at every major subfield. See those funnels of smoke at intervals
across the field? This is what space would smell like, lady, if
it wasn't almost wholly airless!'
Captain N'hn was in great spirits, having repelled pirates
and completed a successful run. He was already in the process
of selling his cargo to a broker and would soon transfer it. He
had a sweet little filly, an administrator in the NNE sector,
whom he had V'd earlier, and she was more than glad to
help him enjoy the fleshpots of Desiree as soon as possible.
But there was one thing he had to do first. He delayed long
enough to squeeze through the crowd, shake the Doctor's
hand enthusiastically and thank him again. 'If you shoot
that well in the last games, Doctor, you're bound to win the
Arrow. The first thing I'm going to do when I leave is get to
Ferdii's and put a hefty bet on your team before I blow the
rest of my tin!'
'Well try not to let you down.' The Doctor laughed with
the big centaur. 'And good luck on your next trip, captain.
I'm sure well do our best to live up to your faith in us.'
The captain pushed his way back to the gangplank where
an anti-gee raft floated in readiness and, with a typical bit of
centaur bravado, threw his knapsack on ahead of him then
jumped the gap, mane and tail flying.
Between the parked spaceships were busy V-boards
advertising all the pleasures the planet had to offer. The
crew were already watching them, murmuring notes into
their implanted Vs, reading off numbers and street names
as they waited impatiently for the cages to be run up beside
their hull. 'The warm weather's coming,' muttered one, as
he squeezed past the Doctor and Amy, 'and the buds are on
the vine!' He uttered a strange, panting noise and gave Mrs
Banning-Cannon a leer as he went by. 'Night, Missus. Aye
aye.' A parting wink.
'Oh, my goodness!' Mrs B-C recoiled in disgust. 'I hope
I never have to travel with that bunch of ruffians again.
Promise me, Doctor, that you haven't booked us on another
ship like this one. Look!' She peered down hopefully. 'Those
must be the porters I asked for.'
Disembarking from an open airbus advertising the Djinn
Inn, and crossing over to the nearest of the tanker's causeways,
came a group of uniformed giants with numbers stamped on
their chests, their backs advertising 'the best hotel on Desiree'.
They were massive. Their heads were shaven of all hair and
they had distinctly simian faces. Mrs Banning-Cannon waved
and pointed. 'Here! Here!' she cried until they looked up and
raised their thumbs to her. The leader spoke to the others
and their huge mouths split in laughter.
Suddenly a big, blue, blocky air-car dropped down to
hover on a level with the observation dome and in a moment
the Customs and Immigration boys came aboard, asking
questions, scanning bodies, demanding dockets, feeling
alien, unfamiliar flesh. The Customs men were mostly
halbots, half-robots of flesh and steel, their eyes modified to
make them more efficient, sending information back to the
central ordinats. When they got to the Doctor and Amy, the
immigration people were confused.
'There are some odd discrepancies,' one murmured. 'Your
passport documentation won't register.' He blinked hard,
trying to re-scan the psychic paper the Doctor had handed
him.
'They're the new kind,' explained Amy. 'Issued through
OE.'
'Olde Englande?'
'Of course not,' snapped the Doctor in apparent ill-temper.
'Original Earth.'
'I didn't know it had been finished.'
'Just,' said Amy.
'You must have had the codes through by now.' The Doctor
pretended to be increasingly impatient.
The official was baffled. Over his shoulder, Mrs Banning-
Cannon looked at the Doctor's papers. 'Why, what's the
trouble?' She was at her haughtiest. 'This man is a well-known
doctor, and I am Mrs Banning-Cannon.'
The immigration official recognised her name. For all he
knew her family already owned Desiree. TerraForma™ was
probably the parent company. 'Doctor, sir? Of course, sir.' He
scratched the back of his head, looking at Amy. 'And you're
his nurse, are you? Ah, yes.' His face cleared as he was at last
able to read the passport properly. He put his palm against
the documents. 'That should do it.'
'Thank you.' The Doctor turned to the matriarch. 'You
saved us some embarrassment.'
'As you saved me, Doctor.' Her smile was almost charming.
This holiday seemed to be doing her good.
The transporter arrived to take them to the West Field on
the other side of the planet.
Amy was still finding it difficult to get over the size of
these vast terminals. She had seen big cities on big planets
but nothing like this devoted entirely to the shipping of the
interstellar spaceways.
The Doctor enjoyed her astonishment. 'And these are often
only the tenders of the large ships like the Gargantua. All the
really gigantic ones are out there in space. To say nothing
of the large patrol ships of the IGP. There are all kinds of
refuelling stations, including a massive colour pool further in
towards the sun. I believe that this was the biggest spaceport
in the entire sector.'
'What if someone decided to take a shot at it? Sabotage?'
