Doctor Who_ Night Of The Humans Part 3

'He was with the Sittuun! said Sancho.

'With Sittuun? With Sittuun. Yes. With Sittuun. Are you a friend of the Sittuun?'

The Doctor shrugged. 'Well... I'm quite easy to get along with, I think. So... Tuco...'

Tuco recoiled, as if he had been stung. He frowned at the Doctor.

'He speaks!'

'Yes, I speak. So... Tuco, as I was about to say before you had your little... ah, moment there... How long have you guys been here?'

The humans looked at one another, frowning.

'What does he mean?' asked Sancho.

'Yes, stranger. Yes. Tuco would like to know. What do you mean?'

'Well... This place. How long have there been humans here? When were you shipwrecked? That's a.s.suming you were shipwrecked, and you didn't come here by choice. I mean, I love what you've done with the place, really, but still... It's not exactly a holiday resort, is it?'

'Silence!' Tuco roared. 'He speaks the heresy!'

The humans gasped, clasping their hands over their ears.

'I'm sorry! said the Doctor. 'Did I just say something?'

Tuco leaned close to him now, his dark green eyes glowing with intent.

44.'We have always been here! he snarled, baring his yellow, misshapen teeth. 'There is no shipwreck.'

The Doctor was gazing up now, at the broken hull of the GOBO ship.

'Er... Excuse me?' he said. 'But... Where exactly do you think you are?'

'This! said Tuco, grinning ominously, 'is Earth. And you, stranger, are a heretic.' He turned to the Doctor's captors. 'Take him away! he hissed. 'Django will decide his fate.'

45.

Chapter.

4.

'But... I saw those things... They weren't human.' things... They weren't human.'

Amy was following Charlie along one of the Sittuun ship's corridors, though she had no idea where he was going.

'They were! said Charlie. 'I'm sorry.'

'But what happened to them?'

They came at last to a control room lined with banks of monitors. Charlie sat at one of the consoles and started typing.

After a moment he paused, turning round in his chair.

'We don't know how long they've been here. It could be thousands of years. They're most likely the descendents of a crew who were shipwrecked here. They've forgotten everything.

Their technology, or most of it. Their history.'

47.'But they don't even look human.'

'Well, they do,' said Charlie. 'If you're Sittuun, I mean. Most of you kind of... well... you all kind of look the same, really.'

He frowned and shook his head. 'I'm sorry! he said. That's really racist, isn't it?'

Amy couldn't help but laugh. 'Well, yeah... Kinda.' Her expression became more grave. 'But what about the Doctor? If they've got him... What will they do to him?'

Charlie shrugged and hung his head. 'I don't know,' he said.

"They killed three of our crew when we first landed, and they captured another three a few weeks back. We haven't seen them since. There were eleven of us. Aisha... she was our chief navigator... She died after being bitten by one of the Sollogs.

So now there's just us four.'

'And how long have you been here?'

Charlie closed his small black eyes and sighed. 'One hundred and eight days,' he told her. 'We've been here a hundred and eight days. We're trying to salvage one of the raft ships, but the Gyre has scrambled all of the ship's navigational programmes. Even if we could get one of the rafts to fly - and we can't - it could send us anywhere. We could be floating in deep s.p.a.ce for centuries.'

Amy sat down at the console next to Charlie and put her head in her hands. When she looked up at him again it was with a quizzical scowl. 'But 48.what I don't understand is, why didn't you just fire a great big missile across s.p.a.ce to blow this place up? Why did you have to come here?'

The Gyre! Charlie replied. 'It's strange. It's like it has a mind of its own. Like it's conscious. It causes all kinds of problems.

The only way to destroy it was to do it up close.'

'And there's just you guys? And just the one bomb? Why isn't there a whole fleet of ships with lots of bombs out there?'

Charlie laughed. 'A whole fleet?' he said. 'With lots of bombs? Nan.o.bombs aren't cheap, and the one on this ship is the largest that's ever been manufactured. It took the combined funds of eight planets in the Battani system, with emergency aid from another fifteen worlds to buy just one bomb. That's why today is our last chance. And so far, it's not looking good.'

'But the Doctor...' said Amy with a troubled look. 'If he was here he'd know what to do.'

She could feel an anger rising up from the pit of her stomach.

'If you hadn't kidnapped us, we could have helped you.'

'What do you mean?' asked Charlie.

'His ship. The TARDIS. It can take you anywhere in the universe. We could have got you out of here. But the Doctor's the only one who can fly it, and now he's gone.'

49.Charlie sat back in his chair, covering his face with his hands. He uttered something in Sittuun, something blunt and guttural.

'Did you just swear?' asked Amy.

Charlie nodded. 'We didn't know,' he said. 'You both looked like them. If we'd just brought you back here, and you'd offered to take us away in that DARTIS-'

TARDIS.'.

'Sorry... TARDIS. If you'd come here and told us that, my father would never have believed you. He really doesn't like humans. Many Sittuun don't.'

Amy was surprised. In her lifetime she had heard people say insulting things about women, Scottish people and redheads, and sometimes she would take offence. She'd never imagined feeling offended on behalf of her entire species.

'Why not?' she asked.

'Because,' Charlie said, trying to sound as tactful as he could, 'humans are superst.i.tious, unpredictable and violent.

You were an apex predator on Earth, and you spread it around wherever you go. Back on our home world, before humans turned up, there were no predators. Can you imagine that? Not a single carnivorous life form on the entire planet. Quite rare, apparently. But do you know something? It means we evolved without fear. Without fear, there is no superst.i.tion. We have no myths, no religions, no monsters in our 50.closets. But humans... You're scared of absolutely everything.

