77141 shifted in his seat, noting with alarm that one of the hinges was squeaking in a manner indicative of imminent failure. Again. He’d only replaced it a month ago, from the fuselage of a Bindir passenger shuttle. The Bindir might have bottoms shaped exactly like his, but they didn’t build things to last. Lazy, that’s what the Bindir were. Lazy.
77141 reached across his huge control panel and flicked a switch. And with a deep, rumbling sigh, he spoke into the floating microphone that constantly attended him.
‘Unidentified vessel,’ he growled in his most authoritarian and threatening voice. ‘You are entering the greeny-yellow province of Junk. Please supply your credentials immediately or you will be reported to Junk’s traffic management authorities, who will, I can assure you, manage you with severe prejudice.’
He scratched one of his frontal lobes with a spined finger and waited for the usual excuses and explanations. Instead, through the window of his monitor tower, from where (on a good day) he could see the whole of greeny-yellow province, he saw a brief flare of light down in sector K.
‘Bleeping transmats,’ 77141 grumped, leaning forward to flick another button.
‘Ahem,’ he coughed into the microphone, causing it to do a dizzy little dance away from him. ‘Your arrival by transmat has been noted,’ he growled, pausing to hear his own words echo away across the darkness of greeny-yellow province from the speakers set around his monitor tower. ‘Do not move away from your arrival zone. Any such move will be considered an act of invasion, and under the authority vested in me, 77141, manager of greeny-yellow province—’
77141 stopped suddenly when he realised that his words were no longer being blasted out of his tower speakers. In fact, they’d been replaced by a very disturbing creaking noise. A creaking and groaning noise that seemed to be coming from the tower itself. He grabbed the arms of his chair as the tower shook – and one of them came off in his hand.
‘Bleeping Bindir,’ he grunted, flinging the arm away across the room – just as something smashed in through the window behind him.
Before he could raise an alarm, cry for help, or even open his mouth, a huge metal hand torpedoed through the gaping window and grabbed him by the neck; and 77141 found himself looking up into an impassive steel face, eyes as red as coals glaring at him.
‘Hello,’ said a tiny, cheery voice from the doorway behind him. ‘I’m the Doctor, this is Mother, and my friend down there is Boonie. D’you mind if we have a poke around your scrapyard?’
77141 wasn’t accustomed to fighting. To be honest, he wasn’t particularly accustomed to moving. He spent most of his 30-hour shift sitting in his chair (when it wasn’t broken) and overseeing the ‘scrap-drop’ flights that visited Junk at all times of the night and day, dumping their unwanted, obsolete or broken technology. All the processing, sorting, dragging, arranging and – in the case of the older stuff that it was clear no one in their right mind would want – crushing and catapulting into the sun was done by service bots, many of which spent their days and nights scuttling, like rats, up and down the rows and rows and rows of piles and piles and piles of junk.
So, when one very large bot and a very much smaller human smashed their way into his monitor tower, he wasn’t quite sure what to do. Actually, he was sure what to do. Nod and say yes.
‘Help yourself,’ 77141 said, eyeing up the bot with the red eyes that hunched in the corner of the control room, trying not to poke a hole in the ceiling with its head. ‘I just work here.’
‘Most kind,’ said the one who’d called himself ‘the Doctor’, before pulling out some sort of metal pen, making the end of it glow blue, and waving it around.
‘Aaah,’ he said eventually, peering out of the broken window over sector J. ‘Got it!’
‘D’you mind my asking,’ 77141 asked, trying not to sound at all awkward or confrontational. ‘But what exactly is it you’re looking for?’ He had a bad feeling about this.
‘That’s the question: what, indeed, are we looking for? I’ll tell you that when we find it. Now, before we go a-hunting, it’d be quite useful to know whether any automated defences, orbital weapons platforms, remote-control attack drones,’ he waved his hands around vaguely, ‘that sort of thing, might be breathing down our necks. It’s just that, well, there might be some other people along in a short while, looking for the same thing we’re looking for. And since we’d really rather get to it before they do – and trust me, we’re the good guys – it’d be nice to have a bit of advance warning about anything that might get in our way.’
The Doctor raised his eyebrows.
‘Well,’ said 77141 cautiously, one eye still on the bot that the Doctor had called ‘Mother’, ‘um, no.’
‘Good!’ beamed the Doctor. ‘In which case… sorry, what was your name?’
‘77141.’
‘77141 – strange name. You’re not a mechanical are you?’
‘No, but if you heard my real name you’d know why a number’s more practical.’
‘Fair enough. Anyway, 77141, we’ll be off. Well, I’ll be off. Mother here will keep you company for a while.’
And with that, the Doctor was out of the door and whizzing down to ground level on the tower’s lift.
