Part Two: Journey
As a dark shape came lunging out of the shadows, Sarah couldn't hold back a shrill yelp of shock and fear – and then almost collapsed with relief when she saw who it was. "Oh, Roba!" she gasped.
"What in the world are you doing here?" Harry demanded.
The boy had the grace to look abashed. "I told you, I want to come with you. I want to go after the sky raiders and find my mother," he stubbornly declared, and Sarah's relief faded into dismay.
"Oh, no – we couldn't possibly take you with us, Roba," she hastily protested. "Tell him, Harry."
"She's right – you really shouldn't have followed us like that, old chap. Who's going to look after those sisters of yours if you aren't there, eh?" Harry gently chided, but one look at Roba's unrepentant face told Sarah he was wasting his breath.
"I promised my sisters I would find our mother," the boy insisted. "I promised I wouldn't go back without her."
The awful thing was that she could understand his resolve perfectly and sympathised with it wholeheartedly, admired him for it…but he was just a child. How could they possibly take him with them on this journey, when they had no idea what they might be facing?
"Stay there a minute while we talk about this," she firmly instructed the boy, and then grabbed Harry's arm and pulled him to one side to hiss, "Now what?"
From the look on Harry's face, he'd been hoping she would offer him the answer to that question. Scrubbing a hand through his short thick curls, he worriedly said, "He doesn't seem willing to go back of his own accord, does he?"
"But we can't exactly turn around and take him back ourselves, can we? We'll lose enough time as it is, if we stop for the night. We can't delay any more – anything might be happening to the Doctor while we wait."
"Or to Roba's mother," Harry quietly observed. "And the other captured natives."
So that was that. There was only one option left and she didn't like it, not one bit. Sarah sighed. "We're stuck with him, then. But he's so young – what are we supposed to do with him?"
Harry shrugged. "Look after him, I suppose. What else can we do?"
She reluctantly gave in to the inevitable. "We don't seem to have much choice, do we? We can't turn back now." Turning back to Roba, she warned, "It'll be dangerous, Roba – you'd be much better off at home."
"I don't care," he stubbornly declared, with all the fearlessness of youth. "I won't go back, I won't – why should I when they'll only come and take me in the end anyway. If you try to leave me here I'll follow you again. I can help, I really can, I promise."
"I don't suppose it would be safe to send you home alone in the dark, anyway," Sarah reluctantly conceded. "So that's it, then: we're all in this together."
dwdwdwdwdw
The Doctor was bored.
Upon arrival at the alien base, he'd been unceremoniously hauled out of the cargo vehicle and shoved into an annoyingly secure little side room just off the loading bay, where he'd been stuck ever since. The room appeared to have been carved out of sheer rock, suggesting that it was underground; there were no windows, no ventilation shafts and no movable ceiling or floor tiles – the heavy door was the sole means of exit from the room and it was securely barred, resisting his every attempt at escape, which was most uncooperative of it.
It wasn't even as if he wanted to go far – just far enough to get his bearings, find out who these creatures were and what they wanted, and see what could be done about it. He had no doubts whatsoever that they would be back for him sooner or later…but since he had rather a lot to be getting on with, he would prefer it to be sooner rather than later.
At long last the door swung open, and this time the Doctor was quick to get in a riposte before any violence could ensue. "Ah, there you are. About time, too," he declared in his most imperious tone. "Let's get on with it, shall we?"
Unfortunately, his attempt at sweeping out of the room ahead of his captors was foiled by the fact that they were blocking the doorway, but they were suitably nonplussed by his breezy attitude nonetheless, which was just the reaction he'd intended.
"Hold," one of them snapped, raising a hand in the manner of a traffic conductor back on Earth. Flanked by guards, both his uniform and manner marked him out as high-ranking, and his next words, spoken with disdainful arrogance, confirmed this hypothesis. "I am Proctor Silrin of Tarse. You will speak when spoken to, alien."
This was news to the Doctor. "Will I really?" he interrupted, and received a baleful glare for his trouble.
"You will accompany me to the interrogation chamber and there give an account for your presence here."
The Doctor had no particular objection to this instruction, so he obeyed it. Accompanying his captors to their interrogation chamber afforded him a good look at the general layout of the place, which gave the impression of being a fairly small-scale facility, rather than a major operation, and was most definitely underground, carved out of some kind of natural cave system. The interrogation chamber itself was merely a larger room than the one he'd previously been held in, with quite a civilised seating arrangement to make use of during their mutual cross-examination of one another – in fact, he had his doubts as to its really being an interrogation chamber at all. The name sounded suitably intimidating, of course, which was no doubt why it had been used, but it looked rather more like a generic meeting room to his experienced eye.
"Why don't you tell me about Tarse, Proctor Silrin," he suggested, making himself comfortable.
Silrin glowered. "You will speak when spoken to, alien."
"Yes, you mentioned that already," the Doctor conceded, and then blithely continued with his train of thought. "You see, the name rings a bell, but I'm afraid I don't really know very much about the place. Is it far from here?"
"Your question is irrelevant, alien –"
"Doctor," the Doctor corrected. "I'm known as the Doctor and I really would much prefer it if you called me that, rather than 'alien', descriptive though the word may be. After all, you are aliens yourselves, aren't you? You don't belong on this world any more than I do."
"Enough!" Silrin slammed his fists down on the table, shouting in the Doctor's face. Easily enraged, then; a man who liked to bully and bluster – that could be useful to know. "You will explain yourself, alien. Where are you from? How do you come to be here?"
"Oh, I was just passing by," the Doctor shrugged, maintaining his studied air of nonchalance. "And yourself? How do you come to be here?"
"Where is your ship? Are you alone?"
"As you see," he evaded, since, wherever they were, Sarah and Harry would be much safer if Silrin and his cronies remained unaware of their presence on Lindos. "However, I'm rather concerned about the Lindosian natives I was travelling with earlier in that splendidly uncomfortable vehicle of yours. Where are they now?"
Silrin narrowed his eyes. "You are a spy," he hissed. "Who do you work for?"
"A spy?" The Doctor was intrigued. "And just what would I be spying on?"
"You know very well that our consortium controls the lupium industry back on Tarse," Silrin snapped. "Our competitors have frequently resorted to underhand tactics in their attempts at gaining a foothold in the market, but this is a new low – your incompetence is astounding."
"Yes, I'm dreadfully sorry about that – it must be terribly frustrating for you to have to deal with amateurs," the Doctor absent-mindedly sympathised, thinking hard. It was all beginning to make sense now. "Lupium, eh. That's a very precious commodity indeed. There's rather a rich vein of it running through the primary moon of Lindos, you know – and of course you do know, because that's why you're here," he guessed, and Silrin's angry reaction confirmed this hypothesis.
