Doctor Who: The Leisure Hive (5 page)

A maintenance guide reported to his superior: 'There appears to be a small break in the fabric of the exterior wall.'

'Whereabouts?'

'Storeroom area.'

The senior maintenance guide checked all his instruments. They confirmed his assistant's report. He was just about to seal off that section of the Hive and order in a maintenance crew, when the alarm stopped. The guide rechecked his instruments. They now registered no activity above acceptable safety parameters. Apparently the Hive was operating normally again.

'Must be a temporary equipment failure,' he concluded. 'Order everyone to stand down.'

Such failures were becoming routine now that Argolis Leisure Planet Inc. was being forced to economize on regular maintenance work.

In the boardroom Morix lay in his chair, gasping for breath. His face was ashen, his eyes closed, his breathing stertorous.

Brock was alarmed. 'We can't just stand here and let him die,' he told Klout. 'We have to do something.' Klout indicated the desk console. Brock played a tattoo on a button on the console. According to the Argolin script, it should have instantly summoned Medical Services. Apparently it didn't. Nothing happened.

'Where is everyone?' complained Brock. 'Their Chairman, their Heresiarch, is dying. You'd think someone would care. But no one seems to give a damn, except us.'

He lifted Morix's limp hand and let it flop back on the arm of his chair like a dead fish.

'Go and see if you can find anybody,' he told Klout.

Klout didn't move.

Brock smiled.' Silly of me. I forgot,' he said. 'I'll go.

But before he could get to the door it slid open and Vargos and Dorant, two of the Argolin, entered.

'About time,' snapped Brock. 'Morix is much worse.'

Vargos and Dorant ignored the Terran. They crossed to the Heresiarch, and while one took his pulse, the other lifted his eyelids.

'How long has he been like this?' demanded Vargos,

'It all happened a moment ago,' replied Brock. 'He suddenly... collapsed.'

Dorant felt for the vein on Morix's neck. 'It's nearly time,' he told Vargos.

'Is there anything we can do?' asked Brock.

'Nothing.'

Vargos went to a wall cupboard and took out a package, which turned out to contain something that resembled a silver plastic sleeping bag.

'Aren't you going to do anything for him,' demanded the Terran. 'The man's obviously very sick.'

The two Argolin ignored the Terrans. They took their places one on either side of the Argolin leader. Together they levered him into a sitting position. For a moment Morix sat bolt upright, his eyes closed, his breathing sounding as if his lungs were a pair of punctured bellows. Then suddenly the bellows stopped. The Heresiarch of Argolis ceased breathing. His head fell forward onto the table and the last remaining crystals which glittered in his hair fell out. His hair turned in a second from gold to white. Morix was dead.

'Good grief,' said Brock, 'is that how all you Argolin die?'

Swiftly the two Argolin slid the corpse into the silver bag and zipped it up. While they were thus occupied, Brock looked at Klout and motioned for him to go. Klout slipped out of the boardroom.

In the Great Hall the Doctor and Romana listened intently to Pangol's explanation of the working of his tachyon generator. The Doctor was puzzled. It seemed to him there was a devil of a lot the fellow wasn't explaining.

'I'm not surprised,' said Romana. 'Look at his audience. Do they look as if they'd understand Cerenkov radiation wave equations?'

'All the same,' insisted the Doctor, 'he's obviously made some kind of breakthrough in tachyonics. So why not tell us about it? Why not flaunt it?'

'Modesty,' suggested Romana.

'Rubbish,' declared the Doctor. 'Commercial reason?'

'Possibly.' The Doctor gazed thoughtfully at the generator. 'You know I wish I could get inside there and take a look at the negative-image chamber.'

Unknown to the Doctor and Romana that was precisely what someone was doing.

The shuttle from the hyperspace liner from Terra descended onto the surface of Argolis. The first person to leave the craft, once the door was open, was Mena. She was still clutching the black globe which was chained to her wrist.

Mena had been informed of Morix's death during the hyperspace trip, and in true Argolin fashion had taken the news without a flicker of emotion. She had bowed her head in silence for a moment, for she had respected her consort. Then with quiet courtesy she had thanked the Captain of the hyperspace liner who had left his bridge to break the news to her. He had attempted to express his sympathy, but the words had died on his lips under the gaze of those impassive Argolin eyes.

