Part Two
"You were 'just passing'? Is that what you expect me to believe?" demanded the man who'd introduced himself as Commander Armin Vishinsky, second-in-command of the space probe KX9-06 and leader of an investigatory landing party; an older man, sallow and grizzled with worry lines worn deep around shrewd eyes, wearing a severe expression and brandishing a gun.
"Er." Harry looked to the Doctor, to see if he might step in to field the questions now – talking his way out of trouble was generally his forte, after all – but the man showed no sign whatsoever of joining the conversation, his earlier good humour evaporated into pensive silence, leaning casually against a worktop with his hands stuffed deep in his pockets, wide blue eyes fixed on nothing in particular, lost in his own thoughts.
He wasn't going to be any help. Harry turned back to Vishinsky and tried again.
"Well, it's still true, whether you believe us or not," he insisted, wondering how he could convince the man. "We were just passing – well, sort of – when we picked up some kind of distress call, thought we'd better pop down and investigate, see if there was anything we could do." He looked from one unconvinced face to another, and added, "Look, you must have heard it yourselves. Isn't that why you're here?"
"Distress call," Vishinsky disbelievingly repeated. "There was no distress call – any signal would have been monitored by our receivers."
"Perhaps my receivers are better than yours," the Doctor spoke up at last with a languid smile. One of the guards snapped at him to be quiet, and he reproachfully added, "My manners certainly are," with an expressive eye-roll in Harry's direction.
"Zeta Minor is in the farthest reaches of space, beyond Cygnus A," Vishinsky crisply declared, still looking stern but also rather tired and worried, and Harry was suddenly reminded of a headmaster he'd had at prep school, a kindly man who'd never wanted to have to play the disciplinarian but nonetheless came down like a tonne of bricks when he had to, strict but fair. "It's as distant again from Ortoro galaxy as that galaxy is from the Anterades, the very end of the known universe. No one 'just passes by' this region. Yet here you are. So let me ask you again: what are you doing here, and what have you done to Professor Sorenson's survey team?"
"That's a very good question, Commander Vishinsky," said the Doctor – rather too cheerfully, Harry felt, in the circumstances. "What happened to the survey team? I think it's high time we began to find out, don't you?"
"If you would explain yourselves properly, perhaps we might," Vishinsky snapped, adding in a curt aside to one of his adjutants, "Find out what's wrong with the lights in here, Landa. This would be easier if we could see clearly."
"I believe you'll find the fault in the main solar cell," the Doctor helpfully suggested as the petite, pretty female operative moved to examine the control console, holstering her weapon. "I had intended to repair it, but I'm afraid we've been rather waylaid, haven't we, Harry?"
"We certainly have, Doctor," Harry had to agree, folding his arms across his chest.
"Then why damage the cell in the first place?" Vishinsky had what were popularly known as beetling brows, startlingly white, and they all but met in the middle as he frowned.
"There you go again," said the Doctor with a smile and a shrug. "You're assuming that my colleague and I are responsible for what's happened here, when in fact that couldn't be further from the truth. We came to investigate –"
"This phantom distress signal, yes, so you say," Vishinsky interrupted.
"It's still true," Harry told him, although in all honesty he could see how it looked – if the situation were reversed and UNIT found a pair of possibly alien strangers standing over a pile of corpses, they'd be inclined to suspicion, as well.
"Yet I can't possibly believe it." Vishinsky looked exasperated. "The last report received by Morestran Federal Council indicated that Professor Sorenson and his team had made a breakthrough in their research, a discovery of crucial importance – and then all contact with them was lost. Our space probe was diverted to investigate, and what do we find? The pair of you standing over their graves, on a planet you could only have reached by design. Yet you claim innocence? Espionage, more like: industrial espionage and a cold-blooded attempt at stealing Professor Sorenson's findings. Give me one good reason why I shouldn't simply charge you with eight counts of murder and have done with it."
The Doctor's ears pricked up. "Eight counts of murder? You mean to say there were eight members of the survey team? That's very interesting – isn't that very interesting, Harry?"
"Interesting? You call murder 'interesting'?" Vishinsky spluttered in fury.
Harry, though, saw at once what the Doctor was getting at. "Five graves, two corpses – you're a man short, Commander."
dwdwdwdw
"It wasn't my fault," Sarah's strange new acquaintance muttered as he pushed and shoved his way through the boggy undergrowth. Sarah had no idea where he was leading her but had to trot to keep pace with him, ducking beneath low-hanging branches wound round with vines that glowed faintly luminescent in the dark, and stumbling over roots and through thick mud; these lovely boots she'd found in the Doctor's wardrobe would never be the same again. "It wasn't my fault. I had to keep working, my researches are vital – mustn't stop, can't give up. It wasn't my fault."