"What else do you know?" the Proctor snarled.
"Well, it's less a question of knowing and more a matter of really quite basic deduction. You've established mining operations on that lupium-rich moon, I imagine, which has enabled you to establish a strangle-hold over the economy back home." Silrin had as good as told him as much, with those angry accusations of his. "I take it this base is some sort of outpost used to round up a few of the natives from time to time, presumably for hard labour in the mines. Am I right?"
Silrin had become very still. "You are very well informed, spy."
"Yes, aren't I?" the Doctor coldly agreed. "Not so incompetent, after all, eh. But the thing I don't understand is why. The Lindosian natives are primitives. It can't possibly be worth your while housing and training them for work in the mines when you could so easily automate the process."
"Mechanoids are expensive," Silrin sniffed. "Native labour is a cheap and renewable resource, readily available and utterly expendable – why should we not make use of it?"
"Why not?" The Doctor was disgusted. "I could give you a thousand reasons why not. Enslaving and brutalising a harmless and intelligent indigenous people for the sake of a few extra points on your profit margin? To say nothing of stealing a natural resource that rightfully belongs to them: robbing them of their world, their culture – their future. It's a disgrace!"
"Oh, so you're one of those." Silrin's disdain knew no bounds. "Just where did the native rights campaigners find you?"
"Not only is it immoral," the Doctor continued. "It's also extremely poor economics –"
"How dare you!" Silrin's indignation at this slur on his business acumen might almost have been amusing, if the Doctor weren't so very furious.
"Extremely poor economics," he fumed, remembering what Emera had told him of the Tarsin depredation of her people. "You're burning through your slaves faster than their people can reproduce and raise their young. Carry on like this, and they'll be extinct within a generation –"
"There are other continents," Silrin coolly dismissed, and the Doctor was outraged.
"Oh yes, there are other continents, more native peoples to conquer and destroy…but for how long? How long will it take you to work your way through them all? This is genocide, you understand – an entire indigenous population being wiped out simply to put a few extra credits in your account in the short-term. And where will that leave you? You'll have no choice but to automate then. Did you factor that into your business plan?"
"Silence!" thundered Silrin. "This session is at an end. Patrols will be sent out to search for your spacecraft and any associates who may have accompanied you on this mission. You will be taken to central command – we shall decide what to do with you there."
dwdwdwdwdw
Sarah had been joking about the fish supper. It wasn't such a joke, however, when the provisions packed for them by the natives really did turn out to be little more than dried fish and a few root vegetables. Roba proved immediately useful to have along, however, disappearing off into the gathering murk and coming back with an armful of juicy berries, which looked delicious – although Harry then remembered that he was a professional and insisted on performing a few empirical tests before he'd let her eat any, just in case they turned out to be toxic to humans.
They got a fire going and sat around it with their picnic, and it might have all been good fun, camping out under the stars for the night, if it didn't feel like such a colossal waste of time, waiting out the hours of darkness while the Doctor was goodness only knew where doing heaven only knew what.
Sarah had never been very good at waiting for anything. She liked to keep busy and active, always had, remembered driving Aunt Lavinia up the wall as a child, running around all the time and refusing to sit still. It chafed, having to sit around like this not knowing what was going on beyond that the Doctor was always alarmingly good at getting himself into trouble.
He was also very good at getting himself out of trouble, of course, and it helped to remember that.
Roba wouldn't stop talking. His mood swinging wildly from bravado to agitation and back again, he was full of questions, non-stop questions: how far did they think they would have to go, what would they do if they ran into any of the dreaded sky raiders, was it safe to stay out here in the middle of nowhere all night, how were they going to free his mother, were they really going to do all they could to find her, did they think she'd be all right, why did they have to stop for the night – who, how, what, why, when…?
Sarah was an inveterate asker of questions herself, always had been; she was a journalist, inquisitiveness was part of her job…or, if you looked at it another way, becoming a journalist had given her a good excuse for being nosy. Now that she was on the receiving end, however, she found herself wondering how Aunt Lavinia and her teachers had never throttled her as a child, because she certainly didn't have the patience for it herself!
Or maybe it was just the circumstances that were getting to her. She could see that they were getting to Roba, his anxiety levels rising visibly as the light faded. Anger and determination had brought him this far, but he couldn't sustain that kind of drive in the face of the long night that lay ahead any more than she could stand the thought of it herself. He was just a child. He shouldn't be in this position.
She didn't know the answer to any of his perfectly reasonable concerns, that was the trouble, and being asked the questions only reminded her of how much was unknown here – and of how worried she was herself. How could she reassure him when the very same doubts and fears were dancing in circles in her own head?
It was no good, she couldn't settle.
"I'm going for a walk." She jumped to her feet, cutting across Roba's latest anxious query about whether they really thought his mother would be all right while they waited here overnight – Harry could field it.
"A walk? You sure, old thing – it's awfully dark."
"Yes, I can see that, thank you, Harry." Or not see, as the case may be, which was his point, of course; that was the whole reason they'd decided to stop for the night rather than risk stumbling around this rocky hillside blind, but just now she didn't care. Still, she softened her tone to add, "I'll be careful – I'll get some more of those berries. I won't be long."
She hurried away before he could argue, cautiously picking her way around the rocky crag toward the berry bushes Roba had found while the list of everything they didn't know yet turned over and over in her mind.
They didn't know who the sky raiders were, where they came from, what they wanted with the natives they captured, or where the prisoners were taken, beyond 'the mountains'. They also didn't know what the sky raiders might want with the Doctor – or what the Doctor might do with them, for that matter.
He would try to escape, that much was a given. And when he found out what was happening here, what the sky raiders were doing to the natives, he would want to put a stop to it. That was certain, too. What she didn't know was how he might go about it, what the sky raiders might do to stop him – or how they were going to find him so they could help. 'The mountains', Caran had said, but as destinations went it was depressingly vague.
A rustling sound in the bushes brought her back to the here and now. Wild animals prowled these hills at night, Caran had said. She stood stock still and listened. Was it the wind she could hear rustling the leaves, or an animal moving through the bushes? Four moons made for a bright night, but it was still too dark to really see much of anything – certainly too dark to find any berries. It was also chilly, away from the fire, and Harry was a bit of worrier, he'd be anxious if she was out of sight for long, in the circumstances. Tripping over a rock in the dark and breaking her leg wasn't going to help anyone, either, any more than fretting about all the things they didn't know.
There was that rustling sound again – definitely high time she got back to the others.
