have caught them!
He was going to get his planet and do what he liked with
it in spite of not having stolen the hat. The only things he
had on his conscience were that (a) he had agreed to pinch
a hat but hadn't, and (b) he was going to get his lifetime's
dream without having done anything dodgy to gain it. He
looked around the room despondently and caught what he
thought was the knowing eye of the Doctor. Who would
have no chance to show off his tremendous skills as he might
have done had they made planet-fall on Flynn and not been
doomed never to reach Miggea and the play-offs.
So as time sauntered on and Uncle Rupoldo and his men
marched behind, all the more motivated to solve the crime
now that their team was in danger of never so much as
getting a sniff at the Arrer, Bingo manfully played host to
the Tournamentors, the Re-Enactors and the holidaymakers
while checking his watch about once every minute in the
hope that some news would come through concerning the
whereabouts of the stolen hat. He tried to talk to Hari, but
Hari was moping and would have nothing to do with him.
And when the beautiful Flapper tried to talk about Hari
to Bingo or to Hari about Bingo, both men, for the wrong
reasons, refused to speak. It looked pretty definite that, by
the time night fell, neither true love nor true sport were ever
going to run smooth again.
Bingo went to bed praying that the hat would be discovered
and the passengers of the Gargantua be allowed to leave.
Gloomily he anticipated another unsleeping night.
The Doctor went to bed wondering who on earth was
telling the truth and who was lying when clearly nobody
he had spoken to had any reason to pinch Mrs Banning-
Cannon's horrible hat. He brooded on the possibility that
this was to do with the tournament and that the Judoon, who
comprised the majority of the Tourists, might have planned
the whole thing in order to stop them catching the ship and
so arriving in Miggea too late to play. But such tactics, he had
to admit, weren't characteristic of the Judoon, who tended to
have fixed, literal attitudes where the law was concerned. He
racked his brain for further possibilities and spent a fretful
night in the process, there being rather more rack than brain
involved.
Everyone was up at dawn, which was no inconvenience
to the android staff. A gloomy and generally pretty weary
team met in the breakfast room. All of them had popped dust
from their eyes, staring at the chronos reading off the minutes
before it would be too late to solve the crime and get aboard
the Gargantua in time. Another gorgeous sun rose over the
brilliant flowers, the picturesque trees, the green lawn and
the glittering blue of the Lockesley Hall ornamental lake, but
it beat down not on a bunch of cheery faces remarking on the
splendour of the weather and its perfection for a tournament
match but on a crowd of miserable features staring into the
sky watching the tenders take up their more fortunate fellows
to board the Gargantua.
Only Mr Banning-Cannon was not grieving. If asked he
would have told you that he was as cheerful as the robin
which, in the words of the popular ditty, sings in the tree.
Sadly, however, he could not afford to show his pleasure but
must appear as grimly inflexible on most topics, especially
the heisting of expensive hats, as his lady wife.
Around lunchtime, Sir Rupoldo de Crespigny dropped
out of the sky, followed by a squadron of his men, to issue
the happy news that Mrs Banning-Cannon's hat had been
found, abandoned, though still in its hatbox, in the bushes on
the far side of the lake.
'It appears,' announced Rupoldo, who felt that Mrs B-C
should have been more flexible in the matter of pursuing
charges and thus let the local heroes get a chance, at least, of
playing for the coveted Arrer, 'that the hat in question has
been found. I would be obliged, therefore, madam, if you
would accompany myself and my officers to identify it.'
The hatbox was opened, the hat identified. Something,
said Mrs Banning-Cannon, could be missing from the hat.
She didn't think so. It looked bedraggled, as if part of the
internal structure had been displaced. As if it had been sat
on... (It still resembled a squatting spider.) Eventually she
was forced to admit that the hat, though a bit battered, was
hers and that charges should not be pressed in the matter of
its theft. Everyone was relieved until they remembered that
the intergalactic liner had already departed and with it their
chances of playing an historic game -
- until the Doctor strolled onto the well-kept lawn
thumbing through a copy of Colvin's ABC, the Intergalactic
Spaceship Guide for the year of 51007 and whistling happily to
himself.
'What's made you Mr Happy-Face all of a sudden?'
asked Amy, who was taking the situation almost as badly as
everyone else, if not more so, since she had some hint of the
larger stakes involved.
The Doctor looked up with a smile which he shared
generously with his surroundings and the population of
Lockesley Hall's beautifully manicured lawn.