'If someone thought it worth blowing up Desiree, they'd
either destroy half the galaxy or wake up the day before in
a police cell. Desiree's on a time fault, and they've managed
to harness some of its power. They've invented all sorts of
temporal alarm systems. They can actually go back and deal
with a problem before it happens, and they've got a constant
forward time-loop working for them. No way that I know of
fooling those. To my knowledge, there have been fifty-two
thwarted attempts since the port was founded.'
'You've been here before?'
'As a youngster, yes. In my gap century. I had a job once as
a courier, taking bills of lading out to the ships. I got lost too
many times. Ships were delayed. They fired me.'
Amy laughed at this, not believing a word of it. 'You're
having me on again, aren't you?' She shook an admonishing
finger.
She was relieved when a special car came for the Banning-
Cannons and took them away to their hotel. She would
be glad of the relative peace. Since the Doctor had saved
them from Frank/Freddie Force, Mrs Banning-Cannon had
cultivated his and Amy's company.
Most of the other passengers had not bothered to book
accommodation, since the hotels were extraordinarily
expensive. They were heading straight for their connection,
to board early and be ready for take-off in about twelve
hours.
'I hope nobody tries to steal that again.' The Doctor
nodded towards the huge hatbox being carried aboard the
hotel's tende
r. 'I wish we could get her to give the thing up
and leave it here. I'm sure Mr Banning-Cannon would love
to see the back of it.'
'So are we sure he paid young Bingo to pinch it?'
'Oh, I think so. Paid him in planets! Well, in a planet.
'Yeah, Bingo's already decided to give Hari a knighthood,
quickly followed by an earldom, so that Hari will be able
to reassure Mrs B-C that he's the stuff that sons-in-law are
made of...'
'And meanwhile Bingo's trying to land you and take you
up the aisle, Amy Pond.' The Doctor grinned.
Amy kept a straight face. 'Well, I am rather fond of him,
Doctor. Don't you like the sound of Amelia, Countess of
Sherwood. Or is it Earl-ess? Can you have an Earl-ess?
Anyway, he's sweet. And very enthusiastic.'
'Oh, yes. I saw he was enthusiastic. Here's our taxi.'
A battered air-car drew up at the gangplank and the
Doctor helped Amy into it. She tried to avoid sitting on the
split maroon fake zylorian myatt covering of the bench seat.
The driver was a huge Unshim-Anlinite sucking a three-foot
long chirpy. Apart from her face, which looked more like
a human skull, she had most of the features of an earthly
praying mantis, which told them she was from one of the
colonised planets of Anlin. An albino with several sets of
ruby-red eyes, she greeted them cheerfully, commenting on
the improvement they had seen in the weather. 'Had a hot
oil storm a week ago. The stuff was everywhere. It would
have been funny if there hadn't been so many accidents. Big
Brunk went over a walkway. Fell almost a mile. Wasn't much
to clean up after that.'
The air-car started up with a lurch, throwing them forward.
The Anlinite used one of her sets of arms to stop Amy falling
while the Doctor helped her get settled in her seat. 'Wow!'
she exclaimed. 'It's enormous!'
The mantis made hissing and clacking sounds which were
probably laughter. 'You should have been here last month.
We had almost double this volume. Time storms! Unusual
number of crashes, apparently. People having hallucinations
and so on. Piggo went totally crazy and pinched an ippy
cruiser. You know what the cops have become. Everyone
jittery. Something to do with the dark tide's sudden speed.
Pulling them in. Gravity increase? I doubt it's as big a deal as
they're making it out to be. Fuel crisis? There's more colour
pools, not fewer! I don't really understand these things. I
mean, what's gravity? Does anyone know? Causing some
serious turbulence, though, they say.'
'We noticed a bit of that,' said the Doctor. 'We arrived
ahead of schedule. Had to settle back and use our thrusters.'
The car made its way through mile after mile of battered,
oil-streaked commercial ships, many of them undergoing
minor repairs, others being refinished or refitted, with the
sky belching and cackling and sending streaks of lightning
in all directions, while the combined stinks of thousands
upon thousands of ships from any number of distant worlds
formed a heavy blanket below, hiding the hulls from view.
Every so often a blob of rainbow-streaked colour wallowed by,
floating like a giant, irregularly shaped, grimy, soap bubble.
Dangerous. The stuff was the best fuel ever discovered but to
drop into it meant you passed through into dimensions not
always compatible with any known life.
The smog eventually grew so thick that the Doctor pulled
over the car's canopy to protect them from a sudden isolated
shower of what was only partly water. The smells seemed
to get stronger the further they went. He wrinkled his nose.
'Maybe we should have taken the Gentlemen's bus,' he said.
'I just wasn't sure if we'd get any time alone on the Dafryd
boat.'
'Will it be as cramped as the tanker?'
