Part 16 (1/2)

Ace went and stood over the hole in the floor.

Looking down into it she could see the struggling shape of Butcher, about twenty metres below, writhing and squirming in the pliant embrace of the soft transparent tube. At least he'd stopped screaming, though she could still hear frantic breathing, choking gasps of air that sounded like an exhausted dog panting after a long run.

102.'Poor bloke,' she said. 'This really must be mind-blowing for him. And I bet the drug isn't helping.'

'What drug?' said the Doctor, his face a picture of polite puzzlement.

'The hallucinogenic drug you gave him. The peyote.'

'I didn't give him any peyote. I merely told him that.'

'It wasn't true?'

'No, I just wanted it as a kind of get-out clause. In case he couldn't deal with the experience of visiting this alien s.p.a.cecraft. If he thinks it's all a peyote vision it will allow him to rationalise it afterwards, if necessary, and preserve his world view intact.'

'What was in his sandwich, then?' said Ace.

'Guacamole.'

There was an inarticulate cry from the open hole in the floor, followed by a rush of air, and Butcher came sailing up into the chamber like a champagne cork from a bottle. The tentacle mechanism had presumably finally lost patience with his stubborn resistance and simply shot him into the craft at high speed. Butcher hovered, scrambling and twisting in mid-air for an instant, struggling frantically, with an expression of loathing and lost horror on his face that Ace couldn't help feeling was rather comical.

The hole in the floor sealed itself before gravity brought Butcher cras.h.i.+ng down again, onto a smooth, solid, surface that shone with a mother of pearl iridescence. The man sat there for a moment, his eyes squeezed shut, cursing savagely in the most profane language imaginable. Ace turned to the Doctor and whispered, 'Gordon Bennett. And I thought he was such a nice boy.'

'I think it's a very positive sign,' said the Doctor. He didn't return Ace's whisper but spoke instead in a normal voice. 'It's certainly a lot more encouraging than that pitiful screaming and moaning.'

Butcher heard what the Doctor was saying of course and he opened his eyes. He stared at the Doctor and anger suddenly replaced the look of despair on his face. And this was, thought Ace, exactly what the Doctor wanted.

'Who's pitiful?' said Butcher hoa.r.s.ely.

'Well you must admit it was rather shameful behaviour for a grown man.'

Butcher stared around himself, like a trapped animal looking for a way out.

It was clear that he wasn't going to find one. 'Aren't you going to ask where you are?' said the Doctor. Butcher stopped twisting his head around and fixed his gaze on the Doctor.

'All right,' he rasped, 'where am I?'

'You're on board a s.h.i.+p,' said Ace.

'A s.h.i.+p? Nonsense.' Butcher wiped his hand across his face and studied the thick coating of sweat that came off on it. 'We're in the middle of the 103New Mexico desert.' He uttered this last sentence like a child repeating its catechism.

'When Ace says s.h.i.+p, what she actually means is an aircraft.'

'Aircraft?' Butcher staggered to his feet. 'Nonsense.' He weaved around like a man who was drunk, or who had spent months at sea and was having trouble adjusting to dry land. 'This is no aircraft.'

'Not of the sort you're accustomed to, true,' said the Doctor. 'But perhaps you've heard of Foo Fighters?'

'What if I have?' Butcher made a visible effort to pull himself together. He stood still, trying to bring his weaving under control, and stared fixedly at the Doctor. Ace suspected that he was doing this because he didn't dare look around and acknowledge the reality of his surroundings.

She tried to catch Butcher's eye and give him a rea.s.suring smile; she had begun to feel sorry for the poor bloke, who was obviously well out of his depth. But Butcher refused to look her way, and Ace got fed up with trying.

Instead she turned to the Doctor and said, 'I thought the Foo Fighters were a band? Sort of a Nirvana spin-off.'

'Quite possibly, quite possibly. But before that they were the earliest precur-sors of the flying-saucer craze, first spotted by American aircraft during this war. In August 1944, for example, over the Indian Ocean, by the crew of a US bomber, and in December of that year over Hagenau in Alsace-Lorraine, Germany, by the crew of a fighter.'

'How did you know about that?' demanded Butcher. 'That's cla.s.sified information.'

There now,' said the Doctor delightedly, 'that's more like it, Major. Just cling to that sense of bureaucratic outrage and inst.i.tutionalised paranoia. It will make what is about to happen so much easier for you to process.'

'Why,' said Ace. 'What's about to happen?'

'We're going to meet the pilot of the s.h.i.+p,' said the Doctor.

At first Butcher refused to follow them. Ace and the Doctor started down the pearly curve of the corridor that led from the arrival chamber away into the depths of the s.h.i.+p. Butcher just sat down on the floor and wouldn't budge.

'What are you doing?' said Ace.

'I know my rights as a prisoner of war under the Geneva Convention.'

'You are not a prisoner and the Geneva Convention isn't really relevant. As far as we are concerned, the war has ceased,' explained the Doctor patiently.

'That's treason,' said Butcher.

'Oh please, Major. All I am saying is that we are on neutral territory, as if we were standing on Swiss soil.'

'We're not standing on soil and this isn't Switzerland.'

104.'Don't be so literal-minded Bulldog Bozo,' said Ace.

The Doctor took her gently by the elbow. 'Now, Ace. If the Major really doesn't feel up to exploring the rest of this craft just yet then I suggest we honour his wishes.'

'All right, we'll leave the little baby in here to hide.'

'Now, Ace.' The Doctor led her out of the arrival chamber. The corridor spiralled through the nacreous ma.s.s of the s.h.i.+p, clouds of moving colours pulsing and changing in the transparent walls around them. The corridor was egg-shaped in section, broad at the bottom and tapered at the top. Ace reached out to touch the wall and it felt warm and sleek, but not smooth. She could feel a detailed roughness to the texture of it, almost like patting the sleek hide of some lithe marine creature, a seal perhaps.

They eventually arrived, after a long spiralling course, in a chamber sunk deep in the glowing pearly depths of the s.h.i.+p.

This chamber was lit by a strangely elegant-looking chandelier, a glowing light fixture that looked to Ace like some kind of curious alien jellyfish. The chandelier had long glowing tubes that radiated out across the flat ceiling, illuminating the dish-shaped chamber. The walls of the room curved down to a flat floor with a dimpled hemisphere in it. This concave hemisphere differed from the rest of the vessel in that it was more sharply transparent and no colours danced through it. 'That's the c.o.c.kpit, is it?' said Ace.

'Very perceptive,' murmured the Doctor. 'Well done.'

'Well obviously we were headed for the control room, so this must be it, eh?'

'It must be,' said the Doctor. He was looking up at the chandelier. The light from it was so bright he had to squint. The Doctor took off his hat and shaded his eyes with it. His shadowed eyes regarded Ace fondly. 'Would you like to take a look through it?'

'Good idea.' Ace wandered over to the hole in the floor and stared down through the transparent dimple at the ground below. She could make out the dark slope of the hill, thick with the darker shapes of pine trees, and the bright flicker of the campfire with the shadows of the three Apaches sitting beside it.

She also saw something else. 'Doctor. . . '

'What?' The Doctor came over to join her. 'Did you see something?'