The Coming of the Teraphiles

  flights of exotic birds floated towards them before turning

  away, heading for the horizon. The great sapphire-jade sun

  sank into the ocean and then rose again behind them as

  they spiraled down towards a stretch of grey-black concrete

  where small freighters and passenger boats stood on their

  launch pads.

  Aboard the ferry the excited terraphiles crowded around

  their screens, pointing out the beauties of the planet. Amy

  and the Doctor speculated on the population of Flynn which

  could not be very considerable. The paucity of ships indicated

  this.

  'From what I've learned,' the Doctor told her, 'there are

  only a few thousand inhabitants of the entire system. There

  were, of course, many more when the planets were first

  terraformed, but that was before people discovered Miggea's

  strange qualities. Sometimes it seems the system returns only

  minutes after she left but the inhabitants have gone through

  several generations. Even without her peculiar orbit, Miggea

  would still be subject to the black hole's influence on her

  planets. The terraformers were able to fix Flynn's appearance,

  but beneath those rolling hills, woods and lakes all kinds of

  changes are taking places. The landscapes as a result become

  horribly treacherous and give shelter to a whole variety of

  bizarre creatures. Outside the settlements you must be wary

  at all times. I've seen people go mad, their flesh melting and

  transforming before their eyes as planets like these collapse

  and reform in a matter of hours. What you see one moment

  has a very different aspect the next. Believe me, Amy, trust

  little - especially your senses.'

  'Warning to all passengers. In five minutes we shall be

  coming in to land. Please prepare.'

  Amy had heard little of the engines in space but now

  they roared and shook as the ship fired her retro-rockets,

  positioning herself for a landing. Then came a stomach-

  churning sensation of falling, a further massive blast and the

  ship shook as she began to descend. The shaking became a

  trembling, like a horse ridden too hard and then was quiet.

  'Flynn,' said the Doctor a little unnecessarily.

  Amy raised a sarcastic eyebrow.

  She had to admit that it was good to breathe fresh, natural

  atmosphere after such a long time in an artificial environment.

  They were taken by air-buses to the special accommodation

  prepared for them, arranged as a series of thatched cottages.

  They each held up to eight people and were built around

  a green large enough to accommodate a ground where the

  players could practise all the games they would have to play

  in the coming Tournament.

  The games were worrying Bingo Lockesley. They were still

  two players short and were due to begin their first serious

  match in two days' time. Bingo was wondering where he was

  going to find a good fielder and an archer before then. He

  was hoping that Flynn, since it was after all the major venue

  for the games, might have a few decent amateur players. As

  soon as he had put his bag in his room he left for the local

  hostelry, the Blue Barsoomian, to have a drink and ask a few

  questions.

  The regulars at the tavern were delighted to be enjoying a

  shant with one of the stars of the following week's Tournament

  and, when Bingo asked, they were only too pleased to

  recommend their best players: 'Mad' Mac McLachan and Old

  Fred Townsend. A polite enquiry gave Bingo the information

  that Mr McLachan was their top archer and that he would

  be out of the lock-up in three and a half weeks, having been

  found guilty at the local assizes for clocking the landlord of

  the Three Earthlings with a two-pint shant of Peregrine's

  Best. But Old Fred Townsend was free and they were sure

  he would be honoured to substitute for the Gentlemen's

  missing fielder. He would be in later, if Bingo would care to

  wait, which he did.

  When Old Fred arrived, his step was a little unsteady,

  partly because of his evident pleasure in the local beverages

  but mostly because his left eye was being regrown at the eye

  clinic on Murphy. Bingo wished him well and asked who he

  thought their second-best fielder might be.

  The Doctor and Amy found Bingo later in the snug of the

  Blue Barsoomian. He had partaken a little too enthusiastically

  of Peregrine's Best and felt, as he put it, about as miserable as

  a three-legged cat at a greyhound race.

  Bingo would later wonder if the Peregrine's plus his high

  regard for the young woman, rather than his good sense,

  played too great a part in his decision to take Amy up on

  her earlier offer to field for them. And, since it had seemed

  churlish to ask one of the women and not the other, had it

  been the wisest choice he could have made? Had he been

  nuts to suggest to Flapper that she might like to try out her

  archery skills at the targets the following morning?

  Chapter 21

  The Tournament of Terraphiles

  THE COINS BEING TOSSED and the order of team play determined, all

  the Terraphiles, the Gentlemen, the Visitors and the Tourists,

  retired to Flynn's lavishly appointed pavilion to enjoy a

  few friendly pints of Vortex Water before beginning the

  serious business of broadswording, jousting, quintaining,

  nutcracking and, ultimately, whacking. Amy and Flapper,

  having done pretty well that morning, were now officially

  members of the First Fifteen, allowing the Gentlemen to

  qualify, and had confided, one to the other, that they weren't

  at all sure about their own sanity, having volunteered to

  play in matches which, the Doctor had told them, might well

  determine the fate of the multiverse.

