CHAPTER SEVEN: Stranded

Adelaide's long-abandoned Botanic Gardens were disturbed by an unearthly noise, seemingly the product of a horrid mechanical howling routed via a Leslie speaker rotating at full speed. Swarms of parakeets left the branches of their roosts in temporary alarm, circling back to land when the echoes died away.

Before emerging, the Doctor carefully checked all thirty sensors that read the external environment. Radiation was up very slightly from the normal background count. Air-borne pollution had declined to almost non-existent; ultra-violet radiation was down by half, indicating that the ozone layer had been replenished. Noise – non-existent.

Quite an attractive piece of real estate, he mused, cynically. All the better for the alien realtors to sell on to whichever third party had expressed an interest.

'Alex, may I suggest a bush hat before you leave the TARDIS? You aren't used to direct sunlight and might burn, and the perspective will possibly knock you off your feet.'

Ace went to ferret around in a distant wardrobe, coming back with a slouch hat faintly stained with sweat, bearing a faded stamp on the inner liner of which only "Army Issue" could still be read.

'Couldn't find one with corks hanging off it!' she said, laughing at her own joke. The Doctor arched an eyebrow and she turned the laugh into a cough.

When they emerged into sunlight, Alex winced and shaded his eyes. There was no visible curvature of the land that he could see, everything ran off in all directions equally. Or seemed to, since they had materialised amidst a riotous jungle of flowers, shrubs, trees and grasses. Daringly, he raised his head, seeing a distinct break between land and sky –

'A horizon,' he muttered, recalling lessons from long-gone schooldays. When he tilted his head back, the sheer blank enormity of the empty heavens above made him reel. A firm hand on his elbow steadied him.

'Don't look up!' cautioned Ace, when he returned a wide-eyed gaze to hers. She felt a sympathy for him after what she'd endured to begin with on Arc One.

The two young people looked around their landing zone. A solid wall of greenery, interspersed with bright flowers, lay on all sides. Whilst not impenetrable, the near-jungle looked forbidding. Ace wondered why on earth they'd landed in such a spot, difficult to traverse without machetes. Her mentor simply stood and soaked in the atmosphere, umbrella dangling from one elbow in a pose that radiated smug satisfaction.

His pose remained unaltered for long enough to make Ace twitch with impatience, and for Alex to look at her with unasked questions in his eyes. Finally the Timelord turned round, gracing them with a warm smile.

'Thank you for being patient. I was listening, looking and smelling and it takes a few minutes to get acclimated after being in sterile or controlled environments.'

'Did you find anything?' asked Alex, just as curious as Ace.

The small figure pursed his lips and shook his head.

'At least three small fires, judging by the smoke trails, all very distant. No sounds of movement, bar the local wildlife slowly returning here after being frightened away. No smells of any petrochemicals or hydrocarbons.'

Which led him to believe that Adelaide now lay deserted and dead. It was the city closest to the Nullarbor Plain, where he believed his alien squatters were hiding, so he wanted to visit and see what the locals thought of any sneaking non-human intruders. Now there didn't seem to be any locals left.

He sighed. Well, they were here, might as well explore.

Finding a way beyond the thickets of trees and shrubs turned out to be far easier than Ace or Alex expected. The plants grew less thickly and were smaller on certain sections of ground, which the Doctor pointed out had been tarmac paths in decades past, and which naturally led to the exit.

'Phew! I'm glad to be out of that!' opined Ace. Alex nodded in agreement, having felt uneasy at the complete abandon they'd been walking amongst. 'Prof, why land in the middle of a jungle? I've got a ladder in my tights.'

He waved at the middle distance.

'That's why.'

