Authors: Nicholas Briggs
He waited patiently in the control room. For what seemed a long time, he stood perfectly still, staring out of the forward view-port, at the nothingness of space. There were Daleks out there, somewhere. There always were, of course, but once again, they had made it personal. Their latest scheme had caused a tragedy to unfold before him. They had crossed his path like an ancient omen of bad fortune, and now it felt to him almost as if he must heave on his battle-stained armour again to fight them.
His thoughts were broken by the sound of the children crying, coming from the cabin back down the corridor. It sounded as if Sabel had finally made it clear to what he was sure was her little brother that his mother and father were dead. The Doctor could pick out Sabel’s low, faltering voice. It was Jeni and the boy who were crying.
Listening harder, the Doctor could even discern some of Sabel’s words as she spoke firmly and with more purpose.
‘You mustn’t cry any more, Ollus … Jenibeth. You mustn’t cry. We must all be brave. It’s what Mummy and Daddy would have wanted.’
‘But what shall we do now?’ came Jeni’s voice.
There was a pause. Sabel clearly didn’t have a plan. Who could blame her? She was probably only about 8 years old.
‘Will the funny man look after us?’ came Ollus’s tiny voice.
The Funny Man? thought the Doctor. Well, if he could at least be that for them, he might bring some light into their lives to help them through the terrible pain they must be feeling. He might at least do that, to make up for the heartache the Daleks had wrought here.
Deciding not to eavesdrop any more, the Doctor sniffed back his emotions and concentrated on the controls of the ship. A cursory examination confirmed to him that although it was damaged, it was space-worthy. He could, perhaps, take the children home without subjecting them to the disorientation of travelling in the TARDIS.
He was suddenly aware of the shuffle of little footsteps behind him. He turned and saw the children, assembled in a line, holding hands. Ollus, the little boy in the middle, between his two sisters again, stumbled back, slightly overawed, and the girls were forced to stumble back with him. Sabel pulled all three forward again. She really was the brave one.
‘So …’ said the Doctor, a bit lost for words. He smiled as reassuringly as he could and crouched down, to make himself less imposing for them. He looked at Ollus. ‘All better, then?’
Ollus nodded and unintentionally pulled Jeni’s hand over his face as he attempted to scratch his nose. Jeni tutted, irritated, and yanked his arm back.
‘Ollus!’ she hissed, disapprovingly.
‘So …’ started the Doctor again, still unsure quite how to treat the children. ‘I thought I’d take you all back home.’
The children looked at him, blankly.
‘There’s probably someone back home, isn’t there?’ asked the Doctor. ‘Someone who could look after you all?’
Still, they said nothing.
‘OK …’ said the Doctor. ‘Well, I’m sure there’ll be someone. Um … can you tell me where you’re from?’
Still nothing.
‘Anyone? Come on. You must know where you’re from.’
Finally, Sabel spoke. ‘Will the Daleks come back?’
And the Doctor realised that his reassuring tone counted for absolutely nothing. How could he honestly tell them the Daleks wouldn’t come back? They always came back.
‘Well,’ he finally decided. ‘They might do. Yes. Yes. They might do. Which is why we have to get you back home, where it’s safe …’ he trailed off. ‘Hopefully safe … in case the Daleks do … er … do come back here.’
‘There isn’t anyone who could look after us,’ said Sabel.
‘Not even an aunt or an uncle?’ asked the Doctor. ‘Or a grandmother or grandfather?’
‘No,’ said Sabel.
‘Oh,’ said the Doctor. ‘Well, I’m … I’m sure there’ll be … er … well, someone …’ He trailed off again, turning his back on them, wincing to himself, feeling totally incompetent, as he approached the astro-navigation section of the controls. Tapping a few keys, he brought up a display showing a star chart.
‘Now then … Local space,’ he muttered to himself. He was looking for their most likely point of origin.
As he pushed his finger around the screen, planetary symbols popped out like rapidly inflating, 3-D balloons, text detailing their names, population, mass, and other information scrolling underneath.
All of a sudden, the Doctor was aware of tiny footsteps rushing towards him.
‘Ollus!’ called Sabel, scoldingly. But Ollus was already heading straight for the Doctor, arm outstretched, a strange, nasal noise emanating from him.
‘Neeeeeeeeeooooowwww!’ he intoned.
The Doctor almost gasped out loud when he saw what little Ollus was holding in his outstretched hand. It was a tiny toy spaceship.