  At this stage the various species tended to group together.

  The seven humans of the Gentlemen consisted rather

  contradictorily of W.G. Grace, Flapper Banning-Cannon,

  Amelia Pond, Old Bill Told, Hari Agincourt, Bingo Lockesley

  and the Doctor. By far the largest non-human group were

  Judoon who were inclined to link arms and sing, very loudly,

  songs which, happily, only Judoon knew to be utterly filthy.

  The Gents' complement of rhinocerids were three superb

  and highly aggressive all-rounders. Their only canine team

  mate, an Arfid from Sinus, tended to prefer the company of

  humans. Uff Nuf O'Kay was an outstanding wotsit keeper,

  able to catch arrers in all four hands, his mouth and his

  prehensile tail. His best friend was the handsome centaur

  H'hn'ee. The bovine whackswoman NTioo was inclined to

  hang out with the younger Judoon who were all secretly

  in love with her. The two avians were Aaak, the massive

  hawkperson, and S'ee'ee, the equally large sparrowman

  whose skills at archery were the subject of many songs on his

  own planet where at least eighty statues had been erected for

  him. That said, S'ee'ee was considered boastful and, while he

  had been cleared by a court of his peers several years earlier,
/>
  was thought somewhat cold blooded and insufficiently

  remorseful of an accidental death during a friendly with

  another avian team on his home planet. He and Aaak were

  not close, and S'ee'ee was at the far end of the bar chatting up

  an attractively crested Twitterian, one of the Tourists' best

  whackers.

  The energies of most of the humans in their team were

  spent telling Amy and Flapper that they were rather good and

  nobody could have known from their playing at the practice

  nets the previous couple of days that they weren't seasoned

  professionals. Hari and Bingo, in particular, devoted most

  of their waking time to getting the pair's game up to scratch.

  They had, in truth, become pretty passable players.

  Everyone was speculating on the next morning's weather.

  Flynn had in fact been picked in part on account of its variable

  weather which was thought to be caused by Miggea's

  relationship to the multiverse.

  The evening ended early with much shaking of hands and

  slapping of backs and assurances of good luck, best teams

  winning and so forth. Everyone went to their beds early.

  Only the Doctor stayed up later than the others, his eccentric

  and complex brain rattling away like a downhill express,

  He had a feeling that this tournament was going to be the

  most important in the history of existence. Unless he put the

  pieces of the puzzle he had been working on since he and

  Amy first heard that oddly familiar voice from the area of the

  Sagittarian Schwarzschild Radius, only nothingness would

  extinguish their past, present and future leaving a true cold

  silent void.

  What part did Captain Cornelius play in all this? And,

  most important of all, what caused the running of the dark

  tides through the universe, perhaps the multiverse, creating

  horrendously destructive storms, stealing the very light from

  all the worlds? How, if at all, were these events connected?

  Wasn't it stupid of him to play these apparently frivolous

  tournaments and place so much importance on winning

  the so-called Arrow of Artemis? Surely it couldn't be the

  mysterious Roogalator? The experience of almost a thousand

  years told him that the danger was real, yet nothing in that

  experience had ever brought him the problems he was now

  grappling with. This was nothing less than a crime against

  Creation. Surely even Frank/Freddie Force, insane as they

  were, were not capable of such an act?

  Some of the puzzle's parts were beginning to come

  together, but he knew in his bones there was little time left to

  find the others. Time, in fact, was quite literally running out.

  Eventually his thoughts drifted slowly into dreaming.

  Since the dreams were no better or worse than the realities

  he decided he might as well go to bed.

  In the Doctor's dreams, various Greek gods and goddesses

  took part in the Olympic Games. The prize was Life itself. He

  was the only member in his team. They called him Mercury,

  Harlequin. Black tides curled around his feet. He walked as if

  in thick mud, hardly able to draw one leg after the other.

  Amy was not exactly enjoying a restful sleep, either. Her

  dreams, however, were more immediate and to do with

  her failing to whack back arrow after arrow until suddenly

  Frank/Freddie turned up and caught the last one. Waving it,

  they put out Miggea's indigo sun. Then they put out Earth's.

  Then they put out every star in the universe and she could

  hear them chuckling with all the self-loathing and malice in

  Creation ready to suffer for eternity as long as every sentient

  thing suffered with them. She woke up, her hands clutching

  for the Arrow of Artemis.

  And in his own, rather narrow bed, Robin 'Bingo' Lockesley

  dreamed that he had won the final game of the Tournament

  and Amy Pond had agreed to be his bride. But why was she

  wearing a black dress?

