Part 22 (1/2)

She spared him a brief glower. 'The ferret's lot are the obvious candi-dates. Those chumps you and Fitz got mistaken for, the Old Preservers.' She shrugged. 'But I suppose it could be anyone. Out for a bit of notoriety, or to get back at Halcyon.'

'Or at Falsh. I wonder if Fitz could have had anything to do with it?' The Doctor smiled fondly. 'He's a very resourceful boy.'

'He'll be all grown up if we don't get to him soon,' said Trix pointedly. 'We can't just hang around here. We should go to Callisto and find him. If Halcyon's there, Fitz must be too.'

'Aren't you forgetting the evidence we need?'

'Aren't you you?'

'I'm still working on it!' he protested. 'I was setting something up when I got sidetracked by the TV! Look in here. . . '

The Doctor showed her into a side room. There was a small mountain of used plastic cups in one corner and a by-now-familiar keypad and holosphere in the other. The Doctor wagged a finger at it and the image rippled.

123.

'What is it?'

'Those encrypted notes we took from the Inst.i.tute. I'm trying to translate them.'

Trix frowned. 'What's wrong with the Polar Lights Polar Lights's computers?'

'Billion-bit encryption doesn't break easily.' He grinned sheepishly. 'But sadly the Polar Lights Polar Lights's computers did while I was cracking the first part of the key. So I thought I'd better finish the job on the builders' computer. But it's very very slow.' slow.'

'Its owners are builders, what did you expect? It'll probably start working on it next Wednesday.'

'Quicker to do it myself,' he grumbled, pulling a pen and a sc.r.a.p of paper from his trouser pocket. But a test scribble proved the pen a dud. He threw it into the pile of crumpled plastic. 'Do you have a pen?'

Trix felt inside her borrowed jacket. 'I have a pencil.' She pa.s.sed it to him.

'Now, it's an asymmetric key cipher. . . ' Absentmindedly the Doctor started knocking it against his knuckles. 'a.s.suming the private key is. . . ' He trailed off, still tapping the pencil. Then he held his knuckles to his ear, and tapped again.

'What are you doing now?' Trix sighed.

'Shh.' He scowled at her, kept tapping, kept listening. Then he smiled. 'It's a good solid lead. A fine pencil.'

'Bit of an anachronism for the twenty-fifth century, isn't it?' said Trix. 'A pencil?'

The Doctor chomped on the blunt end. 'Probably denotes a certain senior-ity on the part of the owner, as well as an individual streak. I imagine pencils like this are very valuable.' He snapped the pencil in two. 'But not indestructible. . . '

'I think you're the one who's snapped,' said Trix.

'Probably.' Shrugging, he started scrawling on his piece of paper with the stub. 'Now, a.s.suming this is the key word. . . '

Trix leaned back against the wall and slowly slumped to the floor. Her b.u.m had barely rested for a moment when the Doctor's jubilant shout sent her jumping back up.

'P. . . A. . . I. . . N. Pain.'

'You certainly are,' she muttered.

'That's the word on this encrypted fragment.'

'I suppose the ultimate weapon's bound to cause a bit of pain, isn't it?

Comes with the job description.'

Suddenly a powerful vibration shook the floor beneath them. Trix flattened herself against the wall in alarm. 'Not again!' she cried. 'What was was that? that?

Someone softening up this place for vaporisation?'

124.

'I don't know,' said the Doctor, already haring from the room. 'We'd better see!'

Trix just about kept him in her sights as he ran all the way back to the TV room. 'Torvin? Where are you?'

He came staggering from further down the corridor: hair rumpled, eyes wide. 'Your s.h.i.+p. . . '

The Doctor didn't wait to question him further, just dashed off again. Trix braced herself for a lengthy pursuit, though in fact he soon skittered to a stop, in front of a small inspection window set into the corridor.

Bits of the Polar Lights Polar Lights were floating past the window, spiralling lazily out into s.p.a.ce. were floating past the window, spiralling lazily out into s.p.a.ce.

'Goodbye, old girl,' whispered the Doctor fondly. 'Thanks for the journeys.'

'Just what did you do do to those computers?' Trix demanded. to those computers?' Trix demanded.

'Not guilty.' murmured the Doctor, jabbing a finger towards the window.

'Which is more than I suspect we can say for that that.'

A chill ran through Trix. There was a s.h.i.+p outside, performing a lazy manoeuvre to bring it down to the docking pad. It resembled a dull silver arrowhead, absorbing the cold glare of the distant sun and the stars it shot through.

'That alien fish-thing,' she whispered. 'It's come for us.'

'Why destroy our s.h.i.+p now? Why not on Thebe?' The Doctor answered his own question. 'I suppose it must have known Thebe was about to get blitzed that's why it shot off when it did.'

'Never mind that! What are we going to do?'

'Ask Torvin for a lift in his s.h.i.+p?' suggested the Doctor.

But even as he spoke, there was a blinding white flash from outside. Seconds later, more debris was choking the view.

He sighed. 'Perhaps not.'

'Torvin?' Trix was already haring back down the corridor. 'How long before your mates pick you up?'

'It's that creature from Thebe, isn't it?' Torvin looked grey and haunted. 'He wiped out my crew, now he's come back for me!'