77141 turned his eyes back towards Mother who was staring at him, her head cocked on one side like a dog wondering whether to attack or not.
‘Lovely weather,’ said 77141. ‘For the time of the year.’
‘I’ve no idea how much of a lead we have on them,’ gasped the Doctor and he skidded to a halt beside Boonie, waiting in the shadow of one of Junk’s vast piles of rubbish. ‘So we’d better be quick. I hope you’re beginning to appreciate what an advantage my tinkering with your sensors has given you. We didn’t get there in time on Karris – let’s get it right this time.’
Boonie gave him a look that suggested he still wasn’t convinced. The Doctor pulled out his sonic device and began waving it around.
‘This way,’ he said, pointing down the row.
As they made their way along the aisles of discarded technology, the night silence only broken by the distant crash of more junk being added and the occasional roar of a rocket engine, Boonie asked about Mother.
‘She’s keeping an eye on the supervisor for us. If it turns out we need some muscle to get to this segment, we can call her up. Fascinating mechanical, Mother. We had a nice little chat earlier.’
Boonie gave a dismissive snort.
‘Told me all about her start in the weapons industry, how she made herself mute, how you rescued her from being scrapped. She’s been through a lot. But then you know that.’ He threw Boonie a look.
‘She told you all that?’ asked Boonie incredulously as they walked down the wide street of discarded technology.
‘Why not – I’m a good listener. Wouldn’t do you any harm to give it a go, either. Just because she can’t speak doesn’t mean she can’t talk.’ He paused. ‘Or should it be the other way around?’
They came to the intersection of two aisles. Overhead, illumination globes swayed in the gentle breeze, casting dancing shadows at their feet.
‘I listen when there’s something worth listening to,’ Boonie said sullenly.
‘You listen when there’s something you think you want to hear. There’s a difference. Y’know, it’s great to have a goal in life – something to get you motivated, get you out of bed in the morning. But sometimes a goal can become an obsession. And obsessions are never good things. Believe me, I’ve had a few of them myself.’
‘You think this is an obsession? Tracking the Cultists, finding out what they’re up to? An obsession?’
In the cold light of the lamps above them, the Doctor’s eye sockets were unreadable pools of darkness.
‘I’m not saying you’re not doing the right thing; but it’s easy to get carried away with the bigger picture to the point where you can’t see the details.’ He paused and tipped his head back to look up at the night sky. ‘Donna – my friend. Up there.’ He gestured at the stars. ‘She’s a bit like you, only in reverse. Doesn’t always see the bigger picture, but you can’t fault her on spotting the details.’ He grinned at the thought of Donna and her down-to-earth-ness. Well, apart from her stint as a goddess.
Boonie sighed. ‘And the point of this is…?’
The Doctor looked back at him, his eyes once more dark and unfathomable.
‘The point is that if you’re going to stop the Cult of Shining Darkness then you need to start trusting people a bit more, let them in. And that includes Mother,’ he added cryptically. ‘Haven’t I already shown that I’m on your side? Without me, you wouldn’t have been able to plot the trajectory of their ship, detect this segment and get here before them. Without me, they’d have been here before you, grabbed it and scarpered before you’d even arrived. Give me a bit of credit, Boonie.’ He grinned. ‘Otherwise I’ll begin to think that you don’t like me very much.’
‘Heaven forbid,’ sighed Boonie. ‘Now stop talking and let’s find the segment before they do beam it away.’
‘Shouldn’t be much further,’ said the Doctor thoughtfully, consulting his sonic device again. ‘In fact…’ He took a breath and held out his hands. ‘Ta-daaah!’ He grinned. ‘Always wanted to say that.’
Boonie stared in disbelief at the pile of junk the Doctor was pointing at. At least fifty metres tall, it towered over them like a metal mountain.
‘Time we called in the muscle,’ said the Doctor. ‘And if the mountain can’t go to Mother, then Mother will have to come to the mountain.’
Mother was there in under a minute – her red eyes glowing as she lumbered quietly along.
‘It’s in there somewhere,’ said the Doctor, gesturing to the huge cone of discarded technology. ‘Now be careful – I’m sure these things were designed to resist a fair bit of battering, but there’s no telling how much other stuff they’ve been buried under all these years. Must admit, it’s quite a nifty hiding place for a piece of machinery. Assuming, of course, that it doesn’t get snitched by some wandering collector, looking for something glitzy to go over their mantelpiece. These Cultists,’ he said, turning to Boonie as Mother began to dig into the pile, ‘they must have been well connected once upon a time.’
‘They had followers all over the galaxy,’ Boonie said, stepping back as a refrigerator came tumbling down the heap to crash at their feet. ‘Why?’