A tragic panorama of skyscrapers, high-rise office buildings, apartment complexes and power pylons stood crumbling, covered with creeping vines, sagging with an air of solemn and funeral finality, less than a mile away. One building at least twenty storeys tall had suffered a catastrophic failure of the middle columns, leaving the two flanking remnants to lean in like a gigantic pack of cards. Trees could be seen growing on any level surface. Mosses and algaes gave the abandoned buildings a uniform camouflage of mottled olive, softening the eroded concrete, steel and brick.

The Doctor pointed with his umbrella.

'If we materialised in that area, we'd risk the noise causing a collapse of any particularly fragile buildings. In any urban area there would be a risk of sub-surface collapse thanks to sewers or subways or tube railway systems. A garden poses none of those risks. Now, let us venture forth and see what we can see.'

Ace recognised the signs of excitement – he rolled the "r" in "forth" like a Shakespearean ham. Her eyes also spotted one of the smoke columns mentioned minutes earlier, streaming upwards like a signal, atop one of the less-battered and smaller buildings. She pointed, and the Doctor gave her a nod of acknowledgement.

They walked west from the Botanic Gardens, along roads and paths long gone to seed, where vibrant plant life broke the surfaces into a jigsaw of cracked paving flags or disintegrated metalling. Coming to a major intersection where toppled streetlights lay like fallen trees, the Doctor spotted an absence where there ought to be a presence.

'Look at this,' he said, pointing to a narrow excavation of a hands-breadth width in the crumbling roadway, which ran dead straight north and south as far as they could see. 'And those,' pointing to a line of streetlights that now lay on the ground, entwined and enmeshed with weeds.

'World's smallest trench?' guessed Ace, to an amused snort.

'Hardly! No, Ace. This was once a tramway and those streetlights are actually power pylons. At a point in the not so recent past, the rails and cables were all removed and taken away.'

They followed the now empty railbed for trams, heading north. After five minutes they still hadn't come across any rails or intact power cables, which left Ace puzzled and Alex completely clueless. To the Doctor it spoke volumes. So too did what appeared at first sight to be a car-park away to their left.

Sighing, Ace followed the Doctor when he diverted away to the car park. Ranks of vehicles, easily in the thousands, had been left there, all with their bonnets sprung and propped open. None of them had wheels, instead residing on bricks or blocks of wood.

Ace snapped her fingers.

'Professor! I just realised what's missing!'

The Doctor turned from looking at rusted wrecks to his ingenue.

'There's no cars left abandoned. Look at the roads. Not a single car left by the side, or abandoned.'

Beaming with pride, the Doctor inclined his head at Alex.

'Apt pupil. I taught her everything she knows. Well done Ace! I'd missed that. I think that allows me to complete the picture.'

'Recycling!' realised Alex, recognising a concept bedded into the psyche of everyone aboard the arcologies.

'Quite so,' drawled the Timelord, producing a pocket telescope and peering at the buildings of the city centre. As he suspected, window panes were missing from the lower storeys, up to about the tenth floor in every building. There were other gaps above that level where panes had become loose or unseated, unplanned losses thanks to erosion.

Order hadn't broken down in Adelaide. Instead, the city government, probably operating as a devolved entity from the Federal government, had carefully organised a resource-trawl to harvest materials that could be used or re-used. Tram rails, steel cables, wheels and axles from cars, and their electrical systems would have been stripped of copper, batteries removed for their lead. Windows from skyscrapers recovered to reduce the requirement to make new glass, cladding taken away, doors, chairs, tables, all would have been removed.

So, a carefully-planned operation to generate resources. Given the long-term inability of major cities like this one to sustain themselves when the world beyond Australia ceased to communicate, the population must have been evacuated, too. From memory, pre-Big Crash Adelaide had a population of at least a million-and-a-half. The scattered smoke visible must be from stay-behinds who refused to leave the dead city and who remained there, scavenging as best they could.

Coming to a respectful pause, the Doctor stood with hands on hips, nodding to himself in admiration: when faced with the slow demise of their civilisation, these humans hadn't given up, despaired, indulged in anarchy or chaos – no, they had planned and adapted and moved on, creating a devolved population that could survive. Homo Sapiens! Truly indomitable! he thought, echoing an earlier expression aboard Nerva.

