Doctor Who: The Leisure Hive (4 page)

The silence which greeted his words seemed to Brock to hang in the air of the boardroom, like some bird of ill omen. He coughed. 'I think it's a very generous offer,' he said at last.

No one replied.

He said: 'I don't think we're likely to get a better one.'

'Buy Argolis?' Morix repeated blankly.

Brock hastened on. 'That's why I thought I ought to come and see you in person,' he explained. 'In view of the financial state of Argolis Leisure Planet Inc., believe me it's an offer you cannot afford to refuse.

'Just think of it,' he continued, emboldened. 'You can unload this white elephant of a place and buy yourselves another planet. There are plenty for sale in this quadrant of the galaxy. You can have a choice of atmospheres. Oxygen. Nitrogen. Methane. Argon. Whatever suits you: just take your pick.'

Still no one replied.

'Don't think of it as losing your home,' he advised., 'Remember you'll be able to take your people from this dead, poisoned world to a new planet where you can actually walk around on the surface and breathe the air. Or methane. Or argon. Whichever takes your fancy... '

'His voice died away.

Brock swallowed.

Pangol could contain himself no longer. 'We will not sell our birthright!' he cried. 'Argolis is not for sale!

After a glance at Morix, who seemed to have fallen into a coma, Brock turned on Pangol. He had taken quite enough from this young Argolin. It was time to acquaint him with the brutal facts of commercial life. 'That, my dear Pangol, is not for you to decide. Nor for Morix, come to that. It is a board decision. The board of Argolis Leisure Planet inc. will be the final arbiter.'

'I wouldn't bank on that,' replied Pangol. 'The Argolin always obey their leader.'

Silent, immobile, K9 stood forlornly on a table while the Doctor unscrewed his side panel. As soon as he began to ease the panel off, about half a gallon of cold seawater gushed out all over his feet.

'Urgh!' cried the Doctor, hopping up and down.

Romana, who was adjusting the controls on the console in preparation for landing, ignored him.

Grumbling to himself, the Doctor stood on one leg and removed a shoe, which he then emptied of water.

'I'll squelch for the rest of the day,' he complained. 'Probably go down with flu or pneumonia.'

There was a faint jarring as the TARDIS alighted.

'We've arrived,' announced Romana.

'Oh,' said the Doctor, studying the jumble of wet and tangled relays and micro circuits which filled most of K9's interior. 'It'll take ages to get him operational again.'

Romana prepared to leave the TARDIS. 'Well, I'm starting my holiday now,' she said, pressing the lever on the console which activated the doors. She stepped out into the Great Leisure Hall of Argolis.

Unhappily the Doctor picked a piece of seaweed off K9s motor circuits. Then a thought occurred to him. 'We're hardly likely to need K9 here, are we?' he said.

He was never more wrong.

Romana was standing in the middle of the Great Hall. She was staring upwards, lost in wonder as the myriad colours of Argolis chased each other in, countless different shades and patterns across the sky.

No one had noticed the arrival of the TARDIS, largely because everyone else, like Romana, was goggle-eyed at the view. As for the police box itself, it fitted in amongst the many kiosks and cabins in the Great Hall. In any case those visitors who were not busy gawping at the Argolin rainbows were watching the big bubble screen set above a kind of booth.

The Doctor locked the TARDIS behind him and moved over to the screen. On it, in 3-D, he saw that a game of squash was in progress. The two players, both humanoid, were very expert. The ball flashed back and forth with monotonous regularity. Then something strange happened to the game. The ball assumed a life of its own. The laws of gravity ceased to apply. The players were now seen to be in a state of free fall, yet they still continued to stroke the ball back and forth.

'Clever,' observed Romana, who had come up to stand beside the Doctor. 'Wonder how they do it?'

'Unreal transfer,' replied the Doctor. 'Has to be.'

'One problem.'

'What?'

'This part of the galaxy doesn't discover the principles of unreal transfer for another century and a half. I looked it up: it's a matter of historic record.

Then the history books have got it wrong,' said the Doctor. 'Not for the first time,' he added.

The game of squash was replaced in the bufebl other scenes, which were all fantastically manipulated in their turn. Then Pangol appeared, floating inside the bubble. Or so it seemed. He smiled and waved at his audience.