'Well, she's designed for passengers, but she's not a luxury
liner. A bit basic. I'm afraid Mrs B-C will be upset with me all
over again when she sees the vessel.'
'Oh, God, I can't imagine!' Amy began to laugh.
'Get some sleep,' said the Doctor. 'It's at least a couple of
hours until we pick up the 11-28 to Placamine.'
Resigned, she settled back in her cushions while the Doctor
continued to look around him at the great port, identifying
ships which had been built sometimes two or three hundred
years before.
The Doctor sighed, suddenly remembering a day, so long
ago, when everything in time and space had been new to
him. He'd been so excited then, and the universe was so
mysterious. There had been so much for him to explore, and
he'd had a long, long lifetime ahead to enjoy it all in. Now,
he thought with some sadness, he had seen far too much of
it to retain the same early sense of wonder. But then - how
different had he really been in those early days of wonder?
He might never know. There were not many people left to
ask.
He looked out at all the odd designs of ships and thought
about the thousands of cultures they represented. Rank upon
rank, mile upon mile the car flew on, past an enormous liner,
its dull metal giving it an oddly organic sense of sickness,
dwarfing the very planet itself, as it came down for serious
repairs which couldn't be made in free space. When the
Doctor asked the driver why the ship was in dry dock, the
praying mantis answered that she understood it had been
attacked by something down near the Inner Suns.
'Know what it was?' the Doctor asked casually.
'I heard they hit a colour pool,' said the driver. 'Though
with all her sophisticated instruments, I'm surprised they
didn't spot it.'
Colour lakes were found everywhere throughout the
galaxy. They were patches of pure energy which could be
parsecs across or, if found on a planet, only a few feet wide
and a few inches deep. They supplied almost all the post-
nukers, since the famous inventor O'Bean the Younger had
developed engines capable of using the raw stuff. It was
extremely difficult to refine. Almost singlehandedly O'Bean
had drawn the human race from its last long Dark Age.
Their driver drove her car between two identical ships,
whose noses disappeared in a blood-red cloud of roiling gas.
'The captain had to do some snappy steering to get her out of
the pool,' she told them.
The Doctor craned his long neck to look back at the big
ship. 'What was her name?'
'I forget, cit. One of that class of supers. Super-luxury.
Super-speed. All of that. I saw a V about her. Didn't you? I
know they made a lot of fuss. She was a C-class. Belonged to
the Aristophanes family, I know. I bet she was insured for a
bundle!'
'I bet,' agreed the Doctor. 'But I'm surprised her captain
let her get into a colour pool and so close to the Inner Suns.'
'You must have heard, cit. There's a lot of stuff going on
down there. Funny stuff you never hear about on the V. Just
rumours. But they add up. Sightings of ghost-planets, weird
distortions in the charts, whole planets changing position or
else vanishing altogether. Conflicting currents bad enough to
pull an ordinary ship apart. Dark flow forming pictures as if
it was intelligent, trying to communicate. I'm surprised you
don't know about any of that stuff. Where have you been?'
'You saw the old tanker you picked us up from. We
started speeding up for a while, too. Something sent her
communications all over the place. Time winds blowing
every which way. She had no high-speed, no real contact
with anyone or anything. How long have you been hearing
stories like that out here?'
'Quite a while. But that's real time. Our time. Months ago
for you.'
'It's all relative.' With a sigh, the Doctor sat back and
closed his eyes.
'Don't talk to me about relatives,' said the driver feelingly.
'Did I tell you about my husbands? Ex-husbands, I should
say.' She leaned forward to tap a control irritably. And began
to wheeze, then to cough. There is no stranger sight than a
mantis cabbie in full exoskeleton shake. But she kept steering
steady, to Amy's amazement.
That was all the Doctor needed to help him keep his eyes
closed and get the forty winks he had been promising himself
for ages. What was going wrong with the colour pools? If they
disappeared or became contaminated it could mean vast
changes in the economics of the entire galaxy.
He was awakened by the driver yelling: 'Here we are, cit!
Forty-seven red ones, if you please, thank you!'
Leaning forward the Doctor handed her a yellow. 'Keep the
change,' he said, as the driver started to punch the numbers
into her wrist bank.
He looked with some relief at the relatively modem
spacebus which was going to take them to Placamine in
Poseidon.
They were not the first passengers. The Doctor cocked his
head when he heard something half-familiar.
'What was that?' he asked the neatly uniformed steward
who checked their tickets and directed them to their cabins.
'Voices?'
'Oh, just the miners singing, cit. The Desiree All Male
National Eisteddfod Deputation. They're lovely to listen
to, aren't they? Representing Desiree in the Interstellar
Eisteddfod. Great lads, sir. There's a strong chance they'll
bring back the ab Ithil cardigan if not the Yellow Leek itself.