‘Well, one segment in an art gallery, one in a forest on, where was it – Chao? – one under the surface of a desert world, one here. Can’t be a cheap business whizzing all over the galaxy hiding bits and bobs. And you’ve probably got to pay people to keep an eye on them. Or make them think you’re gods, at least.’ A sudden thought came to him and he turned to look up at the monitor tower where 77141 was – hopefully – still sitting. ‘In fact, now that I think about it, I really should…’ His voice tailed off as he began to fiddle with his sonic gadget. After a few moments it gave a low-pitched hum. ‘There!’ he said. ‘Scrambler field.’
‘Scrambler field?’
‘Should stop the Cultists from just beaming their little treasure out of here. And if I’m right about 77141 up there, it won’t be long before the Cultists know that we’re here anyway. Wouldn’t stop them beaming down somewhere nearby and getting here on foot, but it’ll give us a bit more time.’
More rubbish came tumbling down the pile, narrowly missing them. Mother glanced down as if to apologise as she ploughed deeper and deeper into it.
‘A bit more time to do what, exactly?’
‘Oh, don’t worry – I’m not going to stop them getting it. I just want to have a closer look, see if I can work out what it’s all for. Soon as I’ve done that, they can have it.’ He paused. ‘You sure you know what you’re doing, don’t you, Boonie? Once the Cult have all the pieces of this thing, they’re going to do something with it: build something, find something. Destroy something. Are you sure that’s a risk you want to take?’
‘You’re suggesting that we steal this part, are you?’
‘It would stop them. And isn’t that what you really want?’
‘It might stop them in the short-term. But I bet they have the resources to make duplicates, even if we take this one.’ He thought for a moment and shook his head firmly. ‘No. They know we’re following them. If they go to ground, we might never find them again. This is the way it has to be. They need to keep believing that they’re just a bit cleverer than us.’
The Doctor gave a big shrug.
‘For the record, I think you’re mad, you know that. If you weren’t quite so driven by all this, so determined to see it through to the end, you might realise that. But this is your game. Play it your way.’ He peered up at where the steel pistons of Mother’s hydraulic legs could be seen, sticking out of the pile.
‘Any luck?’ he called.
‘I don’t like this,’ Garaman said.
‘Perhaps the interference is from some piece of discarded equipment on the planet,’ Mesanth offered. ‘The presence of all that technology is one reason why Junk was chosen for—’
‘Garaman!’ called Ogmunee from the communications station. ‘A message from the supervisor on the planet.’
‘Put it through.’
Seconds later, the sound of a very shaky 77141 came through on the speakers.
‘However much you’re paying me,’ he grunted, ‘it’s not enough to compensate for what I’ve just been through. Are you listening?’
‘With the utmost attention,’ said Garaman, weariness dripping from every word. ‘What’s happened?’
‘I’ve just had visitors.’
‘Visitors?’
‘A bot the size of a house and a human. They’ve come for your precious device, I know it. They’re in sector J right now. They’ve done something to the surveillance cameras so I can’t see what they’re—’
‘What did they say? Have you spoken to them?’ Garaman cut in.
‘Of course I’ve spoken to them. And you owe me for a new window. And,’ 77141 added after a moment, ‘a new chair.’
‘A new…?’ Garaman shook his head. ‘We’ll be down in a moment. There’s interference preventing us from recovering the device from here.’
‘That’ll be his electronic pen thing,’ grumped 77141.
‘Whose electronic pen thing?’
‘He called himself “the Doctor”.’
Garaman’s eyes widened.
‘Five minutes,’ he snapped. ‘And you might want to call in some reinforcements. Big reinforcements. This might be a tad messy.’
If the two of them hadn’t been quite so nimble, Boonie and the Doctor would have been flattened a dozen times over by Mother’s careless chucking-out of bits and pieces from the pile. Whilst Boonie gritted his teeth and made sure he stood well back, the Doctor seemed to take a perverse delight in examining every single thing that Mother threw down to them – whether it was (in the Doctor’s words) a ‘transfluxial rectifier’, an ion drive or a coffee percolator.
Boonie still wasn’t sure whether to trust the Doctor but, on the evidence so far, he had no reason not to trust him. For Boonie, though, that wasn’t quite enough. He’d spent two years listening out for Cult activity, scraping together funds and supporters in order to keep an eye on them. He’d been to worlds, governments, federations and alliances across the Andromeda galaxy, trying to persuade them that, just because Khnu em Llodis was dead and her followers scattered, it didn’t mean that they weren’t still planning something. Boonie had spoken to some of the Cult’s ex-members, and he knew what a devious and long-planning bunch they were. Time and time again he kept coming across rumours of a plan – or ‘The Plan’ as Boonie always thought of it. Something huge, something so big that no one person – perhaps apart from Khnu herself – was privy to all the details.
