Part 6 (2/2)

'But you can't be serious, Mel. That whole system is a navigational disaster zone. I've less chance of getting the Nosferatu 2 through that than of prising a ten-grotzit bit from the Bank President's purse!'

'For heaven's sake, Glitz, I wouldn't ask if I wasn't 54 desperate, you know that.'

'Can't anybody else help you? s.p.a.ce mercenaries land on Avalone all the time.'

Mel spoke through clenched teeth. 'I don't have any money!'

'Then get some. Somebody with your computer skills could -'

'Unlike you, Glitz,' she interrupted, 'I am not a thief.'

'But you designed the Dragon program.'

'Because I didn't know what use you'd put it to.' She tried not to think about the handy subroutine she'd written to ensure that her bed and board on Avalone came free. What Glitz was proposing was a step beyond that. Not that she hadn't been tempted, these past months.

He sighed then, defeated at last. 'Okay. I'll risk my life, I'll come and pick you up. Just don't ask any more favours.'

Mel smiled sweetly. 'I wouldn't dream of it. How soon will you be here?'

'Two hours. Three, maximum. Less if I happen to run into a stray magnetic field and come down in burning fragments.'

'I'll wait for you by the landing site.' Mel was about to sign of when she noticed the sheepish expression on Glitz's face.

'What now?'

'I think you might want to evacuate your accommodation rather sooner than that.'

Mel narrowed her eyes. 'What have you done?'

'Well, since you pulled me into your system, and since you did have an open gateway into the Galactic -'

'You haven't!'

'Ten million grotzits. The sting of the century!'

'You've used me to swindle the Galactic Banking Conglomerate?'

'Well, not exactly.' Glitz looked embarra.s.sed. 'I tripped an alarm, you see. They traced the intrusion back to your terminal.'

Mel leapt to her feet like a startled cat. 'You really know how to test a friends.h.i.+p, don't you Glitz?' She broke the contact and, for a frightening moment, stood s.h.i.+vering in the darkness. Her thoughts tumbled over each other in their madcap desire to 55 reach the front of her brain.

Glitz had managed to implicate her in an attempted computer fraud of unimaginable magnitude. The punishment, if she was caught, would doubtless be a custodial sentence. And the thought of swapping this prison for an even smaller one was, especially after all her efforts, intolerable.

Mel knew that time wasn't on her side. She had to make some sort of decision fast. And, much as she respected galactic law and prided herself on an ability to cooperate with authority of all kinds and at all levels, she knew there was only one rational, logical thing she could do.

She would have to run for it.

Mel hurried about the room that had somehow become her home. She packed up everything that meant anything to her, apart from the bulky hardware that would only impede her flight. As she bundled her clothes into a pillow-case - the property of Avalonian Resorts Inc. - she felt a brief stab of sadness at the thought of how little she had to show for her life.

A life that had once promised to be eventful and fulfilling. She wondered again why she had ever left the Doctor.

This was the sort of situation he might get into.

No, she corrected herself. It wasn't. The Doctor's adventures were on the slightly more glamorous side of this. He would never find himself packing up a few meagre dresses and preparing to run from a seedy resort on a backwater planet; keeping out of the law's clutches long enough to make a rendezvous with a crook and to flee in his purloined s.h.i.+p. This was, by no means, the Doctor's type of adventure. This was madness.

Mel shook herself from her reverie. For all its poverty, Avalone was still part of the Galactic Federation and thus it was only a matter of time before someone - or something came calling. She threw on her pink, half-length leather jacket, stuck the pillow-case beneath her arm, took one last look at a. room which meant more than she cared to admit and pulled open the door. She found herself staring at a security robot.

It was an unsophisticated model, abandoned here long ago, 56 but no doubt given fresh programming now from afar. Its bulky, archaic metal form hovered three inches above ground as it whirred and clicked what was unmistakably an order to halt.

Mel didn't know what type of firepower, if any, this automaton had. That didn't matter; she didn't give herself time to consider the question anyway. Acting purely on instinct, she shook her worldly goods out of their pillow-case and threw them, diving beneath her would-be captor's grasp and sprinting for cover.

The security robot paused only to shake Mel's underwear from its sensors. Then it turned and glided after her at a more sedate pace.

Mel skidded across the loose stone, twisting, turning, dodging behind the derelict theatre and through the Happiness Wing, around the old anti-gray play-skimmer pool and past the tramps outside the Fun Pub. The robot clung to her tenaciously throughout. She had to end this. She might be faster but the machine was tireless and, although she had kept up her exercises, Mel could feel her body growing weary.

She left the camp behind her, heading out for the hills. She would find it harder to lose the thing here, but there was also less chance of it being able to call on reinforcements. She shot past the old man she had spoken to earlier and he reached out a hand to her, but there was no time to socialize. She leapt over the top of the rise and her heart plunged as she saw that the landing area was empty. As if it wouldn't be! She had known that Glitz couldn't have possibly arrived yet, but she had blindly hoped all the same.

She cast around for a hiding place, knowing the search would be fruitless. Then she spotted something that caused her to do a cla.s.sic double-take and made her heart swell with hope like it hadn't done for a long time.

A battered blue police box nestled at the hill's foot. There was only one thing it could be. When a familiar figure emerged from the object, Mel's suspicions were confirmed.

He was still exactly as she had last seen him, that ridiculous question-mark pullover and all. He beckoned urgently, but even as Mel rushed towards him, she heard a high-pitched drone 57 behind her and realized that the robot had caught up.

She glanced over her shoulder: her pursuer seemed to be gaining speed on the downward slope. She pushed herself further, faster, expecting hot blaster fire to bring her down screaming at any moment. She reached him miraculously unscathed.

She was all for diving straight into the impervious TARDIS, but he steadied her with one hand. His face was grim as he turned to the approaching automaton and held up a long, thin, silver device which emitted a low hum. Mel flinched as the robot exploded with a loud bang and an outpouring of black smoke. She turned to him, panting, her face alight.

'You've saved my life,' she whispered. 'I really mean that, Doctor, you have saved my life!'

He didn't say anything. He merely ushered her into the TARDIS. Mel felt that all her dreams had come true at once.

She still paused on the threshold. 'I suppose I should contact Glitz, tell him there's no need to bother coming.' Then she considered the trouble he had caused her and the unanswered pleas of the past few months, and she smiled tightly. 'No. Let him find out for himself.'

The old man stared over the hilltop and his eyes widened as, with an asthmatic wheeze, the unfamiliar blue box faded slowly into nothingness. He s.h.i.+vered and hurled the empty bottle away from him; it bounced three times on its way down the slope, then came to rest with a soft clink against the remains of the destroyed robot.

Presently, three more of the automatons arrived. They cl.u.s.tered about their comrade, swayed to and fro and clicked with what the old man thought sounded very much like agitation.

As one, they turned to him then, and waited expectantly for the information they knew only he could give.

The old man shrugged helplessly and pointed up into the grey sky.

'She went thataway,' he said.

58.

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