Post by Fitz Kreiner on Aug 5, 2009 13:10:33 GMT
6
My Friend of Misery.
My Friend of Misery.
Jess looked round the small quarters that had been supplied to her, the Doctor and Tom. Miles had apologised for the state of it, saying that it was the only room left that wasn’t occupied by base staff and that he hoped they didn’t mind sharing. So far, only she and Tom had been in there, the Doctor had decided to head straight to the sick bay and start reading up on the history of the ‘Space Madness’.
“This isn’t that bad,” Jess said as she sat down on the lower bunk.
Against one wall were three bunks, each on top of the other, with a ladder along the foot of them. The mattress was hard, but not uncomfortable, and there were small pillows and a thin looking blanket that Miles has assured her would be plenty warm enough. Against one wall there was a shelving unit and cupboards and a video screen set into the wall. A small table with two chairs was sat beside the video screen. A window was set into one wall, giving a view across the lunar surface, with parts of the base clearly visible outside. A door beside the window led into a small bathroom containing a shower, sink and toilet.
“It would probably get a little claustrophobic if you live and work here,” Tom said, turning from where he was stood by the window.
“I dunno,” Jess shrugged. “Some of my friends in student accommodation had rooms smaller than this.”
“Were they sharing with two other people?” Tom asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Well, not really.” Jess admitted, shuffling on the bunk. “But we’re not gonna be here long, are we?”
“I hope not,” Tom replied, sitting on one of the chairs by the table. “I don’t like this place. There’s something about it that really doesn’t feel right. Can’t you feel it?”
“I dunno,” Jess shrugged. “There’s certainly something odd here. I can tell that, and that Science lab is rather creepy. I wouldn’t like to be working in there with that Professor Wolfe.”
“Yeah,” Tom said, sounding distant.
Jess looked over at him; the young Time Lord was jostling his legs and tapping his fingers on the table top. He looked highly agitated; he’d lost the spark in his eyes since arriving on the moon. Jess had noticed that recently he’d been slightly distracted. She’d meant to talk to the Doctor about it. A sudden thought hit her; it could possibly have been what they were talking about when she entered the console room that morning.
That now seemed like some time ago. They’d been in the Moon base for some hours now and things seemed to have settled down. There hadn’t been any more power outages, which she was quietly grateful for. What was bothering her now was Tom. He’d been a lot quieter than usual and not rising to her baits when she laid them, in fact, he seemed to be taking her teasing personally rather than retorting.
“So, what do we do while the Doctor is swanning off playing Sigmund Freud?” Tom finally muttered, breaking the silence.
The comment made Jess look up suddenly; his tone was almost one of contempt, as if he were angry that they were helping out the moon base. “What?” she asked.
“Well, we’re just expected to sit around while he does whatever.” Tom replied his drumming of the table getting fiercer.
“Erm,” Jess stumbled over her thoughts, not quite sure how to respond. “Well, we’re here to help him, keep an eye out for things.”
“Yeah,” Tom muttered moving his finger drumming from the table to his other hand. “I can’t stay cooped up in here for much longer; it’s depressing.”
“Video screen?” Jess suggested. “Might have some twenty first century TV or something? Or we can take a walk about the base, see if there’s an observation dome or they might have an entertainment centre. They’ve got to have something up here.” Jess got off the bunk and made for the door before pausing and jumped round clapping her hands together. “Oh, we could see if Doctor Miles will give us a pass or whatever to go down to this Armstrong place.”
With a heavy sigh, Tom hauled himself to his feet. Giving him a comforting smile, Jess hit the door control and the door slid open.
*
Professor Wolfe sat at her personal computer terminal in her office. Through the large glass partitioning, she could see her teams at work. Fritzel was up and busy working on the power couplings on top of the T-Mat cubicle, a technician passing up the tools that he needed. The other members of Fritzel’s team were working on other systems or at their stations, busy working the data and programmes for the first testing in a couple of days. The other part of her department was still sat at their terminals, the neuro-circuits requiring less physical labour at the current time.
However, these were not her main concern right now. At her terminal, Wolfe was engaged in an email conversation with her contacts in Armstrong command, searching for details of any team that had recently been sent from the colony to the base to investigate the goings on. So far, no one at the Armstrong Civic council had any knowledge of such a team being sent across. It had been a long task in trying to identify the mysterious team, and even screen shots of the security surveillance cameras had yielded no results. The records of the official personnel did not match the Doctor or his two companions.
