Captain Desiato was thrown from his chair in the centre of the bridge. As he clambered back to his seat, Yono, the young communications officer, informed him of an incoming transmission.
‘Put it on screen,’ ordered the captain.
The forward viewer was replaced with an image of the Tarrokku commander. The creatures green fur bristled as it looked at the captain, its animosity towards him and his crew evident. It curled back its upper lip to speak.
‘Terran crew, turn back now and there will be no further damage to you vessel. Remain within our space, and you shall be destroyed.’
The image vanished from the screen. Desiato slicked back his fair hair, a look of steely determination on his face.
‘Walters,’ he said, facing the weapons officer, ‘fire the rear cannons.’
Walters nodded, setting a volley of energy pulses from what remained of the rear defences into the Tarrokku ship.
‘Direct hit, sir,’ he reported, the exhilaration he felt clear in his almost breathless voice.
‘Bring us about,’ said the captain, ‘and prepare to launch full defensive capabilities.’
‘Incoming torpedoes, sir,’ Sayto, the first officer reported. The ship was buffeted by the force of the projectiles.
‘Shields down to twenty per cent,’ she said.
If we’re going down, we’ll take those green freaks with us,’ snarled Desiato.
‘Sir,’ Sayto interjected again, ‘there’s some kind of gravitational disturbance forming between the ships. It’s sending out gravity waves of enormous magnitude.’ The ship rocked, as if to back up her observation.
‘Cause?’ asked the captain, annoyed at having to deal with two problems at once.
‘I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s some kind of spatial anomaly that’s been affected by the weapons. Whatever it is, its effects are getting worse.’
The ship was indeed now being smacked from side to side.
‘Are the Tarrokku still firing?’ asked the captain.
‘No, sir. I think they’re just as confused about what’s going on as we are.’
Desiato was about to take advantage of this by launching another attack, when both ships were suddenly swallowed by the enormous wormhole that opened up around them.
The ships screamed through the atmosphere, huge plumes of flame billowing around them as they tore their way to the surface of the planet. The escape pods that both vessels had released had, fortunately, landed a considerable distance away. The two captains stood barely three metres apart, and watched their ships explode on the horizon. Huge mushrooms of black smoke grew rapidly upwards before their eyes.
The captain of the Tarrokku turned its camel-like head slowly towards Desiato. The human greeted this with his most resilient military glower.
‘So,’ came the deep voice of the green creature, ‘now what?’
The Doctor sipped on his lemonade, crossing his eyes to watch the bubbles spiral up his curly straw. He reclined in his deck chair; his long dark coat perched on the back, a knotted handkerchief shielding his bald head from the glare of the sun. He started to slowly nod off.
‘Doctor!’
The Doctor sat up suddenly, spilling the remnants of his lemonade over his blue waistcoat.
‘Oh, Caroline, now look what you’ve done,’ he complained, removing the hanky from his head and dabbing it at his now damp midriff. ‘Did you have to make me jump like that?’
Caroline looked apologetically at the Doctor. She was sitting on her haunches, facing him.
‘Doctor, can’t we go somewhere more interesting?’
‘Don’t you like it here?’ said the Doctor, surprised. ‘It’s a lovely day, the sun is shining, the birds are singing.’
‘It is a lovely day, but I just thought we could go somewhere a little more… unusual. You said the TARDIS can take us anywhere in time and space. So why are we lying around in Hove?’
‘I see your point,’ the Doctor conceded. ‘It’s just… well; I do see the Earth as my second home. After the TARDIS, that is. I did live here for an extremely long time.’ He sat up, and folded his deckchair. ‘Still, you’re absolutely right,’ he said, his voice filling with enthusiasm. ‘There’s an entire Universe to explore out there. Several, in fact.’ He looked his companion in the eye. ‘Sooooo,’ he said, rolling the word around his mouth, ‘where would you like to go?’
Caroline looked back at him, a little taken aback by the Doctor’s sudden change of mood. He wasn’t usually an easy one to convince. She had a sneaky feeling that he’d been angling for her to ask him this.
