The Well-Mannered War Part 3

'It doesn't look very interesting.'

He righted the hatstand, shrugged himself into his long, dark-brown coat and looped his trailing scarf around his neck. 'Never judge a book by its cover, Romana. Besides, we've got to go out. Just so we can say we've been.' He operated the door lever and the double doors swung open with a low hum. 'Come on, K9, if you're up to it. Best roller forward.' The dog trundled after him.

Romana straightened her jacket and cape and followed.

The TARDIS's battered police box sh.e.l.l sat slightly askew on top of a small hillock. Romana emerged and shivered in the chill wind blowing low across the dunes. Her shoes sank a few centimetres into the muddy silt. She wrapped her cape around herself and turned slowly about, taking in the scene. Surely there had never been such a tedious looking place. Nothing but undulating grey sand and rock for what could be hundreds of miles, and a sky made grim by raw, indistinguishable winter clouds the colour of metal plate. Far away on the side facing away from the TARDIS was a range of small mountains. Even these were completely grey. Aside from the crunching footfalls of herself and the Doctor, and the whirring motor of K9, the only sound was the wind's lonely moan.

The Doctor wetted his finger and held it up. 'I think it's going to rain.'

Romana knelt down and let the wet sand fall through her fingers. 'Alluvial deposits. No signs of habitation or animal life.'

The Doctor pounded down the hillock, K9 trailing at his heels. 'There's always something to be found if you're prepared to look.' He put a hand to his brow and peered ahead.

'Even here?'

'Even here. By this time intelligent life is scattered far and wide, right across the universe. Or so they say. We're bound to b.u.mp into somebody.'

Romana shivered again. 'I hope you're wrong again.'

'No, there's sure to be some activity in the general region -' He broke off 'What do you mean, again?'

Romana ignored him and knelt down to address K9,who was sniffing at a lump of rock. 'What do you make of it, K9?'

'Igneous strata suggests ancient volcanic activity,' he replied.

'Not the rock. The whole place.'

K9 whirred and ticked. 'Estimate moderately sized planetoid with thin atmospheric belt and no mineral deposits of value. Inference: unexploited, uninhabited.'

The Doctor strode ahead. 'You can infer all you like. It doesn't mean you're right.'

Romana stood. 'Come on, we'd better follow him.'

K9 waited a second, his sensors still clicking. 'Oddity, Mistress. There is a residual heat trace from this planetoid's core.'

'Shouldn't there be?'

'Not of this magnitude, Mistress. The temperature is slightly higher than reference tables would suggest.' He set off after the Doctor. 'Inference: natural anomaly.'

'There you are,' the Doctor said as she hurried to join him. 'What did I tell you? Something.'

Romana recognized the signs of his trying to save face. 'Only if you're interested in cores,' she said with tart emphasis.

Hans Viddeas walked slightly faster than normal down one of the command post's long, low-ceilinged corridors. His gleaming b.u.t.tons sparkled in the light of the make-shift lamps that were strung along the walls on a length of plastic coil, and the steady trip-trap of his boot heels on the metal flooring made him feel rather important and efficient, fresh and prepared for anything, even though his alarm had roused him only five minutes before.

Five minutes to wash, shave and dress in his freshly laundered and immaculately starched uniform.

G.o.d, how he adored his uniform. Please, G.o.d, let him never be promoted, lest he have to trade its Spartan simplicity - which showed off his broad shoulders and long legs to their fullest advantage - for Dolne's fussy epaulettes and ceremonial tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs. Long ago he had made up his mind that clothes were the best thing about this war. As a boy he'd watched his father set off to the front in the very same garb and longed for the day of his pa.s.sing out. All through his training he'd had to fight hard to conceal his enthusiasm for the amazing garments. And now, after four years' active service on Barclow, the feel of the wonderful dun fabric pressing against his skin still gave him a fantastic thrill.

The reason behind the just discernible increase in his walking speed he was keeping concealed, even from himself. Dolne was his superior - it was Dolne's responsibility. Let Dolne sort it out.

He turned a corner sharply (he was particularly proud of his sharp turns, honed to excellence on the parade ground) and entered the Strat Room. It was the largest room in the command post. On the far side was a long row of desks and work stations at which sat the duty staff a.s.signed to tasks that varied from communications to satellite tracking to weapons maintenance.