But there were always people willing to talk if the price was high enough. And using what meagre resources he’d managed to gather, he’d persuaded one or two people to spill at least a couple of beans if not the whole tin. Enough to convince him that if the galaxy’s authorities wouldn’t do anything about the Cult, then he had to.
And two names that he’d come across, time after time, were Garaman Havati – one of Khnu’s chief scientists at the time she’d been killed – and Mesanth, a Lotapareen and another of Khnu’s scientists. They’d vanished at the same time, in circumstances equally mysterious. There were no reports of their deaths or their captures by the authorities. But the galaxy was a big place to hide in – or to die in. It was only when word filtered through to Boonie and his little band of Cult-hunters that a Lotapareen answering the description of Mesanth was reportedly showing an interest in a collection of Khnu’s unpublished work that alarm bells started ringing.
Months and months of surveillance followed, during which time Boonie accumulated more and more evidence that this was, indeed, Mesanth, and that he was working with others to bring together Khnu’s research.
The whole thing was so maddeningly nebulous that Boonie had been close to giving up on more than one occasion. The only thing that drove him on was his conviction that he was right: that the Cult were still active, still planning something – something to do with Khnu’s opposition to machinekind’s being accepted on the same footing as organics.
And finally – finally! – when one of Boonie’s spies reported that Mesanth and brought together a team and had bought a spaceship, he decided that it was time to act.
Boonie, Mother and the rest of the anti-Cultists had followed the Cult ship at a distance as it had entered orbit around the planet Chao. They’d registered the operation of a transmat, bringing something up from the depths of the planet’s jungles, before the Cult ship had sped off out into space.
Something – even to this day, Boonie couldn’t put his finger on what it had been – told him that this was it. This was the start.
And from then on, for the last month, they’d been on the Cult’s tail.
Boonie watched the Doctor scampering about amidst the growing pile of machinery that Mother was throwing down and wondered whether bringing him aboard had really been the right thing to do…
‘What’s that?’ said the Doctor suddenly, tipping his head back as if he were sniffing the air.
For a moment, Boonie had no idea what he was talking about, but as he listened, he heard it: it sounded like distant peals of thunder. Each one was like a distant airplane, crashing into the planet. And each one was accompanied by a shudder through the ground beneath him.
Instinctively, Boonie glanced up at Mother – but she was still somewhere in the pile of junk, pushing bits and pieces of it back out as though she were digging a nest for herself.
‘Explosions?’
‘Hmmm,’ mused the Doctor thoughtfully. ‘Could be.’ He paused, staring over Boonie’s shoulder into the darkness. ‘On the other hand…’
Boonie turned at the Doctor’s raised eyebrows.
For a moment, Boonie couldn’t quite work out what he was seeing. His first thought was that two of the piles of rubbish had somehow come crashing down and were bowling along the ground towards them. But as he watched, he realised what he was looking at.
‘Mother,’ said the Doctor over his shoulder. ‘You couldn’t hurry it up a bit, could you? I think we’ve got company.’
If the Doctor had thought that Mother was a big lass, the two machines bearing down on them were positively ginormous!
Side by side, they barely fitted into the wide aisle between the piles of junk. As they drew closer, their steps thumping and vibrating the ground beneath them like miniature earthquakes, the light of the floating globes illuminated them.
The one on the left was built, it seemed, out of a collection of metal spheres of various hues – steel, pewter, bronze, gold – all strung together to make a vaguely humanoid form. It was a house-and-a-half tall but moved with surprising grace. Its head, a coppery-coloured sphere with two dark pits for eyes, tipped slowly downwards as it approached.
The one on the right was altogether stranger: its body was, proportionately, quite slender and could quite easily have been built out of a random assortment of rubbish from the piles around them. Much slimmer than the first – almost spindly – it had huge, splayed-out feet, not unlike the grabber that had attacked him on the Ood Sphere. But what stood out most were the creature’s arms: they were vast, half the size of the thing’s body, ending in even bigger, four-fingered hands.
The Doctor had no doubt why the two machines were here.
‘They say size isn’t everything,’ sighed the Doctor, tipping his head back as the two machines drew to a halt twenty metres from them. ‘Someone should have told you two.’
‘Stop!’ boomed the one made of metal balls.
‘Yes,’ said the other one after a second. ‘Stop!’
The Doctor raised his palms.
‘Not that I’m one to argue – well, not usually, and not usually with fellas quite as big as you two – but, d’you mind my asking… why?’
‘Why what?’ asked the first.
‘Why stop? I mean, it’s not like we’re doing anything bad, is it? Just going through some old junk, looking for a bit of rubbish no one wants. You ever heard of Wombles? Well, think of us as Wombles.’