'Oh, I just thought you'd like to know,' he said, continuing
to beam, 'that if we catch the local between Peers™ and
Poppy 100, which leaves the local spaceport at 23.33 this
evening, and on Poppy pick up the 7.20 water-barge bound
for Desiree in the Outer Lavum Hestes and head for Dafryd,
the mining world, getting the 11.28 to Placamine then jump
from Placamine in Poseidon, arriving seven days later on
Seaworld™ 5000, we should be able to get to Kali 7 20.40
by the following evening, to reach Ganesh the following
night and, with a spot of luck, get there about six-and-a-half
hours before the Gargantua is due to leave on her final leg
into Sagittarius, bound to go into orbit some days later above
Murphy in the Miggea system before she turns round, after
being restocked and getting her spaceworthiness certificate
redone, and begins her journey home.' He beamed with self-
congratulation, before adding: 'Of course, it won't be very
comfortable and some of those connections are a bit tight,
but we should be able to get to Flynn the morning after we
check in at Murphy.'
The Doctor would remark to Amy later that he had been
cheered before, had been cheered quite a lot of times actually,
but never quite as joyously as when he had told his team that
they would, after all, have a crack at the Big Tournament.
Chapter 8
Abroad in the Aether at Last
AMY HAD RATHER ENJOYED her stay on Peers™. It wasn't every day you
had a chance to see what a mish-mash people were going to
make of your own history and how pointless it was to worry
about literary immortality. These Re-Enactors and sports
people made you realise how distorted your own i
deas of
the past could be. She supposed there was a slight difference
here since pretty much the whole of her own era could be
compressed to a slender sliver given how much time had
passed between the world she had been bom into and this
period, some fifty thousand years into the future. And when
you thought of it like that you were impressed by how long
the human race had managed to endure in spite of all the
wars and foolish political ideas it had seen come and go.
'I think I understand why you like us as much as you do,'
she told the Doctor. 'I guess I'd take a liking to anyone who
was able to survive that long.'
'Oh, you're definitely worth fighting for,' he said, fiddling
with something under the main encephalog-accumulators. A
hologram of a 'bucky ball' about the size of a large water-
melon appeared before him.
'And that's what you've done - fought for us, I mean. Over
hundreds of thousands of years. Can I help? What's that?'
'What?' He looked up at her in some surprise. 'Oh, you
mean this! I'm hiding the TARDIS.'
'Who from?'
'Oh... nasty people, nice people, me, you. I'll send it
somewhere logical, in case we need it in a hurry. Just
remember these words: Mood Indigo. That'll be our clue, OK?
If Frank/Freddie Force and his Antimatter Men are knocking
about I need to be super-cautious. Can't have them getting
their grubby little anti-hands on the TARDIS. Here - hold
this...'
She looked at the large piece of cable he had put into her
hand. 'Just hold it?'
'For the moment, yes.'
'Maybe we wouldn't be so admirable if we hadn't had
your help, Doctor. Ever thought of that?'
'I don't need to.' He started changing the settings on
his sonic screwdriver. 'I mean, I've seen the future, pretty
much the whole of the future, and I've seen the alternatives.
I see thousands of alternatives. Millions. Billions. That's my
talent.' He sniffed modestly. 'One of my talents. One of my
many talents.'
'Is that why you seem so relaxed sometimes? Because you
can see the whole universe and know what the odds are on a
favourable outcome?'
'Yes. Well. More or less. Sort of... Not really,' he decided.
'More complicated than that. More sort of hit and miss.
You humans can generally get yourselves out of your own
messes. Sometimes you just need a bit of help. And you did
- do - will do pretty well at pulling yourselves back from the
brink before you disappear into nothingness. You wouldn't
expect me to bet on a loser, would you?' He grinned. 'At your
best you're not only smart, you're kind. And unlike most of
the intelligent species I've come across, you have imagination.
That's probably the defining characteristic of the human
race. Even the Time Lords didn't have as much imagination
as you lot. That's maybe what we value most in ourselves
and others. At its finest it enables you to understand how
someone else feels.'
He shrugged, before ploughing on: 'Now the Daleks and
all that lot - incapable of imagining a decent meal, never mind
a different point of view or another species' right to exist.
Imagination gives you conscience. I could go on. Or I could
complain about what terrible sloths you are, taking for ever
to learn the most obvious ideas. Always thinking you know
what's best for people.' The Doctor turned the hologram this
way and that, frowning.
'Didn't you ever think you knew that?' She offered him
the cable. He rubbed his chin as he stared at it.
'Oh, in my younger days, maybe. When I was a much older
man. I've made a lot of mistakes. A lot. Hiding the TARDIS
from everyone might be one of them. But I'm going to do it
anyway!' He grabbed the cable from her and disappeared
under the desk again. 'Just remember-' he whistled a few
bars of a tune '- Mood Indigo.'
The Doctor clapped his hands. The hologram blopped and
was gone.