The hushed ambience was counterpointed by a perpetual underscore of whistles, clicks, computer noise and the crackle of radio communications escaping from headphones and earplugs as patrols called for their instructions. A dozen screens offered a dozen different views of the front, some relayed from ordinary video equipment, others which showed segmented radar images or infrared scans of certain enemy outposts. All of this information was collated on a ma.s.sive circular table in the centre of the room. It was a map of Barclow's fifty-mile-square temperate zone, from the circle of mountains at one end to the airless marshlands at the other, uplit, and overlaid by a ma.s.sive, cobweb-like grid that allowed for instant identification of any area cell by cell. Red lines picked out the swell of the region's contours, and cast a pinkish glow into the face of anybody standing over the map, contrasting with the orange glow of the ceiling lamps. Viddeas liked to stand over it, as it made him feel important. He cast his eyes approvingly over it as he walked in, although he kept them away from the flashing blue cell 63T. Then he said loudly, 'Good morning, team.'

The duty staff looked up briefly from their tasks and there was a general muttered, 'Good morning, Captain Viddeas.'

Viddeas looked around the room. 'Where's Bleisch? Not still down the pipe?'

'Afraid so, sir,' someone said. 'He called in to say he hadn't found the fault and was looking in another section.'

Viddeas swore under his breath. Bleisch, the post's environment officer, had descended the previous morning into the aged heating system, his mission to correct the malfunction in the air-conditioning that was turning from a minor irritant to a burning worry. Already he could feel twin patches of wetness forming under his arms, and a thick miasma of unaired summer rooms hovered over them all. Viddeas had hoped to have this fixed by Dolne's return. It added another worry, as if he needed it.

He nodded to Cadinot, the young clerk in charge of systems coordination. It was his task to oversee the running of their tactics and report any hitches.

'Any sign of the Admiral's pod yet?'

'The shuttle pa.s.sed over on its low sweep ten minutes ago, sir. We should have radar confirmation of the drop any moment.'

'Good man, Cadinot. Stay alert.' He was about to head for his own desk in an alcove off the Strat Room when something on Cadinot's worktop caught his eye. He felt an irrational annoyance. The little little things, always the little things. He pointed to the mound of papers. 'What's that?' things, always the little things. He pointed to the mound of papers. 'What's that?'

Cadinot raised his head guiltily. 'It's filing, sir.'

Viddeas raised the bottom-most file and peered at the date. 'From a week and a half ago. Do it straight away.'

'Er, sir, the Admiral's shuttle will need-'

Viddeas raised a stiff hand. 'Straight away, Private. I will deal with the Admiral's clearance.' He could not resist a further glare at the filing. 'We must keep the paperwork up to date and keep surfaces free.'

Cadinot nodded. 'I'm sorry, sir.'

Viddeas turned and walked to his desk in the alcove, savouring the tension created by his admonition. He sat and switched on his communicator, a tarnished metal box surmounted by trailing wires that sat next to his desk-tidy. After punching in the Admiral's com-number he leant back with the receiver pressed to his ear, twisting the wire and making an abstracted inspection of the sheet-panelled ceiling. The call-tone broke off and Dolne's voice said, 'Dolne here. Who's that?'

Viddeas winced inwardly at his superior's lack of formality. 'Good morning, Admiral. This is Captain Viddeas. I trust you have had a safe journey.'

Dolne's exaggerated sigh crackled in his ear. 'Now look, Viddeas, I'm just about to drop. So forget the chitchat and set up the barrage, eh? We can talk later.'

Viddeas felt relieved. The longer he could put off breaking the big news the better. 'As you wish, sir. The docking pad here is ready to receive you.' He made an impatient signal across the room to one of his subordinates, who hurried to press a row of switches at his station. Immediately a thin, high-pitched bleeping, repeated every few seconds, echoed from the big speaker grille above their heads. 'There's the tracking note, sir.'

'Yes,' said Dolne. 'Locked on. I'll see you in a few minutes. Oh, and Viddeas, by the way...'

'Admiral?'

'Try not to waste too much ammo. Last time there were burst sh.e.l.ls all over the Low Valley. It reflects badly on accounts if we have to reorder too often.

I know you like firing your rockets, but there's no need to go mad, is there?'