"I'm sure it wasn't," Sarah attempted to reassure him, telling herself to tread carefully because the man was unstable and unpredictable. Torn between sympathy for his pitiful condition and concern for where his mental state might lead, she half-wished she'd gone after those other men, to find out what they'd done with the TARDIS, but they'd moved off almost immediately leaving this one her best chance of finding out what was going on here – if she could only manage to get some sense out of him. "Perhaps if you told me where we're going…"
"My samples!" he exclaimed, as if he'd assumed it were obvious. "My equipment, my work. Who are these strangers? Stealing my work!"
"They probably came because of the distress signal," Sarah suggested in the most soothing tone she could muster. "Like we did."
He stopped short and swung around sharply, fixed her with eyes that were suddenly shrewd and suspicious. "What distress signal? I set no distress signal."
"Well someone did," Sarah told him. "Because I heard it, and those other people must have heard it as well, mustn't they, or why else would they be here?"
There was a note of hysteria in his answering laugh. "Do you have any idea where you are?"
He didn't wait for an answer, charging off again even faster than before.
Sarah began to follow but stopped almost at once because she could hear that crackling sound once more, the humid air turning to frost in her lungs before she had even a second to react – it was happening again, she was trapped, unable to move, unable to breathe – why had she dismissed this, how could she ever have persuaded herself she'd imagined it…?
It lasted only a second this time and then again was gone as abruptly as it had come, leaving her gasping and shivering. That wild-eyed man, heavy-set yet haggard, had come back, stood staring at her as if he'd never seen her before.
"Full night," he muttered. "Full night, they come at night. Can't trust what you see." He narrowed his eyes to glare at her. "Are you real?"
dwdwdwdw
"Blue box successfully transposed to probe for investigation," said a tinny voice over Vishinsky's communication device. "We'll continue the search."
Harry watched as Vishinsky, looking harassed, closed down the communicator and moved to chivvy the female crewmember, Landa, as she worked on the connections to the power cell, or some such. The other crewman – a swarthy, long-legged chap with a shock of improbably-coloured hair that couldn't possibly be regulation – was taking the opportunity to slouch at the door rather than guard it, since his commander's eyes weren't on him. Harry and the Doctor, shoved into a quiet corner for safekeeping, seemed to have been forgotten for the moment.
He tried sidling a little closer to the Doctor, who didn't appear to be paying the blindest bit of attention, standing with his hands in his pockets and his eyes blankly fixed on the wall opposite, again staring at nothing in a manner that was almost unnerving.
"They've got the TARDIS," Harry murmured under his breath, wondering if Sarah had made it there before it was found or if she was still out wandering the woods someplace trying to avoid the rest of the search team – probably best not to mention her within earshot of Vishinsky's chaps, just in case.
"Oh, you noticed that, too." Roused from his semi-trance, the Doctor shook his head sadly. "Do you know, Harry, this trip isn't turning out at all how I'd envisaged."
"Isn't it?" Mysterious corpses, guns, captivity – it all seemed rather par for the course to Harry, and he said so. "It's more or less exactly what I was expecting."
"And still you came." The Doctor seemed amused. "We'll make an adventurer of you yet, Harry."
"Just following orders, Doctor," he was quick to point out, since it had been the Brigadier's instruction to see the Doctor safely back to London that brought him back aboard for this trip, after all, but the Doctor only chuckled in much the same way Sarah had earlier.
"If you insist, Harry – hang about, what are they doing now?"
Vishinsky was on the communicator again, this time to his commanding officer up on the orbiting space probe.
"The landing site is moving to obverse, so we'll come in now, we'll miss the window if we wait for dawn," the captain's voice announced over the receiver. "I'll see to the prisoners myself when we arrive. Salamar out."
Tucking the communicator away, Vishinsky swung around with a brusque, "As you were, Wijaya," to the guard at the door, who snapped to attention with a little grin that was pure chagrin at being caught lounging on duty, not that Vishinsky waited to see this reaction, continuing his arc around to Harry and the Doctor. "A full and immediate confession would save you great discomfort," he warned, rather worryingly. Harry shot an uneasy glance toward the Doctor, who seemed remarkably untroubled by the threat.
"Discomfort? You mean you're going to torture us," he said, far more calmly than the situation warranted, Harry felt, visions of that torture device the Kaleds had strapped him into back on Skaro flashing through his mind. It had been switched on only for a matter of seconds, in the end, but they were seconds he was not anxious to relive.
"Interrogate you," Vishinsky corrected, and that might have been reassuring if he hadn't added, "And nobody, I'm afraid, withstands Morestran interrogation for very long."