'So, who do you think pinched that hat?' He turned to her
suddenly.
'And then just dumped it? I don't know. A thief with a
conscience?' She laughed.
His chuckle came back up at him from the twitching
darkness only he sensed at that moment. 'That rules out the
Judoon, then!'
'Seriously, do you know who did it?'
'I know who was going to do it.'
'Really!' She was intrigued. 'Are you going to tell me?'
His smiling face disappeared and emerged slightly out of
focus in a spot behind her.
'You know I hate that,' she pretended to slap at him over
her shoulder.
'I know who had a motive. Mr Banning-Cannon.'
'Sure, but you were down there with me when she went
back to find her reticule thing. He was with her.'
'True. But he could have got someone else to pinch it for
him. So who was the last person to come down to dinner?'
Another of those sudden searching looks.
'I can't remember. His lordship? Bingo Sherwood,
maybe?'
'Got it in one, Pond.' He straightened his back and stood
up.
'But they'd have found it in his room,' she argued. 'The
police made a thorough search.' She retaliated with one of
her sideways looks. 'Are you teasing me, Doctor?'
'I didn't say Bingo did it, and I didn't say he had a motive,
but he was the last person to come down for dinner. Perhaps
the last person in Mrs B-C's room. We both thought he was
behaving a bit suspiciously.'
'I said goofy.'
'And I said flaky. These chaps aren't exactly bred for their
brains. Would you send him off to steal an expensive hat?'
'He's very cute, but I wouldn't trust him to pinch a penny
bun from the baker's shop.'
'So well rule him out...'
' . . . i n spite of him having the opportunity?' Amy was
sceptical. 'Come on, Doctor, you're not telling me everything
you know!'
'Really, Amy, I am. I'm asking you questions in the hope
you'll come up with an idea I've missed. We're pretty sure a
hand-held anti-grav hoist was used, judging by the smell of
bouncing tempelectrons. And whoever did steal it was able
to dismantle it at their leisure.'
'I get you. They weren't trying to pinch the hat itself, they
were looking for something in or on the hat!'
'That would be my guess. The people with the obvious
motives wouldn't have had the time to do that.'
'The whole castle was on the lookout for the hat,' Amy
pointed out.
'Exactly. So the thief or thieves were able, with the help of
an anti-grav gun, to spirit the hat out of Lockesley Hall, get
to a safe place, find what they wanted and then abandon the
rest after putting it roughly back together.'
'Then why was his lordship acting so guilty?'
'I think because he was planning to pinch the hat but when
he got there it had already gone.'
'But it was huge. I saw it when they brought it in.' r />
'That's pretty much what I've been worrying about, too.'
'So? What's the answer?'
'I don't know. It's been puzzling me.' The Doctor
disappeared back under the console. 'The Arrow's safe in
the time vault which will be sent to an unknown time in the
future. Once the winners are declared...'
'What are you doing now?'
'I told you. I'm taking precautions. I'm hiding the TARDIS.
I was tempted to try to bring everyone to Miggea with us,
which would have been very stupid. There are too many
unknown factors in all this. I think we're in serious danger.
And if I knew what it was, I'd feel a lot better about using
the TARDIS. Given the risks, it makes sense to keep it in
reserve.'
Amy nodded. Sagely, she hoped.
First Intermission
HIS SHIP IS CALLED the Paine, named for a hero of ancient times
who suffered the fate of most heroes, dying poor and alone
with half the people he'd saved hating him. She has turned
away from the light of her home, the dwarf galaxy Canis,
and, never travelling at less than whatever in that region is
the speed of light, she gathers momentum and sets her sails
for the main spiral of stars we call the Milky Way.
Her captain, the Dutchman Cornelius, takes a deep breath
of her rose-scented atmosphere, itself stolen from a long-
dead galaxy, which encloses her in an envelope giving life to
all on board and all that sustains life on board. Ultimately he
is bound for Sagittarius, near the centre of those two hundred
billion stars he knows as home. He understands, perhaps
more than anyone, that something terrible is happening
within the Schwarzschild radius. And what is that unseen,
unimaginable power which remorselessly drags this galaxy
and thousands of other galaxies towards what must be the
centre of the multiverse. Dark tides ripping and running
through the whole of perceived reality.
Scientists in his home galaxy first noticed it. That each
galaxy had a black hole into which matter was pulled had been
understood for centuries. People had also known that their
galaxy was in turn being drawn towards an even stronger
source of gravity. Only a few, like Captain Cornelius, guessed
why. Like all rational beings, he accepted that gradual cycle
of regeneration, of universal life and death, as inevitable - this
knowledge has existed for millennia - but of late some other