'I'll never understand the Argolin,' he complained to his second officer when he returned to the bridge. They're cold.'

'It's all because of their warrior ethic,' explained the second officer, who would often while away the long watches by reading galactic history land anthropology. ' "Sorrow, pain and fear are "weaknesses in a warrior",' he quoted. ' "Eliminate them." That's the First Precept of Theron the Terrible.'

'Good thing there aren't many Argolin left, if you ask me,' he went on. 'Otherwise they might feel inclined to put into practice Theron's Second Precept.'

'What's that?' ' "War is the right and duty of every Argolin",' Quoted the second officer.

Mena hastened up the hover pavement to the First Observation Hall. Ignoring, as all the Argolin did, the fever-shifting parade of colours above her head, she made her way to the boardroom of the Leisure Hive. There she was met by Brock, full of sympathy and ready to proffer a shoulder to weep on. But as he soon discovered, the Argolin do not weep.

'Morix did his duty as an Argolin should,' she declared, cutting short his condolences.

'The Heresiarch died well,' said Vargos, intoning Ihe ritual phrases for the death of a leader of the mrgolin. 'And may the next Heresiarch die as gravely.'

'Praise be to Theron, murmured Dorant. Mena bowed her head.

The moment of sentiment over, she took her seat in the chair in which Morix had died. 'In view of the death of my consort,' she said, 'and in accordance with the laws of my people, I automatically become Chairwoman of the Leisure Hive and Heresiarch of Argolis. Agreed?

'Agreed,' said Vargos and Dorant. 'Wait a minute,' objected Brock. 'Surely we ought; to discuss this—'

'There is nothing to discuss,' observed the new Chairwoman: 'The succession is decided. And now to business... '

To Brock's amazement they then discussed the day-to-day routine of the running of the Leisure Hive during her absence on Terra, as if nothing had happened.

At last Vargos asked: 'Where is the Earth scientist? I thought you were bringing him with you?'

Mena explained that Hardin and his assistant were arriving by the next shuttle. She unlocked the chain from her wrist and slid the black globe on the table.

'Here it is,' she said. 'I thought I ought to bring it with me. A holocrystal of the first trials.

'What trials?' asked Brock. 'What's been going on behind your accountant's back?'

'Hardin has found a better use for Argolin tachyonics than those games with which Pangol amuses the holidaymakers,' announced Mena.

'What better use? What's this Hardin fellow discovered?' demanded the accountant. 'He has shown us how to manipulate Time.'

Using the stub of a pencil, the Doctor was trying to work out the various mathematical equations which Pangol punched out on the console of the generator. The equations appeared on the bubble screen.

'Satisfied?' asked Pangol who was growing weary of the Doctor's persistent questions.

'Frankly,' replied the Doctor, 'no.'

'What's wrong? Can't you do the sums?'

Pangol winked at the crowd of holidaymakers, who roared with laughter. Here was an unexpected bonus to their day-the discomfiture of a would-be expert.

'All you're giving me,' said the Doctor patiently, 'is the building blocks of tachyonics. General theory's all very well, but let's have a few specifics.'

'Like what?'

'Temporal ratios. Duration constants. Reduplication fields.'

Pangol's eyes narrowed. This strange-looking visitor was beginning to ask some awkward questions. He seemed to know altogether too much about tachyoaics for his own good. Somehow he had to be headed off.

'One of these days, when we've got more time,' lied Pangol, 'I'll be happy to show you around the machine.'

'Any time you like,' agreed the Doctor. 'The sooner the better.'

But a balding Terran clad in a glimmering smock had other ideas. It had been his wife's idea to come to Argolis. The place was all very colourful no doubt, but personally he was bored stiff. The generator was the first thing he had seen which promised to provide a good laugh.

'Forget theories,' said the Terran. 'What I want to know is-does that thing really work, or is it all a fake?'

Gratefully Pangol turned his attention to the new questioner. 'Visitor Loman,' he said, reading the name badge attached to the man's smock, 'you think we might have been using edited recordings in our demonstration, do you?'

'You're dead right!'

'Rubbish,' snapped the Doctor. 'The whole thing's real —that's what worries me.'

