Doctor Who PDA70 - Match of the Day (4th) by Chris Boucher

Author:Chris Boucher
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-07-13T02:42:30+00:00

* * *

Leela hesitated. She had managed to get the breathing suit off the dead pilot but it was damaged. She could see no way to fix the break in the join between the body-covering and the helmet, and although she thought she had identified the small containers of air used to fill up the helmet she could not think of a way they could be of help to her by themselves.

The breathing suit would be cumbersome to wear and difficult to move in and it would leak air, so the chances were it would be more trouble than it was worth. And it would have to be worth quite a lot to persuade her to put it on anyway. When the pilot had died his body, as usually happens, had voided itself of waste matter. The suit was in a disgusting mess. Only in an emergency would she have considered wearing it and even then the emergency would have to have been immediate and severe. Of course this was an immediate and severe emergency.

She left the body and the soiled and broken breathing suit and went to the feeding station dispenser at the other end of the cell. She helped herself to some food tablets and some of the brackish- tasting recycled water. The pilot had thought she would be shocked to be told that they were drinking their own urine and she had enjoyed spoiling his fun by not being.

She glanced across at his narrow body, abruptly aged and shrunk by death, and thought how petty and pointless their sparring had been as it turned out.

She munched on the tablets. The choices she could see were limited and not what she would have chosen given a choice. Her best chance was to stay where she was: but there was no one controlling the speeder yacht; the food tablets and the water were bound to run out sooner or later; sharing a small space with a decomposing body would be very unpleasant; and she was probably going to die no matter what. Her other choice was to open the airlock: but there was no one controlling the speeder yacht; the food tablets and the water were bound to run out sooner or later; and she was probably going to die no matter what, only more quickly that way.

Her choices came down to: sit and wait and die or get up and do something and die. She had been thinking about this for too long, she decided. She took a final drink and headed for the airlock.

As she lay in the cramped chamber and pressed the switches in the order the control panel indicated she remembered someone saying - was it her trainer, or her father perhaps - someone saying: never hurry to death; you might want to change your mind before you get there. Too late she thought as she pressed the final switch and the air pump whispered into life.

Keefer held the short sabre low against his side and ducked through the automatic doors before they were fully open.

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