Part 5 (2/2)

'He isn't here,' Nyssa said.

So much was obvious. The newly raised lighting levels showed an empty control room, from the panoramic window facing forward to the circuit racks at the back. Kari said, 'I told you, we leave him.'

The Doctor didn't answer immediately. He went over to the window and looked out at the part of the Terminus that was visible from their restricted angle of view. Not much showed beyond the liner's searchlights, but it seemed huge; he could see an edge of stars in only one direction.

He said, 'Leave him? That's a hard set of rules to live by.'

But Kari was unrepentant. 'He knows it.'

The Doctor studied the Terminus for a moment longer, and then he turned away from the window. It hadn't told him much, but he'd noted that the screaming skull painted across the plates seemed to be a fairly recent addition. He said, 'We didn't have any choice about coming here. What about you?'

Kari shrugged. 'It was a big liner from a rich sector.

It looked like a perfect target.' She went on to explain how the Chief had fixed on the liner and tracked it for some time, observing a number of pick-ups from worlds noted for their wealth and influence. When a covert research team had been sent out to check into the liner's background, they'd found exactly nothing.

Officially, the liner didn't exist. The attraction of a secret cargo was irresistible to the Chief, and he'd prepared his plans and stayed on its trail until it had reached this unpatrolled area.

Well, now they'd found their secret cargo. The liner didn't look such a prize from the inside.

The Doctor said, 'And what about the Terminus?'

'I don't know. Ask Olvir, he seemed to have all the information.'

It was Nyssa who suggested that they should try to tap the liner's computer, and the Doctor agreed. All of the crew points had terminal screens and a limited array of inputs, but one place on the console seemed better served than any of the others. The Doctor guessed that it was probably the navigation desk.

The keyboard was, as he'd expected, unfamiliar, but it appeared to have been set up on principles that were mathematically rather than linguistically based.

Alongside this was a row of slots, and by these a stack of rectangular plastic blocks. The blocks were loose, and they seemed to fit into the receiving s.p.a.ces in any orientation.

Kari was silent at first, but the Doctor didn't seem to mind conversation. He could talk and work at the same time, neither distracting him from the other, so she leaned on the console and told him what she knew about Olvir. It wasn't much. This had been their first teaming... in fact, it had been Olvir's first mission. The rumours were that he was from a wealthy family that had gone broke, and that Olvir had saved them from ruin by contracting himself to the Chief, securing them an initial sum as an advance against his bonuses.

'So the Chief paid Olvir's family for the contract and put him straight into training,' she concluded. 'His first time out, and he messes it up.'

The Doctor had so far managed to get the liner's computer to recognise that someone was trying to communicate with it, but not much more. He said, 'And now you want to dump him.'

'That's how it goes.'

'You didn't say that when your ”Chief” did it to you.'

Kari had no ready reply. Instead, she changed the subject. She indicated the screen where random graphs and patterns were rolling through, and said, 'Do you know what you're doing?'

'No.' The Doctor removed one of the blocks and inserted another. They seemed to contain coded areas of memory. 'I don't know the design and I don't know the control programme. Even if there's information about the Terminus in one of these units, I couldn't get it out.'

'So why waste time?'

'Sometimes you hit lucky. But I'd settle for a floor plan of this place.' He looked up. 'Nyssa?'

Nyssa was over by the ugly-looking box that seemed to be the source of the liner's automated control. She straightened up to see what the Doctor wanted, and he held up one of the blocks. 'Can you see any more of these?' he said, and Nyssa nodded and moved out to look.

Kari sorted through the others on the desk, looking for any sign or symbol that might distinguish one from another. 'A floor plan?' she said.

'I need to know why I got it so wrong. I remembered every turn and we still didn't find the TARDIS.'

Kari reached over and slotted in the last of the available blocks. 'Try this,' she suggested, and the Doctor typed in the limited code that he'd so far been able to devise for display.

The screen showed what was obviously a schematic diagram of several star systems, named and numbered in some unfamiliar language. 'What's that?' Kari said, indicating a zigzag dotted line that went through the systems.

'Us,' the Doctor said. The line showed every stage of the s.h.i.+p's journey so far. It ended in a pulsing red point that was presumably the site of the Terminus.

He considered the picture for a while. Although the names were strange, he thought he could vaguely recognise the pattern that they made. He carried out a simple operation that would increase the scale, and he watched as more information came crowding in from the edges.

'What do you make of that?' he said.

'I'm combat section,' Kari replied, almost automatically. 'I don't read charts.'

Nyssa was engaged in what she believed would turn out to be a no-hope mission... but then it was the Doctor who had asked for it, and she had more than enough reasons to be grateful to him.

The area at the back of the control room was cluttered and shadowy, with tall banks of equipment and racks of electrical relays taking up most of the s.p.a.ce. She stood in the narrow gap between two of these and took a deep breath. Just as she thought that she'd more or less recovered, she'd get an all-over tremor and her stomach would try to do a flip. She closed her eyes and waited it out, and in a few moments it pa.s.sed. It wouldn't do to let the others see; they had problems enough already. By the time she'd checked out the area behind the racks, she'd be back to normal. It was on the way to do this that she almost fell over Olvir.

He was sitting on the floor in a shadowed area, hugging his knees like a child hiding in a closet. He looked up sharply when Nyssa called his name, but then he turned his face to the darkness again.

She crouched by him, and tried not to make it sound as if she was talking to a child. That would be all that it would take to finish off his damaged pride.

'Come and talk to the Doctor,' she urged.

He wouldn't even face her. 'Forget it,' he said.

'We're dead.'

'You can't be sure.'

'This place is full of disease. We're breathing breathing it.' it.'

'It's not hopeless. We need your help.'

Nyssa waited, and after a moment Olvir unwound a little. He said, hesitantly, 'Is Kari there?'

She nodded. He thought it over for what seemed like an age, the turmoil running through him like a blade. Then he started to get to his feet.

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