CHAPTER EIGHT: Country Life

The Doctor chose to land just over the state border, in Western Australia. Not for any political reason; the almost-abandoned town – really only a hamlet – of Eucla sat on that side of the state line, and was the only settlement near the coast. He recalled that maybe fifty people lived there, serving the passing trade of the Eyre Highway.

Correction, he realised, looking at the scanner: he had materialised on a slight rise amidst a collection of sprawling sand dunes, about half a kilometre back from the seashore. Low shrubs and stunted trees graced the gently rolling landscape, where tracks and paths darted in between a small town of strangely-constructed buildings, seemingly more glass than anything else. People were bustling about on their business, carrying long poles that heavy nettings dangled from, glinting silver as sunlight caught the scales of captured fish; a cart pulled by two draught horses went trotting by, carrying a cargo of cut wood, the driver looking astonished over his shoulder at the Tardis's sudden appearance. Other people, including many children busy mending nets, looked up when the strident tones of the otherwordly timeship's arrival came to them.

'Time to make an entrance!' he said, lightheartedly, pausing to clutch Alex's arm. 'Alex, I suspect that there is a sinister influence at work here. Please don't comment on anything the locals say, no matter what the temptation. Take your cue from me.'

The young engineer looked baffled by this request, but nodded and followed both outside. Once again he had to wear the bush hat to prevent feeling overwhelmed by Earth. Which didn't prevent him from seeing all the way to the horizon, making his eyes lose focus and struggle to make sense of the sheer distance.

Children had gone running from their net-mending, racing to seek out anyone in authority, shouting out about "Wanderers arriving!". The Doctor took his time walking down the shifting sands, looking around him to pick up information about "New Eucla" – a sign hung up outside one of the mostly-glass buildings, one that had horse troughs, hay mangers, a tether rail and a weary horse outside. Very well, this township was New Eucla, sprung from the decayed ruins of the old hamlet to accommodate what must be a couple of thousand people. Major occupation: sea-fishing.

They had reached one of the well-trodden paths that wended in amongst buildings before a group of three men, red-faced thanks to arriving at a run, intercepted them. None of them wore any kind of uniform, only home-spun woolen clothes. Their leader seemed to be an apple-cheeked man, missing a front tooth, whose receding hair bristled with dust and sweat. To his left stood a small, wiry, sunburnt elderly man with a salt-and-pepper beard, and to the right a younger man, in dungarees and carrying a spanner in one hand, a hammer in the other. He had the air of being interrupted in his trade by the other two.

'Good afternoon! I'm the Doctor,' announced the Timelord, tipping his hat forward politely. He gestured to right and left. 'Doctor John Smith. The young woman here is Ace, and this is Alex.'

The leader didn't reply straight away, looking over their heads into the middle distance, his attention having been caught by the Tardis.

'Who are you?' he spluttered. 'And how did that get there? And where are you – where the Red Nick are you from?' he added, looking them up and down, recognising that their clothes were not made from wool. 'You can't possibly be Wanderers!'

The Doctor pointed an index finger directly upwards, smiling gently. The townsfolk didn't take long to realise what this meant, their eyes growing wide in amazement. Whilst they tried to process this information, more people began to gather to view the mysterious new arrivals who appeared from nowhere and who looked so strange – both in their dress and by having such pale skin.

'From the Stars?' asked the younger of the trio, pointing his spanner at the heavens, to nods from all three travellers. A chorus of impressed babbling ran around the crowd.

Tooth-Missing looked thunderstruck, unable to speak. The bearded man spoke up, with a tone of wary cunning in his voice.

'Aye, Don, remember the mails mentioned those who landed at Forrest.' He looked intently at all three in turn. 'Decided to come back again, have you?'

Mister Tooth-missing – Don – shook his head.

'You can't just arrive like this.' He surveyed the crowd, now grown to at least thirty people. 'Or hang about disturbing the peace.'

'Do you have an office?' asked Ace, pre-empting the Doctor.

Don nodded, obviously thinking. He pointed at the spanner-wielding young man.

'Terry, go get one of the teachers. We'll need this recording. Alright, you lot, get back to work! Entertainment's over! You three, follow me.' He pointed at the small, shrewd-faced elderly man. 'As Assistant Mayor you can come along as an official, too, Lenny.'