"We've already told you everything we know," Harry burst out. "You can ask as many questions as you like; the story isn't going to change."
The Doctor made a shushing sound and patted his hand in a manner he probably intended to be soothing, eyes fixed on Vishinsky, stern and searching. "It's all right, Harry. Commander Vishinsky is a reasonable man, I'm sure he'll –"
"Sir," Landa interrupted.
Vishinsky swung around, irritated. "Yes, what now?"
Landa was no taller than Sarah, sleek black hair neatly cropped to a chin-length bob and uniform immaculate. Her tawny-brown skin flushed to pink around the cheeks in the face of her commander's ill temper, but she stood her ground, back straight and bearing upright. "I thought you'd want to know, sir. I've checked all the connections to be certain – the distress beacon is active, sir."
Vishinsky was visibly thrown. "It can't be. We'd have picked up the signal."
"That's the thing, sir – there is no signal, at least not strong enough for the probe to receive. It's extremely weak, highly localised – wouldn't extend far beyond these walls, in fact."
"Which takes us back to the faulty solar cell," said the Doctor, beaming at the girl with delight. "No reserve, so when the beacon was activated it must have redirected what little power was available from other systems until that too was depleted – before your ship came within range. My own receivers are far more acute, of course. Well done…I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name."
She hesitated, darting uncertain side eyes toward Vishinsky before answering. "Technician Landa, Samina Landa, sir."
"Oh, I'm not a sir and there's no really need to stand on ceremony, Technician Samina Landa," said the Doctor. "It's a pleasure to meet you – now, about that solar cell –"
"Enough," thundered Vishinsky. He looked confused, and didn't seem the sort of man who much appreciated being confused. "I don't know exactly what happened here, but I do know this: seven Morestran field researchers have been killed, the eighth is missing, and you two are the only suspects we have. Now, Captain Salamar is bringing the probe down to the planet, you will be interrogated and we will get to the bottom of the matter, one way or another."
"Or," said the Doctor, "We could all work together to solve the mystery – my colleague and I really could help you, if you'd only let us."
"You're suspects in a murder investigation," said Vishinsky with deep exasperation. "How can we trust anything you say?"
Harry had been thinking about that. "Wouldn't the survey team have kept some kind of log?" he suggested, inspired as much by vague memories of Star Trek as by his own practical experience of lab-based research, and every eye in the room was suddenly upon him. "Well, whatever happened, if they had time to conduct burials, they'll also have kept records of some kind, surely."
Vishinsky didn't seem entirely convinced but the Doctor nodded approvingly. "Good thinking, Harry. So what do you say, Commander? Must we sit around counting one another's eyebrow hairs waiting for Captain Salamar to arrive? Or shall we see what we can do about restoring power and get on with the investigation while we wait? Because I can assure you that my friend and I had nothing to do with the deaths of these people – but something did, and it's still out there."
dwdwdwdw
Tired, thirsty and footsore, Sarah deeply regretted allowing herself to be led so far off the beaten track, but there was no turning back now, not if she wanted to learn anything about whatever was going on here – which she did.
"Here. Here, you see? It's my work, my researches – it's important. I had to stay, it's important," gabbled her odd, traumatised companion, guiding her up a steep rocky incline and through a narrow cleft onto a kind of plateau.
It was chilly up here on the hillside, and away from the luminescence of the vines that proliferated throughout the jungle, with only the pale light of the stars to see by, it was hard to make out much detail, only shadows and darker shadows and odd little glints and twinkles here and there, their source unknown. The man, though, didn't seem to mind the dark at all, lunging away into the shadows as surefooted as a mountain goat, leaving Sarah to fumble blindly at the rocks for some kind of guide.
She couldn't see how big this plateau either was or wasn't. She couldn't see where the man had gone. She couldn't even see the gap in the rocks they'd come through to get here, which meant she'd struggle to find her way back down to the jungle in search of the Doctor and Harry, to warn them about the disappearance of the TARDIS and the presence of these other people. She could have kicked herself – coming all this way and for what?
A light came on, startlingly bright, dazzling her. Blinking rapidly to clear dancing afterimages from her eyes, she slowly made out the figure of her strange new companion fussing over a jumble of scientific equipment as a mother might her lost child. He'd switched on a lamp, reached now to light another, and she was grateful for the illumination this offered, allowing her to make out her surroundings. High enough and rocky enough to be free of the marsh and mud of the jungle, the plateau was dominated by a large pool within a gaping crater, around which lay clusters of gemstones – hundreds, maybe thousands of them, littering the ground.
