The Silent Stars Go By by Dan Abnett

Author:Dan Abnett [Abnett, Dan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Media Tie-In, Science Fiction, General, Action & Adventure
ISBN: 9781849902434
Google: YP3UXtgwr40C
Amazon: 1849905177
Publisher: BBC BOOKS
Published: 2011-09-29T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter

11

The Maker of Our Earth

With the Doctor enthusiastically leading the way,

they explored the deep chambers and tunnels of the

massive terraformer plant.

The simple scale of it silenced Bel and Samewell,

and took Amy back a bit too. The machined and

engineered cavities inside the artificial mountain were

bigger than any machine, factory or structure she'd

ever seen on Earth. They also matched or exceeded the

scale of structures she'd seen since leaving Earth and

travelling aboard the TARDIS.

They followed winding tunnels lined in galvanised

metal plates or slightly tarnished sheets of shipskin.

They entered chambers that had been hollowed out of

the hill so that the face of the rock was cut perfectly

smooth and straight-edged, like set and polished

concrete. Colossal machines that Amy thought of as

turbines dominated these chambers, feeding whatever

energies or processes they output into vast networks of

gleaming metal pipes and condensers. Some of these

pipes, large enough in cross-section to take two trains

on parallel lines, exited into vent stacks, or swept down

into stone floors, connected to other, deeper chambers

and larger, stranger machines.

Sometimes, the Doctor and his companions came

out of tunnels onto mesh walkways of welded shipskin

that crossed, precipitously, the middle of vast

subterranean spaces, delicate bridges suspended

hundreds of metres above the chamber floors from

which they could look up at dim ceilings thousands of

metres above, or peer down into heat-exchange

trenches or energy sinks or other abyssal clefts that

pulsed with distant glimmers of energy, and dropped

away into the planet's crust for miles. Warm updrafts

touched their faces and billowed their hair.

'I've run out of words for big,' said Amy.

'None of them seem adequate, do they?' the Doctor

agreed.

Everywhere they went, they could hear the whirr

and hum of the giant mechanisms. Occasionally, they

could also hear the scratch and scurry of transrats

emanating from blind tunnels or side vents.

They entered one chamber on the level of the rock

floor and found it to be the largest they had seen yet.

Its dizzying space was dominated by a massive column

of silvery metal that was fed by a cobweb of tubes and

ducts. It looked like a huge chrome oak tree. High up,

the roof of the titanic chamber was hazed by clouds of

vapour, so that the branches of the giant metal tree

appeared to be swathed in ghostly foliage.

'Are those clouds?' Amy asked, looking up.

The Doctor nodded.

It was drizzling slightly, like a wet autumnal day.

The chamber was so big, it had its own weather

system.

'That's a secondary sequence prebiotic crucible,'

said the Doctor, with the appreciative tone of a

twitcher who has just spotted a very rare species. 'What

a beauty.'

'What does it do?' asked Bel.

'It makes the world a better place,' said the Doctor.

'In human terms, anyway. It makes life. It's gently

sculpting and shaping the ecosystem of Hereafter.'

'You said secondary,' said Amy.

'What?'

'You said it was a secondary sequence something or

other.'

'Yes,' said the Doctor, matter-of-factly. 'There'll be

about a hundred of these, all supporting the main

sequence crucibles. I hope we get a look at one of

those, because they're really big.'

Amy grinned at him. 'I don't often get to see you

actually impressed,' she said.

'How could you fail to be?' he replied. 'This is

human engineering at pretty much its peak.

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