Disappointed, the watching crowd slowly broke up. Don took the lead, his fellow walking alongside them, looking each of them up and down with interest.

'Don, I reckon these togs is made from artificial fibres. We ain't seen any of them in a generation.'

The leader merely grunted, turning down a side-street towards a building partly made of sandstone blocks at ground level, with more timber and glasswork on the upper level.

'Your Town Hall?' guessed the Doctor, to a nod from Don.

Once inside the town hall, they were led to a small office that flanked the main hall, where Don seated himself at a desk. Piles of papers and sets of fountain pens cluttered the desk, calendars and charts were pinned to the walls.

'Lenny, go get a few seats from the hall.' The elderly man returned with a stack of five seats and crammed them into the office, allowing a middle-aged woman to bustle in and take a seat, holding a pen like a dagger.

'This is them!' she exclaimed. Don handed her a sheaf of blank paper.

'Can it, Doris. We need to make notes about this. This is historic. People from the Stars come to visit New Eucla.' He leaned back and raised an eyebrow. 'Now, supposing you three tell me your story?'

'Ace and I are merely passing travellers trying to help those in trouble. Alex is from Arcology One, raised aboard one of the spheres in orbit. We are here because all those in orbit are desperate to return to Earth.'

He turned and gave an encouraging flick of the eyebrows to Alex, who sighed.

'It's true. Everything aboard Arc One is running short, breaking down, wearing out or gone already. That's why we sent down the Dart gliders, to try and establish if we could land our people.'

Don leaned his chair back on two legs and chewed his lip.

' "Dart", eh? You were unlucky, then. Your spaceship got caught in a bush fire at Forrest. Wiped out the whole town as well as them, two hundred souls gone.'

This came as news to all three travellers, of course. Alex didn't understand the concept of a fire that could be allowed to rage unchecked and struggled visibly to assimilate the information.

'We – we wondered if perhaps the people at Forrest might have attacked our glider crew,' he ventured.

Don, Lenny and Doris all looked instantly and equally aghast.

'Young man!' snapped Doris, a fierce light in her eyes. 'I teach crossbow to hunt animals! Animals, not people!'

'What do you people up there think of us!' gasped Don. 'Attack fellow humans!'

Lenny narrowed his eyes disdainfully.

'Bleeding Starmen. What, you think us grubby Ockers kill strangers on a whim!'

Reactions like this were exactly what the Doctor wanted to obtain – genuine human emotive responses to unpredictable triggers, which allowed him to extrapolate a set of data points. The young man had done precisely what he'd intended, by putting a figurative foot in it.

Doris made notes as the Doctor and Alex explained about the Dart glider, making the Euclans look up in surprise when the second glider's fate became known. The explanation about a particle beam weapon didn't get off the ground, until Ace interrupted.

'A ray gun. A great big one.'

Don hummed, Lenny made a face, Doris stopped scribbling.

'Definitely not us!' scowled Lenny. 'Tell 'em, Don.'

'Why d'you think we're still stuck in the eighteen fifties?' asked the leader. 'Because of the Death-Sats. That's why.' He seemed to think all three would know exactly what his brusque explanation meant, then had to enlarge when he merely received three blank looks.

'Death satellites. They shoot ray guns like the one you talked about, except they go for anything electrical. If anyone along the coast ever tried to build a turbine or a generator, or even a telegraph, the death-sats would blow them to bits. Within a couple of hours, sometimes.'

Lenny got a bright idea.

'You lot up there could get rid of them, couldn't you!' he announced brightly, pleased with his deductive skills. 'Yeah, get rid of them.' He warmed to his theme. 'We could use trucks to repair the Eyre, instead of horses and carts. Yeah, if you get rid of them.'

Ace kicked Alex's seat slyly before he could interrupt, causing him to recall the Doctor's words of caution earlier.

'Oh?' enquired the Timelord, politely. 'How do you know that?'

'I worked it out,' declared Don, proudly. 'Only possible explanation. All the places were blown up, roasted, in nothing flat. One workshop that got done in – Morris Vickers' place, out by Barralonga – got destroyed right next to the coaling station, six feet away, and that wasn't touched. And there's a couple hundred miles between the turbine workshop and the telegraph station, with nobody seen near them at all. Yeah. Death satellites. I read all about them in the library.'