Sarah stared in wonder, knelt to take up a handful of the shimmering gems and marvelled at the quantity and beauty of them, their shifting colours, iridescent in the lamplight, like nothing she'd ever seen before. They were cold to the touch, heavier than they looked, and gave off a curious tingling sensation – a bit like the static electricity you got from rubbing a balloon against your hair. What on Earth – or, rather, what not on Earth were they?
A hand clamped around her wrist, forcing her to drop the jewels. She looked up into the bloodshot hazel eyes of her strange companion.
"No," he said, suddenly fierce. "No touching – they're not to touch."
"I'm sorry." Pulling her wrist free, Sarah held her hands up to show that they were now empty, not wanting to antagonise him needlessly. He seemed to have accepted her as a friend, but he was unpredictable and she did not want him to turn on her. "I won't touch if you don't want me to."
He was satisfied and turned back to his equipment with a nod. Sarah watched him for a moment, wondering what he was doing – the Doctor would know – and, more to the point, wondering what she should do next. Could she learn anything from this madman, or do anything for him? Or should she try to find her way back to Harry and the Doctor now? They'd be worried about her. She was worried about them, with the TARDIS captured.
The man was rooting through his equipment and some of it spilled, scattering across the rocky floor. She bent to help him gather it together again and picked up a notebook, which had a neat little label in the corner.
"Evan Danziger," she read. The name seemed familiar, somehow, but she couldn't quite place it. "Is that you? Are you Evan Danziger?"
He startled upon hearing the name and snatched the book from her hand, stared at its label in sudden distress, nostrils flaring and lips trembling.
"No." Head shaking, his voice was no more than a whisper now, his eyes wide, almost frightened, like a lost little boy. "No, I was professor….professor – this was my team. My team…."
Evan Danziger – it was one of the names inscribed on the grave markers back at the base, Sarah suddenly remembered. "What happened to your team, Professor?"
He stared at her, eyes bright and brimming. "It wasn't my fault."
"I'm sure that's true," she offered, knowing the reassurance was meaningless, hoping it would soothe him into saying something even remotely informative anyway.
"My work is important," he insisted. "It had to continue."
Curiosity well and truly piqued, Sarah tried a different tack. "Can you tell me about your work? Why was it so important?"
His gaze shifted to take in the plateau, the gemstones, that jumble of scientific equipment. There was a dazed look about him now, yet he also seemed more lucid than she'd seen him yet. Would he explain what had happened here?
As he opened his mouth to speak, there was a shout from out in the jungle – a male voice, a cry of pure anguish.
Was that Harry? Or the Doctor?
The professor and whatever he was about to say flew out of Sarah's mind entirely. She snatched up one of the lamps and ran, scrambling back through the cleft and down the rocky incline to the jungle, in search of the owner of that voice.
dwdwdwdw
"So we are going to just sit around counting one another's eyebrow hairs until Captain Salamar arrives, then," Harry grumbled, pacing around the bunk room in exasperation, Commander Vishinsky having conceded that restoring power and attempting to access the survey team's logs would be a good step forward in the investigation, while remaining unwilling to allow murder suspects to play any part in that work. He'd had the two of them locked away in here, with that corpse for company, while he and his team got on with repairs.
The Doctor was no help – he'd just sat himself down on a bunk and drifted back off into that semi-trance of his once more, the moment they were shoved in here.
"Shh," he said, not even glancing in Harry's direction. "I'm thinking."
Harry sighed and paced some more, wondering how they could possibly convince these people they were telling the truth and what Sarah might have been up to all this time, if she was safe. He looked out of the window to see if there was any sign of the probe yet, and then froze because he thought he'd heard something.
"I say, did you hear that?"
There was only silence now, both without and within the room. He was sure though.
"Doctor, I heard something."
The Doctor roused slightly. "What kind of something?"
"A shout – Sarah's still out there, you know."
That got his interest. "Was it Sarah who shouted?"
"Well, I don't think so," Harry had to admit, half-expecting to be given a lecture about raising false alarms, but the Doctor only frowned.
"I was hoping for a quick word with Captain Salamar – still, if you're sure…" He bounced to his feet, suddenly all business. "We'd better investigate, hadn't we?"
He made it sound so easy. "Er, Doctor – aren't you forgetting something?"
The Doctor's eyes went wide and round – well, wider and rounder, that was. "Am I?"
Harry gestured at the door. "We're locked in."
The Doctor grinned. "No, Harry, I think you're forgetting something – and so is Commander Vishinsky. Power locks…but there's no power to power the locks. So it doesn't lock."
He reached for the door – but he had forgotten something, Harry realised. "Wait, we can't go out there. That's where Vishinsky is."