She allowed herself to be guided by the smell of smoke and the sound of voices carried on the breeze as she stumbled along over the uneven ground, too far away at first to make out the actual words – she'd wandered further than she'd realised.
"…look, I do understand how you feel, old chap," Harry was saying in his most conciliatory tone as she came within earshot.
"Your friend was taken," Roba mournfully conceded. "But a friend is not a mother. Your mother was not taken."
"She wasn't taken, no. She died."
Sarah stopped in her tracks, just beyond the flickering light cast by the fire, before either of them realised she was there. She hadn't known that. She'd considered Harry a friend, a good friend, for all his maddeningly old-fashioned ways, ever since they were tied up together in that bunker during the business with the giant robot back on Earth, but she hadn't known about that. He never talked about anything personal – and she'd never asked.
To be fair, they were usually a bit too busy running for their lives to swap sob stories.
"I suppose I'd have been a bit younger than you are," he quietly continued. "But I do remember how it felt, you know, when no one could save her. I'd have done anything – just like you'd do anything now."
Sarah could picture the look on his face just from the sound of his voice: that little crease in the brow that always appeared when he was uncertain or felt uncomfortable for any reason. She had no memory of her own mother and didn't know how it felt to lose one, had been happy enough growing up with Aunt Lavinia instead, but she did know the ache that came of having an empty space where a mother was supposed to be.
"I would." Roba sounded subdued, almost tearful. "I have to find her."
"Oh, we'll find her, don't you worry – but not tonight, eh. We'll start moving again at first light." That was Harry's hearty voice, the one he used when he was pretending to be more confident than he really was, and Sarah moved forward again now that the moment seemed to be over.
"No berries, I'm afraid – didn't fancy cutting myself to ribbons trying to pick them in the dark with all those thorns."
"Sarah. We were just about to send out a search party," Harry greeted her with a little grin that told her he'd been concerned.
"I haven't been that long," she began to protest…but then realised that she probably had. Flashing a quick, sympathetic smile at the heavy-eyed Roba, she sat down alongside Harry and bumped her shoulder against his. "Sorry, I didn't mean to go so far, I just couldn't sit still any longer. I can't stand all this waiting around."
"Is that so?" Harry looked amused now. "Can't say I'd noticed."
"Oy!" She bumped her shoulder into his again, harder this time, and then caught his eye and they both grinned.
"Look, why don't the two of you try to get some sleep," said Harry. "I'll take first watch."
Sleep. Wouldn't that be a fine thing? As she settled down, staring into the flickering flames of the fire, Sarah ruefully reflected that it would probably be easier to achieve if she could only switch her brain off for a little while. As soon as she closed her eyes that list started running through her mind again, over and over, all the things they needed to achieve as soon as it was light enough to see the ground beneath their feet once more: find their way to the mountains, find either the sky raider base or whatever route they took beyond that point, find the Doctor, find Roba's mother, find a way to get rid of the sky raiders…
Sleep felt a long, long way away.
dwdwdwdwdw
The Doctor closed his eyes and settled in for a brief cat-nap in the cramped little cell he'd been locked into aboard the Tarsin transport vessel, since there wasn't much else to do on the journey between Lindos and its primary moon.
Well, he could always try to escape, of course, but there wasn't much point in that at this stage – better to bide his time and wait until they reached the moon base, where there'd be far more scope for positive action – so he might as well get some rest while he had the chance. The journey wouldn't take long, he knew. From what he'd seen of the vessel as he was brought aboard and the feel of the vibrations through the deck plate as it took off, he guessed that it used mag-repulsion engines, presumably on some kind of pre-set relay, which was an efficient enough method of short-range space travel, if not terribly creative, and would certainly make short work of the distance between the planet and its moon.
Sure enough, it wasn't long before he felt the change of motion that signalled their landing and bounced to his feet to await the arrival of the guards to escort him wherever it was they intended taking him.
"Ah, good day to you, sirs," he jovially declared as the door slid open, and went to doff his hat to the two guards standing just outside only to remember that he'd lost it at some point down on the planet, so turned the movement into a rather grand, sweeping bow instead. "What a splendid journey – very smooth, very swift; my compliments to the pilot. Now, it's this way, is it? Do lead on."
The fact that they did just that demonstrated how inured they were to compliant prisoners – they'd never have turned their back on him like that if they had any experience of captives giving them trouble, which meant any hint of rebellion must have been beaten out of the slaves long ago. The Doctor pondered whether or not to burst their bubble by escaping on the spot, before deciding that he'd rather not see the alarm raised too quickly. Instead he dutifully followed them along a few corridors, making a careful note of the layout and maintaining a spot of light chit-chat along the way in an attempt to learn a little more both about the base and about their plans for him.
Disappointingly, both of his guards proved to be extremely poor conversationalists. Even more disappointingly, they turned a final corner to find Proctor Silrin there waiting for them, looking severe.
"Ah, Silrin," the Doctor greeted him. "What a disappointment to run into you again so soon. Time to finish our conversation, is it?"
"You will be silent until spoken to," Silrin snapped, opening a door.
"Another interrogation chamber?" the Doctor lightly remarked. He waved an arm, expansively. "After you."
The guards promptly brandished their weapons at him as a gesture of their displeasure with this suggestion, while Silrin glowered. "Not at all, spy – after you."
dwdwdwdwdw
Roba had never been this far from the encampment before, never ever in all his life.
It was completely dark now. He'd grown up with stories of the things that lurked in the night, fearsome beasts roaming the hills. He'd called them mothers tales, yarns spun to keep the young ones from straying beyond the safety of the camp – he'd said he was old enough to know better now, knew that the real danger lay with the sky raiders, and only babies believed in things that went bump in the night.
But now he was out in the hills in the dark, far away from the safety of the encampment, and those stories were all he could think about.
He wasn't afraid, though. He wasn't. Really, he wasn't…even if there were strange noises away in the shadows, beyond the flickering light cast by their very small fire. He wished again that they could have more fire, a whole ring of fire to shelter within, but Harry and Sarah had said no. There wasn't enough wood, not to keep burning until sun-up, and too much light and heat might attract attention, sky raider attention. So there was just the one small fire and they were taking turns to keep guard while the others slept.
Only Roba couldn't sleep. He wanted so badly to be brave, to help these strange visitors from space find the sky raiders and defeat them, and to take his mother home again, just like he'd promised…but it was hard, in the dark of the night, to believe that such an impossible dream could ever be true. No one who'd been taken had ever come home again before.
The space visitor Sarah wasn't sleeping either, even though it was her turn. Roba could hear her talking softly with Harry, who was on watch. Although… did it count as keeping watch if everyone was awake anyway?