Lenny nodded in solemn agreement.

'You bet! I'm old enough to remember the Big Crash. That started when the Yanks blew up a load of Pak missiles on their launch-pads with Death Sats. Yeah.'

Ace, having had a grandstand seat at Armageddon, knew differently. She pondered for a second about how modern myths developed, before catching up with the Doctor as he carried on in his blandly sincere tone.

'Since Alex is completely new to Earth, would you mind providing him with an escort? He's completely unused to your lifestyle and I guarantee he'll have lots of questions. You would? Thank you so much!'

Which, once again, constituted his deviousness in action, requesting an escort when the Euclans would have insisted on allocating one anyway, getting them on-side without realising.

'I would also like to offer one person in your community the chance to go Upstairs and experience life aboard Arcology One, with Ace as a guide for them. They can help to sort out your, ah, Death-Sat problem when they're up there.'

Don perked up at this, and Ace nearly missed the bit with her as a guide –

'What?' she said, before the Doctor carried on.

'They'll need to be young, around twenty years old, and in sound health, no communicable diseases, good hearing - ' during which recitation Don's face fell again. He was then struck by an idea, one that worried him, to judge by the frown that turned his forehead into a corduroy pattern.

'Hang on, hang on. Just how did you get down here? and how are you going to go back to – whatever you called it. The Arkoloidy.' The threat of lightning-baiting electrical equipment hung in the air, and there might have been a longer argument if Terry, the spanner-wielding youngster of the trio, hadn't burst into the office without warning or knocking.

'Jeeez!' swore Lenny, jumping in his seat. Doris glared at the new arrival, who had caused her to scrawl a long inky smear across the paper.

'Don!' blurted the excited younger man.

'In this office, I am Mayor Kenneally!' growled Don, dragging open a drawer and pulling out an elaborately worked metal chain, from which dangled an inverted, chiselled and severed Volkswagen logo, which did make an "M" of sorts. He tossed the object onto his desk and scowled at Terry. 'What!'

'That thing up on the dune – it ain't a police box, or a police anything!, babbled the young man, wildly excited. 'It's not even wood, even if it looks like it, right. You can't scratch it, you can't chip it or chop it – you can't even burn it. There's no tracks leading to it, so it came straight down out of the sky, 'cept nobody saw it come down in broad daylight in front of a hundred people working outdoors. And it weighs so much even a draught horse can't shift it.'

Suppressing a shudder at the idea of people trying to burn his Tardis, the Doctor silently thanked Terry and associates for investigating the timeship, and for arriving providentially.

'How old are you, Terry?' asked Lenny, in the habitally sly way he had.

'Uh – twenty last month, Len. Why - you got a prezzie for me?'

Don smiled, showing the gap in his teeth.

'And you're fit as a fiddle, ain't you?'

Terry began to suspect he was being set up. He crossed his arms.

'D – Mayor - I've donated blood twice this year already.' He looked at Lenny. 'I've done my turn in your highway repair-rota, too.'

Don scraped his mayoral seal off the desktop and into a drawer.

'Terry, Terry, you'll hurt my feelings. Right now I'm just being Uncle Don, looking after your best interests.' He spread his hands wide and tried to look sincere. 'I wondered if you'd like to go on a trip with these nice people.'

Now the younger man looked at the Doctor and Ace with increased interest.

'Oh, right. Where along to?'

Both travellers pointed directly upwards. No further explanation was needed: Terry gaped, blinked, muttered under his breath and nodded with enthusiasm.

Plotting on the go meant being creative , mused the Doctor. Like keeping a multitude of plates spinning on poles whilst cycling round them on a unicycle, blindfolded. He led them back to the Tardis, nodding and smiling to passers-by, children running errands, fishermen hauling nets, farriers and carpenters. Alex looked around in muted wonder, seeing, smelling and hearing activities he knew of only at third hand or via a computer monitor. Terry hared on ahead, desperate to get to the bizarre structure standing atop the dunes, allowing the Timelord to pass Ace a small silver cylinder unseen by any Euclans.

'Pocket radio transciever, Brigadier's personal issue. Keep it with you,' he whispered from the corner of his mouth. 'Don't call me, I'll call you. And don't give it away!' He paused again. 'In fact, make sure nobody from Arc One ever gets their hands on it. Bad idea. Germs.'