'No, sir,' said Viddeas. There was a brief burst of static as Dolne cut the com-link. Then Viddeas replaced the receiver and swivelled to face his team. (He liked his swivel chair; its fluid movements made giving orders that bit more dramatic.) 'Right then. Cadinot, oversee the barrage. I want -'

he consulted the map, although this was quite unnecessary, as he knew the precise locations by heart like everybody else '- launchers Q17, 88K and 9V primed and ready to fire in a minute. Have the patrol in 88K stand down under cover and prepare a ground report on the attack. I want interceptors primed for automatic response to enemy counter fire.' He'd said those words so many times before. His last girlfriend had told him how he mumbled them in his sleep. Still, there was a gratifying bustle of activity, lots of muttering and pressing of b.u.t.tons, and for just a second Viddeas felt a rush of antic.i.p.ation, a sensation that his job meant something.

The feeling soon faded. It was replaced by an uncomfortable pragmatism.

He was as jaded as the duty staff, only he hid it better. This was all a formality, and despite the lovely uniform and the occasional opportunity to do some shouting, life here was unremittingly dull.

He brushed a fly from his cheek abstractedly, cursing the stifling atmosphere.

The Darkness rustled. Spindly mechanisms, formed of its own tissues, of thousands of tiny interconnecting bodies, rustled as a pulse was received from the Attack Cloud.

To the human ear the report would have been a sudden sharp splintering crack. To the Darkness it was One remote host is in position. The other One remote host is in position. The other awaits. Optimum target identified. awaits. Optimum target identified.

The Darkness clicked its reply. Proceed. Proceed.

Romana let out a despairing sigh. After half an hour the landscape was unchanged and she was beginning to lose the little enthusiasm she'd had for this expedition. 'Admit it, Doctor. There's absolutely nothing here.'

'That depends on what you mean by absolutely nothing,' the Doctor said.

'Absolute nothingness is very much a subjective state, conceptually speaking.'

'I wasn't conceptually speaking.'

'Neither was I. There must be something something here.' here.'

Romana's shoulders slumped. 'K9's soil a.n.a.lysis says that there are none of the essential relational properties needed to nurture vegetation. And if there are no plants there can't be any animal life.'

'Rubbish,' the Doctor replied, 'Life's overrated anyway. The majority of places get along without it very well.'

'Life's a subjective state too, Doctor,' Romana pointed out.

'Tell that to a dead man.' Their route now took them to a narrow natural pathway between two fairly large faces of rock. 'Anyway, you obviously haven't cons-' He broke off and stared down at his foot. 'h.e.l.lo.' He crooked himself and pulled something out that was covered by white dust. 'No life, eh? What's this, then?' He held up a large old leather boot, cracked by the ages. 'There are people here.'

'Were.' Gently, Romana took it from him. It had once been st.u.r.dy and strong, designed to scale mountains, perhaps. Now it felt so fragile it might burst in her hand like a puffball. 'This must be centuries old.'

'Unless there's a corrosive agent in the atmosphere.'

She snorted. 'Straw-clutching.'

'I wonder what happened to the owner.' The Doctor took the boot back and dangled it by one of its frayed laces. 'Why do you always find just the one?

Why not chuck both away?'

Romana said, 'Machine st.i.tching means we can't be too far from a technological society, or the remains of one. A survey mission from a nearby world left that, I'd say. Took a look about and cleared off. n.o.body would want to remain here.' She rubbed her hands together. 'I certainly don't.'

Any further debate on their find was put off by the arrival of K9, who came whirring into view around a corner. 'Request slower progress, Master. My traction unit is incompatible with this terrain.'

'Not to worry, K9,' said the Doctor. He hurled the boot away contemptuously. 'Romana can carry you if you fall behind. She's a good strong girl. Come on.' He turned and started to walk back the way they had come.

'We're leaving?' asked Romana.

The Doctor shrugged. 'I don't think this planet is much cop.'

She hurried after him. 'You're frightened you're going to lose the argument.'

'Nonsense.' He sounded scandalized. 'I am perfectly capable of admitting when I'm wrong.'

'My observation record of your behaviour conflicts with this a.s.sertion, Master,' said K9, who was again struggling to keep pace. 'Available data suggests that -' He stopped suddenly.

'What's the matter, K9?' asked Romana.