4

The anti-gravity beam sucked the Doctor into its belly and he supposed that this was how being eaten must feel. Indeed it was more than mere supposition. He had been eaten twice before, on the same holiday, by blarph whales in Lake Rhonda who thought it was hilarious to gulp down bathers then pop them out through their blowholes. Then all the whales would surface-high-five each other and have a good old laugh at the bather’s expense. The bather would generally take the whole thing in good spirits – after all, who’s going to take issue with a twenty-tonne blarph whale?

The Doctor banished these memories because they were for another time when he was not suspended in the anti-grav beam of a Soul Pirate frigate.

The Doctor knew he had only moments of total consciousness left before the beam’s soporific agent lulled him into a peaceful sleep, when it would seem as though all his dreams were on the verge of coming to pass. The Doctor shook himself vigorously to stay awake, while at the same time holding his breath.

Suddenly he was back on Gallifrey, with his family, safe at last.

‘That’s right,’ said his mother and she smiled down at him, her long hair brushing his forehead. ‘Stay here, my little Doctor. Stay here with me and you can tell tales of the worlds you have visited. I so want to hear your stories.’

She is so pretty, he thought. Just as I remember her.

‘D’Arvit!’ swore the Doctor aloud. ‘I am being drugged.’ He began to describe what was happening around him just to stay alert.

‘There are half a dozen souls trapped in the beam. Three children and three adults, counting Susan as an adult, which I am not sure I should considering the fact that she wilfully disobeyed my instructions. All able-bodied. The pirates need youth and strength to power their ship. I cannot see Susan’s face, though I can feel her joy. I wonder what she sees in her dreams?’

The beam was more than light. It offered resistance when touched and was heavily charged to allow suspension of dense matter.

‘I know we are moving,’ continued the Doctor, narrating his journey. ‘Yet there is no sensation of movement. No friction whatsoever. I can honestly say that in spite of the ominous circumstances, I have never been so comfortable.’

A slender shape flitted past and the Doctor knew, even from the briefest glimpse, that it was Susan. He recognised her as surely as an infant recognises the voice of its mother.

‘Susan, my dear!’ he cried, releasing more precious breath, but Susan’s smile never wavered, and she did not answer.

The Doctor saw in her expression how optimistic about the universe Susan was and he realised how utterly she would collapse in the Soul Pirates’ hands. That could not be allowed to happen.

They passed through the folded-pastry layers of a puffed-up cumulus and emerged looking at the stars. The second star on the left winked and crackled suddenly as its cloaking shield was powered down, and where sky had been now hovered the hulking pirate factory ship.

The beam drew them towards the specially modified bay of the mid-size interplanetary-class frigate. The underside was scored from many close calls with asteroids and weapon fire. The Doctor could clearly see the spot welds where a new plate had recently been attached.

Space gates were cranked open and the Doctor saw that the anti-grav beam had been modified to fire from inside the ship itself, which was incredibly dangerous if not properly calibrated, but it did allow the Soul Pirates to draw their victims directly into the hold for processing.

‘The anti-grav cannon fires from within the hold,’ said the Doctor, but he could feel himself losing the battle to stay alert. ‘The subjects are drawn inside and often spontaneously and in perfect synchronisation sing every word of the Monzorian opera “Grunt the Naysayer”.’

Stop it! The Doctor chided himself. Draw your wits about you. Say what you see.

‘The Soul Pirates’ ship works on the same principle as those despicable Orthonian whaling factories,’ he said, feeling a numbness buzz along his arms. ‘Once the subjects have been deposited inside the Soul Pirate ship, they are scanned by computer and the ship decides how best to use each one. Most are hooked up to battery rigs and drained of their electricity, but some are sent directly to dissection for their parts. Soul Pirates are humanoids, mostly but not exclusively from the planet Ryger. Their systems are extremely robust and can accept all manner of transplants, even ones from different species, such as Earthlings. With timely transplants a pirate can reasonably expect to live three to four hundred Earth years.’

The giant gates yawned wide and sucked the subjects into a vast abattoir. Rows of meat hooks hung from the metal ceiling and a couple of pirates stood in rubber aprons ready to hose down the new arrivals with water cannons. They wore curved heat blades attached to battery packs on their belts in case the computer recommended an instant amputation.

The beam was powered down and its cargo dropped with a thump into a pit on the deck. The Doctor confirmed that there were four others besides Susan and himself.

Six to save, he thought. And those pirates have the high ground.

As soon as the last gloopy globs of the anti-grav beam had faded, the Soul Pirates cranked up their hoses and turned them on their latest victims, blasting Susan, the Doctor and the four others into a heaped hotchpotch of limbs and torsos in the corner of the pit.

The pirates laughed. ‘They so stupid,’ said one. ‘Look, I spray them again.’

Pummelled by water on two sides, the Doctor could barely breathe. He was effectively blind and couldn’t have fought back if he wanted to. But he didn’t want to. When your enemy believes you to be unconscious, let them continue to do so until you gain a tactical advantage.