'Alex!' he called, loudly. 'I'm going to whiz Upstairs with Ace and Terry, drop them off in Arc One and come straight back here. I want you to wait for us.'

By this time they were slogging up the sands of the low ridge to the Tardis. Alex didn't bother at being left behind, cocking his head to catch a low, continuous rumbling roar he hadn't noticed when they arrived, since he'd been so overwhelmed with the perception of a distant horizon. He sprang backwards when the big blue box vanished with a wheezy howl, only for it to reappear less than a second later, making him wonder if the incredible box of tricks had gone wrong.

No. Only the Doctor emerged, looking around and taking lungfuls of sea air, holding Alex's tool box.

'Thank you for remaining reticent in the Mayor's office, Alex,' he murmured. 'Time for a little chat before our watcher catches up with us.' He cast a careful look behind and noticed a man heading directly for their dune.

Pointing with his umbrella, he directed Alex's gaze beyond the scrubland and dunes, to where the sea sparkled and glittered lazily in the sunlight.

'A stroll in that direction, I think, to show you the seashore.'

They set off, sliding down the loose sand in giant footsteps.

'That stuff Don the Mayor spouted about "Death-sats" is all nonsense,' began Alex. 'There simply aren't any.'

He got an encouraging nod.

'I mean, there actually was one, a single American one, and it did destroy a Pakistani nuclear missile fired at the Arcipelago. That was a solo satellite sixrty years ago. Everyone on Arc One knows that much.'

They followed a well-trodden path worn free of sand, passing between the narrow screen of low trees that hid the beach from view, and Alex saw the seashore for the first time.

Before, seeing a landscape that expanded outwards to the horizon had affected his eyes, normally used to a half-kilometre perspective. Now, seeing the endlessly roiling surf and recognising that mysterious low booming sound for what it was - breakers impacting the shoreline, his knees gave way and he sat on the warm sand. This landscape did not dip into unseen hollows, or slope upwards to low peaks. No, this landscape – the sea – ran flat all the way to an infinitely distant horizon, and for the first time Alex began to realise his understanding of distance and perspective had changed. The sea didn't stay static, or simply ripple as the ponds on Arc One did. It moved backwards and forward, with incredible patterns of light dancing and flitting everywhere, it rose and fell, never repeating the same pattern twice. A strange scent tingled his nostrils, and that invisible person tugged at his hair again.

'It's beautiful,' he whispered, eyes moist with unshed tears. 'And scarey at the same time.' He looked at the Doctor and had to clear a lump in his throat before carrying on. 'Thank you for bringing me.'

Eyes with centuries of experience looked down at him.

'I want you to remember this feeling, Alex. If I were a bit colder, I'd explain about "paradigm shifts". Instead I want you to remember how you felt at this point when the townspeople of New Eucla come face-to-face with an equally unsettling experience.'

The words went in, but Alex didn't really understand what was meant at that moment. Levering himself up on one elbow, he turned sharply to try and find what invisible fingers were stirring his locks.

'That's "wind",' explained his companion, grinning, all the solemnity of his previous announcement gone. 'Along with "weather", it's something new to get accustomed to.'

The sombre expression returned.

'You're quite right about the so-called "death-sats". Sheer nonsense. My first suspicion is that our mystery aliens are trying to restrict any technological advancement along this coastal area. My second – actually I think I'll leave that unspoken as yet.'

Six large fishing boats had earlier been run up the beach on wheeled wooden cradles that were now propped with rocks, and their crews were unloading nets, reels, ropes and bouys, having already sent their fish cargoes inland to the gutting and smoking sheds. Alex watched their easy, practiced operation, interspersed with laughs and casual curses.

'Could I travel on one of those?' he asked wistfully.

'Unwise at present!' cautioned the Doctor. 'Let's get you used to a distant horizon and a flat landscape first. Whilst you may have read about ships, you certainly haven't sailed on one, and being sea-sick is very unpleasant.'

Finished with their off-loading, dozens of fishermen began to amble up the beach, looking at both travellers with undisguised curiosity.

'A final word of warning, Alex. Don't disagree with any claims about mystery laser satellites, or mention aliens. Most especially don't mention aliens.'