"Anything might have happened to him by now, you know." Sarah's voice was so low that he had to strain to make out the words.
"I know, but – look, just…try not to worry, eh, old thing." Harry's voice was also very quiet – they thought Roba was asleep, he knew, and were trying not to wake him.
"I can't help worrying. It's been hours – you know as well as I do how quickly things can go wrong. And now we're marooned here until sunrise…we don't even know what we're going to do when we get there."
"Well, we don't know what we're going to find when we get there."
"We still need to have a plan – we should be prepared for anything."
Harry sighed. "Look, let's just worry about getting there for now, shall we?"
"And then what?"
"Well, then we'll do a recce," he said. "Check the lie of the land. We'll be in a much better position to make plans then."
There was a bit of a pause before Sarah said, "Stop being sensible, Harry. It doesn't suit you," which was a strange thing to say, but her voice sounded as if she was smiling as she said it, and Harry huffed a soft chuckle under his breath.
"We just have to hold out until sunrise, Sarah, that's all," he said. "Then we'll find the Doctor and sort all this out – and then we can get back to the TARDIS and try for Scotland again, see what the Brigadier wants."
"Are you still worrying about that?" Sarah asked as Roba shifted his head slightly so he could hear better, trying to understand the meaning of their strange words.
Harry was quiet for a moment. "Well, there isn't a great deal we can do about it just at the moment, is there?" he said at last. "Try to get some sleep, Sarah. I'll wake you for your shift." Then he raised his voice slightly to add, "You too, Roba. Get some sleep, you'll need it," which came as quite a shock, because Roba was certain he hadn't made any sound. How did they know he was still awake?
Since he'd given himself away anyway, Roba fidgeted around a bit, trying to get more comfortable on the hard ground. Then he stared into the glowing embers at the base of the fire and thought about home and how far he was from it, and how it wasn't really home any more anyway, not when so many dearly beloved people were gone and there was nothing to expect in the future but more of the same. Maybe following these space visitors in search of the sky raiders was foolish, but it was the only chance he had to save his mother. And it was better than sitting at home and doing nothing, each person doing the work of ten – even the smallest children – always just waiting and waiting for the next raid, wondering who would be taken this time…
He finally began to drift off to sleep, only to be jolted from his almost-slumber by the sound of a ferocious growl coming from the shadows beyond the fire.
dwdwdwdwdw
It all happened very fast, after that first warning growl.
As Sarah scrambled upright, she was dimly aware that Harry had leapt to his feet and shoved Roba behind him, and then her attention became absorbed by the whatever it was that was charging right at her from the shadows. In the dark of the night, lit only by the flickering flames of their feeble little fire, she caught no more than a vague impression of slathering teeth and claws before Harry grabbed a burning stick from the fire and shoved it in the creature's face. It fell back, yelping and whimpering…but then another came flying out of the shadows in its place.
In the desperate whirl to fend off the vicious creatures, Sarah lost track of how many there were. They seemed to be everywhere, attacking from all sides as fast as she and Harry could beat them away, with young Roba cowering against the rocks behind them. She kicked at one and hit another with a branch from their pile of firewood, then spun around too late to fend off a third, but was saved by Harry and that burning stick of his again. A moment later, yet another had launched itself at Harry's back and he reeled away, flailing, but before she could rush to his rescue, there was still another charging at her. She kicked desperately at it, batted away another and then turned to see that Roba had broken out of his paralysis of terror to help Harry fend off the one that was attacking him, lashing out wildly with a big stick in either hand.
Still the creatures kept coming. Sarah distantly wondered if this was how a fox felt when it was being hunted, hounded on all sides until it was too exhausted to go on. Their fire had gone out, the last embers trampled into the ground, so they could no longer even see the creatures as they charged but could only thrash blindly to defend themselves.
The attack ended as suddenly as it had begun when a light lit up the hills – not from above but from a distance, like the headlights of an approaching vehicle – and the creatures fled, melting away into the shadows as if they had never been there. The transition from fighting for life to all over and safe now was so abrupt that it took a moment to sink in, but a moment later Sarah realised that the light looked like the headlights of an approaching vehicle because it was the headlights of an approaching vehicle, and on this planet that could only mean sky raiders, which meant they weren't safe yet.
"Take cover – hide, quick!" she yelled, grabbing Harry's arm and giving him a little shove, because he hadn't made the connection yet and she could hear the low hum of the vehicle's engine now, which meant it was too close already, the light getting brighter. It would come sweeping around the bend any second now and they couldn't afford to be seen.
She caught a glimpse of Roba's face, eyes wide with panic, mouth open to scream his dread of the sky raiders, but before the boy could make a sound Harry had clamped a hand over his mouth and hauled him behind the rocks they'd made their camp against. Sarah threw herself after them and lay very still, holding her breath as the sky cart rumbled past.
It hadn't seen them.
"Oh, thank God. I thought we were done for." She leaned against Harry's shoulder, gulping in huge, shuddering gasps until her breathing was under control again.
"Are they gone? Are they gone, are they gone, are they gone?" Roba whimpered. He was clinging to Harry's other arm as if his life depended on it and Sarah felt again the weight of responsibility that came with having charge of such a youngster on a journey that would have been difficult enough just with the two of them. How could they expect a child to cope with whatever else might lie ahead – and how could they live with themselves if anything happened to him along the way? Yet what other choice was there at this point but to take care of him as best they could?
"Yes, it's all right, they've gone now," Harry confirmed, and he managed to only sound a little bit shaky. "That was a near one – is everyone all right?"
"I think so." Sarah ran a quick self-assessment, while Harry turned to give Roba the once over. Her heart was still pounding like a jack-hammer, but aside from a few scratches and bruises she appeared to be completely uninjured and could hardly believe it, those creatures had been so ferocious.
Then she heard Harry mutter, "Well, that's torn it," and noticed, as her eyes adjusted to the dark, that he was trying and failing to examine the back of his own arm, remembered seeing one of those creatures jump at his back.
"Were you bitten, Harry?" A surge of renewed anxiety lent sharpness to her voice that she didn't quite intend. They were in the middle of nowhere with next to no supplies, the Doctor was missing, there were wild animals and sky raiders all around…an injury was the last thing they needed just now – especially if it was the medical officer among them who was injured. Sarah's own Girl Guide level first aid skills would only get them so far.
"I hardly noticed at first – adrenaline, I suppose." Harry was grimacing, it clearly hurt, but on the whole he seemed more bemused than anything, so it couldn't be as bad as all that. Sarah allowed herself to relax a notch once more.