Or plainly put: play dead until they come close.

The second pirate dropped his hose and checked a computer console with big coloured buttons.

‘Ship say beep, Gomb,’ he said, puzzled. ‘What beep mean?’

What beep mean? Obviously the pirates kept the slower members of their crew on the lower decks. In the case of Igby, probably below decks.

Gomb clipped the hose nozzle on to a special hook on his belt and hurried to check the screen.

‘Special beep!’ he exclaimed. ‘We got Time Lords. Computer say Time Lords. Brains worth many money pieces. Big blobby brains.’

Even buried under a mound of bodies in an abattoir, the Doctor found a moment to take offence.

Blobby brain, indeed.

Gomb squinted at the heaped pile of sleeping bodies. ‘Which one?’

‘Lay them out,’ ordered his companion. ‘I tell Cap’n face to face and maybe get grog bottle for we two. You find Time Lords.’

The Doctor tried to pull his limbs from their entanglement so he would have some chance in a physical struggle, but he was stuck fast, pinned at the bottom of a body pile, his face a metre from Susan’s. Her eyes were open now, and he could see her consciousness return.

She is frightened, he thought. I cannot allow her to die here.

But Susan was not dead yet and neither was the Doctor.

‘Grandfather,’ she whispered. ‘What can we do?’

‘Shhhh,’ said the Doctor gently, wishing he could give her some encouragement, but if anything there was worse to come before things got better, which they probably would not. ‘Dream a while.’

Pirate Gomb jumped down into the pit, his boots striking the deck with a clang. He sauntered across the closed space doors to where valuable Time Lords were waiting with blobby brains. Gomb sang in a surprisingly pure tenor as he walked, which was about as unexpected as hearing a quantum physics lecture from the mouth of a lemming.

‘Grog, grog,

Swallow it down,

She cures constipation

She up-turns yer frown.’

The Doctor thought that maybe Gomb had composed this classic himself.

Up-turns?

Gomb reached the body pile and hauled off two sleeping children, laying them out side by side and straightening their clothes.

‘Yer going to meet Cap’n,’ he said. ‘Look yer best for Cap’n and maybe he just drain yer soul ’stead of slicing you up for parts.’

The pirate returned to the pile and bent towards Susan.

This was as far as he got because the Doctor had reached up and yanked the release switch on the hose on Gomb’s belt. This was not as precise a plan as the Doctor would have liked, but if he had estimated the hose’s pressure correctly, and providing the pirate’s belt did not break, the result should be advantageous for the prisoners.

Advantageous was one way of putting it: Gomb had barely a moment to register what was happening when the hose bucked as water pressure ran along it, then lifted Gomb bodily into the air, wrapped its coils around him and sent him spinning down a corridor, out of sight.

The Doctor knew that he had seconds before their escape attempt was known to everyone on the ship. They were probably under video surveillance right now.

He crawled out from underneath the sleeping humans and turned to Susan.

‘My dear,’ he said, wiping her eyes, ‘are you hurt?’

‘No,’ she said, but she was terrified. The Doctor could see it dawn on her what happened here as she stared raptly at the meat hooks swaying from the ceiling.

‘Susan, listen to me,’ said the Doctor, taking her face in his hands – well, one hand and a claw. ‘I will get us out, but you need to help me. Do you understand?’

Susan nodded. ‘Of course, Grandfather. I can help.’

‘That’s my girl. Drag the others into the centre of the space gates. Inside the circle.’

‘Inside the circle.’

‘As quick as you can, Susan. We have mere moments before reinforcements arrive.’

Susan began her task of pulling the other captives inside the circle. They slid across the slick deck easily enough, even the adult, who was clad in a soldier’s uniform.

The Doctor’s sodden greatcoat made him feel as though he was wearing a bear, so he shrugged it off and hurried up the steps to the console. The controls were set to Rygerian, which the Doctor could understand well enough, but he switched the language to Earth English and locked the preferences, which might give them another second or two when they needed it.

The Doctor had always been a finger-and-thumb typist so working with a claw didn’t hinder him too much. He ran a search of the vessel for captives and found none besides his own group. Yesterday’s abductees had already been disposed of, which made the Doctor feel a lot better about the action he had decided to take.

He circumvented the pirate craft’s basic security codes and quickly reset the anti-grav beam parameters and door controls. Once the computer had accepted his overriding commands, the Doctor set such a complicated password that it would take either ten years or a miracle to get this computer to perform any task more complicated than playing solitaire.

The pirates did not have ten years, and the universe certainly did not owe them a miracle.

Susan had managed to gather the prisoners on the circle in the centre of the bay doors. The soldier was attempting to stand and the smallest child, a boy, was being violently ill on his own shoes. The Doctor swept him up in his arms, ignoring the squeals of protest.

‘Quickly,’ he said. ‘All together now. You must lay your hands on me.’

