An extract from the original manuscript, withdrawn and revised before publication
The Deep Freeze, they called it, although the temperature was only a few degrees lower than that in the rest of the ship. The slaves lay crammed together in ranks on three tiers of shelving, arranged alternately head to foot. Each was linked to a cluster of tubes that supplied breathing mixture, intravenous food, and the system-depressants that kept their bodies inert. The tubes were linked to main umbilicals that drooped between retaining rings on the uppermost tier.
The shelving lined both sides of the narrow hold, deep into the ship. There was a walkway down the middle, a raised grille that was lit from underneath. It threw up a pattern of shadow-squares that made Sagan look almost demonic when he said, "Want to pick one you like?"
Assuming for a moment that Sagan meant what he was saying, Dulles started to inspect each of the slaves in turn. Every one was tightly chained, a chill fog of condensation drifting around each body. Dulles swallowed nervously. He could just about bear to watch them suffer, but he wasn't so sure how he'd feel about choosing the candidate for suffering.
"Over here," Sagan said. He was over on the other side of the hold, looking at the plastic card, which he had taken from the slot identifying the slave in that position. "Name's Laszlo, for what that's worth. Let's see if we can get him woken up without wasting him."
Feeling some relief, Dulles went back to get the wheeled transport wagon to carry the slave away as Sagan began disconnecting the feed tubes. This is a waste of time, he was thinking. I've never seen an on-board revival yet that wasn't fatal.
*
Romana was thinking about Gallifrey, and it angered her.
Gallifrey was the home planet of the Time Lords, the home of Romana, and once - although she sometimes found it difficult to believe - of the Doctor himself. Belief wasn't easy because the Doctor seemed to be the very soul of nonconformity, while the Time Lords as a race were... well, let's be honest, she told herself, Time Lords can be very worthy, but… dull.
She hadn't anticipated going home with much pleasure. Now it seemed difficult to think that she'd ever get home at all.
But Gallifrey kept pushing its way back into her thoughts, claiming her attention while she tried to concentrate on the problem of the void; and that, really, was where the source of her anger lay. For no matter what deductive method she tried to apply to her problem, everything failed for lack of information; the void stretched on in every direction without features or landmarks. Gallifrey, the world that she'd been hoping she'd never see, was the bolthole into which her imagination retreated.
It had been an eventful apprenticeship, and it had been about to end. They'd been on their way home when they'd unwittingly crossed into E-space, and most of their efforts since that time had been directed towards getting out. Now they'd made that step - but whether it was a step nearer home or a step away, no one could say.
Zero co-ordinates. A place of no space, of no time, a pocket of being that ought to exist only as a theory, a mathematical convenience to be used in an equation and discarded before its solution.
"Hello," Adric said. "Get yourself lost?"
She spun around in surprise. By some fluke, her wandering must have brought her back to...
But then she frowned.
"Where's the TARDIS?" she said.
Adric was standing a few feet away. He flipped his token casually, caught it, flipped it again. "There's no such thing as where in the void," he said. "That's what the Doctor was explaining. You create the place by being there."
"You mean you left the TARDIS after I gave you specific instructions to stay?"
"I would've thought you'd be pleased I found you."
"Found me? Now you've succeeded in losing two of us."
"I'm not lost," Adric said patiently.
"So how do you propose we get back?"
"Same way I got here." Flip. "Let the coin decide."
Gold on white, it sparkled hypnotically as it spun. Adric picked it out of the air. Romana said, "That coin's caused us enough trouble."
"It works, Romana, really. Just like the Doctor said it would."
"You shouldn't always take the Doctor too seriously. Sometimes he argues for the sake of it."
"It doesn't matter. I checked out the probabilities and got sixty per cent accuracy. Expand the sample enough, and you can cancel that out. Watch."
He frowned, forming a question in his mind. Ahead/back, or left/right? The fall of the coin would be his answer. The next throw would narrow it down further still. When he'd flipped the coin twice, he started to move off. In a while he could go through the same process again, repeating the sequence to refine his target. It had worked to find Romana; it would work on anything.
"But you came this way," Romana said, pointing, but even as she raised her hand she realised that she wasn't sure. Spin around a couple of times in the void, and your sense of direction could go completely.
"It doesn't matter," Adric said.
Despite her lack of faith in the method, Romana followed.
*
Back in the banqueting hall, the first event to catch everybody's attention since the Doctor's questioning of the Gundan was the arrival of Jos from the privateer. He brought the crew's lunch.