Ollus made a huge, splashy impact sound with his mouth as he brought the tiny toy into contact with the screen on a planetary symbol named ‘Carthedia’. The Doctor realised that Ollus was approximating the noise of retro rockets firing.
The scrolling text read: ‘Carthedia. Earth Alliance colony planet. Total population: 3 billion …’
Satisfied his spaceship had landed and having finished his retro-roaring, Ollus turned to the Doctor and smiled. His smile lit up the Doctor’s face.
‘Carthedia!’ announced Ollus.
‘That’s your home?’ asked the Doctor. ‘Carthedia?’
‘Yes,’ said Ollus.
‘You can read?’ asked the Doctor. ‘You seem too young to be able to read.’
‘He’s the clever one,’ explained Jenibeth. ‘We’re all quite clever, actually. But Ollus is especially clever. That’s what Daddy says … er, said …’ Her head
suddenly bowed. The Doctor moved to put a hand on her shoulder, but Sabel pulled her away. The Doctor nodded, understanding.
‘Well, er … Well done, Ollus,’ said the Doctor. ‘Do you mind if I have a little look at your spaceship?’
Ollus snatched it away and hid it in his right-hand trouser pocket. He shook his head.
‘Oh, all right then,’ said the Doctor. But even without a closer examination, he was sure that the little spaceship was the same one he had seen embedded in glass on the head of that gravestone on Gethria. ‘Made in Carthedia’, the tiny inscription on it had read.
And the Doctor knew that he had already been to this little boy’s funeral.
It would take some time for this tired old ship to make the voyage back to Carthedia. Whatever had happened during the Dalek attack on the vessel had made its power cells very unstable, so the Doctor dared not risk setting it to maximum velocity. As he watched the various monitor screens, constantly making sure everything was running safely, he idly wondered whether the Daleks had fired on the ship at all. Thinking about the damage he had seen, it occurred to him that such minor harm to the ship had merely been caused by the Blakelys’ attempts at setting up a defence screen. Furthermore, whether the Dalek ship had fired or not in this encounter, they must have seen Terrin and his wife eject themselves into space. And if that were the case, why, then, had the Daleks not destroyed the spaceship?
‘Not like the Daleks …’ muttered the Doctor, realising instantly that he had said this only a few hours before. Something odd was going on. The Daleks were behaving … oddly. ‘What are you up to, eh?’ he said.
‘Who are you talking to?’
Sabel had pulled up another well-worn fold-out swivel chair to sit next to where the Doctor was already reclining, with his pointy boots on the control panel. He instantly sat up, putting his feet down on the floor, as if he had been told off.
Sabel looked at him, not as fiercely as before. But she still clearly didn’t trust him.
‘Oh …’ said the Doctor, in the absence of any coherent, acceptable response occurring to him. Then he opted for the truth. ‘I was talking to myself, actually,’ he said, smiling warmly. The warmth was not returned.
‘How did you get on board our ship and what’s that big blue crate over there?’ asked Sabel, nodding towards the TARDIS.
‘That’s how I got on board your ship,’ smiled the Doctor. ‘It’s the TARDIS.’
Sabel regarded the TARDIS for a moment. She clearly did not believe him.
‘Seriously,’ said the Doctor, a little hurt.
Sabel turned to look out of the view-port, apparently not interested in talking to the Doctor any more. He felt a little dismissed. He swivelled his chair around, absently. Ollus was sitting on the deck by the door, engrossed in playing with his spaceship toy. It was quite a technologically impressive little item, thought the Doctor, and Ollus was very adept at ‘operating’ it.
Accompanied by an array of fizzing and buzzing sounds, the toy ship flashed various colours and projected tiny holographic images around its hull – whooshing space warps, cascading comets, gigantic
planets, some orange, some blue, some coloured like pulsing rainbows. There were moments when the ship itself even seemed to hover a little, or perhaps the Doctor was mistaken about that.
Jenibeth emerged from a cabin somewhere down the corridor. She was carrying a small, plastic packet of something. As she walked along, she was staring into it with fervent determination, totally absorbed. Whatever she was about to fish out, speculated the Doctor, it seemed as though it was going to be her favourite thing.
With a resolute crackle of plastic, Jenibeth finally pulled out a small, bright green blob of something. She held it up for a moment, admiring it. Then she licked it with delight and popped it into her mouth, instantly chewing, her cheeks bunching in a grin of pure joy. The Doctor thought of telling her that sweets would rot her teeth, but he stopped himself, remembering that these children needed all the happiness in their lives they could find.
He swivelled his chair back to view the control panels and read-out screens. Everything was still working well, although the power levels were far from ideal. He glanced back at Sabel. She was still staring ahead.