Wolfe was starting to wonder whether they really were part of an investigation team from Armstrong, and if they were really here at Miles’s request to snoop around the science department. She knew that wasn’t paranoia, it was known that there wasn’t a great amount of trust between her and Miles; she’d known that he had sent several reports of complaint to ISC about her department. It didn’t bother her, within the next few days, when all her endeavours were bearing fruit she would get much support from Earth.
“Report.”
The voice of her benefactors came through loud and clear in her head.
“I’m trying to find something on this Doctor and his friends. There doesn’t seem to be any record of them in Armstrong.” She thought, sending her thoughts through the receiver in the chip. “It’s as if they don’t exist.”
“Explain.”
“I have contacts in the Armstrong Civic Council, and no one authorised an investigation team. Their pictures haven’t been identified either. They just seem to have appeared out of nowhere.”
“This Doctor could be a threat. He must be kept under observation.” The voice replied. “We have located an unidentified object on the lunar surface. Its appearance is unexplained. You are to determine whether this Doctor is related to that object.”
“What?” Wolfe asked, so taken aback she said it aloud. “What sort of object? How am I meant to do this?”
Wolfe waited for the reply, to no avail. Her benefactors had ceased their transmission. Great, she thought, she now had a highly difficult task ahead of her; not just finding out who this Doctor was, but whether he had anything to do with a strange object of which she had no idea what it was.
Blinking to clear her head, Wolfe looked back at her computer screen. She had a mail report flashing at her from the screen. Clicking it open, she saw a report from her contact in Armstrong. It was a report from an incident involving the Moon base in 2070; four strangers had arrived, one of whom was calling himself ‘the Doctor’. But it couldn’t be the same man; the Doctor she had met earlier would only have been in his teens back in 2070, unless it was a title given to the head of a team. She would have to really research this. Flexing her hands, Wolfe typed a reply to her contact to research this more and see if there were any other mentions of him in recent history.
Finally sending the email across, Wolfe got to her feet and left her office as Fritzel jumped down from where he was working and crossed over to her.
“Nearly all the last updates are complete now,” he said, rubbing his cheek and unknowingly spreading a smear of dark grease across his face.
Removing her spectacles and placing them in the top pocket of her lab coat, Wolfe gave Fritzel a rare smile. “Good,” she said, “I trust I can rely on you to keep things ticking over until I get back; I’m off to themes deck for some dinner.”
“Ja, sure,” Fritzel nodded, rubbing his grimy hands down on his lab coat, scowling at the dark smudge it left on the white material.
Turning to the door, Wolfe only paused to make sure she had her communication headset with her, before leaving the lab.
*
The Doctor finished trawling through the records with a scowl. So far the records of the seven reports of Space Madness had revealed nothing to highlight any causes of the affliction. All the patients had different backgrounds, were of different ages and had joined the service at different times. There was no indication in terms of how long they had been serving at the Moon base.
The most worrying thing he had found, however, was that four of the seven had disappeared, gone AWOL according to their records; two of them that day. There was something very bothering about that. He had entertained the suggestion that Doctor Miles and his wife had given, that the crewmen had gone back to Armstrong absently, but he had dismissed that when he had gotten in touch with the Armstrong Police Service and they had told him that no one had arrived there by the link in the past two weeks.
He was now saw at the main station in the sick bay waiting doctor’ Ricci and Miles to bring one of the Space Madness cases back to the sickbay so he could examine them himself. There were several worrying thoughts running through his head about it; one, that is was the result of alien interference and two, Tom looked as though he was starting to suffer the preliminary stages. He’d noticed that he was starting to become distant and anxious, probably as a result of the dreams he’d mentioned in the TARDIS and things here heightening those anxieties.
The sound of the door opening brought the Doctor out of his reverie and he looked up as Miles walked in.
“Well, your patch up job on the Gravitron seems to have held, Doctor,” he said, rubbing his head. “How’s the research coming along?”
“Not good, Patrick, not good at all.” The Doctor admitted, getting to his feet and checking his pocket watch. “I take it that you’ve had no word from Professor Wolfe about my visiting her department tomorrow?”
Miles snapped his fingers before hitting the palm of his hand against his head. “Damn it, I forgot to chase that up for you,” he said.
“That’s quite alright, Patrick,” the Doctor smiled popping his pocket watch back in his pocket. “I wasn’t expecting to hear from her on time. I imagine she’s rather busy with her own agenda, hello.”