‘What about Mars?’
‘Mars? The entire Universe to explore and you want to go next door? Anyway, Mars is populated by reptiles, and I know you don’t like them.’
‘Oh, just take me somewhere!’
‘All right,’ said the Doctor, a grin spreading across his face. ‘I’ll set the TARDIS to land on some planet somewhere. I’ll do it at random. That ought to be fun, yes?’
‘OK,’ said Caroline. ‘We’d better wake up Danny.’
The Doctor looked sideways at the brown-haired man lying stretched out, asleep on the grass. He slipped on his coat, and gave him a gentle kick.
‘Come on, lazybones. We’re leaving.’
‘What?’ said the dozing Danny.
‘We are leaving,’ replied the Doctor impatiently. ‘Get a move on.’
Danny dragged himself to his feet, and followed the Doctor and Caroline into the TARDIS. As they entered the console room, the Doctor hopped up to the main console. He began pulling levers and fiddling with knobs in that way he had that made all his actions seem more complicated than they really were.
‘Right then, old girl,’ he said, under his breath. ‘I’m giving you control of this one. Take us somewhere nice, will you? Somewhere interesting.’ He stepped back from the console, as the central column began to rise and fall, its now familiar whining filling the room.
The Doctor stood between his companions, and looked up at the scanner screen. An image of the Galaxy flickered on the small monitor, and then zoomed towards a destination. It halted on a view of a blue planet, traced with delicate silvery clouds.
The whining stopped.
‘Where are we?’ said Caroline.
‘On that planet, I suppose,’ said Danny, still wiping sleep from his eyes.
‘Yes,’ said Caroline, a little annoyed, ‘but what is it called? Where is it in space?’
‘It’s a very long way away from Earth. About forty thousand light years away, on the other side of the Galaxy’s central bulge. As for its name, I’m afraid I have no idea. Shall we go and have a look?’
‘Good idea.’
The Doctor led the way out of the ship. They stepped through the door, out into a field of blue-white grass.
‘It’s beautiful,’ said Caroline.
‘Yes, indeed,’ added the Doctor.
‘It’s another field,’ said Danny.
‘It’s more than just a field,’ said Caroline.
She was right. The silvery blue lawn stretched into the distance, where it eventually met the hazy shapes of a far off mountain range. The sky was white, with silver clouds shimmering as they gently drifted with the breeze. Some distance away, the land dipped into a gentle canyon, at the bottom of which a river ran over iridescent rocks.
A dragonfly, the size of a small bird, fluttered up from the blue reeds that grew from the bank, inquisitively landing on the Doctor’s shoulder.
‘I think we’ve found a new friend,’ he chuckled. ‘What shall we call him?’
The insectoid fluttered what appeared to be long eyelashes at Caroline.
‘“He” is clearly a she,’ she said.
The Doctor breathed the air deeply. ‘I think perhaps I’ll get my deckchair back out.’
‘Doctor, we surely didn’t come all this way just to sit about again.’
‘I agree,’ said Danny. ‘Aren’t there any people about here?’
‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘If we’re going to find them, the best plan of action is to follow the river back to its source. A settlement will always grow up around a source of water.’
‘Okay then,’ said Caroline. ‘Let’s go.’
The Doctor led on again, his coat billowing in the breeze, Polly perched comfortably on his shoulder.
After walking for some time, what appeared to be settlement could be seen on the edge of the trio’s vision. Venturing closer, the travellers could just see silhouettes walking about the buildings. The buildings themselves were of a dull grey composition, a little dowdy compared to the resplendent surroundings. They appeared almost organic in form, spiralling and twisting upwards in elegant spires. As the group walked on, it became apparent that some of the figures were walking towards them.
‘Ah, it seems that we have caught their attention,’ exclaimed the Doctor, happily.
‘I’m not sure I like the look of them,’ said Danny.
‘Oh, nonsense. They look like perfectly acceptable types to me. Anyway, you shouldn’t judge by appearances.’
