Chapter 6
The Doctor rapidly began to grow worse. The freighter's sickness, as yet unidentified, hit him fast and hard. It hit him harder than it had Turlough, if for no other reason than that they were different individuals. The Doctor was no less fit than he, but the illness did not see it that way.
The onboard epidemic tolled up more victims each day. Those becoming ill had to leave jobs in food processing, as well in ship maintenance and repair work—both kinds of tasks necessary for the colonists' continued existence.
Except for the Doctor's medicines, now used up, there was no cure. Round the clock, the medical staff worked to find such a cure, but with no luck. All they could do was to treat the symptoms—breathing issues, pain, and spiking fevers.
Since the fever affected the Doctor's breathing, he gasped as he spoke, and for two days, due to mal de mer, he could not eat. Now he was so weak he could not stay awake for long, and he was so 'blitzed out,' as Turlough put it, he admitted he could not even feel the manacles on his wrists.
Speaking of which, try as hard as he could to find the key to the Doctor's cuffs, Marco, wading deep into the armory's stores and cabinets, still came up empty-handed. Once, with his proverbial tail tucked between his legs, he paid a visit to the Doctor's bedside, apologizing all over the place.
"I've had no luck, sir, in finding the key. I don't even know how it got lost. If it wasn't for the hard material those cuffs are made of, I'd have it off by now."
The Doctor, instead of chiding with Marco about 'spilled' milk, reached out a hand and shook his. Marco smiled down at him, and thinking of one place he hadn't tried, out of so many which he had, fled the hospital room with renewed vigor to find the key.
One night, Elana pulled Turlough away from the Doctor's bedside and invited him to a late supper in the hospital cafeteria. They had no fear of meeting each other now. Since Gavilan, the freighter's pilot, had so much to do at that time just to keep the ship 'trim,' he no longer tried to force her and Turlough apart.
"Will we ever make to another world," she mused, using a spoon to finish her dairy ration, "even Frelia?"
Turlough took a final sip of his once-hot beverage, a kind of tea-like brew, but darker in color than the darkest oolong. "The colonists are restless," he said. "They've divided into two camps, those for the Doctor, and those for Gavilan."
Laying her spoon on the tray, and wishing for more, as she always did, Elana said, "I've noticed. I've heard the same whisperings, that the Doctor is the only one now who can save us."
"Gavilan, in particular, is losing control," Turlough surmised, "and the colonists are losing confidence in his direction. The Doctor may be the only one who can save all of us."
"But," Elana said, softly, not wanting to hurt Turlough's feelings about his friend, "he appears to be dying."
"He may be, and he may not be," said the young man, cryptically.
"I'm bored, too. I must be, Turlough," she said, with a short, dry laugh. "That almost made sense. Some of us are going to talk to the Doctor—"
She did not finish, for Gavilan came over to their table with a scowl, but he only sat down with his mug, sipping it while it steamed. He had just visited the Doctor's room, prodding him awake, for all the good it did. The Doctor's wandering mind was of no help in answering the simple question of when he would be able to fix his Tardis.
But the Doctor's small, patient nurse, the same one who had watched over Turlough in his illness, didn't mind the Doctor's 'wandering' mind. She sat by his bed and talked with him, about this and that, or really nothing at all. In and out of consciousness, he only replied when and if he could, and this pleased her heart greatly.
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One night, in the deepest hours, the Doctor woke to a sudden jarring of his right shoulder. He opened his eyes and squinted in the subdued hospital light, but he could barely comprehend the forms of several individuals hovering near his bed.
Trying to sit up, he was pushed back abruptly. In a fading voice, he asked, "Who are you?"
"Aren't you weary of Gavilan's manacles, Doctor?"
He tried to pry his eyes open further. It was hard to do. He put a hand to his wretched forehead and massaged the confused hurt he felt there. His hand was taken and forcibly put down again. Then, before he knew it, he had been lifted to a sitting position. His shoes were put on his stockinged feet.
As he stood up, with help from the 'others,' the room swam before him, and in flash, he fell asleep again, only to awaken as he was moved out of the room into the hall, then while still under another's power, pushed into an elevator. At some point as it climbed to the deck where his Tardis was, he slipped away again.
Once the elevator had stopped and he and his unknown captors emerged, he was shaken a bit to wake him. Standing next to the blue police call box, fighting for control of his awareness, he breathed out four simple words, "What do you want?"
In a voice that sounded as if it were light years away, instead of right next to him, a man said, "You want to help us, Doctor, and so you shall. You'll fly us off this ship. Gavilan need not know about it. We have weapons. We'll use them if he tries to stop us. It's all up to you now, Doctor."
"But my ship isn't fixed yet."
"This ship is failing in every way, Doctor. You have to take us away from here. We'll help you repair your vessel. We are determined."