He may as well have been talking to monkeys. These humans were in the middle of a transition from paradise to hell. If they were fortunate, it was possible that their minds would heal, but at the moment it was all they could do to breathe.

Only Susan had her wits about her. She hugged the Doctor with one arm, the soldier with another and gathered a boy and a girl who might have been twins between her knees.

‘Good girl,’ said the Doctor, hoisting the ill boy on to his shoulders. ‘That’s my girl.’ They were all connected now: a circuit.

‘Whatever happens, we do not break the circuit!’

Susan nodded, hugging her grandfather fiercely. ‘I won’t let go.’

‘I know you won’t,’ said the Doctor.

Seconds passed and the Doctor began to fret that he had allowed too long on the timer. The pirates would be upon them at any moment. In fact the approaching ruckus echoing down the corridor suggested that this moment had arrived.

A dozen or more pirates fell over each other to access the cargo bay, training their weapons on the Doctor and his fellow captives. But they did not fire. Why would they? These prisoners represented a night’s work. By the looks of it they had managed to surprise Gomb, but a jack-in-the-box could surprise Gomb, he was so stupid. And what could the prisoners do now? Outnumbered, surrounded and unarmed? There was nothing for them to do but accept their fate.

The Captain elbowed his way to the front of the pack. He was a fearsome specimen. Three metres tall with a flat, grey-scaled face, deep-set glittering eyes and a long scar vertically bisecting his face.

‘The Time Lord,’ he bellowed, and it sounded as though someone had taught a rhinoceros to talk. ‘Where is the Time Lord?’

‘I am here,’ said the Doctor, checking by touch and sight that the band of Earthlings was still connected.

The Captain’s laugh was uncharacteristically high-pitched for such a large person.

‘It is you, Doctor,’ he said, touching the scar on his face. ‘You should not have come back.’

The Doctor noticed that the Captain wore a shrunken hand on a cord around his neck.

That is my hand, the fiend!

‘I had unfinished business,’ said the Doctor, counting down from five in his head.

‘We both have unfinished business,’ said the Captain.

Generally the Doctor was not in favour of rejoinders or snappy one-liners but this captain was a vile specimen and so he treated himself to the last word.

‘Our business is now finished,’ the Doctor said, and the space doors opened beneath them, dropping the Doctor and his group into the black of night, three thousand metres above the glowing gas-lights of London.

The Captain was disappointed that he would not get to personally enjoy harvesting the Doctor’s organs, but the fact that the Time Lord would be dead in a matter of seconds cheered him somewhat. There was one little thing that niggled at him, though: if the Doctor had set the space doors to open, what other computer settings could he have fiddled with?

He barged to the nearest screen and was greeted by complicated unfamiliar text running in ever-decreasing circles.

‘Doctor!’ he bellowed. ‘What have you done?’

As if to answer his question, the anti-grav cannon fired off one short fat squib through the closing space doors. Just one burst that grazed the doors on its way out before they clanged shut.

Lucky for me, thought the Captain. He did not think lucky for us, as he was a selfish and tyrannical captain who would sell his entire crew to a body farm to buy himself an extra minute of life.

Because if the anti-grav cannon was ever fired when the space doors were closed it would be the end of the entire ship.

Again it seemed as though the computer could read his mind as it diverted every spark of energy into the cannon and unloaded it directly at the sealed space doors.

The Doctor and his party plummeted to Earth, although it felt as though London was rushing upwards to meet them. There was no room in their lives for thought now. Life had been reduced to the most basic of urges: survival. And if they did survive tonight, any of them, then their lives would never be the same. They would have been to the brink, peered into the abyss and lived to speak of it. Only the Doctor maintained something of his faculties, as near-death experiences were more or less his speciality.

They fell in a ragged bunch, held together by death grips and tangled limbs. Somehow in the middle of the jumbled chaos, the Doctor and Susan came face to face. The Doctor tried to smile, but air rushed between his lips and ballooned his cheeks.

I cannot even smile for my beautiful granddaughter.

He saw it coming from the corner of one eye, an orange bloom in the sky above them.

Physics, don’t fail me now, he thought. Then: Physics cannot fail, but my calculations could be flawed.

The bloom blossomed and became a bolt, which shot towards them with unerring accuracy, leaving a wake of fairy sparks behind it.

The Doctor pulled everyone tight, hugging them to him.

Live or die. This moment decides.

The anti-grav pulse enveloped the small band, and slowed their descent in a series of jarring hops and sputters. The Doctor found himself floating on his back watching the pirate ship list from the side of a large cloud bank. Eight storeys of wounded metal.

They deserve this, he told himself. I am saving the lives of children and avenging many more.

But still he turned away when the anti-grav ray he’d instructed the computer to fire began to eat the ship from the inside, changing the very atomic structure of the craft until its molecules disbanded and became at one with the air.

Susan hugged him tight and cried on his shoulder.

They would survive.

They would all be fine.