"Well, let's just hope those things don't have whatever the local equivalent of rabies might be, then. Here, let me. You can tell me if I'm doing the first aid wrong."
She pushed his hand away so she could take a look at the wound, ignoring his pained, "Ow, steady on, old thing," as she helped him peel his jacket off and then squinted in the moonlight before giving her diagnosis.
"Well, there's quite a bit of blood," and she pulled a face as she said it, because the truth was that she would rather deal with Cybermen or Sontarans than blood any day of the week, "We'll have to bind it, but honestly, I think your jacket took the worst of it."
"Do you think they'll come back?" Roba quavered. Sarah wasn't sure if he was talking about the sky raiders or the creatures, but either way the answer was the same.
"I don't know – I hope not." She glanced around at the dark, gloomy hills that surrounded them. There could be anything lurking out there and they wouldn't know until it was too late. Those creatures knew where they were now and they couldn't rely on more sky raiders coming along to frighten them away the next time – couldn't rely on finding cover in time if they did, for that matter. "But we'll be sitting ducks here if they do. So I suppose we have a choice. Do we stay here and just hope those creatures don't come back? Or should we start moving again and take a chance on not breaking our necks in the dark?"
"Well, one thing's certain," Harry ruefully remarked. "None of us will be getting any sleep tonight."
dwdwdwdwdw
"So what was it you wanted to talk about this time, Silrin?" There was a single chair in the bare little interview room the Doctor had been shown into, but it looked rather uncomfortable so he perched on the edge of the table instead and smiled winningly at the Tarsin. Silrin glowered and the Doctor laughed. "You know if the wind changes, your face will stick like that."
"You prattle nonsense to avoid answering my questions," Silrin sniffed. "Why are you here?"
"That's a very interesting philosophical question, Silrin. Tell me: what's your understanding of the concept of the immortal soul?"
"You understood my meaning – equivocation will not help your situation."
The Doctor chose to ignore this statement in favour of pursuing his train of thought. "I believe it was Plato who theorised that humans were composed of two parts: an immortal soul housed in a mortal body – although he got the idea from the much older Persian philosophy, of course. You might be surprised to know just how many sentient races develop similar theologies, across all corners of space and time –"
"Enough!" snapped Silrin. "You will not distract me. Answer the question."
"But I already have, Silrin," the Doctor mildly reminded the man. "You asked me before, down on Lindos, and I told you – I'm just passing through."
"That is not good enough."
"Well, I'm dreadfully sorry you feel that way, of course, but it happens to be the truth."
"Why are you here?" Silrin demanded.
The Doctor sighed. "We're back to that again, are we?"
"What do you hope to achieve?"
"I assure you, Proctor Silrin, I had no particular ambition in mind when I landed, although I did think I might look around for a while before continuing my journey – the Lindosian landscape is rather lovely, don't you agree?"
"Enough of these lies!" Silrin was becoming increasingly heated. The Doctor eyed him thoughtfully and maintained his nonchalant demeanour.
"But I'm afraid I hadn't quite finished my sightseeing before I was accosted by your men – rather rudely, I might add, and quite without provocation."
"Illegal trespass on Tarsin property is provocation enough."
"Illegal trespass? Tarsin property?" The Doctor allowed a harder edge to sharpen his tone. "You have no authority here."
"This planet and its satellites belong to Tarse by right of conquest," Silrin declared.
"I dispute that claim!" the Doctor snapped.
"You admit your guilt!" Silrin was triumphant.
"If opposing the illegal occupation of a populated planet is an admission of guilt –"
"It is."
"Then so be it."
"Who sent you?"
"Why does it matter?"
"Answer the question!"
"Well, how many opponents do you have to choose from? You mentioned the native rights campaign – your practice of enslavement is not popular back home, then?"
Silrin snorted. "Do-gooders protesting on the basis of hearsay and rumour," he dismissed. "Easily discredited. They have no proof to support their claims."
The Doctor stilled, intrigued. "You mean they don't know?"
"What?"
"Your people, the masses – the government, even. They don't know that they've conquered an occupied planet and enslaved the indigenous population, purely to boost the profits of the private corporation which now holds them all to ransom?"
"Who do you work for?" Silrin hissed. "What are your plans?"
"So what happened?" the Doctor pressed, determined to get to the bottom of this. "Someone on the initial exploration team saw the geological survey and became greedy, falsified the reports? How do you keep a secret that big? You can operate at a minimum staffing level, perhaps, buy their silence with threats and bonuses, but some of them must talk, surely? Is that where the native rights campaign came from – information leaked by unhappy employees, denied by the company? So what happens if the truth comes out? Would your people care? You know, I rather get the impression that they would."
Silrin was rattled – too rattled to continue the interrogation, which was a shame; the Doctor had hoped to get a bit more information out of him. "You speak of things you don't understand, spy," he snarled. "But be prepared to tell the truth next time we talk."
Spinning around on his heel, he stalked out of the room without looking back.
The Doctor shrugged and offered a cheerful wave to the guards as they slammed the door shut. Then he got down to business – the time for waiting games was now over.
Private security guards rather than military, they hadn't even asked him to turn out his pockets: that was how unaccustomed they were to handling any prisoner who wasn't a broken-spirited primitive. The Doctor listened at the door for a moment until he was satisfied that both guards had walked away down the corridor, and then pulled out the sonic screwdriver and got to work.
dwdwdwdwdw
Harry Sullivan prided himself on being a practical-minded sort of chap, not much given to flights of fancy, but even he was just about jumping at his own shadow by the time the first rays of sun began to light up the sky, signalling the end of their night-long ordeal of scrabbling through the rocky hills fending off ravenous local wildlife and avoiding sky raider patrols. Not that either of those requirements was necessarily at an end, of course, but they'd at least be able to see where they were going now, instead of stumbling around in the dark.
Since meeting the Doctor, he'd felt as if he were stumbling around in the dark more often than not, but it wasn't usually quite as literal as it had been this long, arduous and occasionally painful night, since they'd decided that keeping moving would be marginally safer after all than waiting it out until dawn.
"They're definitely looking for something," Sarah whispered as yet another sky cart rumbled past their latest scanty hiding place.
"Yes, us," Harry hissed back at her. He couldn't think what else the aliens might be looking for out here in the middle of nowhere.
Sarah shook her head defiantly. "How would they even know we're here? The Doctor wouldn't have told them, I know he wouldn't."
Harry didn't think so either, but facts were facts. "Look, I'm not saying he did, but you said it yourself, old thing – they're definitely looking for something."
"Well, whatever they're looking for, they've gone now, so we'd better get moving again before they come back," Sarah retorted. "It can't be much further now, surely. And stop calling me old, Harry – how many times?"
