2. I don't want to sit there.
The quieter man, although deeply discourteous towards everyone, appears to be the local manager of the operation. Ommera wants to talk to him and see if he really is as brutal as his manner might suggest. She fears the worst in this matter and approaches him when he has just finished his meal.
"I made some adjustments," she says. "What can we realistically hope for?" He might turn around and just tell her that it must work, or it is end-game.
He turns towards her and says, "we must make it more stable. It is hopelessly unstable right now."
Ommera had noticed where instabilities might arise. "Yes," she says. "I've put in a few corrections for that already."
V starts to quiver. "This is the most exciting project I have ever worked on. There are so many rewards for getting this right."
"What applications does the project have?" Ommera asks.
The man raises his eyebrows and Ommera wishes she hadn't asked such an open question. She downplays her question. "Such a small craft might carry boxes around, or deliver mail," she suggests.
The man's eyebrows relax again. Clearly the eventual use is top secret, and he has no idea how to downplay it. He laughs. "What an insult that would be to its designers! We are looking to this being a wonder weapon. How would it be to ride in such a craft?"
"What, a man riding in it?" Ommera asks, horrified.
"Yes, very dodgy last time, but if it doesn't actually flip over the moment we start it up, it has a chance of someone on board surviving."
Ommera wants to say that he wouldn't catch her riding on it, but she thinks that might be tempting fate and lead to him insisting that she is the first - make the designer prove their own craft.
But it seems the decision has already been taken. "Your seat will await you tomorrow at test time. You will have the best view from the craft itself!"
Ommera's heart is suddenly in her mouth as she recognises that her seat is the one on board the small round craft, and that her predecessor must have similarly sat in that seat! End-game for her predecessor when it flipped over!
She recalls the changes she made. Yes, the changes should prevent it flipping over when it first starts, but beyond that?
The man looks at her. Her face must have fallen. He laughs. "Want to make any more changes?"
To do so now would be like an admission of guilt. Is this a trap to ensure she does the right thing?
"It shouldn't flip, but how high does it need to go before we know it is okay?" Ommera asks. "Even a few feet would tell us it's better than before."
"Yes, alright, just a few feet up," the man says.
"Will I be in control?" Ommera asks. "I saw some controls by the seat."
"Yes, no-one else can control it!" the man says. "It must be controlled from inside the craft. That is where the controls are. It will be a first just for it to stay upright."
The next day.
Ommera opens her eyes. A sheet is covering her. Her head hurts and her neck hurts. She sees yellow misty swirls and knows she is regenerating. A few minutes later she sits up and swings her legs over the side of the bench she has been lying on on. The sheet falls off her and she contemplates the next bench to hers. A figure lies there under a shroud.
"It's a mortuary," Ommera thinks.
Then she realises that she has been taken to the mortuary. She remembers the test flight. The craft hadn't flipped over, merely lurched forwards and tipped her out of her seat onto the ground below, head first. It probably landed on top of her. She has died and regenerated.
Ommera walks to the door and steps out of the mortuary. The next room is a nursing station for a tented ward. A nurse screams and faints to the floor. Ommera runs to the exit door before anyone else comes to see what the noise is. She finds a washroom and tidies up some of the mud and blood from her face and clothes.
She finds the quiet man, V, at his lunch and she walks directly up to him.
As he looks up she says, "I have further ideas to improve it."
His jaw drops. "You died!" He points a trembling finger at her. He looks like he has seen a ghost! "You still have the muddy marks on your uniform where you fell!"
"We can't let small details like that get in the way of your exciting project, can we?" Ommera says, diverting attention away from her demise and onto anything more interesting.
The man tries to regain his composure. "Yes, of course. I thought I was going to have to find your replacement so soon."
"Can we dispense with the designer having to ride on the vehicle? It will only lead to reduced design time!" Ommera stays away from emphasizing the danger as that is unlikely to matter to V and is more likely to have the opposite effect. "I have an idea how the controls might be moved to outside the vehicle."
Can Ommera survive until her rendezvous with the Doctor? Can she prevent the defects she introduced being noticed?