He staggered down the steps from the entrance tunnel. As well the mass detector, he was laden with a large box that had a hinged lid and a handle. He looked as if he was ready to drop in his tracks. He headed towards the banqueting table, and yelled "Lunch!" so everyone would hear.
He lifted the box with a final effort, and slammed it onto the table. The impact raised a cloud of dust and he tottered back, coughing.
The crew appeared as if by magic. The first one to the box opened the lid and they all gathered around, clucking and cooing; lunch, great, what have we got, it's about time, I'm just about ready...
Rorvik was glancing around as he stepped in amongst them. The Doctor hadn't appeared yet, and Rorvik wanted to be sure that he didn't hear what was about to be said. Bad strategy.
"Right, lads." Rorvik kept his voice low. "Since the Doctor isn't here yet, I just want to grab this opportunity of us being all here together to say something. Now, you all know about the problem we've had with the warp motors, and why we're trapped here in the..."
It slowly dawned on Rorvik that nobody was paying him any attention at all. He couldn't compete with the lunchbox.
So he walked around the table, shouldered his way between two crewmen, and slammed the lid. The general appreciative muttering became a little chorus of disappointment. Rorvik held down the lid and glared around.
"I'm only going to say this once." Somebody muttered 'good', and Rorvik shot him a withering glance before continuing. "We've got no warp motors and no navigator. In practical terms, it means we stay here forever. That's unless we can fix one and replace the other."
Nestor said, "How do you replace the warp motor?" and Rorvik looked heavenward in a plea for patience.
"We replace Biroc. We revive as many of the Tharil slaves as we have to - until we get one that survives the procedure. As for the warp motors, that's where the Doctor comes in."
Jos said, "Will he be so keen to help us out when he finds we're a slave ship?"
"Or," Nestor added, "that the motors got damaged in a blast from an Antonine scout?"
Rorvik thought about pointing out that maybe the Doctor's cultural background might not even have given him knowledge of the anti-slavery alliance, but he simply said, "If he's got an ounce of scruple, of course he won't be keen. That's why we'll force him to help us. Any questions?"
There was only one question that was in everybody's minds, but no one would come out and say it. Rorvik glared around; they were all staring longingly at the lunch box.
He took his hands away, and the scrummage resumed.
*
WARP SYSTEMS POWERED DOWN OVERLOAD SYSTEMS POWERED DOWN
LIFE-SUPPORT HOLDING AT PLANETFALL LEVELS
EEC ROOM COFFEE DISPENSER NOW INOPERABLE
ELECTRICAL SYSTEMS FAILURES IN REC ROOM UNDERFLOOR CABLING
WARNING: NO NEW INFORMATION ON PRESENT LOCATION CO-ORDINATES
SEE 01/00/2222 FOR SYSTEMS CHECK
WARNING: POSSIBLE UNDETECTED FAULT IN EXTERIOR SENSORY APPARATUS
AM I IN NEED OF A SERVICE, OR IS THIS SHIP GETTING SMALLER?
*
Adric's aim had been to head back to the TARDIS, but somehow the privateer had got in the way. He couldn't know about the tentative warning that the ship's inboard computer was showing to the crew, and which the crew were ignoring, nor could he know about the readings from Lane's mass detector which, apart from giving a strange account of the Doctor's craft, had shown the distance between the privateer and the gateway to be contracting.
All he knew was that he and Romana were standing under the privateer's jutting fin, and it seemed to make a mighty mess of his navigation-by-coin theory.
Something else had made a mighty mess of the privateer.
The damaged section was a little way along from the engine shells. The torn edges had been pushed into the hole, and the surrounding metal was blackened and soot-streaked.
Adric said, "The Doctor didn't mention this."
There was no obvious access to the ship. They must have boarded the Doctor on the other side. He couldn't have seen the damage.
Romana was uneasy. It was obvious evidence of a missile hit. "Somebody was chasing them, " she said. "I wonder why?"
Adric had already pocketed his token and was at the rent. The lower edge was a good step up, just reachable. "Let's find out," he said, and he'd pulled himself inside before Romana could argue. So she followed, instead.
It was comparatively dark inside, and it took her eyes a moment to adjust. She paused on the threshold of the tear, and the first feature that she saw clearly in the gloom was Adric's hand, stretched out to help her up.
"I can manage," she said, and climbed up beside him.