The Doctor stopped, hand already on the door, and looked slightly embarrassed. "Ah," he said. "Yes. Good point."
"Er…the window?" Harry offered, reasoning that if there was no power to seal the door locks, then surely the same would also be true of the only other possible exit from the room.
"I knew I'd brought you along for a reason, Harry." The Doctor's grin was pure mischief and Harry got the distinct impression he was being sent up. "Let's go."
dwdwdwdw
Struggling through a particularly boggy bit of ground that threatened to tug her boots from her feet, Sarah wasn't entirely sure she was going the right way. That shout had come from this direction, hadn't it? She could no longer tell.
She hauled her way to marginally drier, firmer land, fought her way free of a prickly vine that caught at her clothes and snarled in her hair, and stumbled out into a small clearing where a uniformed figure was huddled over a body, hands fluttering as if unsure what to do.
She'd come the right way after all, then.
"Hello?" She approached cautiously and crouched to look at the corpse, which was just like the one back at the base – dried up like a thousand-year-old mummy – and then looked up into a narrow, high-cheek-boned face with the blackest skin she'd ever seen, currently blanched with shock. He was very young and very afraid, so shaken that he didn't even question her presence.
It was the two men she'd seen earlier, she was sure of it – the ones who'd made the TARDIS disappear. Looking down at the corpse again, she remembered noticing what a contrast they made, the one so dark and the other so fair. She'd seen the dead man no more than an hour ago, surely, as hale and healthy as they came…how could he have been reduced to a mere husk like this, and so fast? His bright blond hair was shrivelled up like old straw, milk-fair skin turned waxen and grey, once rosy cheeks now sunken and hollow…Harry had said the other corpse was fresh, but she wasn't sure she'd truly believed it until this moment. What could do this to a man?
"H-he's dead," stammered the young man. "It's Bartrum. He's dead."
"I know," Sarah soothed. "I know. Can you tell me what happened?"
"I just stopped for a minute – only a minute. My boot was loose – stuck in the mud. I thought he'd wait. He didn't wait…" He clasped his hands behind his bowed head and brought his elbows together to hide his face, palms pressed flat against the multiple tiny braids that ran tight against his scalp, ending in so many inch-long pigtails.
Touched by his distress, Sarah reached out to rest a hand on his shoulder. "It's all right. It's not your fault. What's your name?"
"Ola," he muttered, and then blinked, dashed a hand across his eyes and made an attempt to pull himself together. "Oh, um, that is – Sub-ensign Utoblo. Ola Utoblo. I was…I should…I need to call this in…I have to…" He stopped, frowned as if seeing her for the first time. "Wait – who are you?"
"Sarah Jane Smith. We heard a distress signal and stopped to see if we could help. Isn't that why you're here, as well?"
He shook his head slowly, suspicion creeping into his eyes. "You're with the others – Commander Vishinsky says you're responsible. You did this – you killed him."
"No!" Sarah protested in alarm, startled both by the accusation and the implication. 'The others', he'd said. Where were the Doctor and Harry? What had happened to them? "Think about it, Ola – how could I have killed him? I wasn't here."
"I don't know that – I didn't see what happened. You could have killed him and then come back…" A note of alarm tinged his voice now. He jerked away and pushed upright, reaching for the gun holstered on his belt. "You won't do that to me, not to me. Stand up and start moving. I'm taking you back to base. The captain will know what to do with you."
dwdwdwdw
"Which way?" asked the Doctor, scrambling out of the bunkroom window so hot on Harry's heels he almost landed on top of him.
Hopping hurriedly out of the way, Harry hesitated, because he had absolutely no idea which direction the very distant shout he'd heard might or might not have come from. "Er…"
He got no further as a faint whine he'd been only vaguely aware of for the last few minutes became ear-splitting, the whole glade suddenly lit up from above, and the Doctor caught at his arm to stop him going any further. "Look out!"
It was the probe – a massive spheroid, landing struts extended – making its final, impressively vertical descent directly in their path, the scorching heat of its engines forcing them to stumble back and away. There was a time the sight of an honest-to-goodness spaceship would have inspired awe, but all Harry could think just now was that it was cutting off the route back to the TARDIS, the way Sarah would have gone.
A moment later there was another shout, this one much closer at hand: Commander Vishinky and his aides had come out of the base and spotted them. So much for making a clean getaway.
The Doctor glanced back and then quickly turned away again, as if he thought they might not see him if he couldn't see them. "Don't look now, Harry," he muttered, slinging an arm around Harry's shoulders, "But I think the good commander might be onto us."
"Stay where you are!" shouted Vishinsky.
