CHRIS COMPLETED HIS circuit of the tiny white room. ‘So there are no doors,’ he began.
‘Correct,’ said Romana, who had drawn up her feet and was sat next to K-9, her chin propped in her hands.
‘So,’ said Chris, ‘we must have been transported here, wherever here is, by some form of matter transference.’
‘Very clever,’ said Romana, staring straight ahead.
‘Commendable deduction, young master,’ said K-9, and Chris could have sworn they exchanged a glance that was not entirely favourable to him.
‘Oh well,’ said Chris, feeling confident enough to throw a little sarcasm back their way. ‘I suppose you two do this sort of thing all the time.’
Romana sighed. ‘Yes, actually.’
There was a silence. Chris was never loath to take the opportunity to fill a silence. ‘Do you know, I was meant to be delivering a paper to the Physics Society next week.’
‘Oh yes?’ asked Romana.
Chris nodded. ‘Finally disproving the possibility of teleportation.’ He shrugged. ‘Well, I can always deliver it the week after. Means a complete rewrite, though.’
He sat down next to Romana, crossing his legs. ‘You’re very calm,’ he said. ‘And that makes me calm. Thank you.’
Romana smiled. ‘Actually, Chris, I’m desperately worried.’ She turned to K-9. ‘K-9, do another scan. Can’t you pick up any trace of the Doctor?’
K-9’s ears rotated. ‘Negative, Mistress. Every signal is shielded. Suggest that this is a primitive zero environment, isolated from all external sources.’
‘That’s one of the things that has me desperately worried,’ said Romana. ‘Skagra’s technology, it’s frighteningly similar to our own.’
‘You mean,’ said Chris, ‘similar to yours and the Doctor’s in particular, or to the Time Lords in general?’
‘Both, in a way,’ said Romana. ‘The shielding around this Ship. The invisibility screen. Now a zero environment. And how did he know to find the book here in Cambridge? The Professor was surely the only person in the universe who even knew it had been stolen from Gallifrey.’ She dug her chin harder into her hands. ‘What does he want from the book anyway? And who or what is Shada?’
‘Could Skagra be a Time Lord?’ asked Chris. ‘A bad one? There must be some bad ones.’
‘Let’s hope the Doctor’s finding that all out now,’ said Romana.
‘You’ve a lot of faith in him,’ said Chris.
‘He’s saved your planet many, many times. And not just yours. He’s the most wonderful man in the universe,’ said Romana, quickly qualifying her remark. ‘If you tell him I said that, I’ll kill you. Same goes for you, K-9.’
Chris’s mind was buzzing with questions. If they were stuck here for a bit, it was time to ask a few more questions. And it might distract Romana from her worries. ‘I always thought,’ said Chris, ‘that aliens, if they existed, would be gas globules or big bat creatures or something, or something we might not even recognise as life. No offence.’
‘There are plenty of creatures like that in the universe,’ said Romana.
‘But you and the Doctor and the Professor,’ went on Chris, ‘you look just like us, really. You even drink tea and ride bikes. You’d think that would be disappointing. But as a scientist, I think it’s actually a good thing, it opens up so many areas of thought and theory as to the parallel evolution of the humanoid form.’
Romana seemed to have the glazed fascinated expression falling onto her face now, noted Chris. She turned her attention to K-9, pressing a sequence of some of the flashing buttons on his top side. ‘I suppose we could try altering K-9’s sensors to overlap rather than influx.’
Chris abandoned his questioning and decided to go for a decisive course of action. He sprung up and examined the inward-curving walls of the white room. They felt neither warm nor cold. In fact, though he could most definitely touch them, they felt like nothing at all. ‘This wall. It’s made of a very curious substance.’
‘Zero technology again,’ said Romana casually. ‘Give me a year, I’ll explain it to you.’ She finished her reprogramming of K-9. ‘Try again, K-9. Overlap scan this time, there’s just a chance it could penetrate the null interfaces of this place.’
Chris tapped the wall. ‘Even looking at these walls is hard. It’s as if there’s nothing there at all, though I can see there is.’
‘Your senses can’t operate properly in a zero environment,’ said Romana. ‘Don’t try to understand.’
K-9’s ears whirred around again. ‘Overlap scan commenced.’
‘Yes,’ said Chris, ‘so the senses of my lot, Earthlings I suppose you’d call us –’
‘Among other things,’ said Romana, bending over K9 anxiously.
‘– Earthling senses can’t fully comprehend this wall,’ went on Chris.
‘Negative scan, Mistress,’ said K-9.
Romana sighed and ran her hands through her hair in frustration.
There was another awkward silence.
‘I suppose the thing about this wall—’ began Chris.
Romana banged her fist on K-9’s side in frustration. ‘Oh, blast the wall!’ she shouted.
‘Affirmative, Mistress,’ said K-9 brightly. A bolt of bright red laser-light shot from his snout with an ear-splitting zap.
‘Duck!’ shouted Romana. She grabbed Chris roughly and flung him to the floor.
The red laser bolt ricocheted wildly around their tiny prison, lancing inches from them. It had no effect on the walls whatever, but Chris was not so hopeful about their chances if it hit them.
Suddenly, Romana tore off her hat and threw it with expert timing up into the air, directly into the path of the laser bolt. There was a small explosion and the hat was reduced to a cloud of ash that rained down on them.
Another silence followed.
‘Apologies, Mistress,’ said K-9 finally. His head and tail drooped. ‘Action was precipitate.’
‘Not at all,’ said Romana, letting go of a big sigh and getting to her feet, dusting the ash from the pristine white lace of her dress. ‘It was a good try, K-9.’
Chris got up and found he was grinning. ‘One thing you’ve never solved out there in space, then,’ he said. ‘Computers, however advanced, just do whatever you tell them to. Whatever it is, however stupid, they just do it. On Earth we call it the sophisticated idiot problem.’
K-9 spun to face him. ‘In this unit’s memory bank regarding Earthling behaviour, instances of idiocy outnumber instances of sophistication by a ratio of 77 to 1.’
Before Chris could take him up on that, and there was certainly no chance of taking the dispute outside, K-9’s sensors whirred again. ‘Mistress! I am picking up faint telepathic signals.’
Chris and Romana knelt at his side.
‘Must be the sphere again,’ theorised Romana. ‘To be detected in here, it must be active again. And enormously powerful.’
‘Can you let us hear it?’ asked Chris.
‘Affirmative, young master. I have calibrated the signal so that your unsophisticated Earthling senses can hear it.’
A new noise issued from K-9.
To Chris’s ears at first it sounded like a lot of static and interference, like Radio Moscow on long wave during a blizzard. But instead of announcements on tractor production and the progress of the glorious revolution, Chris could just make out the thin distorted babble of inhuman voices, all speaking together. The words were indistinguishable. The effect was haunting, like the lamenting of lost souls. He shivered.
‘Yes, that’s the sphere, and it’s active,’ said Romana. ‘But it sounds different this time.’
‘Different how?’ whispered Chris.
‘Ssh,’ she ordered. Her face was creased in concentration as the ghostly voices cried out.
For a second, Chris thought he recognised one of the voices. Deep, dark and distinctive tones, so far away, so insubstantial.
Romana gasped. ‘K-9, did you hear that?’
‘A new voice has been added, Mistress,’ said K-9.
‘Oh please, no,’ said Romana, her eyes suddenly wide and wet.
K9’s head drooped. ‘It is the voice of the Doctor.’
Romana’s face was a mask of horror. She reached out automatically to grab Chris’s hand, and he saw the light go out of her eyes.