Caroline, despite herself, found that she agreed. There were two distinct types of character approaching them – four appeared to be human, dressed in what appeared to be rather imposing grey military uniforms. The other two appeared stranger – humanoid, but with camel-like heads and green fur. She was quite transfixed on them, until she realised that they were almost on top of each other.
‘Greetings!’ said the Doctor, extending his hand. ‘I’m the Doctor, and these are my companions, Danny and Caroline.’
The taller of the two alien creatures spoke.
‘I am Hesper. This is Porto, Johnson, Sayto, Tranter and Klein.’ He indicated the second of the green people first, then the humans. ‘How did you get to our planet?’
‘Oh, we just popped by,’ said the Doctor. Sensing that Hesper wasn’t happy with this, he continued, ‘We landed here to explore. I hope that you don’t find that offensive.’
‘Not at all,’ said Hesper.
‘It’s just,’ said Sayto, a young woman, ‘that we wondered how. Has the Fleet finally found us?’
‘Fleet? Oh, we’re not part of any fleet.’ The Doctor continued. ‘Listen, we’ve walked quite a long way from our ship. Is there any chance we could go back to your charming settlement and discuss this over a nice cool drink?’
‘I… suppose so,’ said Hesper. ‘You must forgive us, Doctor. We haven’t seen anyone else since our ships crashed here five years ago.’
‘Crashed?’ interjected Caroline, as the party began once again to walk towards the settlement.
‘Yes. We were pulled through a wormhole, and lost control of our vessels. We landed in escape pods.’
‘Really?’ said the Doctor, intrigued. ‘And what were you up to before the wormhole swallowed you?’
Sayto spoke up again. ‘We were fighting.’
‘Fighting?’ said Caroline. ‘Why? Were you at war?’
‘The Earth Empire and the Tarrokku Confederation were at war for five years, Caroline,’ said the Doctor, slightly under his breath.
‘Were at war?’ said Hesper.
‘Yes, indeed. I’m glad to say that by this stage your respective nations have stopped that silly border conflict and settled a treaty.’ The Doctor decided to change the subject. ‘So, you crash landed, joined forces, and built this?’
The Doctor gestured at the spiralling building that they were rapidly approaching.
‘Most impressive cooperation, I must say. To produce such structures in such little time, with so few people; people who had just been in battle together. Most encouraging!’
‘What else was there to do?’ said Hesper. ‘We would have had little chance of survival if we had continued fighting each other.’
‘Besides,’ said Porto, ‘we didn’t exactly build these.’
‘What, did they grow out the ground, or something?’ said Danny, incredulously.
‘More or less.’
‘Could you elaborate?’ queried the Doctor.
By this point they were almost upon the building. This close up it was clear that it was not smooth, but almost appeared moulded.
‘To start with we sheltered in our pods,’ explained Hesper. ‘But then we discovered this substance.’ He prodded the surface of the tower. ‘It exists in the ground. It’s some kind of life form, living off the electrical energy produced by the microbes and plant life. It’s symbiotic; there are many microscopic species we’ve discovered that bond with it. The larger species seem unaffected by it.’
‘But a large enough electric field can persuade it to grow’ hypothesised the Doctor.
‘Exactly. We tried to contact our government, but the beacon was swallowed by it, almost overnight. It still functioned, but was considerably dampened. We realised that we could build structures by channelling energy through the pods. Over time they grew into the settlement. It exists as a single huge life form, we think. We give it a little energy, and it gives us shelter, encourages crops to grow with its waste chemicals, and gives us somewhere to call home.’
‘What do you call this planet?’ asked Caroline, still intent on knowing where she was.
‘Terrakk. It’s - ’
‘A mixture of Terra and Tarrokk, you’re respective homeworlds.’ The Doctor looked around, impressed. ‘Magnificent.’ He looked round at Hesper. ‘Were you the captain of your ship?’
‘I was.’
‘And the human captain?’
‘Desiato. We will take you to meet him. Come.’
They followed Hesper into the town.
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