Part 21 (2/2)

When the s.h.i.+p has righted itself, he starts to look around.

Pelham knows exactly who he is looking for and attempts to shrink back into some non-existent shadows.

It does no good.

'You'd better have a d.a.m.ned good explanation for their still breathing, Carlin,' Hopkins hisses.

'Oh, he has,' says the Doctor, much too flippantly for Pelham's liking. 'He has. Tell him, Carlin. He's all ears.'

Carlin coughs. Before Hopkins turns too red he speaks up.

'Well, they are the only people with any idea what's inside this palace, Citizen. I thought it best...'

'Leave the thinking to me.' Hopkins glares at them. Any excuse, Pelham realises, any at all.

'We're one hundred and twenty kilometres into the atmosphere, Citizen, descending at ten kps.'

Thank you, bridge technician person, she breathes, thank you.

'Activate sensor equipment,' orders Hopkins, snapping into the job. The buffoon has gone, replaced by the sinister figure she knows only too well. Hopkins is back on the hunt.

'Problems with the sensor array, Citizen,' says Carlin. 'The acid is attacking our probes.' He bends over, squinting at the sensor terminals. 'But I think we've found it. Large metallic object, some unknown elements, could be your palace.'

Hopkins looks up at the Doctor, who confirms: 'It is the palace. I would be very careful if I were you.'

'Hull breaches occurring on nine decks now, Citizen.'

There is a tearing sound overhead. A sudden b.u.mp of turbulence sends them all scrabbling for handholds.

'Visual, give me a look at the d.a.m.n thing!' Hopkins orders.

The crew swarm over their controls, trying to find a spectronic reading that can penetrate these clouds. Infrared reveals the column of vast heat from the planet's core, supporting the structure.

'My G.o.d...' whispers Carlin.

'Don't be stupid,' Hopkins warns him. 'It's a building, that's all. There's nothing supernatural about it. Forget the docking bay, Neville will have thought of that. Take us over the top of the thing. We'll burn our way in.'

Yeah, right, thinks Pelham, nothing supernatural at all.

She is feeling the same unease, the same background ice she felt the first time that she approached this ancient structure.

There is something unreal about it, a sense of ancient... what could it be... ancient evil?

'There! There it is!' Hopkins loses his cool. He leaps out of his seat and jabs like a maniac at the viewscreen.

Indeed, through the acid clouds, the clouds that even now gnaw at the New Protectorate cruiser, the bulbous shape of the palace emerges, dark no longer.

The doubts return, unbidden. It is as if the palace has become sick.

The air on the bridge has become hot, thick. Compensators whine deep under her feet as they attempt to cope with the atmospheric conditions. Pelham is drawn to remaining silent as she stares, and she realises she is not the only one. All gaze silently at this thing towards which they are driving.

The column of superheated air that sustains the palace's position high above the surface, is almost visible, glowing with an obscene light. The palace itself seems to throb with its own unearthly breath. It glistens. Nothing she can specify, it is just wrong. Something that shouldn't exist here.

She thinks of herself caught in this sticky structure, the life drained from her. She sees her own face, her own dead face staring sightlessly back at her. The palace makes her think of night and a dark, earthen crypt.

'It... it's alive...' she mutters, after an eternity.

'No,' says the Doctor. 'Not life, not in the sense that we know it. Not even an ”it” as we know it. Just something that can shape matter, objects, minds. Remember, we are seeing this with the benefit of the vaccine. These others, and Romana, will be affected and they won't even know it. They won't be seeing what we can see. What this palace has become is what everything will become, if the gateway is opened.'

'Whatever you say...' she replies. 'I can't go there again. You have to stop Hopkins going there. We'll die, I know it.' She looks at him, knowing the mask that fear is making of her face.

'I'm sorry, Miranda, I can't do that.'

'Don't, don't say that. You have to.'

'I've made a terrible mistake and the consequences will be catastrophic unless I can stop it. There will be nowhere to go to unless we prevent Neville opening the tomb.'

She feels like stamping her feet. 'Do you always get so high and mighty in the face of certain death?'

'It's a living.'

'Prepare an artisan team,' says Hopkins. His voice is hoa.r.s.e but and Pelham groans once more dreadfully expectant.

'And fetch Redfearn,' he continues.

Carlin nods and, unable to tear his eyes away from the growing palace, flicks the intercom switch. 'Calling Mr Redfearn. Mr Redfearn to the airlock please.'

The s.h.i.+p clangs on to the roof of the palace. Hopkins selects a retinue and they all shuffle down to the airlock. The artisan team well, some stripped-to-the-waist thugs and some welding apparatus, anyway are already there, filling the small chamber with smoke and sparks. The work turns the cramped s.p.a.ce into a furnace. Pelham has been kitted out in a kind of makes.h.i.+ft, iron clad outfit, without the iron, which doesn't help. The s.h.i.+rt is too rough, the breeches too tight and the boots too hard. The Doctor, meanwhile, gets to keep his mad professor's outfit, down to that stupid scarf.

Pelham can feel the buffeting of this mad atmosphere. The metal plates of the hull buckle and twist with the violence of the storm.

Mr Redfearn, it turns out, is a small, pale, rather rakish-looking man in his early forties. His main distinguis.h.i.+ng feature, if Pelham is forced to allocate one, would be his brightly coloured, expensively tailored waistcoat, which he wears beneath a smart grey jacket. That, and the black wide-brimmed hat which he raises to the boarding party.

'Mr Hopkins. Gen'lemen,' he states formally, in an accent that has to originate from the Presley colonies. 'Ah trust y'all have a reason for disturbing mah three-card stud? Ah was in possession of a peach-like hand capable of stunning mah opponent into foregoing the game.'

'Your opponent?' asks Pelham, stunned by such an inappropriate figure.

Mr Redfearn places a hand on his waistcoated chest.

'Mahself. Worthy adversaries are so rarely to be found in this day and age.'

Mr Redfearn sees her with his hawkish eyes and smiles. He bows. 'Ms Pelham. Delighted t'make yoh acquaintance. Mr Niles Redfearn at your service.'

Hopkins, like the rest of his boarding party, is buckling armour and weapons all over himself. He holsters his pistol.

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