They were in what seemed to be a sealed area between the inner and outer skins of the privateer. There wasn't much room to move around. About fifteen feet above them there was a catwalk and it was reached by a sloping maze of equipment, wiring, piping, and conduit. There were short cat-ladders for extra assistance. Lighting was low-level compared to the brightness of the void outside. It was also intermittent, being provided mainly by flashing lights within the equipment banks; there was also a more uneven sparking that indicated a serious fault.
Adric was already halfway up the first cat-ladder. "Messy, isn't it?" he said. "Any idea where we are?"
"These are warp motor control circuits, basic Minados design. Any Time Lord could tell you that." The Minados design was one of the commonest available, either in original or pirated form, and the Minados sales force was the most efficient in anyone's history. As soon as their prototype motor was completed they built it into a market research survey ship and sent it to jump out to the galactic fringe and back again. The ship aged a few months, the galaxy a few hundred years; the robot probes then surveyed the number of Minados warps in use and, where possible, identified the users. The information was coded into a tachyon beam and fired at a preordained point in space; as the tachyons could only exist at super-lightspeeds the message effectively travelled back in time. It was picked up by the Minados people less than a year after the probe's launch. Knowing who their customers were going to be before the customers knew it themselves allowed the manufacturers to avoid overproduction and wasteful sales campaigning.
Piracy of the design was less of a problem than it might have been. Minados set up its own piracy operations and stole its own design - much neater, and it kept everyone happy. As Romana had said, any Time Lord would be familiar with the story.
"Does being from Gallifrey make you a Time Lady?" Adric asked innocently, and it was impossible to tell whether that innocence was real, or something he merely assumed to cover a mischievous intent. That was the difficulty with Adric. On the surface he was an ordinary-looking boy, but his mind was keen and contact with the Doctor was sharpening it.
Romana said carefully, "By training, perhaps. By temperament, no."
Adric reached the catwalk and swung around to sit on it and look down.
"But I heard the Doctor say that you'd be going back to Gallifrey."
"That's supposed to be the idea." Romana came up beside him and dusted off her hands. Her look had a warning in it. Adric was getting the message; drop the subject.
He looked around. "Why do you think they were being chased?"
"I don't know."
Adric scrambled to his feet and moved off down the catwalk. There was some kind of hatchway that seemed to lead through the inner skin to the main part of the privateer; obviously a service airlock. On the metal bulkhead next to the door was a simple touch-panel and sensor arrangement. The sensor would probably monitor air pressures, and be linked to deadlocks in the doors that would prevent the ship being inadvertently opened to vacuum.
He glanced back. Romana wasn't watching. He touched the panel.
Obviously the safety deadlocks were disengaged when the ship was in a state of rest, because the door slid open immediately.
From within the privateer, muted by the obstruction of the inner airlock door, came a drawn-out howl of agony.
Romana looked up at the sound, but already it was being shut off; Adric was in the airlock and the outer door was closing. She ran down the catwalk and hit the touch panel, but there was a delay as the lock went through its cycle; the inner door had to close before the outer would open again.
She joined him a few moments later in a darkened chamber. There were storage boxes stacked around, and an elongated grid of light was thrown across them from a grille in one bulkhead wall. The howling was louder and more distressing here, coming from somewhere very close. Adric was pushing one of the boxes across to the grille so that he could stand on it and look through.
Romana crossed the storeroom and climbed up beside him.
They were looking down into another, slightly bigger chamber. The view was like that from the uppermost gallery of an anatomy class. Several boxes had been pushed together, and on this makeshift table lay a Tharil. Patches of his fur had been ripped away so that electrodes could be attached; there were also drip-tubes strapped to his arm in such a way that he couldn't shake them off. Two crewmen stood by him, one either side; and as Romana and Adric watched, the Tharil suddenly came bolt upright, straining against the cables and straps. There were curls of smoke from where the electrodes touched bare skin.
The two crewmen gripped a shoulder each, and wrestled the Tharil down. They were careful not to make contact with any of the cables. The howling continued; the Tharil started to convulse.
As he shook, his outline started to shimmer. One of the crewmen, the com-point headset of a communications clerk hanging from his belt, started to curse.
"Forget it," he said. "We've lost this one."
The sounds of agony were now no more than a strangled gurgle. The Tharil lay still as the other crewman shut down the power, and soon the noise stopped altogether. It wasn't Biroc, Romana noted, although that had been her first assumption. This alien was taller, slightly thinner. The communications clerk, sleeves rolled up, was wiping his hands on a towel. He was also shaking his head at his failure.
