Pirate Loop, The (2 page)

In the moment after she woke and before she opened her eyes, Martha thought she was in her mum's house in London. She could smell strong tea and cleanliness all around her as she lay sprawled on her back. Her jeans and leather jacket dug into her skin, she felt hot and heady like she'd had a late night out and the floor was trembling beneath her. Sore and a little bit fragile, she dared to look around.

Dark. Industrial. Noisy. Not the TARDIS. She closed her eyes again.

When she next awoke, she found the Doctor crouched beside her, grinning encouragingly. He brandished a chipped china mug at her with a drawing of a sheep on it.

'A little milk and no sugar, yeah?' he said.

'Ta,' she said, struggling to sit up. Her head throbbed and her limbs felt shaky, so she checked herself over for concussion. She wiggled her fingers and toes, and closed one eye and then the other to make sure her vision was OK. Everything seemed to be fine. Martha could remember the explosion in the TARDIS, being thrown off her feet and across the console, so she wasn't missing any memory. And, for all she felt battered, she didn't feel queasy, so there didn't seem to be any internal damage to worry about.

'What's the diagnosis?' asked the Doctor, with that slight, admiring smile he kept for whenever she showed a bit more intelligence than your average human ape.

'OK, I think,' she said. 'Can you check my pupils?'

He handed her the mug of tea and fished in his pocket for his sonic screwdriver. Its brilliant blue light dazzled her for a second. 'Both the same size,' said the Doctor. 'Both go all small when I shine a light at them. That's what they're meant to do, isn't it?'

'Means I'm probably not bleeding to death on the inside,' she said, batting the sonic screwdriver out of her face. 'I'm happy with that.'

So she had survived intact. And then she realised it was not a headache she could feel but the deep bass line of vast machinery thrumming all around her. They were no longer in the TARDIS. Wherever they were it stank like washing-up liquid, all efficient and clean. And it wasn't her own body that was shaking; the hard metal floor beneath her trembled with terrible power.

Martha drank the strong and pungent tea while glancing round to get her bearings. They were in the narrow alleyway between two huge machines; huge and noisy as an old factory or printing press, she thought, a whole series of sturdy great machines working flat out. She was suddenly reminded of the dark, low-ceilinged basement at the Royal Hope, where the hospital had its own power generator. Her mate Rachel had taken her down there at the end of a night shift to watch some other medical students lose at cards to the porters. Martha remembered them squeezing into a small, sweaty, claustrophobic room where you couldn't even hear yourself think. This place had the same heavy, oppressive feel to it.

'We hit the engine rooms then?' she said.

The Doctor grinned at her. "Very good,' he said. 'Yeah, smacked right into it. Sorry. Think they must have some sort of unmentored warp core or something, and the TARDIS went a bit rabbit-in-the-headlights. Doesn't take much to turn her head these days, poor girl. I meant to put us down in the passenger lounge. Bet it's a lot more posh than this upstairs.'

'Right,' said Martha. She put down her tea and struggled unsteadily to her feet. Just along the alleyway stood the reassuring shape of the TARDIS. She could still taste the acrid smoke that had billowed from the console, and realised the Doctor must have carried her out of it, letting her down here before hurrying off to find help . . . and the mug of tea. The engines around her filled her head with noise and her skin felt itchy with grime. Yet the dark and solid machinery seemed immaculate; perhaps she was just imagining the dirt. She shrugged off her jacket, the air suddenly hot and clammy on her bare arms. Despite the heat, she shivered; there was something wrong about this place, she could feel it deep inside her.

And then she realised she was being watched.

There were six of them, short, stocky men wearing tough leather aprons and luridly coloured Bermuda shorts. Practical, she thought, for this hot and heavy environment. They lurked in the shadows by the machines, watching her and the Doctor nervously.

'Er, hi!' she waved at them. One of them waved back instinctively then hid his hand behind his back. The men remained where they were, skulking in the darkness.

They're more scared of us than we are of them,' said the Doctor quietly.

'You said that in Kenya about those lions,' said Martha.

'Well, yes,' admitted the Doctor. He smiled his brightest smile as he addressed the men. 'She's feeling a lot better now, thank you. Said a tea would do the trick!'

The men remained in the shadows, watching. The Doctor nudged Martha in the ribs with a bony elbow.

'Come on,' he said, stepping forward. 'You need to thank them for the tea.'