‘Sorry,’ said the first one, ‘we’ve got our orders.’
‘Yes,’ agreed the second. ‘And orders is orders.’
‘Are orders,’ corrected the first. ‘Orders are orders.’
The skinny one turned its car-crash of a head.
‘You always have to do that, don’t you?’
‘What?’ thundered the first.
‘Correcting my grammar. I don’t correct yours.’
‘That’s because I always get it right. I only do it to help, you know.’
‘Well, why d’you always do it in company?’
The first one glanced back at the Doctor and Boonie.
‘Hardly company,’ the robot muttered.
‘It’s the principle. I know why you do it, you know.’
‘Oh,’ said the first, archly. ‘Do you? And why’s that, then?’
‘It’s because you’re insecure, isn’t it? The only way you can make yourself feel good about yourself is to put other people down.’
‘That’s just rubbish,’ scoffed the first. ‘What have I got to feel insecure about?’
The skinny robot spread its massive arms wide, knocking the tops off two piles of junk in an almighty crash.
‘Where do I start?’ asked the other one, as if this were an old, old argument between the two of them.
‘Um,’ said the Doctor awkwardly, watching the debris tumble to the ground around them.
‘Just a moment,’ said the first, raising a powerful, blobby hand.
‘Fine,’ said the Doctor, folding his arms. ‘You two go right ahead. We’ll just wait here, shall we?’
‘Let’s talk about this later,’ the round one said to its friend. ‘We’ve been told to sort these two out, so let’s get this done first, shall we? Save the domestics for—’
‘We’re not having a domestic,’ said the thin one through gritted teeth (or through what passed for teeth in its mighty metal head). ‘You always do this as well, don’t you?’
The Doctor sighed and planted his hands on his hips.
‘Well, it sounds like a domestic to me,’ the Doctor called up. He glanced over his shoulder to where Mother’s feet could be seen sticking out of the hole in the side of the pile of junk. More bits tumbled down as she wiggled her legs to get in deeper. ‘But I think it’s probably important to get these things out in the open, so feel free – go right ahead. We’ll still be here when you’ve finished.’
‘Firstly,’ said the thin one, ‘we’re not having a domestic, right? And secondly – who on Junk are you?’
‘I’m the Doctor, this here is Boonie, and that there – up there, yes, I know you can only see her feet – but that’s Mother.’
‘A mechanical?’
‘Yes,’ the Doctor said. ‘That OK?’
The skinny robot turned to its friend.
‘77141 didn’t say there was a mechanical involved.’
‘Ahh,’ said the Doctor as the penny dropped. ‘77141 sent you, did he? Now why aren’t I surprised at that? What’s your names, then?’
‘What are your—’ began the blobby one before the skinny one cut him off.
‘Oh do give it a rest, Chuck.’
‘So you’re Chuck,’ interrupted the Doctor. ‘And you would be…?’
‘I’m Crusher,’ said the thin one.
‘Nice to meet you,’ grinned the Doctor. ‘Now, you were saying… 77141 sent you, did he?’
‘Trouble in sector J, he said,’ boomed Chuck. ‘Intruders.’
‘Despatch with the utmost force,’ added Crusher. ‘That’s what he said.’
‘Oh,’ said the Doctor, almost sadly. ‘That means you’ll be wanting to kill us, won’t you?’
Crusher gave a shrug with his entire body, the metal parts screeching and grinding on each other. ‘Orders is orders.’
‘Orders—’ Chuck began but stopped as Crusher turned sharply to him.
‘OK,’ said the Doctor, not fancying another round of bickering. ‘Orders is or are orders. And what is or are those orders, exactly?’
Chuck sounded almost apologetic.
‘Kill you all, I’m afraid. Sorry about that.’
The Doctor raised his eyebrows.
‘Well, can’t say I’m too pleased about it either, but there you go. Orders is – hang on: did 77141 tell you exactly why you had to kill us?’
‘That lazy good-for-nothing never tells us nothing,’ grumped Crusher (and the Doctor winced at the thought of another domestic over his double negative). ‘But he is the boss.…’
‘So we do as he says,’ Chuck finished the sentence.
‘And very right you are to,’ the Doctor said. ‘D’you mind my asking something? It’s about your names.’
‘Well, I’m Crusher,’ said the skinnier one, ‘cos I crush stuff up.’ He raised his hands and flexed the immense fingers with the creak of metal on metal and the hiss of hydraulics.
‘And I’m Chuck,’ added the fatter one, ‘cos I chuck stuff into the sun. Not the good stuff, mind,’ he added, as if the Doctor might think he were just a vandal. ‘Just the rubbish that no one wants.’
‘Into the sun, eh?’ said the Doctor admiringly. ‘That must take some skill.’