The other crewman was bringing an empty trolley. "Why does it hurt them so much?" he said.
"Because they're Tharils." The communications clerk's voice carried clearly up to the grille. "They're not like you and me - we've got a fixed existence in space and time, they haven't. Try to tie them down, and it's agony."
"Like the way Biroc used to howl when we chained him."
The clerk threw the towel down. "Don't waste your sympathy, they're only slaves. We'll have to try another."
They pushed the empty trolley out through the sliding doors and into the corridor. One more specimen ruined, start again with another. Romana was aware of Adric climbing down off the box beside her, but she stayed to watch the Tharil.
If the Tharil wasn't dead, he was close to it. His temporal instability increased and waned and showed no sign of steadying. She was about to turn and follow Adric when a hand like a vice clamped onto her wrist.
"I don't know where you came from," Packard said, "but let me guess."
*
Packard didn't know who this young woman was, but she had to be from the Doctor's craft. The damage report on the warp control circuits would have to wait - this was more of a prize, and perhaps the leverage they'd need to secure the Doctor's complete co-operation. If there had been any doubt that the Doctor might be of use to them, that doubt was now gone. His protests were not to be believed. He'd concealed the fact that he wasn't alone. He was probably concealing more.
Packard pulled the girl down off the box. She started to step towards him, finding her balance, and he immediately knew that she'd be no easy captive; she was lining up for a combat move.
The best answer to that would be to deny her any stability, keeping her in motion so that she couldn't use his own weight and power against him. He pulled her towards the main corridor, so that she either had to stagger along with him or fall.
They passed within a few feet of Adric, who had been returning from another unlit part of the storeroom complex. In the moment that he spotted Packard with Romana, he stepped back into the shadows. Neither saw him as they passed.
Packard dragged his captive down ironwork steps to the main level, around a corner and past two bulkhead doors to stop at a third; Sagan's so-called 'recovery room'. The mounting number of dead Tharils would be company for her, and a clear indication of the advisability of obedience. As soon as he'd slung her inside and the door had closed, he coded it to lock.
Alone in the corridor, he took a breath. He didn't get enough exercise and when he got it, he didn't much like it. He looked up to see Lane coming from the direction of the bridge.
"I just got back," Lane said. "Someone said you were looking for me."
"You were supposed to be helping Sagan, but forget it." The scan-surveys of the Doctor's craft were no longer important, the anomalies of no consequence. "See to this, instead," he said, and held out the clipboard that he'd been carrying under his arm.
"What is it?"
"Damage checklist for the warp motor. Let me know when it's finished."
Packard walked off briskly, other things on his mind. Lane looked at the clipboard and moved off in the direction of the warp access hatch, not quite so quickly.
*
It was obvious to Rorvik that nothing was going to be accomplished at the gateway until the lunch break was over. He could threaten and he could coerce, but the co-operation he'd get would be resentful and only half-attentive.
The crew had dusted off one end of the banqueting table and set out their meal in as civilised a manner as anyone could wish, considering the circumstances. Rorvik could only watch and wait.
"Finished?" he said at last with barely-suppressed anger.
The crewmen nodded and smiled appreciatively. If there was irony there, they were insensitive to it. A couple were wiping their lips with napkins. Another burped.
"Then," Rorvik said, "would you mind getting off your backsides and finding the Doctor for me?"
"He's around here, somewhere," Nestor said, waving his hand in the air.
"Around here, somewhere isn't good enough! I want an armed guard and I want him marched back to the ship!"
The crewmen shrugged, and carried on without any particular haste; dusting off crumbs, unholstering their sidearms, checking the charges that they carried. One man blew his nose.
Rorvik watched for a few seconds. Then he unholstered his own sidearm. He aimed at the centre of the lunchtime debris on the table.
There was a deafening crack, and a bright flash of light that illuminated the entire banqueting hall for perhaps half a second; napkins, bones and crumpled drinks cans jumped high into the air and came clattering down.
They all stared at Rorvik, open-mouthed. If they'd glanced up to minstrel's gallery they'd have seen the Doctor, candelabrum in hand, making a quiet assessment of the scene that he'd just witnessed. But they didn't, nor did they see him nod sagely to himself, set the candelabrum down at the top of the gallery stairs and back off into the labyrinth of upper corridors.
Instead they only saw their captain, confirming all their long-held suspicions by going completely over the edge.