Pangol ignored his intervention. 'Perhaps you'd care to try the machine for yourself, Mr Loman,' hi suggested. 'Take my place inside.'

Mr Loman stared at the generator, his enthusiasm for the prospect waning fast.

'Having second thoughts?' queried Pango maliciously.

'No, of course not,' replied the man witb noticeable lack of conviction.

The watching holidaymakers roared with laughter.

Pangol slid open the doors to the central chambel of the generator and invited Loman to enter. 'There' nothing to it,' he told the Terran. 'The machine does it all. Just stand in the image chamber and try to relax.'

Loman smiled weakly, but he managed a cheery wave to the crowd outside before Pangol closed the doors.

Pangol busied himself at the control console 'First,' he told his audience, 'the projection.'

Suddenly a startled Loman could be sfcen floating upside down in the bubble screen.

The crowd applauded.

'Two temporally coincident Mr Lomans are now in existence,' explained Pangol; 'one inside the imag chamber, the other as you can see-within th bubble.

'Now, he went on, 'we can manipulate the one without injuring the other.'

He began to punch in instructions to sjthe computer. The audience stared at the image of Loman, now right side up, floating in the bubble. Apparently full of confidence, the Terran began to wave at his fellow holidaymakers. He pulled faces and clowned around to the amusement of the audience.

Suddenly a look of agony crossed his face.

His left arm detached itself from his shoulder and floated off into space. But unlike Pangol's earlier demonstration, the amputation was followed by a great fountain of blood from his shoulder. The right leg detached itself from Loman's body. Again it was accompanied by a cataract of blood. The bubble screen was by now spattered with scarlet.

The crowd screamed.

Detecting the change of tone, Pangol glanced up from the computer console and stared in horror at the one-armed, one-legged, lifeless figure of Loman floating above the generator.

'Get him out of there!' shouted the Doctor. 'Hurry, for Heaven's sake! Open up this thing!'

Pangol fumbled with the catch, then slid aside the doors of the generator. The Doctor entered.

'Who is that man?' Pangol asked Romana.

'The Doctor.'

'Is he a scientist?'

Romana nodded. Experience had taught her to keep explanation down to a minimum. In any case, how did you explain the Doctor? Even his fellow Time Lords preferred to keep him at arm's length.

He must be the scientist Mena decided to import from Terra,' said Pangol. 'That would by why he was asking all those questions about tachyonics.'

Fortunately Romana was required neither to confirm nor deny the charge, for just then the Doctor emerged from the generator. He was looking rather shaken.

'How is he?' demanded Pangol.

'Dead.'

'Dead? But that's impossible.'

'Not if you've just had an arm and a leg torn off,' snapped the Doctor, who was in no mood to suffer fools gladly.

Pangol stared at him aghast. 'You mean, what we saw on the bubble screen really happened? It's impossible.'

'That's the second time you've said it,' observed the Doctor. 'Go and see for yourself.'

'But you don't understand, the only way it could happen would be if the generator had been repolarized. And that would mean the reversal of the whole image function.'

'Tell that to the poor devil in there,' said the Doctor tartly. 'I'm sure he'll be impressed.'

With Romana at his heels the Doctor began to elbow his way through the excited mob. Meanwhile, using his communicator, Pangol ordered immediate medical facilities, then he spoke to Security at some length.

The Doctor and Romana had found a quiet corner. They were hidden from the mob's view by one of the crystal statues of Argolin heroes which dotted the Great Recreation Hall. They were waiting for the hubbub to die down.

'I don't know about you,' remarked the Doctor, 'but I've had enough of Argolis. Let's try and work our way back to the TARDIS and get out of here.' He peered through the crystal pelvis of the statue. 'I don't think anyone has noticed us yet.'

'Wrong,' said Romana.

'Eh?'

Romana nudged him. The Doctor turned round to face three large Argolin Security guides, who were looking down on him with a distinct lack of cheer.

'Madam Chairman,' said the smallest guide, 'wishes to see you, sir.'

'Now, sir,' said the other two.

At that moment Mena was in the boardroom showing Vargos, Dorant and Brock a holographic recording of the experiments which Hardin had done on Terra. They were watching Hardin and his assistant, Stimson, helping an elderly lady into a chair in their laboratory, which was placed in the midst of a set of tachyon projectors, all wired to small individual generators.