'Sorry, ladies and gentlemen,' he said genially, 'but that completes the demonstration for the moment. See you soon.'

An expression of alarm crossed his face.

'I hope,' he added - as one of his arms detached itself from his body and flew off into space.

The audience reacted in shocked horror, which rapidly degenerated into laughter when Pangol, apparently undisturbed by the loss of a limb, tried to grab it as it floated past him. The laughter continued when one of his legs fell off and started to do a dance on its own. Eventually all that was left of Pangol was his head, which began to grow larger and larger until it filled the whole bubble. At the end there was just his eye. The bubble had become one enormous staring eyeball.

'See you soon,' said Pangol-and winked.

The audience applauded enthusiastically.

You still say it's unreal transfer?' queried Romana.

The Doctor shook his head. 'I don't know,' he admitted. 'But if it isn't, then someone's found out how to do some very strange things with a tachyon generator.'

'He's got a lot of talent, that boy of yours,' remarked Brock.

He and Morix were still sitting in the boardroom.

They had been watching Pangol's display of tachyonics on one of the video screens. Morix, who seemed to have recovered slightly, indicated that Brock should turn off the monitor.

'Take my advice, old friend,' said the Terran, leaning across to depress the button on the desk console. 'Sell this place. Get rid of it. Buy a new future for your race.'

'It's very tempting,' agreed Morix.

'It's the sensible thing to do.'

'From where does this offer originate?'

Brock shrugged. 'It's not important who wants to buy the planet,' he observed. 'Just be grateful that somebody does.'

'Who are they?'

'A group,' he said. 'A syndicate.'

'Which group? What syndicate?'

'Does it matter?'

Obviously it did.

Brock sighed; he could see trouble looming ahead. 'Very well,' he replied at last. 'If you must know, it's a Foamasi syndicate which has made the offer.'

Morix stared at him in amazement. 'Foamasi?' he cried, seemingly rejuvenated by the sudden access of adrenalin in his veins.

'Their galactic credits are as good as anyone else's,' pointed out Brock. 'Better, in fact. Since no one else can breathe your atmosphere — only a reptilian species whose genes were randomly modified by the effect of radioactivity caused by Argolin missiles.'

Morix did not reply for a moment. He was trying to take in the news. 'You mean,' he said at last, 'that it is because of our missiles that-the Foamasi can breathe our polluted air?'

'It's about the only air they can breathe.' Brock laughed without humour. 'Ironic, isn't it, when you come to think about it? But that's the way it is. As a result of the war you waged, you made your own planet uninhabitable for your own race. Yet at the same time you transformed your enemies into the only biological heirs to your own world. At least the Foamasi could live out there on the surface of your planet. They won't need all that protective shielding you can't afford to maintain.'

Morix closed his eyes. Oh, my poor Argolis, he thought, is it we who are guilty of destroying you?

'What do they want with this planet?' he asked.

'Who knows?' replied Brock. 'And who cares what a bunch of asthmatic green snakes with legs want with a place like this? I say they're welcome to it.'

'My people will care. Pangol will care. It's hard for an Argolin to live with defeat. And to be forced to sell our world to our enemies-isn't that the ultimate dishonour?'

'Then you will sell?' demanded Brock.

Morix did not reply.

'Look, I'm just an accountant,' continued the other. 'Not a warrior. I don't understand grand emotions. For me a defeat is when the books don't balance. Dishonour is when you lose to the galactic tax collectors.'

Suddenly tired, Morix leaned his head on his hands. A crystal, one of the jewels with which all the Argolin dressed their hair, fell on to the table. Brock forbore to pick it up.

 

The Doctor and Romana joined the crowd of excited holidaymakers who surrounded Pangol when he emerged from the tachyon generator.

'It is a well known fact that the tachyon was first discovered on Earth,' insisted an intense lady. She was dressed in a seamless, fluorescent suit that fitted her like a second skin and she wore a hat that looked as if it were made out of living moss (which it was). She glared accusingly at Pangol.

'Agreed,' said Pangol. 'The tachyon particle was first hypothesised on Terra. But that's as far as they got. They never developed it. They never did anything about it.'

'What I'm saying,' insisted the lady in the moss hat, 'is that it is quite wrong of you to claim tachyonics as an Argolin science. We on Earth could have done all this—' she waved a set of jewelled nails at the generator '—if we had wanted.'