  Bingo awoke next morning with mixed feelings. At his

  best he knew he could probably beat the finest archers in

  the galaxy, including W.G. Grace, but he had been known to

  have some very bad days. He had a horrible notion that this

  was going to be one of them.

  Amy, on the other hand, showered with a song in her heart

  and another on her lips. Why she felt so cheerfully confident

  when she had spent such a terrible night, she had no idea.

  She tossed the shampoo into the air and caught it. She even

  tossed the slippery soap and caught that. If only she could do

  the same with arrows, things were going to go pretty well,

  she thought.

  The Doctor sat on the edge of his bed trying to read back

  his notes. He had a nagging feeling there was something

  missing from them. Someone who was playing a crucial part

  in the whole scenario. The Force Brothers and the Antimatter

  Men? Peggy Steele, the Invisible Crackswoman? Brian

  Abberley and the Bubbly Boys? Captain Quelch, whom he

  was sure he'd seen lurking in Ketchup Cove? Who else? He

  was seriously wishing he had not hidden the TARDIS so

  thoroughly. He was sure it was around here somewhere.

  Had they stipulated an ETA? No, it was probably connected

  to an event. He should have thought this through, he knew,

  before he hid it. He had a decided feeling that this wasn't the

  first time he'd sort of mislaid the TARDIS.

  He stumbled into the shower. He had sent his clothes

  for cleaning just before he had gone to bed and they were

  hanging outside his door, ready to wear. As he got dressed,

  the birds started to sing. He pressed the button to open his

  blinds and there was that deep blue sun rising over the dark,

  burnt orange and strawberry-coloured hills. He flexed his

  fingers.

  Today was the day he swung his sledgehammer. And every

  nut he cracked had to be a winner. He was going up against

  two of the best in the game, both of them Judoon - one from

  the Visitors and one from their great rivals, the Tourists. They

  had been competing for years and had incredible muscle

  control, swinging huge, beautifully balanced hammers. The

  Doctor's hammer, of course, would not be nearly as heavy.

  The sport took bodyweight and species into consideration,

  among other things. This morning would determine which

  hammerer would play the other. He felt more confident than

  he had done the day before, even though, when he checked

  his V, the bookies were favouring both Judoon over him.

  More ominously, the bookies were giving both rival teams

  better odds than they were giving the Gentlemen.

  He met Amy outside on her way to breakfast. She had also

  seen the odds, and yet she too was smiling.

  'Are you reconciled to losing?' he asked.

  'No way!' She laughed in his face. 'Now we know the odds

  we have a better idea what we're playing against. What we

  need to do. Is that nuts, Doctor?'

  'There's no better way of taking your opponent's measure,'

  he said. 'That's what I used to be told at th
e Academy. An

  overconfident opponent is a beatable opponent. Of course,

  those professors weren't always proven right...' The Doctor

  shook his head as if to get rid of unwanted thoughts. He

  hummed to himself, avoiding Amy's eye.

  She knew only a little bit about his past on Gallifrey, and

  she also knew there were some subjects she should not bring

  up.

  'Let's go and get some breakfast,' she said.

  Chapter 22

  Tournament Time

  HEFTING HIS HUGE HAMMER, the Doctor judged the nut seated at the

  regulation angle to the nutting pad. He had to make every

  crack count. The hammer had to be brought down at a

  particular spot and a properly judged speed or the nut as

  well as the shell itself would be crushed. The object was to

  crack the shell and leave the nut itself whole and unharmed.

  Few people could achieve this with ordinary nutcrackers or

  a fairly light coal hammer. Only thoroughly trained nutsmen

  (or 'crackers') could achieve what the Doctor would have to

  do over and over again until all ten nuts of the first round

  had been cracked. He was relieved when a Judoon from the

  Tourists won the first toss, even though he could choose the

  type of nut he would crack.

  Watched by a keen audience of 'shell-faces', as fans of the

  sport were called, the huge Judoon fixed his visor in place,

  flexed his powerful muscles, spat on his hands and picked

  up his mighty hammer. The white-gloved Gondarlian nutter

  (who was also the umpire) stepped forward to place the

  regulation Brazil - a hard nut to crack at the best of times - in

  position and then step back. The representative of the Visitors

  checked the positioning of the nut to his own satisfaction and

  gave the thumbs-up. Taking long, deep breaths, the Judoon

  lifted his sledgehammer above his head. It shone like silver

  as he shifted his feet in the sand, wriggled his legs and arms

  a little and then, with a loud Judoon war-snort, brought the

  hammer down. The tough shell appeared to be untouched

  by the hammer as he stepped back. Then it fell into two neat

  halves, revealing a pristine nut, ready to eat. The crowd

  applauded loudly and enthusiastically with cries of 'Well

  cracked, sir!' and 'Nutted!'

  A popular player with the crowd, the Judoon acknowledged

  its applause with a modest (for a Judoon) bow and stepped