And look where it's got you.'

'And what's that supposed to mean?'

Charlie turned away. "The first three... the ones they killed!

he said, his voice a little softer. 'They went to the human city to warn them about the comet. We were offering to save them. And the humans... they just didn't care. They didn't want to know, or listen. They hung the bodies at the city gates for us to see, and then they came for us. We've been hiding out here ever since. So if you want to know why my father doesn't like humans... well... there's your answer.'

Amy nodded, feeling a sudden sympathy for Charlie and the others, and a terrible fear for the Doctor.

'We aren't all like them,' she said, sounding almost apologetic.

Charlie smiled at her. 'I know,' he said. 'I know.'

'So what can we do?' asked Amy. 'I can't just sit here and do nothing. Those humans have the Doctor. G.o.d knows what they've done to him...'

'There's nothing we can do,' said Charlie desolately. 'In a few hours Schuler-Khan is going to crash into the Gyre. We either sit here and wait for it to happen, or we detonate the Nan.o.bomb and get atomised. Sorry, Amy... There's no fairy-tale happy ending.'

51.He was looking at her again with a soulful expression when, from beyond the control room, they heard hurried, clanking footsteps. The door crashed open, and Ahmed burst into the room, skidding to a halt. He braced himself with both hands clasping his knees and gasping for breath, his cheeks flushed a strange shade of turquoise.

'Come quickly!' he said, still breathless. 'We've got an incoming ship. Looks like an Earth vessel.'

Amy and Charlie looked at one another and were on their feet and running in a fraction of a second, following Ahmed down the corridor to the bridge. Captain Jamal and Dr Heeva were waiting for them.

'Look!' Ahmed said, pointing up at the sky.

Sure enough, streaking across the sapphire-coloured skies above the Gyre was a single, small s.p.a.cecraft. Its hull was a vibrant yellow with a single red stripe from its nose cone to its tailfins. It looked, to Amy, more like the kind of s.p.a.ceship she had seen in cartoons when she was younger than the industrial and functional ships she had encountered in her travels so far.

The yellow ship banked sharply to its left, and they could hear its rockets shuddering and wheezing. It was heading straight for them.

'It's going to hit us!' cried Dr Heeva.

The Sittuun all hit the deck, and Amy followed suit, covering her face with her hands and squinting 52 up at the windows through the gaps between her fingers. The ship was corning closer, bearing down on them but, when it was only a hundred metres or so away, it stopped very suddenly.

Turning slowly on its axis, the yellow craft shook in mid air, clouds of black smoke belching out of its vents, and slowly began its descent.

Amy and the others got to their feet and watched as it landed with a heavy thump in a dense cloud of dust.

'It's a ship,' breathed Ahmed, his hands and face pressed up against the window.

'Yes, Corporal Ahmed, we can see that,' said Captain Jamal.

'No...' said Ahmed, turning around to face them. 'I mean, it's a ship. We're rescued! We're actually rescued!'

Before Captain Jamal could say anything further, Ahmed and Charlie had raced out from the bridge. After a second's hesitation, Amy, Captain Jamal and Dr Heeva followed them.

'It just had to be humans, didn't it?' said the Captain. 'And you know, we'll never hear the last of it.'

'Quite,' said Dr Heeva. 'And of course, the way they'll talk about it, it won't just be us these humans saved. It'll be the whole flipping galaxy.'

Amy scowled at Dr Heeva and the Captain, and followed after Ahmed and Charlie as they ran 53.down several flights of stairs to the loading bay's entrance.

Ahmed was carrying his rifle.

'Well...' he said, noticing Amy's disapproving glare, 'you never know, eh?'

They left the hull of the Beagle XXI and ran out across the plain to where the yellow s.p.a.ceship had landed. Written in dashing calligraphy along its hull was the ship's name: The Golden Bough.

For a moment, Amy and the crew of the Beagle stood around the ship, gazing up at it in silenced awe. Under the very thin veil of dust that had coated it upon landing, its canary-coloured hull still shone. It could not have looked more incongruous, in the bleak and barren landscape of the Gyre; like a glittering diamond in a mound of coal.

When a door in the hull hissed open, all five of them jumped and took a step back. The door lowered itself with hydraulic grace, revealing a flight of gleaming chrome steps, and there was a moment's pause before there appeared, at the top of the stairs, a man in a shining silver s.p.a.cesuit. Faced by Amy and the Sittuun, all of them covered in grey dust, the new arrival looked strangely glamorous and unfazed. He ran down the steps, his beaming smile revealing perfectly white teeth.

His hair was styled in a way that reminded Amy of the kind of film stars she had seen in old movies, and his upper lip was adorned with a thin and rakish moustache.

54.'Afternoon!' said the stranger, as he stepped down onto the Gyre.

The Sittuun looked at one another, then Amy, and then back to the stranger, who walked straight up to Captain Jamal, holding out his hand.

'Dirk Slipstream at your service,' he said. 'You must be Captain Jamal al-Jehedeh. Am I correct?'

Captain Jamal nodded. 'You are! he said, a little awkwardly.

'Jolly good. So... Seems you chaps have run into a spot of bother.' Dirk Slipstream gazed up at the wreck of the Beagle XXI 'Blimey. She's looking a bit worse for wear, what?'

'I'm sorry! said Captain Jamal. 'But... who... are you?'

Slipstream's gaze snapped back to the Captain, his eyes growing wide. He looked offended in some way.

'I'm Dirk Slipstream! he said, as if that were explanation enough. 'Formerly of the Terran Airborne Division. Won four Silver Buzzards at the Battle Of Krontep?'

Captain Jamal said nothing.