"I can't leave the others to perish—"
A female voice interrupted him. It spoke with urgency and pleading. He recognized it as that of Turlough's friend, Elana, but it did not now strike him as familiar. It had a desperation in it too old for such a young girl.
"Help us, Doctor. We are dying," she said. He looked at her hand on his arm, and into her eyes. With those impassioned depths, he believed he could see what Turlough cherished about them. "If I must leave Gavilan, my father, I will," she said with sudden emotion.
"Elana," he asked, "where's Turlough?"
"He isn't here, not yet. He does not know—" She ended her speech with another desperate plea. "Will you help us? All we ask is to join you on your ship, and to help you repair it."
The Doctor sighed. He turned and put his key in the Tardis's lock. Entering, he walked up to the console and leaned hard against it, recognizing the familiar form and feel of it, though he barely saw it. Buttons, knobs, and gauges in his haze appeared blurred. The computer screen might have been signaling a danger alert, but he would not have been able to read it.
The same rough voice as before spoke again. It belonged to a tall, stalwart man who he knew worked in recycling. "What do we do now?" the voice asked.
He looked up at the man, befuddled and blinking against the light with his sensitive, heated eyes, then he had a sudden start as other colonists began to clamber aboard the Tardis dragging their baggage behind them. Many had their children in tow, too.
Of every age, and whether affected by the epidemic or no, they traipsed through his Tardis to the inner door, leading to bowels of the ship. But before disappearing, the newcomers checked out his console, running their hands over it, seeking what he did not know. After all, it was a spaceship, not a London flat to let.
During their sojourn with him, each of his companions, including Turlough, had a room of his or her own, full of keepsakes and furniture of whatever kind they desired. Some of the colonists slipped into those rooms and started to set up housekeeping. None though would have been perceptive enough to find his room. First, they'd have to find the hidden passage that led to those thirteen doors.
Rather shaken by this turn of events, although it wasn't totally unexpected, he said, "I must go and get my tools." When he had first become ill, he had had Turlough put them away for him.
"Just tell us what we need to do," he was gently told by the same man as before.
He nodded, then moved to the inner door. Others went with him, supporting him.
When he returned with a toolbox, he had a mind to dismantle the entire time column. The time column, as it moved up and down, was the lifeblood of the Tardis. In its present state, the Doctor could only make short 'jumps,' and could not time travel at all, at least not safely.
After a few tests, a few repeated from before he got sick, he believed he had found the difficulty, certain that it was a faulty time travel disk. It routed the power for the Tardis in time travel, but it also facilitated the more mundane task of making space jumps. However, it needed to be source on a high-tech world, such as Gallifrey. He didn't have an extra one, either. The spectrum spanner all over again!
Gazing over the 'spilled' guts of this time column, he breathed out, "I need something I do not have."
"What is that, Doctor?" he was asked by his new 'apprentice,' the same man whose name the Doctor never did catch.
"A disk. I'm not sure I can repair mine. In the meanwhile—" he said, and disappeared under the console again. It was a place he seemed to like to be, thought the man helping him.
Both were expecting a visit from Gavilan at any time. When he came, in a rather put-out mood, the Doctor jumped up, opened the door for him, and prepared to withstand the onslaught. He felt so bad, so severed from his normal, easygoing temperament, that he didn't even try to put up a fight.
Pain actually propelled him on, and it would for at least a while. But whether or not he fixed the Tardis, or then used it to ferry the colonists off the freighter, he would die. The heat of a cauldron of hot oil boiled inside him, wiping out all memory except of the last few hours, rendering him almost will-less. If it wasn't for the tall man at his side, handing things to him, replying when he asked questions, and sometimes gripping his shoulders when he was about to cave in, he'd have succumbed already.
He felt this with a certainty, his last hour was approaching, unless it was already there, but it would not deter him from the struggle to fix the Tardis. If he could rescue any of Gavilan's people off this dying ship, and to safety, then losing the battle within himself would have been worth it.
"Doctor," Gavilan acknowledged him. He stopped when he saw the wires and other pieces of the console laid out to view on the floor. "Busy, Doctor?"
Turlough had come with him, or Gavilan had brought him. Either way, he reproached the Doctor before Gavilan could say another word.
"You should be in bed, Doctor. You don't have to fix it now—there must still be time. You need rest."
The Doctor smiled a small, sad smile at Turlough. Not finding much of a voice, he whispered, "I have to go on. I must, for there isn't time anymore, not really."
Turlough shook his head. He had tried to sound as firm as he could, but the Doctor's usual willfulness always won out. He looked at all of the parts lying on the floor and on the console itself.
"Do you know what's wrong with it?"
Others gathered close by to hear the muttered answer. Gavilan bent towards the Doctor too for his words were very faint. He was very faint, and Gavilan knew it. He'd given his last iota of strength, and would in all likelihood die for Gavilan's people.