He was always forgetting how much that annoyed her. Muttering "sorry, sorry," more from habit than any actual regret, Harry pulled the map out again, suppressing a wince as his injured arm registered a protest at the abrupt movement, the thickness of improvised bandage tight beneath his jacket sleeve. "Not too much further, by the looks of this," he agreed, squinting at the very rough sketch in the hazy half-light that dawn afforded them. "Jolly hard to be sure, though – this thing isn't exactly to scale."
Sarah leaned over his shoulder to peer at the sketch. "Well, there's that three-fingered rock," she said, her breath warm against his ear. "We passed that a while back."
"Rather more by luck than by judgement." Harry still wasn't sure quite how they'd managed to stumble over that landmark in the pitch black of night, but if they'd missed it they'd most likely have gone miles in the wrong direction before they realised their mistake.
"Maybe the gods are watching over us," Roba rather surprisingly suggested. Taken aback, Harry looked at Sarah, who lifted her eyebrows and shrugged.
"Who knows? Maybe they are – we could certainly use the help!" She flashed a dazzling smile at the boy before returning her attention to the map. "All right, so if we're here, more or less," and she pointed at their approximate location, "And the three-fingered rock was back in that direction, then we need to go…" She spun around and gesticulated, "That way."
As they set off again, while the going was good, young Roba caught hold of Harry's jacket sleeve and hung on tight as they cautiously picked their way around scrubby thickets and over outcrops of rock, keeping a sharp eye out for animals and sky carts all the while. They'd all three been hanging onto one another during the night so as not to lose each other in the dark, but the boy's desire – perhaps need – to maintain that contact in daylight came as a bit of a surprise. Harry had never thought of himself as a particularly child-friendly sort of person; he'd have expected Sarah to appeal to the boy more, she had a knack for endearing herself to people that he'd had never quite mastered. He remembered how it was to lose a mother, though, and could only imagine how he'd have felt if someone had come along and offered a way to save her that involved facing his deepest, darkest fears.
No one ever had made that offer to him; there'd been nothing anyone could do. But there was still a chance that Roba and his family could have their happy ending – if they could only find their way to that sky raider base that was.
The directions they'd received had been rather vague: head for the mountains, they'd been told, because that's where the sky raiders go. The fact that mountains tended, in general, to be rather large and therefore quite difficult to explore at any speed hadn't really come up. The terrain grew ever more rugged as they went along, while although the rising sun made the going a lot easier, it also made them considerably more visible to passing sky carts than they had been overnight, and they were constantly on edge, listening out for potential danger. Sarah didn't seem to have thought of it yet, but they weren't at all equipped for any serious mountaineering, and Harry was starting to get a bit concerned about just how far – and high – they might have to venture, as their route took them steadily upward through the steep, jagged slopes that formed the foothills of the mountains. It was jolly rough going already – increasingly slippery underfoot as a fine drizzle filled the air, while humidity levels rose steadily with the rising sun – and he didn't like to think how much worse it might get before the journey's end.
Exactly what they thought they were going to do if and when they reached their destination was another problem best not pondered. They would have to cross that bridge when they came to it.
He told himself again not to think about it and concentrated instead on helping first Sarah and then Roba scramble up a particularly steep shelf of rock. Then he began to clamber up after them, and promptly lost his own footing and went tumbling several feet back down the rocky slope to land heavily on his injured arm, sending a jolt of white-hot pain shooting through the nerve endings and whiting out his vision.
"Harry!"
There was a woman and a child present, there was a woman and child present, Harry breathlessly reminded himself, biting back an invective as Sarah came slithering back down from the ledge at speed, calling for Roba to stay where he was.
"Are you all right, are you hurt?" She was suddenly at his side, hands fluttering over him anxiously.
That first fiery rush of pain was subsiding, he could breathe again, and a very careful examination assured him that the wound had not re-opened. He nodded, but took a few more breaths before he dared trust his voice. "Sore, but nothing broken – I'm all right."
"Well, thank goodness for that." Sarah sat back on her heels. "I certainly couldn't carry you if you'd busted an ankle or something. Here." Pushing upright, she held out a hand to help him up…but he'd no sooner taken it than her foot slipped on the damp moss underfoot. She fell forward, throwing Harry off-balance before he made it upright, and they both went over in a heap.
That just about summed up this whole trip so far, really.
Harry took a moment to catch his breath again and sort out their tangled limbs, while Sarah simply leaned her head against his chest and shook with laughter.
"Well, I'm glad someone thinks it's funny," he grumbled.
"If you could see your face!" chortled Sarah …but her giggles quickly died away to become a weary groan as she rolled onto her back, lying against his good arm with her head resting on his shoulder. "Oh, I've never been so tired. Are we nearly there yet?"
"I wish I knew," he admitted with a weary sigh, dislodging her as he pushed up onto his elbows. They could be right on top of the place already and they wouldn't know – there was no scale to that map. Or they might be miles away still, for all he could tell. He wasn't entirely sure how they were supposed to recognise whatever they were looking for when they saw it, for that matter.
Pulling herself up to a sitting position, Sarah looped her arms around her knees, a curtain of silky dark hair tumbling forward to frame her face. "You know, the Doctor keeps promising me a nice, quiet, uneventful trip – somewhere fun, where we can relax. It hasn't happened yet."
"At least you knew you were going somewhere before you went." The words escaped before he could censor them, and Sarah looked worried.
"You don't really regret it, do you, Harry?"
Now there was a question. Did he regret it? Did he regret swapping a comfortable life on Earth, the stability of a job he enjoyed and was good at, for the uncertainty and confusion of careering around the universe at the whim of the Doctor, never knowing which end was up, all because he hadn't believed it when the Doctor claimed that the rickety old police box in the corner of his lab was actually some kind of space ship? Even now he knew the truth of the matter, Harry still felt that his stance on that point had been perfectly reasonable – who in their right mind would ever believe that a chap might keep a time machine in a police box? The Doctor had invited him to step inside just for a moment, just to demonstrate the so-called illusion…and they'd been hurtling from one desperate battle to another ever since, without so much as a moment to draw breath in between.
He couldn't remember the last time he'd had a good night's sleep – or a hearty meal. Couldn't remember the last time he'd gone a full 24 hours without having to run for his life, for that matter.
He'd also seen some rather amazing things along the way – witnessed the future of mankind, no less. He'd helped to save lives, as well, and that was something he could never regret – it was, after all, his primary calling in life. But as far as the rest of it went….
"Ask me again later," he said, "If we manage to find the Doctor and sort all this out."
"You mean when," Sarah immediately corrected. "When we find the Doctor and sort all this out."