'Right,' said Martha, feeling awkward. She hated being pushed in front of people, expected to perform. Her mum would still have important workmates round for dinner sometimes. Tish and Martha were always made to hand out the nibbles – her brother Leo always got away with filling up people's drinks. This is my middle one,' Mum would preen as her friends took the stuffed olives or carrot sticks and dip. 'She's going to be a leading surgeon.' It always made Martha furious, but she had never answered back. Tish, who liked playing up to her mum's image of her, said Martha had a twisted sense of duty. And Martha knew she was right. Even now, hundreds of years in the future, she felt herself adopting a familiar, joyless smile.

'Hi!' she said with badly faked delight. 'I'm Martha!' The men in the leather aprons said nothing and remained where they were. She turned to the Doctor. 'You did introduce us, didn't you?'

'Er,' said the Doctor sheepishly. 'I did call out a bit, but nobody responded. They probably didn't hear me over the noise of the engines. And then I found the kitchen and sort of helped myself. Sorry! Better leave them some coins in case they've got a tea club!' He rummaged through the pockets of his suit jacket, the inside ones first. 'Can you remember what the money is in space in the fortieth century?' Martha felt guilty; only a couple of days before she'd thrown a gold sovereign away down a wishing well.

The men in aprons seemed to cower in the darkness, and Martha realised they must think the Doctor was looking for a weapon. The poor blokes were terrified of them and she started to understand maybe why. They were the lowest of the low, toiling away in this noisy, sweaty place. They would never mix with any of the ship's passengers, and they probably only ever heard from the crew when something had gone wrong.

She reached a hand into the inside pocket of the Doctor's jacket, helping herself to the slim leather wallet that he kept with his sonic screwdriver. He raised an eyebrow at her but otherwise didn't seem to object; he liked it when she showed some initiative.

Martha flicked the wallet open, paused to picture in her mind what she wanted it to show, and then brandished it at the men still lurking in the shadows.

'There's no need for any concern,' she said, adopting the confident, reassuring tone that she'd learned from Mr Stoker. 'We're not here on an inspection. My assistant here—' she nodded her head at the Doctor'—just needs to familiarise himself with the ship's workings as part of his training. We'll just be a couple of minutes and then let you get back to your work.' She smiled her most charming smile.

The men in the Bermuda shorts and aprons turned to each other, said nothing yet seemed to confer.

'That was good,' said the Doctor quietly, taking the wallet of psychic paper from her and pocketing it carefully. Slowly, one of the men in aprons shuffled forward, glancing back to his friends, who all kept safely where they were. Martha's heart went out to the poor bloke. She thought he might have been the one who had waved before.

'That's it,' she told him. 'Me and him, we're really nothing to worry about. I'm Martha, he's the Doctor. Who are—'

The sentence died in her throat as the man in the leather apron stepped out into the light. He was tall and muscular, his eyes alive with fear and excitement. And he didn't have a mouth.

Martha realised she was staring, her own mouth hanging open. The man in the leather apron and the garish Bermuda shorts stared back at her mutely. Below the man's nose, where a mouth should have been, there was just a small, round hole, the same size as if it had been made by a hole-punch. His glistening black stubble didn't divide into beard and moustache, but covered the lower part of his face evenly. 'Right,' she said, not sure what she would say next. 'Right,' she said again.

'I think what my superior is trying to articulate,' said the Doctor, nimbly taking charge, 'is that we're very keen not to disturb what you're doing. We'll just keep out of your way.'

But the mouthless man raised his fist and began gesturing wildly. Martha grabbed the Doctor's arm to pull him back, worried he might get himself hit. The Doctor shrugged her off, and began to wave his own arm in a similarly emphatic manner.

It was some rudimentary kind of sign language.

'What's he saying?' she asked.

The Doctor and the mouthless man continued to wave their arms at each other. 'I think,' said the Doctor, 'he wants us to go that way.' He stopped waving, and pointed in the direction that the mouthless man was still indicating. The mouthless man nodded vigorously. 'Yes, I think that's what he wants.'

'Sorry,' said Martha to the mouthless man. 'But you can understand us, can't you? You can't speak but you understand English?'

The mouthless man nodded, then looked back at his colleagues. In the shadows, they nodded too. 'Oh,' said the Doctor. 'That's a good point. So, whoever you answer to, whoever gives you orders, they can tell you what to do out loud.'