‘This formula,’ the Doctor said to her. ‘Have you any idea what sort of thing it was?’
Sabel continued to stare ahead. ‘A secret.’
‘A secret the Daleks wanted to get hold of,’ said the Doctor. ‘So it must be something bad.’
‘Why?’ asked Sabel.
‘Because everything the Daleks do is bad,’ said the Doctor.
To his surprise, Sabel seemed genuinely curious. She reached out a foot and propelled her chair round to face him. The Doctor swivelled to face her too. He was intrigued.
‘You know what the Daleks are?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ said Sabel. ‘They help people.’
‘Help people?’ the Doctor was appalled. ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘The Sunlight Worlds. They made those, didn’t they?’
‘The Sunlight …? Did they?’ asked the Doctor. ‘Actually, I don’t care what they’ve made, it always leads to the most terrible trouble. That’s what you’ve got to remember about the Da—’ He suddenly cut himself short. ‘Wait a minute! Did your father think the Daleks “help people”?’
Sabel seemed confused about the Doctor’s question. ‘Of course. Everyone knows that.’
‘Then why didn’t he just give them this formula of his, if he thought the Daleks were apparently so nice?’ asked the Doctor.
‘Because Hogoosta said no one must ever know about the formula, that’s why,’ said Sabel, simply. ‘No one at all. Ever.’
‘Why not?’ The Doctor decided to ask about this ‘Hogoosta’ later.
‘Because he said it was dangerous and no one must know about it,’ she said, rather unhelpfully.
‘So, how come
you
know about it?’ asked the Doctor.
‘I don’t really,’ confessed Sabel. ‘I just heard Mummy and Daddy talking about it. And even if I did know, I couldn’t tell you about it anyway. I mean, who are you?’
‘I’m the Doctor,’ the Doctor said, simply, as if that explained everything. He thought he might just get away with that.
‘Did you know my Mummy or Daddy?’ Sabel asked, almost hopefully, as if his knowing them might mean a little of them was still alive.
The Doctor didn’t like disappointing Sabel. ‘Er … well, no, I didn’t. But I’d
like
to know about them. About what they did and who this Hogoosta person was.’
Sabel considered for a moment. The Doctor was encouraged that it really did seem as though he may actually have got away with not explaining who he was.
Suddenly, Ollus spoke, without looking up from his toy. ‘Hogoosta looked funny. He made me laugh.’
‘Did he?’ asked the Doctor, grateful for the change of focus. ‘What was funny about him?’
‘He had lots of legs,’ said Jenibeth, through a mouthful of her chewy green blob. ‘And he went
scuttle-scuttle-scuttle
, like that.’ She made a spider-like walking motion with her hands.
‘He wasn’t human, you mean?’ asked the Doctor.
‘He’s from Gethria,’ explained Sabel. ‘You don’t know him?’
‘Er … no,’ confessed the Doctor. ‘But, um … I’ve
been
to Gethria. Although, possibly not … er … recently.’ He thought back to the funeral he had witnessed. About the little spaceship in the gravestone. He looked at Ollus, engrossed with that spaceship, staring with wonder through its multicoloured, holographic projections.
‘So how did this Hogoosta … person … How did he know your parents?’ asked the Doctor.
The Doctor positioned his chair so that he could see all three children, and patiently listened as they started revealing fragments of a fascinating and disturbing account. He learnt that their parents, Terrin and Alyst, were highly thought of physicists and polymaths. It was clear that their influence had been passed down to Sabel, Jenibeth and Ollus too … especially Ollus, who seemed capable of really quite breathtakingly sophisticated thought processes for a boy who was, the Doctor learnt, not yet 5 years old.
Apparently ever interested in expanding their knowledge, Terrin and Alyst, the Doctor was told, had begun a long-distance correspondence course with an esteemed Klektid archaeologist on the planet Gethria. As he listened to the unfolding story, the Doctor set part of his mind to work on recalling exactly what a Klektid was.
Hogoosta’s work was concerned with the unearthing of an ancient monument, known to be called the ‘Cradle of the Gods’ – no one knew why, apparently. Terrin and Alyst had freely participated in an ‘exchange of knowledge’ programme, sharing much of it with their children. Sabel, Jenibeth and Ollus had been shown many images of this Cradle of the Gods. They had found it fascinating. What the Doctor found more fascinating, however, was that their descriptions of it began to conjure up an image in his mind of the giant, granite-like structure
he
had seen on Gethria.