The trio walked slowly north, keeping to the middle of the delapidated road. Giant stands of weeds had taken over the gutters, long clogged with earth. Big stagnant ponds loomed, green and lifeless, across the roadway where rains had gathered and stayed. Small animals whispered unseen amongst the long reeds and grasses, making random splashes.

Ace nudged Alex, who looked nervous.

'You look a bit pasty. Anything up?'

He swallowed and gestured at the city centre.

'I've never seen anything as big as those buildings. They must easily be three or four kilometres high! All this flora allowed to grow anywhere, without planning. And something keeps touching my hair!'

Their progress was interrupted by the Doctor, who came to an abrupt halt, putting his umbrella up and holding it horizontally in front of him as a parabolic reflector.

'Expect company, from behind,' he warned them, causing all three to turn and face south along the ragged, overgrown road.

The muted clatter of hoofbeats came to them, a sound muffled by the weeds and shrubs and drifts of earth across the ruined tarmac, until a mounted man came trotting into view astride a big bay mare. Of possible concern was his uniform, blue woollen serge with a white belt and a dark bush hat, almost shouting "Police". A long firearm nestled in a big leather holster on the horse's flank.

When the horse halted, the rider dismounted and jumped down in an easy movement, staying close to the holstered gun, looking at them with sharp, suspicious eyes. He was a big man, with a ruddy complexion and scars across his knuckles.

'Hello!' smiled the Doctor, tipping his hat. Ace tried a sarcastic curtsey. Alex stared, first at the man, then at the horse.

'A horse!' he whispered, too quietly for anyone else to hear. He'd seen film and pictures, of course, and knew about the embryo bank. None of that prepared him for the sweating bulk of the creature, the whickering noises it made, the echoing clop of it's hooves.

'Don't give me "hullo", you scrawny bludger!' scowled the man. His accent sounded just like Ace expected, with the vocabulary to boot. 'What have you been stealing?' he asked, before interrupting the Doctor again. 'Don't lie, I found that cupboard you've got your stash hidden in.'

An uncontrollable snigger found it's way to Ace's lips. She knew what Barry McKenzie here meant.

'I think you've mistaken us for – ah – common criminals,' began the Doctor. 'We've come down from the arcologies in orbit. Arcology One, actually.'

The blue-clad man sneered, totally unimpressed.

'Oh yeah? That's the umpteenth time I've heard that excuse. "We don't know anything about trespassing or stealing or Government Property". Buncha numpties!"

'It's true!' blurted Alex, all injured sincerity.

'Right. Get turned around and head back to the Gardens. If you try running, I'll shoot yer feet off,' and he tapped the solid metal barrel of his gun as he took the saddle again.

He had to dismount again when they reached the straggling brambles outside the Botanic Gardens, tethering the horse and patting it's nose reassuringly. A couple of wrong turns in the denser parts of the jungle cost them a few minutes, until they came abruptly across the Tardis, standing backed against a giant spray of heliotropes.

'Go on, open it up!' snapped the big man. 'Bloody cheek, calling it "Police"! What, did you think we'd not look inside?'

Predictably, the Timelord bristled at any criticism of his timeship, all the more so since he now realised what their captor meant by "cupboard".

Predictably, the big man's jaw dropped and his face paled when the doors were opened. He leant to one side and checked how big the cupboard was on the outside as compared to the inside, then took his hat off and wafted it to cool his suddenly sweaty brow.

'Hello, again. I'm the Doctor, this is Ace and this is Alex. We've come to visit from the arcologies up in orbit.'

This time the Australian responded, slowly, as if drugged.

'Hello. Hello. Ah – I'm Kane. Officer Kane of the South Australian Police.' Which is when they noticed the embossed tin badges sewn to his shoulders: SAP.