Harry glanced over his shoulder to see that all three were brandishing their weapons – had the Doctor had ever, he wondered, landed in a place without anything like this happening? "I think you might be right, Doctor."
They exchanged rueful glances and raised their hands, turning around in unison to face their captors.
"Come back here," Vishinsky ordered.
"Doctor – Harry!" The sudden shout startled them all.
It was Sarah, emerging from the forest around the side of the probe as it settled onto the ground, that ear-splitting whine finally beginning to subside – and she was at gunpoint, another of Vishinsky's men at her back.
"Utoblo, what is this? Where's Bartrum?" Vishinsky called out.
"He's dead, she did something to him and he's dead!"
"I didn't!" Sarah indignantly protested. Harry reached out to her as she approached, captor at her heels, and she caught at his outstretched hand to tuck herself in between him and the Doctor, safety in numbers. "Doctor, it was the same as that other body we saw – it happened in minutes, Ola said, just a couple of minutes. I'd seen him, he was alive – and then he looked like that." She pointed to the first body they'd found, still lying where he'd fallen close to the impromptu graves of his colleagues.
"As fast as that?" The Doctor was intrigued.
"Strange how you failed to mention when questioned that you had an accomplice roaming loose still," Vishinsky observed. "How many more of you are there?"
"No more, I can assure you," said the Doctor in his mildest tone.
"Just as you assured us you were not responsible for these deaths?"
The Doctor opened his mouth and then closed it again, scratched at his head and wrinkled his noise, chagrined. "Ah. Yes. I do apologise for the omission, I can quite see how it must look, but given the hostility of the reception Harry and I received, I'm sure you can understand our reluctance to expose our friend to the same. Allow me to introduce Miss Sarah Jane Smith – Sarah, this is Commander Vishinsky. I'm afraid he's quite determined to blame us for the deaths of the survey team."
"Oh, but they aren't all dead," said Sarah. "I met one of them."
"What?" Vishinsky was startled. "You've seen Professor Sorenson?"
"Well, he didn't tell me his name, but he said he was a professor," Sarah began, and then stopped as a hatch slid open beneath the probe and a set of steps dropped down into position.
Flanked by armed guards, a man who could only be Captain Salamar strode down the steps in state. Startlingly pale with narrow-set eyes, sandy hair cropped close to his scalp, he was surprisingly young for his position of command. Not a tall man, he paused halfway down the steps to regard the assembled party down his nose in supercilious fashion, while his guards took up position around him, weapons at the ready.
"Vishinsky," he snapped. "Explain!"
dwdwdwdw
"Get your hands off me – let go!" Sarah squirmed away from a rigorous and intrusive search of her clothing and heard a scuffle nearby as Harry likewise protested, while the Doctor loudly complained that he was capable of emptying his own pockets, thanks all the same.
None of it did them any good. They were pushed, still struggling, back inside the survey team's base, roughly enough that Sarah almost overbalanced, caught at Harry's arm to save herself and nearly took him down with her.
"Do you ever get tired of being pushed around?" she grumbled as they steadied themselves, hanging onto one another for balance – and perhaps also, a little, for reassurance. All they'd done was respond to a distress call. It was infuriating.
"Frequently." It was the Doctor who muttered a response to her rhetorical question, sounding heartily fed-up yet resigned. It was rare to catch even such a fleeting glimpse behind his usual smiling façade, Sarah knew, but being shoved around at gunpoint when you were only trying to help was enough to wear anyone down, even him – maybe especially him.
"They are unarmed," Commander Vishinsky informed Captain Salamar.
"Well, of course we're unarmed." It was Harry's turn to grumble.
"Bring the prisoners forward," Vishinsky ordered, ignoring him.
Sarah glared at the guard nearest her, silently daring him to try pushing her again. A tall man with carefully coiffed hair patterned in brightly coloured stripes, he seemed to get the message, quirked an eyebrow in something that looked like sympathy and backed off. She stepped forward under her own steam with as much dignity as she could muster, Harry hovering protectively at her shoulder, which for once she didn't mind at all. They were all in this together – right up to their necks.
"Prisoners?" said the Doctor, smiling façade well and truly back in place, as if it had never slipped. "We're here to help, although you don't make it easy."
Captain Salamar eyed him down his long, thin nose – no mean feat, considering he was a full head shorter. "You are prisoners, charged with diverse acts of war against the subjects of Morestra."
Sarah couldn't believe what she was hearing.
"This is ridiculous," she protested, furious with them all, while the Doctor simultaneously countered the accusation with a firm, "Not guilty," and Harry argued, "We've already been through all this. We haven't done anything!"
"Silence," snapped Vishinsky, before adding, with a little more sympathy, "You will have your chance to speak."
