Part 8 (1/2)

It was time to check the liner, and to collect their consignment of Hydromel from the control room. It would be packed into a metal case that fitted into a slot in the automated unit by the windows. Any attempt to remove it before the brief period between disembarkation and stage-two sterlisation, and the locks would go on. They moved towards the liner, but their way was blocked.

One of the drones had managed to come up with another Lazar. It was still gripping her wrist as she stood there, wide-eyed and scared. She looked almost alert, but Valgard knew how deceptive appearances could be. The best way to keep your sanity in the Terminus was to forget that these things had ever been human. Then when the company's radiation-resistant trained mule took them off into the zone, you were safe from any worries about what lay ahead of them.

Now time was getting short. Valgard said that he'd take care of the Lazar if Sigurd went in to get the Hydromel. Sigurd agreed, and as he disappeared through the air-seal Valgard half-dragged and half-carried the girl across to the returned elevator there was no point in expecting a Lazar to understand you or manage for itself.

Inside the cage, Nyssa grabbed the bars to stop herself from falling. She felt as if she'd stumbled into somebody else's nightmare without knowing the aims of the plot or the story so far. Her new jailer entered after her and stood blocking the way out, but this seemed to be incidental he obviously didn't expect her to run anywhere, and for Nyssa's part she couldn't immediately think of anywhere to run.

He was wearing dark armour and a cloak, but for the moment he'd removed his helmet. He seemed weary, a gaunt and haggard man with thinning hair that hung almost to his shoulders. Nyssa took a deep breath and said, 'Where are you taking me?'

Valgard looked at her sharply. 'They don't usually speak,' he said.

There was a coldness in him that Nyssa didn't find encouraging, but she pressed herself to go on. 'I'm not one of the Lazars.'

'You should see yourself. The drones are programmed to recognise the symptoms, anyway.'

It took Nyssa a long moment to absorb this. She'd had no illusions about the dangers of infection, but to learn that it had already happened to her... It had arrived so fast. What kind of disease could it be? And why this was a fleeting thought that she was later to wish that she'd given more attention why didn't her new jailer seem worried by being so close to it?

She said, 'Are you doctors?'

'Doctors?' Valgard was bitterly amused. 'We're baggage-handlers. We just receive and pa.s.s on.'

'But I have to know what's happening to me.'

'You'll be given to the Garm,' Valgard told her in a tone which suggested she'd already used up more of his patience than she had a right to expect, 'and he'll take you into the forbidden zone. And that's the last that anybody here will see of you.' And then he half-turned away to watch the liner for Sigurd's reappearance.

Garm? Forbidden zone? Whatever lay ahead, it sounded grim. And her hand was starting to hurt. She held it up and saw a spot of blood lying as fat as a bead on her thumb. It must have happened as she'd tried to ease her breathing in the liner corridor. She'd felt the jab, but she only remembered it now.

Valgard was watching her out of the corner of his eye, and he was getting suspicious. He couldn't tell for sure whether or not she was trying to conceal something in her hand. He said, 'What are you doing?'

Nyssa turned to show him. 'I cut my thumb,' she said. 'Look.'

She put out her hand for Valgard to see, and he automatically leaned closer. It was then that she changed the gesture into a fast upward sweep with the heel of her hand that caught the Vanir on the point of the chin.

He staggered back, and Nyssa ran from the elevator.

The platform outside was small, and there were only two choices: a metal runged stairway that she could see over to one side and which probably served for access if the elevator wasn't working, and the liner itself.

Inside the liner were the Doctor and the TARDIS; it was really no choice at all.

In the doorway, she paused just long enough to take a look back. Valgard was emerging in pursuit, and he didn't look pleased. If she could keep her lead (and ignore the weakness that-was already beginning to pull her down) she could perhaps lose him in the complex of internal pa.s.sageways. She turned, and ran straight into Sigurd.

He caught her wrist easily, and held her fast. 'Come on,' he said. 'Valgard's not that that ugly.' ugly.'

Nyssa could only struggle weakly as she was taken into the elevator for the second time. Valgard was looking embarra.s.sed, and Sigurd said, 'Are you getting old?'

'No, just gullible.' Valgard glanced at the familiar metal case in Sigurd's free hand. 'Did you check through all the levels?'

'You're joking. If there's anybody left, the drones can flush them out.'

The cage door was closed, the interior switch was thrown. There was a lurch, and they started to descend. Within a few metres, Nyssa was getting her first real view of the Terminus.

They were dropping through a complex of catwalks that ran all around the open shaft. Nyssa's immediate impressions were of darkness, bare metal, oil, and steam, but then the steam cleared and she was looking out into an immense interior s.p.a.ce. It was like the inside of a gutted whale, or perhaps some bizarre parody of a cathedral under restoration. The best-lit areas were far below; elsewhere the lights were strung out and temporary-looking, and the presence of a large amount of what appeared to be scaffolding and tarpaulin sheeting only added to the makes.h.i.+ft effect.

Behind these layers of evidence of human activity was the dark presence of the Terminus itself, overpowering all attempts to create brightness, and making them small.

Nyssa was glad of the bars to hold onto. Something out there was being prepared, just for her.

'We can't have missed it,' the Doctor said, perplexed and frustrated. They'd covered their own part of the liner and had no success at all. The same was presumably true of Olvir and Nyssa, since they hadn't radioed.

Kari said, 'How about the other explanation?'

'What?'

'It's disappeared.'

But the Doctor shook his head. 'There was a book lying on the floor,' he explained. He couldn't know that the biotechnical text from the TARDIS's library was at that moment being flash-burned in the liner's incinerator along with a bagful of beads and several kilos of discarded bandages, all collected in the drones'

anti-litter campaign. 'It would still be...' The Doctor tailed off. In looking at the floor he'd seen something else, and he moved over to pick it up.

It was a piece of material, a part of Nyssa's skirt. In the bad light they'd almost missed it. 'There's blood,'

the Doctor said. 'Call Olvir. Quickly.'

Nyssa's first impression that the human activity in the Terminus was a recent overlay on some much older structure was confirmed when they reached the lowest level. The large tunnel structures that ran through the middle of the s.h.i.+p were original, as were the ma.s.sive fuel or liquid storage tanks that stood in rows on either side of these. The crudely cut doors which converted these tanks into rooms and the walkways that linked them, however, were obviously by some different hand. They'd been squeezed in wherever they'd fit, and the standard of workmans.h.i.+p was low.

Some of the tanks appeared to have been put to use as holding wards for the Lazars. Nyssa could see a few of the sick people, hardly more than bundles of bone and rag, waiting to be moved inside by the Vanir. The workforce showed no cruelty, but no tenderness, either. Valgard's description of them as baggage-handlers seemed to be as apt as any. They prodded and pushed where they had to, using their metal staffs as shepherds might. The Lazars, for their part, obeyed like sheep.

And I'm one of them, Nyssa thought. The thought didn't scare her as much as it should. She knew that it would get worse when the realisation hit her for sure.

Eirak watched the two Vanir unloading the girl.

Like all the others, he wore full armour for maximum protection out in the open areas of the Terminus.

When he moved towards Sigurd with his hand outstretched, there was no question about what he wanted. Sigurd handed over the Hydromel case.

Eirak hefted it expertly, testing its weight against his memory of countless earlier consignments.

'It's light,' he said.