"Move!" he roared. "Bring them in!"
Rorvik watched his men scatter. Then he did a quick mental calculation, and looked around.
There was a crash from the minstrels' gallery, and a candelabrum came bouncing down the stairs followed by the curses of the crewman who'd tripped over it. Rorvik was momentarily distracted, but only glanced up as he strode to the far end of the table. He lifted the linen cloth, old and frail and brittle. He looked underneath.
Nestor was hiding there, fingers in his ears. After a moment, he realised that he was being observed.
"Any sign of him down there?" Rorvik said.
*
Adric's first idea had been to follow Romana and, at the first opportunity, let her loose, but with the need to stay out of sight he lost the trail. The ship was too big, its interior layout too complicated. He tried to backtrack, and took another wrong turn; it was then that he heard voices coming his way, and saw shadows thrown on the far wall at an intersection.
He backed into cover, and cautiously peeked around the corner.
There were two of them, both about the same size, both noticeably older than any of the other crew, and they both wore similar pull-on knitted caps. Between them they were pulling a black plastic garbage bag.
"So I cleaned it off," one of them was saying.
"Did you?"
"Cleaned it off and replaced that little collar around the end, and it was as good as ever. Still got it."
"You never."
"I have."
"And they'd thrown it away, just like that?"
"Just like that."
"They don't know the value of anything."
They were close enough for Adric to be able to read the name tags on their coveralls. One was called Aldo, the other Waldo. Adric was starting to think that maybe they wouldn't turn out to be much of a threat when another crewman appeared around the corner. He was carrying a clipboard, his nametag read Lane, and he didn't look so harmless.
"Sagan's looking for you," Aldo said to Lane as he came level.
Lane was more interested in the listing on the clipboard. "I know," he said.
"He's waking up slaves," Waldo added.
Lane said, "I know." There was another howling starting up; this one was close, somewhere in the corridors. The last slave hadn't even lasted to the revival room.
"Killing 'em off, more like," Aldo said.
Lane said, "Yes, I know." He was past them now, and not really listening; Waldo peered after him, and decided to see how much he could get away with.
"You've got a pointed 'ead."
"Yes," Lane said absently, "I know."
Aldo and Waldo shared a secret giggle behind Lane's back; this turned into near panic as Aldo tugged Waldo's sleeve to draw his attention to the fact that Lane had stopped in his tracks. Adric felt a sudden stab of fear, supposing himself to be discovered; but that wasn't the case, not yet. Lane was walking back towards the two crewmen, who were now busying themselves tipping the contents of the garbage bag into a waste point in the corridor wall.
"Something puzzles me," Lane said.
"Oh, yes?" Aldo said with exaggerated innocence. Or perhaps it was Waldo - at a distance it was difficult to tell.
"Yes." He indicated the waste point. "Where does all this stuff go?"
Waldo started to recite. "Every shift we do the bridge and the communal areas. Every second shift we do the bunkrooms and the kitchens. Every third shift the engine rooms and the corridor waste points, and once a tour we give every bin a spray of disinfectant."
"Yes," Lane said, "but where does it all go?"
"Go?" echoed Waldo.
"Where does what go?" added Aldo.
Lane indicated the rubbish again. "It can't just build up forever."
Aldo glanced at Waldo, and then winked at Lane. "Trade secret," he said.
"Not supposed to ask," Waldo said.
Lane said, "I only want to know."
Aldo wagged a disapproving finger. He said, "You know what curiosity did."
"No," said Lane, expecting to be told, and Aldo was on the point of telling him when he realised that he didn't actually know himself.
He turned to Waldo with an enquiring look, but Waldo only shrugged. He didn't know, either. Lane looked from one to the other with growing impatience.
Aldo said finally, "There you are, then."
"There I am where?"
Waldo closed the cover on the waste point. "Ask no questions, gather no moss."
They moved off, dragging the near-empty bag and muttering to each other. At the intersection, the muttering turned again to cackling laughter. Lane watched them go; then he shook his head, as if to clear it.
Time to back off, Adric thought, and turned to make a retreat down the side-section into which he'd ducked.
If he'd learned anything: in the last few minutes, it was that he didn't have much prospect of rescuing Romana on his own. He had to get out of the ship, maybe to the TARDIS or to the Doctor. And there was a safe way of doing it, a way by which he couldn't possibly get caught.
He took the token from his pocket, and started to frame the first question.
© Stephen Gallagher 1980