‘Oh it does,’ agreed Chuck, flexing his fingers. ‘People think it’s easy – they think it’s just brute force, overcoming gravity and all that. But it’s not. There’s a lot of maths involved – otherwise, it just goes into orbit or messes up the system. Gotta get it just right.’
‘And crushing isn’t as simple as it sounds,’ added Crusher, clearly feeling left out.
‘Not as hard as chucking,’ said Chuck.
‘Well, maybe,’ agreed Crusher awkwardly.
‘Ladies, ladies,’ cut in the Doctor. ‘Or gentlemen, gentlemen. I’m sure you’re both very special and very unique, and me and Boonie here are very impressed. So 77141 has given you orders to come and crush – and chuck – us, has he?’
‘Fraid so,’ said Chuck, almost regretfully.
The two of them took a mammoth step forward and the ground shook. Crusher raised his hands in front of him and flexed his fingers.
‘Who’s first, then?’ he asked.
‘Probably me,’ the Doctor said. ‘But before you start with the crushing and chucking, I don’t suppose it would make any difference if I told you what we’re doing here, would it?’
‘Shouldn’t think so,’ replied Chuck.
‘But you could always try,’ Crusher added, clearly trying to be reasonable.
The Doctor glanced at Boonie who, throughout the whole conversation, had hovered nervously in the shadows.
‘You ever heard of the Cult of Shining Darkness?’
‘Those nutters?’ laughed Chuck.
‘The anti-machine nutters?’ added Crusher. ‘The mechanet was full of stories about them a couple of years ago. Didn’t they fall apart or something?’
‘The woman leading them died, didn’t she?’ asked Chuck.
‘That’s them,’ the Doctor agreed, wincing at his own grammar and hoping it didn’t set Chuck off again.
‘So what have they got to do with you?’ asked Chuck. His voice suddenly went very growly and low and he bent forwards. ‘You’re not with them, are you?’
‘Oh no!’ exclaimed the Doctor. ‘No, not at all – in fact, we’re on the other side. The goodies, as it were. Ask Mother up there – well, when she comes down.’
Chuck straightened up slowly, but clearly wasn’t convinced.
‘But your 77141,’ the Doctor went on slowly. ‘Now he’s a different matter.’
Chuck and Crusher exchanged glances.
‘You’re kidding,’ said Chuck. ‘77141?’
The Doctor reached down and dragged a finger across some of the junk at the bottom of the closest pile before holding it up to show them the muck on it.
‘How long is it since sector J had a good clean-out?’
‘Must be at least two years,’ Chuck said, and Crusher nodded.
‘And is that at all unusual for Junk?’ asked the Doctor casually.
Crusher and Chuck looked at each other again.
‘Well,’ said Crusher, ‘now you come to mention it, it is a bit odd.’
‘Most stuff round here’s on a one-year rotation,’ Chuck added. ‘You know how quickly technology gets out of date. If it’s not been reclaimed or recycled in a year, me and Crusher usually get to work on it, crush it up real small and send it on a one-way cremation trip.’
The Doctor nodded thoughtfully.
‘So the fact that this particular lot of junk hasn’t been touched for so long is a wee bit suspicious, you’d say?’
The two robots swapped glances again.
‘Y’know,’ said Crusher slowly. ‘You might – and I say might – be onto something there. Masher, over in sector E, was going to bring the remains of a Hajaveniakii stasis chamber over here, but 77141 made him carry it all the way over to T. He wasn’t happy, I’ll tell you.’
‘So,’ said Chuck, straightening up. ‘Let me get this right, Doctor. You’re saying that that lazy lump up in the control tower is somehow in league with these daft culty types and they’ve paid him to keep people away from this sector, are you?’
‘Well, either paid him or he’s doing it out of the goodness of his heart.’
‘Paid,’ said Chuck. ‘Lagacteons don’t have hearts.’
‘Or goodness,’ added Crusher.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any proof?’ asked Chuck. ‘I mean, it’s a bit of an accusation to make, isn’t it, regardless of whether he’s a lazy, fat, heartless lump or not?’
‘No proof at all, I’m afraid. Not unless you count the fact that he’s clearly so worried about what we’re doing here that not only has he sent you two, but he’s sent those as well.’
As he spoke, the Doctor raised an arm and pointed back down the aisle.
Illuminated in the cold glow of the light spheres overhead, a tide of crawling, creeping, scuttling machines was flowing towards them.
Boonie squinted into the darkness: it was as though the ground itself were wriggling and shifting.
‘Now tell me that’s normal,’ the Doctor said, and Boonie realised he was talking to Chuck and Crusher.
‘What’s he playing at?’ whispered Crusher – although his whisper was louder than most people could shout.
