Part 9 (1/2)

'What is it?' she said.

'Stage-two sterilisation,' The Doctor told her. 'Come on.'

They backed off with haste. Elsewhere in the liner Tegan and Turlough were yelling in an attempt to get their attention, but it was too late. The heavy gas deadened any s.p.a.ce that it filled, and now it seemed to be coming from every direction. With no handy vents and no alternative air supply, the Doctor knew that their chances of riding out the sterilisation were, as the automated voice had put it, small.

They were more than half-way to the exit, as the Doctor remembered it. Not an attractive course to take but then they didn't have many options to choose from.

The door to the outside was dropping as they reached it, eyes streaming and gasping for breath. Kali would have done better if she'd kept a hold on her pressure helmet, but both she and Olvir had left them in the control room. They were a liability in combat, and they'd seemed unlikely to be necessary for a trip in the TARDIS.

They ducked under the falling edge of the door and emerged onto the receiving platform. Kari was already ahead, her burner raised and at the ready.

'I'm used to this,' she said, suddenly business-like and unarguably in command. 'Stay with me.'

The Doctor wasn't going to object. Kari had been trained in making sudden entries to strange and probably hostile situations, and such an advantage wasn't to be wasted. He said, 'What do we do?'

'First, we get to cover.'

No disputes so far. The receiving platform was as brightly lit as a boxing ring. The elevator shaft was empty and there was only one way to go, down the iron stairs to the side.

Even as they moved, the lights went out.

The Doctor was going to wait until his eyes adjusted, but Kari had a hold on his elbow and was pulling him along. He groped blindly for the guiderail, found it, and began to follow her down. They took it slowly, being careful to make as little noise as they could.

Within a minute, he could see. There was a dim glow around them, no more than a starlight overspill from the brighter areas somewhere down below, but it was enough. They were on part of a complex of catwalks that centred on the elevator shaft. Some ran along girders bolted between uprights, others were cable-suspended over long drops through darkness.

Where two walks crossed over, a ladder or stairway would connect them. The entire structure appeared makes.h.i.+ft and frail.

Kari studied the way ahead. She was aware of the lit areas down below, and she wanted to pick a route which would avoid them. The object was not to seek confrontation, but to find somewhere away from danger so that they could discuss and decide their next move.

As she was evaluating, the Doctor was marvelling.

He'd moved to the catwalk rail and was looking down on the same scene that had appeared to Nyssa: the vast interior of the Terminus, and the antlike activity under the bright lights in a small section of it.

'Dante would have loved this,' he breathed a living h.e.l.l, complete with armoured dark angels.

'Reconnaissance comes later,' Kari said, and she pulled him away.

From his place by the lighting switches three levels below, Valgard watched them go in amazement.

Outsiders? In the Terminus Terminus?

The area that Kari found for them seemed to be some kind of storeyard. It was on the 'ground-floor'

level of the Terminus, but it was away from the occupied areas and further screened by a number of hung tarpaulins over a frame of scaffolding.

'The liner's no good to us now,' Kari said decisively.

'We'll have to find another way out.'

'You're combat section,' the Doctor reminded her.

'Leave the strategy to me.'

'But what's the alternative?'

'We've got Olvir and Nyssa to think about. Nyssa may be hurt you saw the blood on the floor. I've got friends back in the TARDIS and they're trapped as surely as we are.'

'But we can't go back,' Kari pointed out.

'No,' the Doctor agreed, 'We can't. But in the end, we may have found that we had to come out into the Terminus anyway.'

'But why?'

'There's not only escape to think about. We take the risk of Lazar infection with us. And if there's an answer for that, I think we've a chance of finding it here.'

The Doctor pulled back a canvas cover. Underneath it was a stack of highly polished metal sheets standing on end. He looked at the distorted reflection of his own face. Nothing of the Lazar disease showing there... but for how long?

Kari said, 'You think there's a cure for the disease?'

For a moment, the Doctor said nothing. He moved on through the storeyard. Finally he said, 'I think there's more to the Terminus than just an old dead s.h.i.+p.' Now he stopped before some kind of signal box that had been bolted to an upright. 'Didn't your chief think that there was anything strange about its position on the charts?'

Kari didn't answer. The Doctor let her chew on the idea for a while before he turned for her reactions.

Kari hadn't spoken, not because she was lost for a response but because a metal staff clamped crosswise on her neck was cutting off her air. Valgard had managed the hold in such a way that she could neither cry out nor reach her burner. Almost as the Doctor saw them, he released her. She slid to the floor in a graceless heap.

And then Valgard came for the Doctor.

The armoured Fury with its mailed hands outstretched, no part of the human being visible, would have been enough in itself to overcome opposition in many, and even the Doctor, who had seen more than his share of strange sights and weird aggressors, hesitated for a moment before he could react.

It was long enough. Valgard's hands clamped around his throat and started to squeeze.

Until now the Doctor hadn't been certain as to whether Valgard was a man or an artefact, but the pressure behind the gloved fingers was human. It was a limited kind of relief hydraulically powered pincers would have decapitated him as easily as one might snip the head off a flower. The Doctor grabbed at Valgard's arms and tried to relieve the pressure, but Valgard responded by bearing down more heavily.

They struggled in silence. The Doctor wasn't having much success. Everything started to turn grey, and then red; and as blackness started to creep in from the edges of his vision, the Doctor knew that the situation was becoming desperate.

He could see, dimly and far away, that Kari was stirring. Her speed of reaction was a tribute to her training. Within a few seconds she was fully alert and reaching for her burner.

Some sign of hope must have shown in the Doctor's eyes. Valgard swung him around. The pressure eased for a moment, and then the Doctor was s.h.i.+elding the Vanir from Kari's weapon. There was no way that she could get a clear shot.

She fired.