"Thank you," said the Doctor with a decidedly sarcastic edge to his voice, incurring another glower from Salamar.
"This interrogation will be conducted in an orderly manner," the young captain insisted. "Failure to comply will result in your immediate execution."
He looked as if he meant it, as well. Sarah saw the Doctor open his mouth to argue some more and quickly stepped on his toe to shut him up. He subsided, looking mutinous.
"Not only have seven Morestran scientists been killed but now a member of my own crew has died. Your group is implicated in all these deaths with no other suspects." Captain Salamar had rather a high-pitched voice with a slight squeak to it, which undermined his attempt at judicial solemnity somewhat, but his conviction was absolute. "What have you to say for yourselves?"
"We haven't killed anyone!" Sarah glared at Ola Utoblo, who still looked distraught and was refusing to meet her eyes; she'd approached him to offer support and he'd turned on her, because he was afraid and upset and for no better reason than that. "Look, go and find the professor, if you don't believe me. He can tell you – I was with him when Bartrum was killed."
At least, she hoped the professor would corroborate her story; he was unstable enough that she wouldn't put it past him to have forgotten her completely.
"I should like nothing more than to find and de-brief Professor Sorenson," said Captain Salamar. "But there's no evidence beyond your word that he's even alive."
"He is – at least, he was when I saw him," Sarah faltered, suddenly doubtful, because anything might have happened to the professor since she left him.
A hand slid into hers and gave it an encouraging little squeeze – Harry, of course, trying to be reassuring. She squeezed back to return the moral support. Why wouldn't these people believe them?
"Then why did he not show himself to the search team?" Commander Vishinsky demanded – to the annoyance of his captain, who looked more than a bit disgruntled at having his interrogation hijacked.
"He hid from them," Sarah explained. "He was afraid – he didn't know who you were."
The Doctor, at least, was interested in her story. "What else did Professor Sorenson say, Sarah?"
"Well, he was babbling, confused – I think he was in shock. He said his work was important, too important not to continue. And he kept saying it wasn't his fault –"
"I'll ask the questions, thank you," Captain Salamar interrupted.
The Doctor ignored him completely. "What wasn't his fault? Did he tell you anything about the nature of his work?"
"Enough!" Salamar's voice was shrill with indignation. "I'm asking the questions here."
"Then ask the right questions, man," snapped the Doctor. "This girl is both the only person here to have spoken to Professor Sorenson and the only person present with direct first-hand experience of the phenomenon that killed all these people, and you're too busy accusing her to hear what she has to say."
"You mean that funny turn I had when we first got here? You think it's connected?" A chill ran down Sarah's spine as she realised what he was implying. "It happened again later, as well, when I was with Sorenson – I couldn't move, as if I was being pulled from my body."
The Doctor regarded her sombrely. "You had a lucky escape, Sarah."
"There will be no more escapes," said Salamar, who didn't seem to be following the conversation at all. "I've heard enough of these lies and evasions."
"I'm not lying." Exasperation lent a hard edge to Sarah's voice. "Go and find Professor Sorenson if you don't believe me. He'll probably hide from you again, though," she ruefully added.
"I sent out one search team and found no trace of the professor, and a member of my crew is now dead," said Salamar. "I don't have such a large crew that I'm willing to throw away more lives on a wild goose chase."
"A commendable attitude indeed, Captain," said the Doctor with an approving nod and a broad smile. "Perhaps you might like to extend it to the possibility that my friends and I are innocent."
"The evidence against you –"
"Is circumstantial at best." The Doctor's voice became stern and authoritative. "You accuse us because we're here and for no better reason than that, an easy scapegoat to save you the trouble of investigating further. Captain Salamar, Commander Vishinsky, all our lives are in danger here and you're so busy throwing unfounded accusations around you that haven't stopped to examine the facts, so perhaps we might assume for the moment that my friends and I haven't killed anyone and look instead at what the evidence is actually telling us."
"More deception, you're trying to cover your tracks," Captain Salamar accused, but Commander Vishinsky looked thoughtful now.
"I'm not so sure. Let's hear them out."
"Thank you, Commander." The Doctor smiled at him. "I knew you were a reasonable man – didn't I say he was a reasonable man, Harry?"
"The facts of the case, Doctor," Vishinsky dryly reminded him. "Our patience is not inexhaustible."
"Very well: facts. The fact is, we heard a distress signal, came to investigate and discovered the survey team just as you find it, and my young friend here had a close encounter with the culprit."
"You're saying that what happened to Bartrum could have happened to me." Sarah shuddered reflexively at the memory of that creeping, freezing sensation and the thought of what it could have led to, those shrivelled, wizened corpses. Was that how they'd felt in their final moments? How had she survived, twice, when they'd all died?