‘Your boss clearly doesn’t trust you to get the job done,’ said the Doctor. ‘He’s called in reinforcements.’
‘Has he indeed?’ said Crusher in a low, serious voice. ‘Well, we’ll see about that. There’s union rules about this sort of thing.’
‘We’re not in a union,’ Chuck pointed out.
‘Well, maybe we should be.’ Crusher raised his head and swivelled it through 180 degrees until it was facing back towards 77141’s tower. ‘Oi!!’ he bellowed in a voice like thunder that rolled on and on and on. ‘Boss! What’s going on here?’
Seconds later, amplified by 77141’s speakers, the reply came back.
‘I gave you two bots a job to do, and instead you’re standing around gassing. You can’t carry out simple instructions? Fine! Then let these bots do it instead!’
There was a grinding, crunching groan from inside Chuck, and Boonie saw how he clenched his blobby hands.
‘I’ve told him about that,’ he muttered, gears whirring inside him. ‘We’re not bots. We’re mechanicals. How many times…?’
‘Calm down, pet,’ said Crusher. ‘He doesn’t mean anything by it.’
‘Don’t tell me to calm down,’ grunted Chuck. ‘And yes he does mean something by it: he means he’s too lazy to take any notice when I say I don’t like being called a bot!.
And with that, Chuck bent low and swiped his right hand across the ground in the path of the dozens of service and maintenance robots that were scuttling towards them, sending them tumbling and clattering into each other, bouncing end over end like kicked marbles.
‘He’s not going to like that,’ warned Crusher with a worried shake of the head.
‘Stuff whether he likes it or not. Let him have his way and, before you know it, we’ll be on the scrapheap – literally – and these… these appliances,’ he spat the word, ‘will be doing our jobs for us.’
But the little robots just kept on coming, legs clicking, caterpillar tracks whirring.
Boonie backed towards the Doctor who was looking worriedly up at Mother’s feet, still sticking out of the heap behind them.
‘We need to get out of here, Doctor,’ he whispered, hoping that Crusher and Chuck’s hearing wasn’t good enough for them to pick up his words.
The Doctor’s face fell, like a child who’s been told his holiday had been cancelled at the last minute. He was clearly enjoying it.
‘If the service bots don’t get us,’ Boonie continued urgently, ‘those two will. It’s not worth the risk.’
‘Oh, it’s always worth the risk, Boonie,’ the Doctor suddenly grinned as, emboldened by Chuck’s stance against the little robots, Crusher joined in, sweeping his freakishly long fingers along the ground and sending dozens and dozens of the little ‘appliances’ bouncing end over end. ‘This is what living’s all about – get rid of the risk, what’s the point of it all, eh?’
The two of them seemed forgotten by Crusher and Chuck as they clearly started to enjoy their battle against the little machines. Wave after wave of them clattered and clicked their way across the ground and over the bases of the piles of junk around them, like a plague of mechanical insects. But as they did, working as a perfect team, Chuck and Crusher cleared them out of the way, almost effortlessly.
‘We’re gonna get the sack for this,’ said Crusher – and glanced at Chuck.
‘I know,’ Chuck replied, laughing. ‘But you know something – I reckon it’s worth it!’
And with that, Chuck gathered up a handful of wriggling, squirming appliances, took aim, and lobbed them with frightening accuracy in the direction of 77141’s observation tower. Boonie held his breath for a moment – until he heard the sound of multiple crashes and bangs. As he watched, the lights of the tower wobbled and began to move, describing a slow arc as it began to topple.
‘Bullseye!’ cried Chuck, punching the air.
With a final, echoing crash, the tower hit the ground – and to everyone’s surprise, floating out of the darkness, there came the sound of cheers. Not just from one mechanical, but from dozens, all over the place.
‘Sounds like you two are heroes,’ commented the Doctor.
‘77141 always was a fat, useless lump of lard!’ laughed Crusher as he squeezed another handful of appliances until their cogs fell out. He tossed the motionless remains onto one of the piles at his side.
‘Now…’ Crusher dusted the remains of the broken machines from his fingers and bent low over the Doctor and Boonie. ‘What we gonna do with you little Squidgies?’
‘Squidgies?’ said the Doctor.
‘Sorry,’ apologised Crusher. ‘It’s what we call you organics. No offence.’
‘None taken, Crusher.’ The Doctor paused. ‘Can you tap into records of recent planet-to-ship communications?’
Crusher glanced – a little shiftily, Boonie thought – at Chuck, who was still at work flinging the last wave of robots into the air.
‘Not officially, no.’
‘OK, well, say you were to unofficially tap into them. Just, y’know, theoretically.’
‘Yeeesss,’ said Crusher, dragging the word out.
