Doctor Who_ So Vile A Sin Part 9

'A military listening post?' said Iaomnet.

'If it were,' said Martinique, 'I'm sure we'd have been refused permission to visit. No, this is something much older. It is not only artificial it is an artefact artefact.'

'How old is that thing?' said Iaomnet.

'Quite a find,' said Martinique. 'Quite a find.' He beamed at Iaomnet. 'Material for a remarkable dissertation, wouldn't you say?'

The internal cabin doors were designed to withstand vacuum.

Chris had to shuffle around with the tray until he could press the door chime with his elbow. It took the Ogrons a whole minute to answer.

80.One of them stared at Chris through the open door. 'Hi,' said the Adjudicator. 'I didn't know whether you guys were going to the galley, but I thought you might like this.'

The Ogron's gaze lowered slightly until he was looking at the tray Chris was holding. The eyes were nearly hidden under a narrow, protruding ridge of bone, the naked skull sloping up and back to where straw-coloured, limp hair hung down at the back of the head.

The Ogrons had come with the ship, like a couple of appliances. They'd accepted the sudden change in the crew and destination without question. Martinique had fussed over the cargo, delaying their departure for a nail-biting quarter of an hour, and the Ogrons had just done whatever they were told.

Chris could see the other Ogron lurking in the cabin, watching him. Another pair of squinting, mistrustful eyes. 'Er,' he said, 'I looked up some Ogron recipes in the database. I'm not much of a chef I hope I got it right.'

After a moment, the Ogron stepped back. Chris decided that was an invitation, and stepped into the cabin.

The Ogrons just stood there. They tended to do that, the Xenoculture course had taught, if you didn't give them an order or some other reason to act. They'd been the same while they'd been loading the cargo hold. Like robots.

The blank stare was rather unnerving. 'Um, could you pull the table down?' Chris asked.

Right away, the Ogron who had opened the door unlocked the table and folded it down from the wall. Chris gratefully put down the heavy tray.

'OK,' he said, 'I had to improvise a bit, but the database suggested some subst.i.tutes. This is mostly raw mutton and a little bit of ice to keep the temperature down, some rock salt, some geranium leaves and some basil.'

The Ogron who had opened the door shuffled up to the table.

He scooped up a handful of meat and sniffed at it. Then he pushed it into his mouth and chewed, hard, muscles bulging beneath his jaw.

'My name's Chris,' said Chris.

81.The Ogron eyed him for a moment. 'Good food,' he said. His voice was deep and throaty. He made a sound like coughing, deep in his chest, and the other Ogron joined him at the table.

Chris hovered, but the Ogrons paid him no attention, shovelling mutton into their mouths, occasionally taking a pinch of one of the flavourings between thick fingers.

'Well,' he said after a bit, 'I guess I should leave you to it.'

'Good food,' said the Ogron. He scooped up a handful of meat, took Chris's hand, and plopped the raw mutton into the human's palm. 'Try some of this.'

Chris looked at the meat, the juices starting to leak on to his fingers. 'Er,' he said.

The silverware on the tray rattled. Chris glanced at it. The Ogrons were looking at one another, chunky teeth showing in their leathery faces.

Chris started to laugh. He put the handful of flesh back down on the tray. 'Thanks, but I already ate.'

The Ogrons laughed louder, the cutlery rattling harder with the force of it. Chris hoped they weren't trading rude comments about him in those deep rumbles.

'I am Son of My Father,' said the Ogron. He picked up the stray handful of meat and gulped it down.

'I am his Sister's Son,' said the other.

'Great, hi,' said Chris. 'Listen, how much did Professor Martinique tell you guys about this expedition?'

'He did not tell us much,' said the Ogron. 'He told us to lift and carry his boxes and things.'

'Did he tell you about the crater? The base hidden under the rock?'

'He did not tell us,' said Son of My Father. 'But we heard him talking to Zatopek about the crater. He does not know very much about it.'

Chris nodded. 'Never mind. I figured you guys might know something he wasn't telling us... like what's really hidden inside that mountain.'

The Ogron hesitated, glancing at his nephew. He raised a dark hand, gesturing Chris closer.

82.He put his mouth close to Chris's ear and whispered, 'I don't know.'

The cutlery started rattling again.

Later, Chris took the tray back to the galley. Iaomnet and Zatopek stopped talking the instant they saw him, and glared at the table. 'Good night,' he said, quickly stacking the tray in the cleaner.

'See you in the morning,' said Iaomnet as he retreated.

Chris really wanted to stretch his legs, but the Hopper didn't even have a gym. He could run in circles around the cargo bay, but it just seemed pointless. He went back down the corridor to the bridge.

The Doctor was sitting in one of the chairs, his face lit in slow-moving patterns by the telltales. The view through the front window was blackness marked with rainbow streaks. Chris tried to ignore it hypers.p.a.ce did strange things to your eyes as they tried to focus, and it always made his head ache. The Doctor was watching it as though it was a particularly interesting television programme.

'I think there's a lover's tiff going on in the galley,' murmured Chris, turning one of the chairs backward and sitting in it. He leant over the back of the seat. 'Iaomnet and Zatopek.'

'Or a professional disagreement, perhaps?' The Doctor raised an eyebrow. 'The geologists appear to have neglected to fill their a.s.sistant in on all the details of the mission.'

'I was right, wasn't I? Those images were military. Probably cla.s.sified.'

'Of course. Most likely, they're from Mei Feng's original expedition.'

'I can't believe the military would miss the significance of that line down the mountain.'