Pangol once again blandly agreed with the woman. But Romana, who was watching him, could see the rage boiling inside the young Argolin. It was like a forest fire: one day it would get out of control. How you hate all these visitors to your planet, she thought! 'Excuse me,' said the Doctor. 'May I ask a question?'

The lady in the fluorescent suit attempted to wither the tall, oddly dressed figure with a glance. In the course of her seven marriages it was a technique she had employed successfully to reduce her husbands to nerveless wrecks. But the Doctor, unwithered, unwrecked, smiled aimiably.

'Argolin science! It doesn't exist,' she declared. And she turned on her heel and left.

Pangol fought to regain his self control. He shrugged. 'Must be one of those Terran nationalists,' he said at last.

But the Doctor wasn't interested in politics. 'As I understand it,' he observed, 'a tachyon travels faster than the speed of light.'

'Correct.'

'So it follows that a tachyon field can be made to arrive at Point B
before
it has left Point A. Am I right?'

'Quite right,' agreed Pangol. Or put it another way,' went on the Doctor. 'A tachyon field can move backwards or forwards in Time without relation to the space it occupies.'

'Indeed.'

'Which is all very interesting,' said the Doctor. 'That is, if you're interested in hypothetical particles. But it doesn't explain what went on when the generator projected your image-or was it really you?-into that thing up there.' He pointed to the bubble screen.

Pangol's eyes were wary. 'What did you say your name was?' he asked.

'I didn't,' said the Doctor. 'Anyway we were talking about your generator.'

'If you like I could show you the wave equations that define the creation of three-dimensional tachyonic images—' began Pangol.

'I like,' replied the Doctor. He took a stub of a pencil and a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket. 'Here. Use this.'

A bitter wind blew, colder than charity. Even if you were protected by a heated space suit, it still seemed to chill you to the bone. Or perhaps that was just the effect of the dead landscape-an immense plain broken here and there by short, jagged outcrops of rock: mostly quartz and granite. Everything else had been worn away.

The surface of Argolis was gritty underfoot and (covered with a kind of coarse dust, a couple of centimetres thick. It was like walking on ash, which is precisely what the surface layer was composed, of - ash and cold cinders.

The colours which blazed in the sky overhead somehow made the scene look even more desolate. Once outside the Leisure Hive you realized that the air-or at least the gales that roared across the planet-were full of tiny fragments of glittering dust which reflected and refracted light from Argolis suns.'

Somewhere in this brilliant world of colour ash stirred and rose and was snatched away in the wind. Webbed feet left tracks which were instantly erased. Something Was moving cautiously across the barren plain in the direction of the Hive. They-for by now it was clear there were at least two of them - had planned their advance with care. Out of sight of the great observation domes, which errupted from the building like enormous transparent blisters and were crowded with holidaymakers, they approached the rear of the Hive. They followed the wall round to where the storerooms, offices, laboratories and other service areas were located. There they attached a sensor to the exterior wall, and listened.

There was the sound of movement within; some Argolin was checking equipment in a storeroom. They waited patiently under the lee of the wall, their breathing harsh and laboured in the poisonous air of Argolis. At last, when their detector confirmed that the Argolin had gone and the storeroom beyond was empty, they began work.

Getting into the Hive took a matter of minutes. They attached a small box to the wall, then drew it slowly down the side of the Hive, so that it traced out a circle-a circle large enough to permit their access. Inside, in the darkness of the storeroom, the circular lines glowed and the wall itself bubbled as if attacked by acid. When the circle was complete, a slight pressure from a clawed hand was enough to push the segment of wall inwards. The figures entered the Hive. They replaced the cut fragment of wall and, using the same device, reversed the cutting process. The opening was sealed shut, and to the casual observer there was no sign it had ever existed.

It was the duty of the maintenance guides to monitor all functions of the Leisure Hive 20.5 hours a day. (Incidentally 20.5 hours
was
the length of an Argolin day.) Any change in atmospheric pressures or increase in radiation levels-in fact any variation in the physical status of the Hive-and lights would begin to flash in the maintenance control room. Alarms sounded. Emergency routines went into immediate operation. The extent of the damage (if any) was assessed, and repairs put in hand.