Harry mustered up a tired smile for her benefit. "Of course," he agreed. "I mean when."
"Shall I come back down?" Roba's anxious little voice piped up from further up the rocky shelf.
"No, stay where you are, Roba," Sarah quickly called, meeting Harry's eyes with a tired little shrug. "We're just coming."
"No rest for the weary, eh."
Sarah's answering smile was rueful. "Come on."
They helped each other up off the damp, mossy ground and scrambled back up that steep rocky shelf to re-join a very anxious Roba, who promptly reached out and caught hold of Harry's jacket sleeve again, and then they heard it: the unmistakeable hum of a sky cart engine, far too close already and approaching fast.
They just barely had enough time to dive behind a thorny thicket for cover before the sky cart came zooming past the spot where they'd just been standing.
Unwilling to take any chances, they crawled around the other side of the bush and over a ridge to watch where the sky cart was going…and found that they had a bird's eye view of the vehicle as it whooshed across a narrow valley and disappeared into a tunnel at the foot of a mountain on the other side – a very artificial tunnel, at that: large and square with sturdy metallic support struts and a reinforced roof.
So, whatever else it might be, their destination was at least easy to recognise, after all.
"Well, I should say we're just about there, then," Harry redundantly observed. With Sarah at one shoulder and Roba nervously clinging to his other arm still, he peered across the valley at the tunnel, wondering how far back into the mountain it extended…and just how many of those sky raider aliens might be lurking inside.
"Sky raider central," Sarah thoughtfully murmured. "And they've left the door open."
Harry stared at her for a moment, then looked over at the tunnel and back again as her meaning slowly sank in. "Now, look here, Sarah, you're not suggesting that we…"
He didn't bother finishing the sentence, because of course she was.
"We have to get inside, Harry. The Doctor's in there!"
"We think," he countered. It was probably true, but they had no way to tell for certain.
"Well, if you have any better suggestions, I'm all ears," Sarah hotly retorted, and he waved his hands in surrender because he did actually agree with her, in broad principle, at least. They needed to find the Doctor, after all. The trouble was that he was also anxious for all three of them to stay alive and out of enemy hands and wasn't sure that charging in blind would be the best way to achieve that.
"What are you saying?" Roba looked confused. "What are we going to do?"
Sarah lifted an eyebrow. "Yes, Harry – what are we going to do?" she pointedly repeated.
Harry sighed and gave in. "I suppose we should try to get a closer look, at any rate. We might scout around a bit, first, though – there could be some kind of back door."
dwdwdwdwdw
The Doctor flattened himself against a wall and waited until the footsteps of a pair of passing Tarsin had died away, then cautiously peered around the corner to check that the coast was clear before moving on. He'd reached a junction in the winding corridors that made up the moon base, and quickly recited an old Gallifreyan counting rhyme under his breath to help him decide which way to go, since there were no signs or other markings to indicate what might lie in either direction – most inconsiderate of the Tarsin architects who had designed and built the place, he felt. The counting rhyme pointed him left, so he turned right and went that way instead, moving swiftly but cautiously; he had no desire to run into anyone just yet.
The base didn't appear to be overly populated; not in this sector, at least, which he took to be a positive sign, so far as his continued freedom to roam was concerned. And, despite their aversion to helpful signage, the Tarsins had very kindly installed handy viewing panes in their doors, allowing him to peep into each one to see what was inside. He was hoping to find some kind of control room, preferably unoccupied, where he could tap into their systems and learn a bit more about what was going on both here and on Tarse, which would help him to formulate a plan of some kind. This depredation of Lindos and its people simply could not be allowed to continue. Unfortunately, he appeared to be in completely the wrong area – nothing but kitchens, common rooms and crew quarters, all of which was very interesting, in its own way, but wasn't going to furnish him with the information he needed.
Then he spotted a computer console in one of the crew rooms. The door was locked, but the sonic screwdriver quickly saw to that, and he was soon inside the room, where he spent a speculative few minutes tapping away at the console's keypad. It was easy enough to access the contents of the terminal – mostly personal logs, which he quickly skimmed through because all information was of value – but, rather disappointingly, it turned out to be a standalone device with no connection to the centralised system he wanted to explore.
"No, no, this won't do at all," he muttered aloud…but of course there was no one to listen because he'd mislaid his human friends – quite some time ago, as well, which was a bit of a worry.
He allowed himself a moment or two to fret about what might have happened to Sarah and Harry after he lost sight of them, but then pushed those concerns out of his mind once more in order to focus on the task at hand. There was nothing he could do for them at present and the lives of the Lindosian slaves had to take priority. Sarah and Harry could fend for themselves and he would search for them at the first opportunity, but just now he needed to find that control room. He'd wasted too much time already.
The Doctor headed back out into the corridor to continue his exploration of the base, but he'd no sooner stepped through the door than an alarm began to blare. He froze in his tracks, listening intently. So his absence had been noticed at last. He was going to have to hurry.
dwdwdwdwdw
The door to the sky raider base was closed after all; a heavy door, at that, set across the tunnel a little way in, too far back to be seen from a distance.
So much for Sarah's optimistic hope of being able to simply walk right in.
It turned out, though, that Harry was right about there being a back door – sort of. They found it more or less by accident, in the end, as they wearily scrambled around the steep mountain slopes, on edge, painfully exposed and increasingly desperate to find a way, any way, of getting inside that base.
They could, of course, have simply sat alongside the doors and waited for them to open again, and Sarah was exhausted enough that she almost wished they had – at least they'd have been able to rest a little – but they weren't quite that desperate yet.
Some way above the tunnel was a plateau that had probably once been a natural feature of the mountain, but which now bore the scars of sky raider occupation in the form of the most enormous trap doors Sarah had ever seen, cut deep into the rock. They weren't going to get in that way, either, but further down the incline was a cave. They ducked into it for shelter when the steady drizzle of the morning turned into a sudden burst of heavy rain, and were startled to realise that they could hear noises, the distant sound of voices and machinery, coming from somewhere deep within the mountain.
The cave was the entrance to another tunnel. It was damp, narrow and cramped, but it led into the base – it had to, for that sound to be coming through. Whether or not it was big enough for adult humans to get through was another question entirely, but it was the only possible way in they'd found, so they had to give it a go.
Sarah already had sore feet, painfully blistered from an unanticipated night of orienteering through steep, rocky hills in shoes that she would not have chosen to wear for this trip if she'd known what it was going to involve. Now she was acquiring quite a collection of scrapes and bruises to go with them as she squeezed and occasionally crawled her way through the pitch dark and painfully narrow passageway, continually catching her head, elbows, shoulders and hips on rocky protuberances along the way. Little grunts and owws filtering back from up ahead told her that Harry was having an even harder time of it, tall and broad-shouldered as he was. He couldn't stand up straight even in the highest sections of the passage. Young Roba, sandwiched in between them, seemed to be the only one for whom the going was relatively smooth.
