Part 6 (1/2)

The old man watched her for a while. Then, knocking back a slug of what he imagined to be rum, he dismissed her from his mind.

Mel wandered about the near-deserted camp, for what she thought would be the last time. She wouldn't have left her room at all had she not believed that.

She had spent almost three months locked away, shunning all contact.

She had long since given up hope of turning Avalone into what it claimed to be. The Camp Entertainments staff, Burney and Brison, were more interested in their own entertainment, and none of the few visitors to this so-called resort planet cared anyway. They came here to drink and sleep and forget.

Except Mel. Because no one had warned her.

Oh, but she had been so clever, hadn't she? Fancying herself the great hitch-hiker, wandering the s.p.a.ceways with no dependence on anybody. She'd left Glitz and made for Earth, and never mind what he had said about her home world's fate in this era. She would find the decimated planet anyway, pull its scattered populace together to rebuild and to reach for the skies again. She had found a cause.

Six months later, she had ended up here. The irresistible (so the brochures said) Avalone, a temporary rest stop before the final leg of her long voyage. Only, for 'temporary stop', read 'stranded in this miserable slate quarry for almost two years'.

She'd tried, but even her infectious enthusiasm had its limits.

She had put her mind, instead, to leaving, but that was a harder task than antic.i.p.ated. Not many s.h.i.+p-owners came to Avalone: it was, on top of all else, some sort of navigational hazard.

Those that did visit refused to carry her away without an amount of money she didn't possess.

Mel wandered past the hanging door to the filthy kitchens, where once she had worked before realizing that her wage covered only the exorbitant cost of accommodation and food.

51.No escape by that route. It was then that, having finally experienced enough of Avalonian life, she had made her retreat into solitude, breaking off her short affair with the cook, Peter, in the knowledge that only one man could help her now.

Well . . . two, perhaps. And after two years of loneliness - and three months devoting every waking moment to contacting one of those two men - second best was beginning to look quite good.

Two long years on Avalone. One more since leaving the TARDIS.

'Well, I suppose it's time.'

Silly cow, why had she said said that? that?

'Time that I left.'

The more she went over it, the less her own actions made sense.

The Doctor had seemed upset at first. He had got over it quickly. 'Excellent, yes. Mel can keep you out of trouble, Glitz.'

So there she was, roaming the galaxy, many millennia into her own future, her partner a self-confessed thief and swindler and no type of home left to return to. What must she have been thinking?

She had contacted him last night: the fourth time she had entered the Galactic Banking Conglomerate's computer system and left a message only he could find. The first one he had actually responded to.

She had been woken by the red light, pulsing through her eyelids, shocking the brain into wakefulness with one electric thought: freedom! Pulling the old computer out from under the bed, rubbing down the dirt-streaked monitor, moving the mouse frantically, pressing to gain purchase on the threadbare carpet.

She had activated on-screen menus, accessed details of the ice-breaking program which her own system had caught in the act and held trapped. She had smiled at the thought of the computer operator's panic as he tried to close down his terminal, to remove incriminating traces.

He was in for a surprise.

52.Mel had activated the voice sensor. 'h.e.l.lo Glitz,' she had said, with satisfaction. Then she'd sat back, thought about him retrieving that message, and laughed for the first time in too long. A laugh born of relief, of the knowledge that her imprisonment was over.

That was two nights ago.

Mel sighed now as she pushed open the peeling yellow door to Chalet A113. After all this time, its interior still smelt musty and unused. She let her eyes adjust to the gloom, then stepped carefully over the equipment which littered the floor: stripped wires, junction boxes, screwdrivers, soldering irons and circuit boards salvaged from obsolete equipment, torn from the gutted corpses of crashed vessels. Avalone was a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p's graveyard. That, at least, had one advantage.

She had sent precise enough instructions to Glitz. He should be on his way; in fact, he should at last be close enough for visual contact. Mel fished out her computer again and worked the mouse with practised ease, negotiating her way through a series of gateways and surrept.i.tiously into her target system.

She toggled into telecommunications mode, sent out a call signal and drummed her fingers against the floor impatiently.

She counted the seconds for thirteen minutes before the light on the monitor's top began to wink. Mel punched in the activation code, trying hard to contain a long-denied excitement. A graphical representation of Glitz's roguish, bearded features appeared, its colours washed out, flickering and swaying as though wind-blown. The computerized Glitz was wearing an obviously forced smile, which well matched the forced tone of his electronically relayed greeting.

'Mel! How good to hear from you again.'

'You could have fooled me,' she said caustically. 'You've been ignoring my distress messages for over a month!'

He feigned innocence. 'Messages?'

'I checked my equipment dozens of times, Glitz. I know they got through. I planted them in the Galactic Banking Conglomerate's computer systems, where I knew the Dragon cypher program I designed for you would find them in seconds.

53.So don't try pretending that you never received anything.'

'Oh . . . those messages.' Glitz waved his hand vaguely. 'All hopelessly scrambled, I'm afraid. I wanted to come and find you, of course, but I just didn't know where to look.'

Mel pursed her lips to prevent a smile from breaking through.

She was too glad to see him to remain angry. 'You received my message about the opal s.h.i.+pment easily enough, I see. You hacked into that file in seconds and fell, incidentally, straight into my trap.'

'Ah, well of course, I knew it was you. I wasn't fooled.'

'Or perhaps greed was simply a stronger motivator than friends.h.i.+p?'

'So . . . there isn't actually an opal s.h.i.+pment, then?'

Mel laughed. 'Okay, I'll believe you, Glitz. Somebody has to.'

'Well, it was nice talking to you -'

'Don't you dare cut out on me now! I need your help.'

Mel started as the picture fizzed and vanished. For one heart-stopping second, she thought she'd lost him. Then, thankfully, the image rolled back onto the screen, its pixels slowly updating to show that Glitz was now wearing an almost comically worried look.

Mel sighed. 'Don't worry, I don't want to join up with you again.'

'Is that a promise?'

'I just need a lift to the nearest civilized world,' she continued, ignoring the implied insult. She cast her eyes about the dingy interior of the chalet. 'I seem to have got myself unfortunately stranded.'

'What, on Avalone? Whatever possessed you to go near the place?'

'Never mind that now. Can you come and get me? Please?'