Doctor Who by Michael Moorcock

Author:Michael Moorcock
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781409073437
Publisher: Ebury Publishing

Chapter 15

Luxury Class

APART FROM MRS BANNING-CANNON’S occasional complaint about the choir practising in the common rooms of the spacebus and a bit of an argy-bargy between W.G. Grace and her chums, who had accused one of the other players – Pavli-Pavli – of licking their arrow flights during a friendly on the faded artificial green provided by the bus, the journey was largely without incident. Poseidon had experienced an horrendous space tornado and was out of bounds to civilians.

Amy was sure Frank/Freddie Force and Co had been given the slip, but the Doctor wasn’t quite so optimistic. ‘Once he’s after you, that one, he becomes a bloodhound. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he had somehow attached himself to our hull and Lady Peggy had made them all invisible.’

‘You’re not serious?’ Sitting next to him, Amy stirred her kashions. She would have been glad to have a bit more variety in her diet, wholesome as the food was.

They were feathering down against the huge, glowing world of Pangloss. They would not actually land but had arranged to meet the Gargantua here. As they swung round into Pangloss’s night side they spotted the mighty liner lying along the line of the planet’s twin rings, hardly visible at first until their own reflected light suddenly struck her and made her blaze like a star, all silver and rubies in the depths of night.

‘Wow,’ said Amy. ‘Whenever I start to get blasé, something like that happens. Is she the Gargantua? Gosh, she’s the size of Earth!’

The Doctor smiled. ‘Aren’t you glad you didn’t miss the chance to go aboard her? Even if it’s only for a few days. I’m surprised she’s here ahead of us. She wasn’t supposed to arrive until tomorrow, I thought. I must have got the schedules wrong.’

‘It’ll be good to take a shower,’ Amy said, ‘without worrying about seventy miners queuing to use it after you. Did you say they have showers en suite?’

‘I think the A-class cabins have two,’ he told her. ‘But that’s only for the family apartments. Mr and Mrs Banning-Cannon and their daughter are in one of those.’

‘On a different deck to ours I hope.’ She smiled.

‘At least one removed. Probably twenty or so. I think it says somewhere on our tickets.’ He consulted his pocket-V, then put it away, grinning. ‘They’re on Deck Four and we’re on Deck Hundred and Two!’

‘Result!’

‘Yes, that’s six decks away from the B-Cs.’

‘Six?’ She shook her head. ‘You’re a whizz at maths, Doctor, but even I know that four from a hundred and two makes a ninety-eight!’

‘Think about it,’ he said. ‘The ship’s a huge tube. She has a hundred and ten decks.’

‘Oh!’ she felt like an idiot. ‘So the poshest deck is next to the lowest economy?’

‘Not exactly.’ He seemed puzzled. Something about the massive planet had intrigued him. Then he turned his attention back, watching as their tender swept gracefully around the golden ship while she drifted into dock.

Her wonderful nouveau baroque stylings made Amy gasp in delight.

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