Doctor Who by David Solomons

Author:David Solomons
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2018-11-05T16:00:00+00:00

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Yaz wandered the deserted passageways of the SS Phaeton, feeling guilty about leaving Ryan behind to the mercies of M8-Tron, but knowing that if she’d stayed to help she would have been captured too. She silently swore she’d find him and the key to Vault Thirteen. However, she couldn’t deal with the medical robot on her own. She needed the others. The trouble was, they weren’t on this deck.

There was also one other obstacle to her plan. She was lost.

The lift that had brought her to this level was somewhere far behind, in a maze of corridors that all looked the same. As yet, she hadn’t come across another lift. All she knew was that this was deck thirteen, and that M8-Tron had yelled that it was out of bounds.

‘I wonder why,’ she muttered quietly to herself, as she reached another junction identical to all the others. ‘Eeny, meeny, miny…’

The impact of the original crash had shattered the Phaeton’s interior, but some sections were more damaged than others. This one was the worst spot she’d encountered so far. Dust lay thickly on every surface, as if no one had visited this part of the ship in years. The ceiling had caved in at various points, peppering the route with debris. She stepped over a lump of twisted metal, and continued on down the passageway.

At the next junction, she found a directional sign on the wall, obscured by an accumulation of dirt. She rubbed away at it to reveal the words COMMUNICATION CENTRE.

A few minutes later, she found herself in a control room similar to the one where the TARDIS had set down. But, where that one had been filled with activity and the hum of power, here the monitoring positions were unmanned and the equipment silent. Nonetheless, she was at the very heart of the ship’s communications systems. No wonder this place was out of bounds.

The students believed that, since the crash, the ship had been broadcasting an emergency distress signal, but the Faculty wouldn’t want them to know that was a lie. For any normal teacher it would have been a priority: protect the children, send for help. But something had gone terribly wrong on New Phaeton.

Yaz could only imagine the horror that must have followed the crash. Whatever had happened must have driven the teachers and M8-Tron completely mad.

As Yaz tried to rid herself of the image, she wondered if perhaps she could get the equipment working and transmit an emergency distress signal herself. The lift, the lights – there was power on this deck, that much she knew. But how to bring the ship’s communications back to life? The Doctor would have known which buttons to press, although Ryan had confided in her that the Doctor’s approach to most technology seemed to be to press all the buttons.

She studied the control desk for a clue, circling it twice before she spotted a fat booklet propped between a couple of sliders. She picked it up, and turned to the first page.

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