'Maybe they didn't bother to examine it,' said the Doctor.

'Then why take the picture in the first place?' Chris said.

'Besides, after what happened to the first expedition, you think they'd be looking for an explanation.'

83.'Good point.' The Doctor drummed his fingers on his mouth, thinking. 'I wonder if someone pulled a few strings, and this is the first expedition to get permission...'

Chris insisted, 'Even if it was low-level security info, there's no way that a couple of university geologists could have gotten their hands on it. Who are these people?'

'Good question,' said the Doctor. 'Though at this point I think we'd be a little hypocritical to complain that they weren't who they say they are.'

Chris spent the next morning helping Zatopek work on the sensor array. The young academic monitored the links from a palmtop while Chris and the Ogrons unpacked huge antennae and scanner dishes from their plastic crates.

After lunch, Chris crawled out through the airlock and spent an hour welding things together on the hull. Zatopek watched through Chris's suit camera, giving him terse instructions.

Back inside, he'd showered off the sweat, his elbows knocking against the walls of the tiny cubicle in his cabin. Feeling pleasantly scrubbed, he wandered up to the bridge. The smart systems were quite capable of handling the entire trip from one Clytemnestran moon to the other, a.s.suming it was all routine; they needed a human pilot only to handle the last stages of the journey, where there'd be no automatic beacons to guide the ship in.

But it didn't hurt to run your eyes over the controls every so often. Chris had heard of a ship on the Eartht.i.tan run which had got so nervous about one of its retros that it changed course for the nearest repair station, and the crew didn't even realize until they were halfway to Mars.

The door behind him slid open and Iaomnet came on to the bridge. Maybe she'd heard the same story. 'What is that noise?'

she asked, and sat down in the co-pilot's position.

'The Communards,' said Chris.

'Who are they when they're not strangling cats?'

Chris pa.s.sed her the ca.s.sette case. She turned it over in her hands. He noticed her frown when she pressed her thumb against the list of artists on the back and nothing happened.

84.'Old technology,' he said. 'There's no display encoded into the plastic.'

'Twenty-first century?' she asked.

'Close,' said Chris. 'Twentieth. I'm impressed.'

'I know you've heard different,' said Iaomnet. 'But us students do occasionally learn things. Albeit during brief gaps between hangovers. I did pre-Diaspora history as an elective. It was that or Earth Reptile aesthetics.' She looked around the c.o.c.kpit. 'So where have you hidden your "tape deck"?'

Chris showed her where he'd used a universal connector to plug his Walkman into the navigation console. She asked him if it was really safe to do that.

'Sure,' he said. 'I've done it thousands of times.' He made sure he was looking straight into her eyes when he said it. She had deep black eyes.

She looked away first, glancing down at the artist list on the back of the ca.s.sette case.

'You like this stuff?' she asked.

'It reminds me of someone I used to know,' said Chris. 'They used to play this at the clubs we went to.'

'Way back when in your wild and frivolous youth, right?'

'Right.'

'How old are you?'

'How old do you think I am?'

'Older than you look.'

Chris couldn't help himself he had to laugh. 'You are absolutely the first first person who has ever said that to me.' person who has ever said that to me.'

'There has to be a first time for everything,' said Iaomnet.

'Funny, that's what he said.'

'Your friend?'

'Right,' said Chris, remembering steamy windows.

'Hey,' she said, holding up the ca.s.sette case. 'I know this one Sting. Didn't he go on to found a religion?'

'That was Prince,' said Chris. 'Sting went into politics. I think he was a.s.sa.s.sinated in the early twenty-first.'

An alarm sounded and every proximity alert on the navigation display lit up simultaneously. Chris checked: the sensors were registering two unidentified emission sources within forty 85 thousand kilometres on a possible interception vector. He tapped his throat mike. 'Doctor, I think you'd better get in here.'

He flicked the navigation computer over to antic.i.p.ate antic.i.p.ate, relieved to see that it was at least smart enough to realize he meant the fast-moving bogies and not a moon or other fixed navigation point. The display showed the possible course of the bogies as a series of nested cones a rough estimate of where they could could be in the near future. be in the near future.

Chris wasn't surprised to see that the Hopper was right on the centre line of the innermost cone definitely an interception course. He glanced at Iaomnet, who was frowning at the screen.

When she realized he was looking she asked him what was going on.

'I think we're going to be buzzed,' said Chris.

The Doctor arrived on the bridge with Martinique and Emil close behind. 'What have you got?' he asked.

'Two unidentified bogies on an intercept course,' said Chris.

'They're decelerating at irregular intervals, the maximum deceleration being thirty gees.'

'What do you think they are?' asked the Doctor.

'Well,' said Chris, 'they're small enough not to occlude any stars and they've got very shallow emission signatures. The random deceleration is a typical military-style approach. At a guess I'd say they were a pair of Whirlwinds.'

'Fighters?' asked Zatopek.

Chris punched up another tactical display. 'From the Victoria Victoria,'

he said, 'a carrier in orbit around Orestes.'

Emil said, 'What do they want with us?'

'Let's hope it isn't target practice,' said the Doctor. 'What kind of weapons package will they have?'

Chris tried to remember his model-building days. 'a.s.suming they're loaded for s.p.a.ce intercept, four ASDAC missiles for high delta V, two Roscoes for low V and a proton cannon for knife work.'

'Which means?' asked the Doctor patiently.

'If they drop within a delta-V range of about twenty kps we're probably all right.'

'Unless they use their cannons,' said Iaomnet.