Doctor Who Zeta Major Simon Messingham

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.ZETA MAJORSIMON MESSINGHAMPublished by BBC Worldwide Ltd,Woodlands, 80 Wood LaneLondon W12 0TTFirst published 1998Copyright © Simon Messingham 1998The moral right of the author has been asserted Original series broadcast on the BBCFormat © BBC 1963Doctor Who and TARDIS are trademarks of the BBCISBN 0 563 40597 XImaging by Black Sheep, copyright © BBC 1998Printed and bound in Great Britain by Mackays of Chatham Cover printed by Belmont Press Ltd, Northampton This book is dedicated toJulie and Alexander KirkAcknowledgements are due to thefollowing:First, literary.James Ellroy.Cyril Tourneur (or Thomas Middleton).Ian Fleming.Mark S.Geston.And not least, Louis Marks.Second, personal.Stephen Cole for commissioning me.Caz and Mike for invaluable proofreading, mathematics and chronology.Steff and the lab team at SBCL.Brother Mark for lending me N64 at just the wrong moment.All at Netherbury Road.The students on my Fiction Writing course at Ealing College.Who taught me how to write.PrologueTime slowed.Kavelli awoke from his three-month sleep.The first he knew about it was the fear that pumped through him, fear that had travelled with him for two hundred light years.The fear that reminded him that the cryogenic tubes installed in this crumbling ship were working at fifty-three per cent efficiency.A brief flash in his mind: a last depressing vision of his home planet.The cold sun hanging over the steppes, ancient metal gantries that webbed over the shuttle bowl, the glow of the orange sun.And on the ground, watching, the handful of scientists that had made it all possible.Their faces had been pale blotches wrapped in warming fur but Kavelli had felt their need, their hunger to succeed, for this mission to work.A sudden lightning strobed across his eyes.The lid of the cryo opening up.A harsh snapping sound as the plastic shroud surrounding him cracked and split in the cold.A temperature so low Kavelli couldn’t yet feel it.He had survived.He wondered how many others had made it.But he didn’t wonder for long; the cold changed everything.Some time later, Kavelli found himself on the bridge.His mind still chased itself with sleep-lag.Even arriving in this cramped room was a hazy memory.He stared at the three green lights on the ship’s computer terminal interface.His head cleared a little.The ceiling began to glow, buzzing as ancient technology strained to rouse itself.Melted ice pooled over the plastic sheets covering the equipment.Water began to drop and seep through the grates in the floor as ancient heaters shuddered into life.Kavelli stretched, his palms pushing against the ceiling plates.His blue Space Service uniform was cold and damp.Like the ship, it was a relic from a different age.This costume irritated Kavelli.It seemed a conceit, unnecessary, a fantasy.And then he dropped the thought from his conscious mind.There were things to be done.All right, he thought, let’s take a look.Without hesitation, he stabbed at a chunky rubber button on the primary console.Huge, riveted screens from another age screeched and screamed open to reveal the dizzying infinity of space.What the hell was this?For a moment, the immensity and the distance crept into perspective, just at the edge of his reason.Kavelli felt fear; a primordial fear.It was all wrong.Not immediately, not obviously, but it was wrong.Whatever it was that surrounded their tiny, pathetic little ship, this emptiness that stretched and curved into infinity, it bore little resemblance to the space lanes of the empire.This was.deranged.The blackness was bunched, like old cloth.Like something was hiding behind and looking in.A handful of distant pustulant stars wove light into the black blanket.As Kavelli silently watched, purple nebulae crawled across space, thick as liquid.How far back were they? How many trillions of years of space and time did it take for their plum light to reach his eyes?They were so far out.No one was meant to see this.‘Kavelli?’He almost jumped, lost as he was in the dark [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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