Ace was unhappy. "I thought this place was empty?" she whispered.
The Doctor pushed up the brim of his hat with the carved end of his umbrella. The shadow cleared and she could see his worried concentration flit back to friendly reassurance.
"All long gone," he chirped with a bit of a lisp. "Total amnesty from all crimes. Once…" He nodded back over his shoulder. "Once the greater enemy arrived."
Ace felt her shoulders tighten and her fists clench. The two short bokken crossed over her back rattled in sympathy. She was not frightened to name the Daleks. But she still took care when speaking about them.
"Why's the life support still working, then?" She felt the dry rasp of over-cycled oxygen in her throat. "And the AC is ticking over." She was cold, but not uncomfortable. Your basic late era Terran bio-envelope.
The Doctor grunted. "Titania was mostly automated at this time. Maybe when someone was leaving they pressed 'restart' instead of 'shut down'?" He reached into his left pocket and a sonic key flickered briefly in his hand. Another hexagonal hatch opened and another long corridor was revealed ahead of them.
Ace raised her eyebrows. It seemed too familiar. "I hope we're not going in circles. Remember that castle in Leeuwarden?"
The Doctor frowned with the tips of his eyebrows. "That was not my fault. Paper maps always confuse me." He picked another instrument from the other pocket, glanced briefly at a green dot on a black square and returned it to its place. "There's certainly some dimensional folding down here, but we are getting there."
"Dimensional folding sounds perfect for the Tardis. Why won't she… Why won't it just do what it's told for once?"
The Doctor stepped thru the hatchway into the new corridor and beckoned her forward. "Step thru before we're separated. The Tardis didn't feel up to the trip. That's why we're traveling on foot. She gets like that. After a thousand years of traveling you'd want to put your feet up too once in a while." He was irritated now. Ace should have stuck to the Daleks. The Doctor got upset when she even referred positively to the Tardis. "Don't you like exploring?"
"This isn't exploring." Ace sighed and scanned the ceiling with her eyes. "This is a test of patience."
:::
After another five minutes, there was another hatch, and another corridor. But at their end of the corridor, before the walkway opened out, there was a shallow service alcove off to the left containing locking panels and grease-covered display screens. "A genuine drinks replicator," Ace remarked. "Fantastic." She held one side of the tall dispensing machine and pressed a picture of a juicy fat raindrop. She watched a cool blue mist condense into a small beaker.
The Doctor looked back from the remote access terminal. "Water vapor cooling into liquid water. Not exactly magic." He pressed a dull section of the panel. Low-powered lights activated into strips, one along each side of the floor. "Aha."
Ace swallowed a mouthful of the water. Bland, but delicious. Then she noticed the corridor was not like the last ones they had crossed. "Another walkway?"
The Doctor walked forward with deliberation putting his arms out, waving the umbrella as if he had to balance. He pointed down into luminous shadows.
"More cages?" Ace asked. They had passed over some animal enclosures several hours before, the stink of sweat and excreta overpowering her. But not the Doctor, of course.
"Sort of," he replied kneeling to tap the surface. This time there were no grates, no grilles, and no meshes. Ace put aside the beaker and stepped onto the corridor decking.
"An aquarium?" she asked.
The Doctor nodded and leaned forward to peer thru the armored plastic. A ripple of bare reflected light passed over his face. His worried frown had returned.
"Whoever ran this prison had a lot of pets, Doctor. First a zoo. Now an aquarium. Where did they find the time?"
"Hmm?" He looked up. "Not pets, Ace. A prison has prisoners. And these were for prisoners."
She felt her shoulders tense up again. The bokken rattled. "Who would imprison a tiger? Or a shark? Or whatever the equivalent is in space?"
The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Anthromorphs, Ace. Or hyper-sentients. Clever enough to know right from wrong and offend some great common morality." He turned his head slightly to dare her to laugh at him. "As most societies do."
She felt the cold now. And she felt the walkway seem to move like a rope bridge over a gigantic gorge. Vertigo at ground level. Her fists started to clench. "Can we go? It can't be much further, Doc. Come on." She tapped his shoulder and made to move on.
"Ah. Look," he exclaimed. He balanced on the umbrella and pointed eagerly at a glimmer in the water in the tank below. As his finger approached the plastic, the glimmer appeared to twitch.
Ace flinched. "Oh, watch out, Doc. You don't want to upset whatever's down there."
He grinned and teased her by drumming his fingers on the clear surface. The glimmer separated into dull sparkles that mirrored the tapping. "Just an echo, Ace. Totally harmless." He stood up and waved her on. "Come along now. One last push, Ace."
She reached the hatch and waited for him to press the electronic key. One last push. But a squawk from behind her made her turn.
The Doctor's foot was stuck in the plastic glass, sunk in up to his left knee. "Stay back. A vibrational matrix. It seems harmless enough." He prodded the surface of the material around his ankle with the umbrella. But molten tendrils stretched up and out and lashed at his legs and lower torso. "Oh," he muttered, less convinced.
"Doctor," she shouted. "Stay still." She swept one of the bokken up from its location on her back, over her shoulder, and into a straight vertical position. She stepped forward, ready to strike at the glass, ready to free her friend.
It was already too late.