"I've been through some pretty nasty tunnels in my time, but this one takes the biscuit!" she muttered under her breath as her hair caught on yet another snag. Jerking her head to pull it free, she managed to pitch face-first into some kind of alien cobweb, and had to bite back a yelp of surprise and disgust as she spluttered her way free of it.
It would be worth it in the end, she promised herself as she brushed the sticky strands off her face with a grimy hand. As long as there was a way through, as long as this damp, dirty little passageway led them to the Doctor, it would be worth it, because they simply had to find the Doctor – and find some way to free the people of this world, as well, for that matter. If crawling through this poky, dirty little hole was what it took, then so be it.
Oh, but it was horrible, though.
"Are you all right?" a small voice whispered alongside her, and she realised that Roba had crept back to see why she'd stopped. She mustered up a smile for the boy – which he probably couldn't see anyway, it was so dark – and assured him that she was fine, just catching her breath. He promptly disappeared again, and she could hear him hissing "she's all right," somewhere up ahead, closely followed by a guarded 'hush' from Harry.
Sucking in a deep breath, Sarah pressed on, squeezing around a narrow bend in the tunnel into a slightly wider section, where Harry and Roba were waiting for her to catch up.
It was brighter here, she realised in dull surprise: still very murky but light enough that she could see Harry lift a finger to his lips to warn her not to make any sound. Then he moved aside and she saw that they were almost out at last, their tunnel tapering away once more to become a narrow fissure through which light was filtering from some kind of cavern that lay beyond. It would just about be wide enough to squeeze through, she realised with relief as she pressed herself against the rocky wall to cautiously peer through the gap into what looked like some kind of vast garage or aircraft hangar, carved out of sheer rock.
The fissure that formed the entrance to their tunnel was quite high up, which was probably at least part of the reason it hadn't been barred – after all, who in their right mind would ever even dream of trying to get in or out this way? The aliens must have dismissed it as a useful ventilation shaft and thought no more of it, which was a stroke of luck for them…if they could only manage to get down safely, without being seen.
It would be an awful drop from up here, but it might just about be do-able – it had to be, because there was no other way.
There didn't seem to be anyone around. Sarah turned back to Harry. "Coast's clear," she murmured and he nodded. If they wanted to make a move, and they did, now was the time to do it.
Harry went first, since he was the tallest, awkwardly squeezing through the narrow fissure, gingerly lowering himself until he was hanging by his fingertips, and then dropping the last few feet to the floor below. He landed with quite a clatter, grabbing onto the wall to keep from pitching over, and then froze, waiting to see if anyone had heard.
It all seemed quiet still, although for how much longer was anyone's guess. Sarah sent Roba down next, almost cringing: it was such a horribly long drop for such a small boy. But although Harry could be clumsy enough on occasion, he was generally reliable when it really mattered. He caught the boy easily and set him gently down, then reached up to help Sarah as she took her turn.
As she made her highly undignified descent, scraping both elbow and chin against the rocky wall in the process, Sarah was only grateful that she was wearing trousers rather than a skirt, and took comfort in the fact that Harry was even more embarrassed than she was by the hands-everywhere manoeuvring involved in helping her down.
All right, so they were down. Sarah dabbed at the scrape on her chin as she gazed around curiously. So where were they?
"Sky carts!" Roba's voice was no more than a whisper as the boy cowered behind Harry at the sight of the dreaded vehicles, parked in neat rows near what must be the end of that main tunnel they'd seen earlier. There were other tunnels, smaller tunnels, opening out of the vast cavern at odd intervals, while assorted bits and pieces of equipment were scattered around here and there; apart than being carved out of rock, it really did resemble nothing so much as the workshop at Sarah's local garage…except that over at the far end of the cavern there was…
"A spaceship," she gasped in surprise, gazing over at the enormous rocket, which sat beneath those giant trapdoors they'd seen out on the mountainside. Then she wondered why she was so surprised; the sky raider aliens had to have travelled to this planet somehow, after all, so of course they would have a ship. She just hadn't expected to find it underground. It wasn't very big, though, not to have transported all these vehicles and equipment and everything, so what did that mean – were there other ships somewhere else, or…?
"Shh," Harry suddenly hissed. "Someone's coming."
They just barely had time to take cover before one of the aliens came into sight, sauntering over to a control panel near to the parked sky carts.
So that was what the sky raiders looked like. While Roba cringed in fear, hiding his face in Harry's shoulder, Sarah stared in fascination at the odd-looking alien with its beaky face, misshapen bald head and leathery yellow skin, like nothing she'd ever seen before – and she'd seen a fair few varieties of alien in her time. It pressed a few switches on the control panel and a groaning sound ensued from somewhere down the main tunnel – those heavy doors opening, perhaps, Sarah wondered, and moments later her guess was confirmed as another sky cart flew out of the tunnel to land nearby.
"About time," the first alien snapped in a scratchy, nasal voice as two more clambered out of the sky cart's front cab. "You're the last – what kept you?"
"This."
The back of the sky cart was directly facing their hiding place, which meant they had a perfect view into the vehicle as its rear door was opened. Sarah had to clamp a hand over her own mouth to keep from crying out in surprise when she saw what was inside.
It was the TARDIS – they'd found and captured the TARDIS.
dwdwdwdwdw
The domestic sector of the moon base wasn't quite as deserted as it had been previously, now that there was an alarm blaring to trigger a full-scale search for a missing prisoner.
Speaking as that missing prisoner, the Doctor thought it was most unhelpful of them to fill the hallways like this just when he was trying to move around without being seen. He had a lot to do, if he wanted to free the Lindosian slaves, see off the Tarsin invaders, and find his lost friends, and all this ducking and diving to avoid detection wasn't making any of it any easier.
Freeing the Lindosian slaves and ridding their world of the Tarsin invaders was his top priority, it had to be…but the absence of his human friends was nagging at him now. Quite aside from missing having someone to talk to, which he did, he was growing rather concerned that something might have happened to them, out of his sight for so long on a strange world – humans were so prone to finding trouble wherever they went.
Then again, he mused with some regret as he surreptitiously crept out of his latest hiding place and ventured around a corner only to find himself face to face with a rather startled but heavily armed Tarsin, Harry and Sarah might very well say just the same thing about him, if they could only see him now.
dwdwdwdwdw