They led him back to the clearer grounds of the old main road, where he perched on a rusted remnant that had been a rubbish bin, once. Still looking inebriated, he told them about himself: a guardian of the city's remains, ensuring that people didn't venture into the dangerously unstable, collapsing, friable and undermined city buildings, either out of curiosity or to steal. He hadn't heard the peculiar noise made by the Tardis, instead he'd witnessed swarms of normally indolent birds fleeing their perches before returning. Investigation revealed a large cupboard –

'After that, I don't doubt you're from the Stars.'

None of them had to ask what he meant by that, although he carried on.

'We've all heard about the people who lived in space. Never bloody well imagined I'd meet 'em!'

A glance from Ace confirmed that the others picked up on the past tense.

'You didn't think we were all dead, did you?' asked Alex. Officer Kane shrugged.

'Pretty much. Up until a week ago, anyway, when the courier mail mentioned a spaceship landing north of the coastline, way past New Eucla.'

That meant Dart One.

'How many of you are there still up there?'

'My sphere has about twelve thousand people aboard. With everyone from all the spheres, maybe a hundred and twenty thousand. That's guessing at how many are alive in the Chinese sphere.'

Kane whistled in appreciation.

'That's a tidy township!'

Officer Kane confirmed the Doctor's suspicions, that the city had been deliberately, carefully and slowly emptied of it's populace back when the regional government still existed, a long emigration to west and east along the coastline where small, self-sufficient townships could be established. There they thrived, able to rely on the ocean for fish and seafood, as well as resurgent wildlife. Since the Doctor wanted to travel west, the policeman directed him north, keeping the River Torrens on his left, until they came to Dickson's Crossing, the only bridge that safely crossed the river to the west bank.

'Thank you,' smiled the Doctor. 'We have our own transport.'

'We laugh at rivers!' added Ace. Alex looked faintly glum at not being able to see a real river, until Officer Kane explained about the distance involved to get to the Nullarbor Plain. The young engineer nodded but plainly failed to actually understand how far they had to travel; to him, everywhere was no more than ten minutes walk away and "a thousand kilometres" was no different.

'Do we need to worry about the South Australian Police arresting us?' asked the Doctor, looking ahead as he usually did, and trying to pre-empt trouble. 'You know, strangers, dressed oddly, no papers, arriving mysteriously.'

Kane frowned.

'We don't arrest the Wanderers, and they're completely round the twist – strange, ragged, can't even read. Get arrested? I don't see what for, unless you steal. Or pick a fight. People won't stop asking you questions, you're right about that – you stand out.' He snapped his fingers. 'I can get a notice added to the courier post, warning townships that you're coming. They won't stop asking questions, but they won't try to arrest you, either.'

The "courier post" turned out to be a mail service that used horses, way stations and dedicated riders to make deliveries across South Australia. Not high-tec in the least, it still managed a high level of efficiency and promised to carry any letter from one side of the state to the other in five days or less.

'That's very helpful. Could you include that we intend to stop at Eucla, in case people want to contact us?'

'I wouldn't really have shot yer feet off,' apologised the policeman. 'Just so you lot don't think the worst of us.' He paused before continuing. 'See, there ain't enough humans left, even here in Oz, and we missed the worst of The War. Killing people's a last resort.'

'I guessed that,' murmured the Doctor when the policeman had mounted his horse and departed, to an echoing clop-clop-clop. 'Those smoke columns are from squatters - human ones this time. Not too difficult to track down, yet they're still merrily smoking away. I doubt they fear the police.'

Once back in the Tardis, they waited whilst the Doctor perused maps of varying scales on the big wall monitor. His maps were generations out of date, showing the shoreline along the Great Australian Bight as unpopulated, when in reality over a million people lived there. If he'd been thinking ahead properly, he'd have remembered to update from Arc One's database.

Still, going in blind at least allowed one the experience of novelty.