Again the mouthless man nodded, and Martha felt a thrill of fear. It wasn't that this was a new species of people who just weren't born with mouths. Instead they were some kind of lower order of men, able to take instructions yet not to answer back. Either they'd been bred like this or they'd been operated on, but whatever it was they were clearly some kind of class of slaves.

Martha could see in the Doctor's eyes the same determination she felt burning hot inside herself. Whatever happened, they were going to help free these people.

The mouthless man gestured again down the passageway, beckoning the Doctor and Martha to follow him. They continued up the alley between the huge machines. The mouthless man's bare back showed strong shoulders and toned muscles, Martha noticed. His Bermuda shorts were all swirls of pink and blue.

The alley emerged into a wide, open area, about the size of Martha's tiny flat in London. The far wall was covered over with a bank of complex levers and controls. Not needing to be prompted by the mouthless man, the Doctor put on his glasses as he hurried over to inspect it.

Martha, knowing she'd make nothing of the controls herself but keen to at least look interested, headed over to a small, inset porthole to the left of all the switches. It must be some kind of inspection hatch for looking into the machine, she thought. She gazed in on a pale grey light that swirled gloopily beyond. Despite the clammy heat of the engine room she found her bare arms suddenly prickling with goose bumps. There was something scarily familiar about that grey light, but she couldn't think what it could be.

She turned to the Doctor to ask him. His mouth hung open and there was a mixture of awe and horror in his eyes.

'What?' she said.

'Oh, I'm so sorry,' he said to her softly. 'I really am.' Martha felt her heart hammering in her chest. It was what he normally said when somebody they'd met got killed.

'We're too late?' she said.

The Doctor snapped out of his reverie to look at her. Again she saw the glimmer in his eyes, that quick and sly intelligence. 'Too late?' he said incredulously. 'Nah. It's just we've only been here five minutes and I already know what went wrong! Hate it when that happens. Well, not hate exactly. It bothers me. Brilliant word, "bothers". Like "oblong". People should use it more. Anyway, good puzzle should take an hour to solve at least. Well, with me slightly less. Like that cornfield maze on Milton Nine.'

'You got lost in that for two days,' said Martha.

'Yeah!' grinned the Doctor. 'Wasn't it brilliant? But this!' He waved a hand dismissively at the bank of controls as he turned to the mouthless man. 'Madness!' He turned back to Martha. 'You know what this is?'

Martha scrutinised the levers, dials and switches. She was acutely aware of the mouthless man watching her, and his leather-aproned colleagues still there in the shadows, too. 'Course,' she said, lying through her teeth. 'And it explains why the ship was never found, doesn't it?'

The Doctor gazed at her with the same utter bewilderment as that time she'd tried to explain about MySpace. Then his face lit up. 'Of course!' he said 'Oh, you are brilliant, Martha Jones! Brilliant!' He turned back to the controls and began to inspect the dials and readings with new-found glee.

Keen to maintain the illusion of brilliance, Martha leant in close beside him to inspect the same dials and readings. The display showed complex swirls and flourishes instead of numbers she could read.

'I think the TARDIS must have crashed quite hard,' she said. 'It doesn't translate this for me.'

The Doctor looked at her over the top of his glasses. 'Nah,' he said. 'They're not numbers as you understand them. They're expressions of atemporal mismatch. Kodicek Scale, I think.' A thought struck him. 'Are you sure you understand how this drive works?'

She shrugged. 'A bit.'

'Right,' said the Doctor. He stood up straight again, stepping away from the controls and stretching his long arms and back. He seemed about to address the mouthless man, then changed his mind and turned back to Martha. 'What bit do you understand?'

'Well,' said Martha. 'It drives the spaceship, doesn't it?'

'Aaaah,' said the Doctor, wagging a finger at her. 'But it's not a spaceship, is it?'

'Sorry. It drives the
starship.
You can be such a geek.'

'Well,' he huffed, pulling a sulky face. 'These details are important. This drive here means it doesn't travel through space.'

'What?'

'See?' he said to the mouthless man. 'She was really just winging it! Unbelievable these people. And you know what they did to the Dodo?'

The mouthless man stared at him, either not getting the joke or too wary to show that he did.

'Doctor,' said Martha levelly. 'Why don't you tell us what this drive does.'

'Yeah, good idea,' he said. 'What we've got here is really very clever. And a good century ahead of its time. They should be on plain old hyperspace wossnames. But this? It's . . . it's . . .' he twirled a hand in the air, as if it might help conjure the right word.