‘And,’ continued the Doctor, pulling a face and kicking the ground with his toe, ‘say you were to check whether a certain ship currently in orbit had been speaking with 77141…’
‘Go on.’
‘Would one of those communications be about making sure that we didn’t get our hands on—’
‘He’s right!’ cried Chuck suddenly. ‘I’ve found the message! The scheming, bloated, sack of—’
Chuck was cut off by the sight of Mother, emerging from the junk mountain and holding something aloft – something huge and circular. She held it in one hand as if it weighed next to nothing as she clambered carefully down, sending a shower of debris clattering down the heap as she did so.
‘Crusher, Chuck – meet Mother. If you’re in any doubt about our credentials, ask her – she’ll tell you.’ The Doctor checked his wristwatch. ‘But you’re going to have to make it quick: they’re going to be here any minute,’ he said, motioning for Mother to lay the device on the ground.
‘So what’s that, then?’ asked Crusher, stomping on the last, few straggling appliances.
‘That’s what we want to find out,’ the Doctor said gleefully, bounding over to the segment.
In the dim light from the floating globes overhead, even Boonie could see that the device had received a considerable battering. The wheel-shaped casing was dented and scraped. Hardly surprising considering the mass of junk that had been piled on top of it.
‘Is it damaged?’ he asked anxiously.
‘Well, give me a chance to examine it and I’ll tell you.’ The Doctor rolled his eyes. ‘Look, if you want something to do, go and check how 77141 is. He looked a tough old thing and he may well have survived the fall. If he has, he might already be telling the Cult what’s happening. They might be planning on coming down with some reinforcements. Take Mother with you – you might need her.’
Boonie was torn: he didn’t fancy leaving the Doctor here with the device, but, equally, he didn’t want to be caught by the Cultists. ‘Go on,’ said the Doctor when Boonie didn’t move. ‘Shoo! Go on!’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to see if it’s damaged – and if I can work out what it does.’
‘You’re not going to sabotage it, are you?’
The Doctor frowned.
‘Sabotage it? Why would I do that?’
‘To stop the Cultists.’
‘Oh, that. Nah. You know, you’ve piqued my curiosity, Boonie. I’m almost as curious as you are to find out what it does. And like you say, if they don’t get this one to work, they may just go to ground again. And much as I’ve loved my trip to your galaxy, I really can’t hang around for ever to help you track them down again. Now go!’
With a shake of the head, Boonie beckoned Mother and the two of them headed off to the monitor tower.
‘You’re sure you don’t need our help?’ asked Crusher.
‘You two have been wonderful,’ the Doctor grinned up at the machines. ‘A credit to machinekind everywhere.’
‘Hear that?’ said Chuck proudly.
‘We like to do us bit,’ Crusher added.
‘Our bit,’ Chuck corrected him.
‘Here we go again,’ sighed Crusher with a shake of the head.
‘Lovely couple,’ the Doctor said to himself with a smile as he watched them go, still bickering. ‘Right, you little beauty,’ he said with glee as he hunkered down next to the segment. ‘Let’s see what you’re made of, eh?’
He pulled out the sonic screwdriver, checked that it was still emitting the scrambling frequencies that he’d set it to earlier, and activated the secondary circuits. Gingerly, he began to play its blue light over the surface of the segment…
‘Doctor.’
He looked around, wondering where the voice had come from.
‘Boonie?’
‘No, Doctor.’
Cautiously, he stood up, the sonic still in his hand. There was no sign of anyone – not Boonie, not Mother. No one. And then he saw it. It had been hidden by the random piles of machinery thrown down by Mother and the broken bits of appliances left by Crusher and Chuck, but once it moved he saw it.
It was a robot, about the size of a large child. Its upper body was a scratched, pale blue cube, its lower body an inverted pyramid from which sprouted two segmented legs ending in flat, circular feet. Two similar, flexible arms extended from the sides of the cube. A small screen was set into the front of the body near the top, glimmering bluey-white. It had no visible head.
‘I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure,’ he said charmingly, reaching out a hand. But the robot remained where it was, ten metres away.
‘I’m using this servitor as a conduit to speak to you,’ the voice said. It sounded surprisingly lively, but the Doctor had no idea whether that was its real voice, the voice of whoever was speaking through it, or just a disguise.
‘Who are you?’
‘You don’t need to know that.’
‘Oh. OK. What do I need to know?’
‘You need to know that if you attempt to interfere with the device at your feet, in any way, that you will not see Donna Noble alive again.’
The Doctor clenched his jaw.
‘I don’t take kindly to threats,’ he said sourly. ‘Particularly not ones directed against my friends.’
‘Then don’t take it as a threat, Doctor,’ the voice said, its bouncy nature sinisterly at odds with its words. ‘Take it as a promise. Interfere with the segment and Donna dies.’