Part 11 (1/2)

Tegan took hold of the rail and pulled herself to her feet. 'You're weird, Turlough,' she said. 'What a subject to bring up at a time like this.' And she started to ascend.

'We're just going deeper and deeper,' Kari complained. 'What are we looking for?'

'Whatever it is that makes the Terminus special,' the Doctor told her. 'Something that could even cure the Lazar disease.'

They'd really had little choice over their route. The ribbed tunnel that they'd entered hadn't offered them any interesting-looking diversions, and there seemed little point in returning when they knew that a hostile reception was guaranteed. Kari said, 'There's nothing here but radiation.'

The Doctor considered this for a moment. 'You know,' he said, 'you're right.' And he switched on the hand-radio for a brief burst of the wave interference. It was much louder than before. 'And we're getting closer to the source.'

'That doesn't sound too healthy.'

'It isn't. How safe is an engine when it leaks that badly?'

'You couldn't use it. You'd blow yourself away as soon as you tried to open up.'

'So,' the Doctor said, letting his mind run along the speculative rails that events had presented to it, 'why haven't they just dumped the reaction ma.s.s and made the Terminus radiation-free?'

'You think radiation's part of a cure?'

'I think there's even more to it than that,' the Doctor told her. What Kari had suggested seemed, from the evidence, to be reasonable. If the Lazar disease was caused by a virus or a similar organism with a lower radiation tolerance, a non-lethal dose might be enough to clean it out of the victim's system.

Blanket secrecy and social shame would serve to keep this simple solution from becoming common knowledge. Whoever ran the Terminus the 'Terminus Incorporated' referred to in the liner's automated announcements was obviously taking advantage of the old s.h.i.+p's high incidental levels without either knowing or caring how they were caused.

And the possible causes were beginning to worry the Doctor even more than the disease itself. 'We're standing at the centre of the known universe,' he told Kari. 'Now, don't you think that deserves some close consideration?'

But Kari was no longer listening to him. She seemed incredulous.

'I can hear someone singing! singing! ' she said. ' she said.

Handling of the Lazars was conducted according to a plan originally devised by Eirak. Vanir responsibility for the sufferers technically ended at the yellow line when they were handed over to the Garm, but it seemed that the Company's judgement of their success was based on the survival rate as it was calculated somewhere later in the processing. What happened beyond the line was something that they couldn't know, but it was in their own interests to ensure that as many Lazars as possible arrived to face it alive.

Originally this had meant sending the sickest and least able through first. It looked good in theory, but in practice it was a disaster. They slowed up the whole process so much that even those who'd arrived able to walk on their own finally had to be carried to the handover point. Eirak's answer to this had been the Lazar a.s.sessment, where estimates of the advancement of the disease were made and the fittest sped through first. Which was how he came to be looking at Nyssa.

'She's hardly touched,' he said, putting a hand under her chin and tilting her face towards him.

'Well, compared to some of these,' Sigurd agreed.

Other Vanir were moving amongst the Lazars and pinning numbered labels to them. It was all running in an orderly manner, the way that Eirak liked it.

'Take her first, then,' he said, straightening, and Sigurd turned to beckon one of the others over.

'No, wait,' Nyssa said quickly, and Eirak gave her the cool look that he saved for troublemakers. He'd been right, she was hardly touched. The progress of the disease barely seemed to have advanced beyond the initial stages.

He warned her, 'Don't give us a hard time.'

'But others are worse than me.'

'The fittest ones go first,' Eirak said. 'There's some kind of quota going, and most of these corpses won't fill it. So just co-operate and don't mess up our chances.'

He nodded to Sigurd. Two of the Vanir took Nyssa's arms and raised her, protesting, to her feet.

Tegan and Turlough had found the control room.

They stood in the doorway, taking their first look.

'Maybe they were here,' Turlough said, but he didn't sound as if he believed it. Tegan was looking at the two pressure helmets that had been abandoned on the main console.

'Maybe somebody was,' she said.

They moved in to look around. It wasn't as promising as Tegan had hoped. It was one thing to suppose that you'd be able to spot the control that you needed out of all the others, but facing the reality was something else. She wouldn't even know where to start.

Turlough reached over and tried a couple of switches, 'Hey,' Tegan said apprehensively, 'What are you doing?'

'Messing around, unless you've got a better idea.'

'Well, don't. The situation's bad enough.'

'We've got to try things,' Turlough insisted, and to demonstrate he tried a couple more. All of the screens at every crew position suddenly came alight. 'We can't just stand around. What if one of these opens the door to the outside?'

Tegan looked at the nearest screen. It showed a diagram which she couldn't understand, but which reminded her of the old-time maps which showed the earth at the centre of the universe, long before the spiral-arm backwater that was its true home had ever been imagined. She said, 'Do you think it could?'

'Well, how will we know if we don't try?'

Tegan came around the desk for a closer look.

Kari had been right. Somebody was singing to himself breathlessly, tunelessly, and without much regard for the words. The song was something about being across the purple sea in the cold ground and sleeping peacefully, and the whole endless ramble was basically the same verse over and over with lines skipped, mumbled or hummed. When they came to the end of their tunnel, a cautious peek gave them a view of the singer.

'Who's that?' Kari said.

'He seems happy enough,' the Doctor said. 'Let's find out.'

He was hunched over and limping, obviously very ill. Part of his face, chest and arm had been blackened by an explosion that had ripped open his armourthe same kind of armour worn by their attacker only a short time before. There was a strap around his neck which had been knotted to make a sling for his twisted arm, but despite his injuries there seemed to be an odd cheerfulness about him, self-absorbed and purposeful.

His cloak was spread out on the floor behind him.

There were three or four machine parts heaped on it.

The hood was wrapped around his good hand, and he was dragging the haul onward into the Terminus. It seemed to be a painfully slow business. As they watched, he stumbled and fell to his knees.

The Doctor started to move out of cover, but Kari held him back.