Miles looked up at the Doctors last word; Murdoch was stood in the door from the dome, a bemused expression on his face as he looked at the Doctor. “Ah, Steve, come on in, what’s up?” Miles asked.
“Erm, Doctor Miles called me down, about the Space Madness,” Murdoch replied, never taking his eyes off the Doctor.
“Splendid,” the Doctor said, stepping forwards and shaking Murdoch’s hand. “You must be Doctor Murdoch, who first coined the phrase. Pleased to meet you, I’ve read your papers on the topic.”
“Erm, papers?” Murdoch asked bemused.
“You’ll go on to do great things,” the Doctor smiled, looking over Murdoch’s shoulder as Christina Miles and Ricci entered the sick bay with a base crewmember. “Excuse me.”
*
Jess looked round the main dome of the base, the place was a bustle of activity, crewmen busy at their terminals. She looked around for anyone she recognised, the Doctor and Miles weren’t in the dome, clearly. Across the dome she saw the female technician, Anneke van Weesenbeek who was working with a repair team on what the Doctor had called the Probe. With a gentle nudge to Tom, they started to walk over to her.
“Can I help you, miss?”
Jess paused and turned around. A short scientist, not much taller than herself, was looking at her, holding what looked like a small laptop computer in on arm. Jess’s eyes fell to the ID badge on his chest, next to his name, Ulrich, was the number three and a Danish flag.
“Yeah, erm, I’m looking for the Doctor?” Jess replied.
With a quick check of his notepad Ulrich looked back to her. “I believe he’s in the sick bay with the chief,” he said before pointing to a door, “down that way.”
“Thanks,” Jess smiled, turning to Tom only to notice he was now stood in the dome, staring out onto the surface.
“Lars,”
The call made Jess turn round, Ulrich was also turning towards van Weesenbeek, who had called across the control room.
“Lars?” Jess asked Ulrich. “Lars Ulrich?”*
“Yes, that’s my name,” Ulrich replied bemused as to Jess’s apparent amusement at his name. “Excuse me; I’ve a lot of work to do.” With that he scurried over to van Weesenbeek.
Grinning to herself, Jess skipped lightly over to where Tom was stood. She could see his reflection in the glass of the dome, staring ahead. He seemed to be hugging himself with his arms and was bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet.
“Hey, Tom, you’ll never guess what,” Jess started, pausing when he didn’t react. “Tom?” she asked, gently placing her hand on his arm.
She withdrew immediately when he visibly jumped at her contact, taking several steps away from her. “Tom?” She asked again. He was now wide eyed and she could see him visibly shaking. “Stay here,” she said quietly before turning and running in the direction Ulrich had pointed towards the sick bay.
The door led to a small ante-chamber with benches along the walls, one of which was a large observation window. It reminded her of a waiting room. There were doors opposite where she had just came through, two of which had notices hanging on them, making them appear to be offices. Choosing the central door, Jess ran through it to find herself in the sick bay. The background hum that filled the Gravitron control room was replaced with a sound that reminded Jess of a machine that helped people to breathe. It sent a shiver down her spine before she looked round to take stock of who was in there.
She instantly recognised the shape of the Doctor, stood next to the tall and imposing figure of Miles. They were stood round one of the beds with who Jess assumed to be Miles wife. There was a fourth figure lying on the bed and two other members of the medical team, at least, that’s who she assumed them to be, were by another bed, attending a second patient. It wasn’t the Star Trek sickbay she’d been expecting, but it didn’t seem like a cosy hospital either.
“Doctor?” she said, before she’d even taken many steps into the room. She didn’t want to get too far from the Dome because of her concern for Tom.
At the sound of her voice, the five upright occupants of the room turned to look at her, the Doctor stepping towards her, spotting the look on her face. “What is it?” he was asking before Jess had even noticed the reaction.
“It’s Tom,” she replied, looking back the way she had come. “There’s something really wrong with him,” she paused and swallowed hard, not sure quite how to continue her sentence.
The Doctor was almost immediately on her side. “What is it? Where is he?” he asked, placing his hands on her shoulders.
“The Dome,” Jess replied. “He really doesn’t seem himself. He seems scared of something.”
The Doctor shot a knowing look over his shoulder back to Miles, who sent a look over to Christina. “Take me to him, quick,” the Doctor said, his voice soft and caring yet full of urgency.
Nodding, Jess turned and led the Doctor back to the Dome, only vaguely aware that both Miles and Christina were following them. Arriving back in the main control, she was in the process of raising her arm to point to where she’d last seen Tom when she noticed that he wasn’t there anymore.