'It's brilliant?' suggested Martha. Everything was brilliant with him. That's why she'd found a starship called 'Brilliant' so funny in the first place.

'Yeah,' said the Doctor, nodding. 'It's that, too. Cuts out all the boring stuff of travelling between the stars. And there's a
lot
of boring stuff out there. Billions and millions of miles of it. And empty, mostly, except for background radiation and lots of old TV. There's not a lot to do on the journey to another star. You get old, you die and you just hope your great-great-great-great-great grandkids still remember how to fly the ship.'

'Sounds fun,' said Martha.

'Oh, you lot do it with your usual pig-headed determination to do
anything
that's completely bonkers. Have I said how you're my very favourite species? But, bit of thinking, and there are ways of cutting corners.'

'Like the Time Vortex,' said Martha, who had taken some elementary lessons in how the TARDIS worked.

'Well, yeah,' the Doctor acknowledged. 'But this lot haven't got anywhere near that far yet. Which is just as well, 'cos I'd be duty-bound to stop 'em. What they've done here is to push against the surface on the outside of the Vortex. It's tough stuff, so it resists and you sort of bounce back off it. And if you can get the angle right – not that you have angles as such in nine-dimensional space – you skip along it, bump-bump-bump. I suppose it's not that graceful, now I come to think about it.'

'So it's like skimming a stone across the surface of a lake,' said Martha.

'Er, yeah,' said the Doctor. 'I wish I'd thought of putting it like that. Can we just pretend I did?'

'Yeah, whatever you like,' said Martha. 'So how does this explain how the
Brilliant
disappeared?'

'Well,' said the Doctor. 'While all the posh passengers are upstairs sipping cocktails, the ship is lurching across the surface of the space-time continuum like a stone skimming across a lake.' He beamed. 'That
is
a good analogy! And every time it presses itself into that surface, and just before it bounces back out... Well, it technically skips out of space and time. That's what makes it move so quickly, it misses out most of the actual distance. To anyone looking at it in just four or five dimensions, it's like it blinks out of existence.' He tried to click his fingers to demonstrate, but couldn't make them click. 'You get the idea.'

'Right,' said Martha. 'So the drive makes it flick in and out of reality, yeah?'

'Pretty much,' said the Doctor. 'Now you see me, now you don't. Now you see me again, now you don't again.'

'So it didn't blow up or fall into a black hole,' said Martha. 'It just got stuck somewhere nobody could see it.'

'Oh, I'd have been able to see it,' said the Doctor. 'If I'd gone looking.'

'Well you've got special powers, haven't you, oh mighty Last of the Time Lords?'

'Do I go on and on about that?'

Martha fluttered her eyelashes, all innocence. 'I don't think I've ever heard you mention it.'

'That's OK then. Still, it would have been a bit easier for everyone else to find it if they hadn't kept this technology quiet. I mean, I didn't know anything about this drive. Me!'

'You said there's about to be a big war, didn't you?' said Martha. 'Maybe they wanted to keep it secret from their enemies.'

'Maybe,' said the Doctor, glancing round. Martha realised he didn't want to say whatever it was he really thought while the mouthless man was still listening. But she had an idea herself; the starship's rich passengers weren't just on some wild pleasure cruise. While the rest of the galaxy was struggling not to have a war, this lot had built themselves a clever new way of escaping all the trouble.

Like she and the Doctor would be doing, if they just left in the TARDIS now. She felt awful about that, with the mouthless man stood there. They would be leaving him to his doom.

'Isn't there anything we can do for them?' she asked the Doctor quietly. 'They're going to be lost for ever, aren't they?'

The Doctor took her hand. 'You know how this works,' he said kindly. 'We can't change anything. We have to be responsible. What happens has already happened.'

'Yeah, I know,' she said. 'Still...'

'They also brought this on themselves,' said the Doctor gently. 'This drive is experimental. And they've got staff to run it who can't even tell them when it goes wrong! Oh, that's all very clever for keeping it secret, but it's also pretty stupid.' He turned to the mouthless man. 'No offence.'

The mouthless man nodded vigorously. 'See?' said the Doctor. He checked the controls again. 'Yes, see? Our friend here has sent an alert up to the captain to tell him the drive has stalled. But there's not been an answer, so presumably it hasn't got through. But at least everyone knows their place! The lowest ranks literally can't speak back to their superiors, and now that's going to cost everyone their lives.'