blanket over you, really. Something that can't be registered on our stuff covers up our guys, so we can't read them.'

'But -' Dallion was stony-faced - 'as you said, no one else is down there.'

McCarrick tried not to let his panic show. 'No one we're aware of, anyhow.'

Dallion stood up, pulling her blaster from its holster and checking the charge. The others did the same.

'Carruthers, you and Clarke stay here.' She looked at Clarke. 'Monitor us, Pete. We'll keep talking all the way.' She indicated the second borehole.

'Smith and McKay were nearest, well try there first.'

McCarrick led the way, followed by Dallion, with Klein nervously bringing up the rear, doing periodic 36Odegree turns as Carruthers and Clarke watched them dwindle into the darkness.

'Shouldn't there be lights down that tunnel?' muttered Carruthers.'I thought that's what the guys were doing down there.'

Pete Clarke didn't answer. He was too busy listening to the constant reports coming in from QS Dallion, and watching the tiny spots on the hologlobe that marked their progress. And praying to G.o.d that they didn't suddenly cut out ***

Reverend Lukas gently laid his hand on Phillipa Iley's shoulder. Behind them were the clean, white buildings of the s.p.a.ceport.

'Do you feel better for our walk, child?'

She nodded. 'Much, Father. I find travelling so far unpleasant. It is so much better to arrive in a place, somewhere new, ready to do the G.o.ddess's work.'

'Indeed,' smiled Reverend Lukas, indulgently, a hand smoothing out the folds of his long, black robe. 'Indeed.'

A young man, hitching up his own robe with one hand, trying to keep his hat on with the other, was hurrying towards them.

'Is there a fire,Jolyon?'

'No, Father.'

'Then is this haste necessary? It is not seemly to serve the G.o.ddess in a way so undignified.'

Jotyon Tuck bowed his head slightly, catching his breath. 'Forgive me, Father. I apologise, but I felt you should know that the wedding has been brought forward a day. It takes place tomorrow.'

Reverend Lukas absorbed this information, smiling. 'Excellent. We should be able to perform the G.o.ddess's bidding and be on our way to another crusade within a few days.' He nodded as he saw Jolyon take Phillipa's hand affectionately. 'I shall retire to my quarters and prepare for the ceremony we are to perform tomorrow. In the meantime I shall leave you two to enjoy the sights of this world.'