“He was there, in the dome,” Jess said, turning to face the small group who had been following her.
“This could be serious,” Christina said, stepping in between the Doctor and her husband. “It sounds like he’s coming down with Space Madness, and in such a short space of time, it could be one of the most serious cases we’ve dealt with.”
The Doctor nodded gravely in agreement. “Was he seeming anxious or on edge?” he asked Jess.
“Like you wouldn’t believe,” Jess replied, feeling a wave of panic wash over her. “All I did was go up to him and put a hand on his arm and he almost jumped out of his skin, he looked at me like I was horrifying him. It was horrible,” she said feeling a tear well in her eye at the memory of how her friend had looked at her.
“He can’t have gotten far in this little time,” Miles said, reaching onto a desk and picking up a couple of headset communicators and passing them to the Doctor and Jess. “I can organise some of the teams to search, but they’re mostly working on the problem of the Gravitron. No offence, that that’s the most important thing at the moment, a lot of them have family on Earth. With these we can contact each other if we find him.”
“That’s fine, Patrick,” the Doctor said, taking the communicator and placing it over his ear. “I get the feeling that if we have too many people looking that will only make matters worse.”
Copying the Doctor’s actions of putting the communicator on, Jess nodded in agreement. Turning, she headed towards the Science labs, she remembered Tom’s reaction to the place and decided to start her search there. If Professor Wolfe had seen him, then she would make sure the Professor would tell her where he went.
*
Professor Wolfe was stood listening to Fritzel’s report. All the preliminary checks had been completed and the first test was now scheduled for the next day; one day ahead of schedule. Wolfe felt a glow of pride at the news. She was about to reply when she heard a faint whine in her head from the chip. She wasn’t sure whether the rest of the team would hear the same from their chips. She was mid step when she froze in position, as did the rest of the science department.
With the science department frozen, the door to the corridor that lead the back way to the sickbay and medical stores slid open and a Cyberman walked silently into the lab. The silver creature walked directly up to Professor Wolfe, and raising its hand to its chest unit, it touched a control. In response, Wolfe turned and walked towards the T-Mat cubicle, eyes staring directly ahead. Reaching up she picked up a dispersal coil and pulled it out of its housing.
Returning to the Cyberman, she passed the device open before returning to where she had been previously. Silently, the Cyberman turned and walked towards Wolfe’s office, entering, it moved to the far corner and a concealed wall panel slid back, revealing a black space beyond. Once the Cyberman had stepped through the panel it slid back into place seamlessly, leaving no trace it had ever been there.
Mere seconds later, the door to the Gravitron control opened and Jess burst in, pausing in the doorway. All around her, the members of the science team were frozen in whatever action they were doing. As Jess watched, the whole room, as one, started to move again. It was like someone had hit a pause button on the room and then pressed play. She was still starting, slightly slack jawed when Professor Wolfe turned round and spotted her.
“What are you doing here?” She demanded, storming over.
Clearing her throat and pulling herself to her full height, which was still shorter than Wolfe’s, Jess stared her down. “I’m looking for Tom, have you seen him?”
“Why would I have seen him?” Wolfe countered, staring at Jess over the top of her glasses.
“Because there’s something very wrong here and I wouldn’t put it past you to know full well where he is and not be telling me.” Jess said, putting her hands on her hips defiantly.
“How dare you?” Wolfe began. “What gives you the right to storm in here with such accusations?”
“I don’t see you denying it,” Jess countered, cutting Wolfe off. “I don’t know or care what you’re up to here; I just want you to tell me-” Jess was cut off by a klaxon ringing out, echoing down the corridors and through the lab, causing her to look round. “What the hell is that?”
Wolfe was also looking round at the sound of the klaxon. “Unauthorised Air Lock access,” Fritzel shouted from where he was stood, looking over a flashing image on the nearest computer screen.
“What does that mean?” Jess asked turning back to the lab.
“Someone has broken into an airlock,” Fritzel replied, taking a seat at the computer terminal and tapping some keys. A plan of the base flashed up on the screen, a red square flashing at the location of the airlock. “Not too far from here,” he said, pointing at their location on the screen.
Jess was about to reply when she heard a beeping from the communication device at her ear before the Doctor’s voice came through it. “Jess, you might want to come down to the air lock, we’ve found Tom.”
Taking one last look at the screen to get an idea where to go, Jess turned and ran from the lab.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
NB: *Lars Ulrich is the name of the drummer of the band who wrote the song from which the name for this story is taken.