When the fishermen came level with Alex and the Doctor, another person came shuffling up behind them. When they turned, a tall, wiry individual wearing battered clothing, shoes made from car tyres and a slouch hat discoloured with dirt and sweat had arrived.

'Afternoon. Name's Mike, Mike Velic, Deputy Mayor. Don – er, Mayor Kenneally, that is, asked me to catch up with you. You come visting from the Stars?' he explained, looking them over with shrewd eyes.

'Alex has. I'm more of a passer-by.'

'You bet! This is incredible – seeing Earth up close. The smells, the horizon, the sounds – I've never heard the sea before, or been close to a live horse, and I want to go on one of those ships -'

Mike pushed his dirty hat back and scratched his tanned forehead.

'The horizon and the sea? Just part of the landscape, mate.'

Alex shook his head in fervent denial.

'Not to me! My landscape has been the inner surface of a sphere with a completely controlled environment. No rain, no clouds, no wind, no weather.'

Mike grinned.

'Sounds ace, mate! Just wait till we get a thunderstorm, then you'll change your mind.'

He led them back up the beach, in the footsteps of the departing fishermen.

'Where do you wanna go first? Don said show you around. Lenny volunteered but he's in charge of the highway team and had to ride out to 'em.'

Alex shrugged.

'Begin with the nearest building and look at every single one after that?'

His eager inquisitiveness was boundless and his questions incessant, and it took a good hour before Mike noticed that Doctor Smith had quietly vanished at some point of their township tour. He shrugged; Don had only sent him to make sure these strangers didn't get up to mischief and he couldn't be in two places at once.

In fact, whilst Mike had been escorting them to the courier offices, the tannery, shearing sheds, the smoking sheds, and explaining the function of each, the Doctor had been keeping a cautious, watchful eye on the watcher. Eventually he decided that body language, inflection and speech implied only what Mike had told them: he was there to keep an eye on them, and not under orders to inflict any harm.

Very well, time to explore on his own. He boldly strolled off, being watched by curious townsfolk who whispered to each other when he passed, and accompanied by a small cluster of children. In time, a pair of teenaged girls caught up with the youngsters.

'There you are! What d'you think you're doing!' shouted one of the pair.

'We was just watching the stranger,' replied a child, meekly.

'You don't just walk out of the nursery!' said the second girl, exasperated. 'That's twice this month.' She turned to the Doctor, who anticipated a telling-off for his involuntary Hamelin ability. 'Thanks, Mister Smith. At least they all stayed in one place 'cos of you this time!'

'Happy to help,' he said, bowing.

'Ooh, int he polite!' giggled the second girl. 'Come on you lot.'

His exporatory stroll seemed to be entirely uneventful, rather to his disappointment, so he followed a track off what passed for the main street in New Eucla, passing one of the big glass buildings Mike had said were used to corral sheep before shearing. The doors were swung wide open, allowing air to circulate in what must be a sweltering box when full of sheep.

Even though he expected trouble the savage impact on his spine came as a surprise, causing him to stumble inside the glass shed and fall onto the soft dark earth that smelt of sheep droppings, his umbrella falling alongside him. A rustling thump, followed by a grating sound and a solid clack, were revealed to be a small sack thrown into the shed just inside the doors, which had been slammed shut. That last noise had been a solid beam being dropped into place across the doors, holding them shut.

'Ow,' winced the Timelord, rubbing his bruised vertebrae. The bruise would, without a doubt, match the end of that wooden beam.

Very well, the suspect had stuck him inside a glass shed. Clearly there was more to this plan –

'Ah,' he murmured. 'I see.'

From the sack crawled an enormous spider, it's body easily bigger than his hand. It scuttled out into the shed, followed by another dozen that rapidly scouted around before focussing on him. Forming a wavy line across the building's width, they cut him off from the door as he slowly backed away.

'Hmm. Interesting. Pack hunting instincts. Most unusual.' He didn't recognise the species, which might be a result of local mutations, evolution being driven faster than normal thanks to the presence of radioactive isotopes in the food chain. Recognisable or not, they still had the air of being hunters, hunters and killers, carnivores. Hungry carnivores.

The line of spiders advanced, herding him back into a corner. Discretion being the better part of valour, the Doctor tried calling for help – and realised the shed's glass didn't transmit sound very well, if at all.

One spider, slightly in advance of the others, ducked down and he recognised it was about to jump.