Part 15 (1/2)

'Completely.'

'Inconvenient, to say the least.'

'Undoubtedly.'

'Your recommendation?'

'Tricky.'

'But you do have one.'

'Possibly.'

Bishop clasped his hands together and steepled his fingers. When he spoke, his voice was completely without inflection. 'It may interest you to know that I, too, am developing a theory, Doctor. One in which your own involvement plays a significant part.'

The Doctor smiled engagingly. 'You know, I was rather afraid you were going to say something like that.' He turned and left the Operations Room.

Bernice lifted her face to the warming rays of an impossible sun, and wondered at the beauty and mystery of the universe.

Out on the fringes of the Vartaq Veil, looking for traces of her lost father, she had been part of a team excavating a Dyson sphere constructed around a white dwarf star. Built from the debris of planets, moons and comets, the sphere had originally been designed to completely enclose its star, collecting all the energy it gave out rather than letting the vast majority of it escape away into s.p.a.ce. Like most engineering projects, it may have looked good on paper, but in practice it was another thing entirely. Tidal stress and gravitational asymmetries had pulled the sphere out of shape. Newtonian mechanics had done the rest. By the time Bernice and her colleagues had arrived, it had degenerated into a series of unconnected fragments which drifted apart over thousands of years, gradually leaking their atmospheres into the vacuum. The builders, overcome by the tragic outcome of their vast conception, had devolved into a sh.e.l.led race who spent their nomadic existence migrating from one fragment of the sphere to another, living in the ruins of their once great cities and seeing the cosmos as a gigantic jigsaw puzzle being slowly a.s.sembled by G.o.d.

It was a funny old universe.

Bernice looked around. Beautiful though the interior of the lower moon was, there was also something disturbing about it. Perhaps it was the way the horizon curved upwards on all sides, like a bowl, or the way gravity worked when there shouldn't have been any. Perhaps it was the way the translucent 'gra.s.s' seemed to develop an immediate and lasting attachment to anything or anyone that walked across it. But she didn't think so.

Ordinarily she would have relished the variety which the creators of Moloch had offered up for her pleasure without a qualm or a second thought, but this time something was getting to her, making her nervous. Itchy...

Oh.

It was the Veil.

Moloch reminded her of the Vartaq Veil.

Not the precise pattern of plants and trees beyond the human enclave, nor the affectionate gra.s.s, nor even the strange and delightful animal life if it was animal life which peered from the undergrowth at the human installations with delicate curiosity. No.

It was the quiet.

And a sense of history gone terribly wrong.

She s.h.i.+vered, despite the heat.

A wafer thin translucent something something undulated through the air towards her, chuckling gently to itself in a liquid voice. She put out a hand, and the thing wrapped itself around her arm, warm and dry and tingling and Bernice was suddenly struck by a question so obvious it stunned her. If the builders of this artificial paradise had not been around for several millennia as Alex Bannen seemed to think how come the flora and fauna hadn't run riot and completely ruined the environment? undulated through the air towards her, chuckling gently to itself in a liquid voice. She put out a hand, and the thing wrapped itself around her arm, warm and dry and tingling and Bernice was suddenly struck by a question so obvious it stunned her. If the builders of this artificial paradise had not been around for several millennia as Alex Bannen seemed to think how come the flora and fauna hadn't run riot and completely ruined the environment?

Bernice ran the fingers of her free hand through her thickly beaded dreadlocks as she tried to think. She was no naturalist, but it seemed to her that every living thing around her was controlled in some way, by some force: prevented from over*breeding, over*growing. In some way patterned. She had a sudden feeling that if she could only work out how the ecology of Moloch ticked, she would have a vital clue, if not to discovering Ace's whereabouts, then at least to getting a handle on the vanished aliens. With any luck, the rest of the puzzle the missing personnel, the mystery of the Angels and, not least of all, the rapidly sliding situation on the Base itself might follow on from that.

Bernice shook loose the amiable sc.r.a.p of nothing and watched as it fluttered away, lost in moments in the gentle glow of Moloch's endless day.

She rubbed her arm. The skin tingled.

Cheryl palmed the access lock on the medlab door and the hatch rolled open. She moved cautiously into the room.

'h.e.l.lo? Christine?'

There was a sudden movement behind a bank of filing cabinets.

Cheryl sucked in an alarmed breath. 'Sam?'

'I'm afraid not.'

The Doctor.

'Go away,' she snapped.

'I could do that,' he said, emerging from behind the cabinets. But I wouldn't be taking the problem with me, would I?'

'Who says I want you to!' Cheryl croaked out the words before lapsing into another long silence.

'Why don't you tell me about it? I guarantee it'll help.'

'You wouldn't understand. You're just a '

'Just a man? Isn't that expression out of date yet?'

'I was going to say... Oh h.e.l.l. I don't know what I was going to say.'

'That's good. Now we can start fresh, with no preconceptions.' The Doctor sat on one of the medlab's empty diagnostic beds, and drew his legs up into the lotus position.

'I'm not ready to talk yet. If you had any degree of sensitivity you'd be able to see that.' Angrily, Cheryl turned and left the room.

After a moment's thought, the Doctor followed her.

Miles re*entered the Bridge terminus. The floor of the chamber was obscured by a silver mist that had risen since their arrival. Tiny clouds swirled about his legs as he walked. On impulse, he reached out and pa.s.sed his hand through the vapour. The silvery substance clung to his skin, looking like tiny beads of mercury, as slippery as graphite between his fingers. Miles flicked his hand absently. The stuff relinquished its grip upon him readily enough, drifting away to join the main ma.s.s of the stuff as it cl.u.s.tered around the end of the Bridge, where some kind of subtle activity seemed to be taking place.

Miles looked closer, his confusion momentarily overcome by curiosity. The hole through which the survivors of B s.h.i.+ft had left the Bridge was knitting back together like cloth, the weave forming as the bulk of the mist reduced. High above Miles's head, beyond the terminus bubble, the Bridge itself was trembling; it was becoming more difficult to see, as if something were being called into shape around the central shaft.

Miles blinked. Something was forming around the Bridge: a new Lift.

Miles felt suddenly weary.

It was time to carry out his decision.

He walked through the Bridge terminus to the Atmospheric Vehicle Research Laboratory: the room where Paula had spent most of her working time. The starpod, her creation, hung suspended in the engineering pit.