"I suspect it could happen to any of us, for as long as we remain on this planet," the Doctor grimly agreed.
"Well that isn't very reassuring."
"Reassurance won't protect us, Sarah, but forewarned is forearmed." He offered an encouraging smile that wasn't.
"I don't think four, six or even eight arms will help us if we don't know what we're up against!" Sarah retorted.
"Then we'd better start finding out. We do have a number of clues," said the Doctor, ignoring her feeble pun entirely, although Harry acknowledged it with a sympathetic grin and that guard with multi-coloured hair looked amused, over in the corner where his superior officers couldn't see it. "Your experience tells us the killer is both silent and invisible, and we know from Sub-ensign Utoblo's account that it strikes fast and drains the body completely in a matter of seconds – nothing human could do that."
"So you claim," Salamar stubbornly countered. "You could be using a new type of weapon."
"For what purpose? You already know we're unarmed," Harry argued. "What do you think is behind it all, Doctor?"
"I don't know," the Doctor admitted. "But I have some very nasty suspicions. Here's another fact: the survey team didn't all die at once; the dates on those graves suggest the deaths occurred over a period of weeks, yet it seems they neglected to call for help until it was too late. Why? Until we have access to their logs, we can only speculate – I don't suppose you've found the cause of the power loss yet, Technician Landa?"
The young woman called Landa had been quietly working away at the control console throughout all this, head bent over the exposed wiring beneath a panel she'd removed. She startled upon hearing her name and cast an uncertain glance to Vishinsky, rather than Salamar, for consent to disclose this information.
"No, sir, there's no sign of damage, all the connections are intact." Her voice was low-pitched and clear, her tone precise, a professional certain of her findings. "I'll need to check the external lines to be sure but I can't find any reason the solar cell shouldn't recharge normally once the sun rises – or any reason for it to have drained so completely in the first place."
"Another mystery – another clue," said the Doctor as Sarah glanced toward the window, which was just lighting up with the first rays of dawn. It had been quite a night. "Of course, if you linked up to the probe we'd have power to access the base computer now."
"Out of the question," Salamar snapped.
"Oh?" The Doctor lifted an eyebrow, curious, but didn't argue the point. "Then, if I may, I propose three lines of enquiry."
"You propose?" Salamar was as snooty as a grand duchess. "You're a suspect, not an examiner."
"Well, with your permission, of course," the Doctor added with an exaggerated gesture of deference.
"The manual says…" Salamar began but the Doctor was having none of it.
"The manual can't help you here, Captain Salamar. You need to find Professor Sorenson. Sarah can help you with that. He survived when the rest of his team were wiped out. He'll be able to give us some real answers."
"You said three lines of enquiry, Doctor." Vishinsky seemed far more amenable than Salamar, regarding the Doctor intently, brow furrowed with thought.
"That's right, Commander. We need as much information as we can gather, and the survey team appear to have left very little physical evidence in this base. Restoration of power in order to study their computer records is the second line of enquiry – there may be a secondary cell in the stores here we can rig up, if you don't have any to spare – and the third, of course, is a post-mortem examination and bio-scan of the bodies. You have a medical officer, I take it?"
"Not as such. We have a fully equipped med-bay," Salamar warily replied, a suspicious look still in his cold blue eyes. "The KX9-06 has only a small crew complement; Vishinsky has first aider qualifications that were deemed sufficient for any accidents or illnesses that may arise on our mission."
"Oh, well this is your lucky day, then, Captain," the Doctor beamed. "My colleague Lieutenant Sullivan here is a doctor of medicine, more than qualified to carry out post-mortem examinations. Congratulations, you now have a medical officer…should you choose to accept our offer of help, of course." He regarded the young captain speculatively, wearing his most innocent, beguiling expression.
Salamar still seemed unsure, looked to Vishinsky as if for guidance, pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes, thinking hard, but at length nodded reluctant agreement.
"Very well. The girl will join a search team at first light. In the meantime, Technician Landa will oversee repairs here, and Commander Vishinsky will escort the doctor to med-bay and assist with the examination…"
"The Doctor? Oh, you mean that doctor." The Doctor gestured toward Harry, who lifted an eyebrow, amused. "Not this Doctor." And that, of course, was himself.
Harry might be amused by his antics, but Salamar was not.
"But let me give you fair warning: you remain under suspicion, all three of you," he sternly declared. "You will be permitted to assist in further investigation, but I will not allow my crew to be threatened. If you give any trouble – any at all – you will be summarily shot. Is that clear?"
"Crystal," the Doctor sourly replied.