Doctor Who: Virgin Decalog [002] - Lost Properties by Mark Stammers & Stephen James Walker

Author:Mark Stammers & Stephen James Walker
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science-Fiction - Doctor Who
Publisher: Virgin
Published: 1995-07-17T22:00:00+00:00

Lonely Days

By Daniel Blythe

Survey Officer (Second Class) Sebastian Musgrove had got used to being the only human inhabitant of Monitoring Base XL-7.

He had the drones, of course. The pair of globe-shaped robots – one silver, one gold – bobbed on their little flames of propellant, bustling about the base on their never-ending tasks of maintenance. It sometimes amused Sebastian to watch them at work. He found it funny the way their spindly crab-pincer arms worked away, brandishing circuits or pulling out pasta-like tangles of wiring, while all the time they burbled and hummed to themselves like fussy old men.

He had precious little other entertainment. The tiny planet was too remote to get a clear signal from any of the galactic vid-channels, and the only audio he could pick up was hissy and agitated, throbbing as if straining to break free of the speakers. Here, out on the fringes of the Magellanis system, there was rarely anything of note happening.

Sebastian spent much of his time in the observation gallery, below the great spire of optriscopes and imagers in the Observatory itself. Every now and then he would be rewarded by the sight of a shooting star describing its white streak across the dark green sky. Sometimes the lights were too slow and erratic to be shooting stars and he wondered if he might have just seen the death throes of some alien vessel, its debris floating through space – a phantom of war.

If he got bored with observation, there was always the big dome that housed the green sea of the Conservatory. This was the location of a subsidiary project, the aim of which was to grow as wide a variety of plant life as was possible in the planet’s soil – plant life that needed tending with a lightness of touch that the drones could not manage.

When the eight hours of greyish natural light were expended and darkness closed in around the Base, Sebastian would begin to shiver and feel all alone in the empty night. Tongues of blue dust would lick against the Plexiglas windows, the girders would creak like old wooden beams and the wind would sound like giants prowling around the Base and breathing into its ancient ventilation system.

Often, Sebastian fancied he could see the acres of green fronds in the Conservatory rippling as if touched by invisible hands. And if he peered out at the darkening dunes and ridges, he saw blue-black shadows on the land, like giant bruises, where no hollows had existed before.

At such times, he would go to the corner of his quarters, where he kept his favourite work of art.

It was a cold evening. Sebastian felt lonely and knew, by now, that he was being watched.

In search of reassurance, he gazed upon his treasure. Its beauty comforted him. A recess in the wall lit up in reddish gold, and there, in her red silk dress and gold earrings, stood the tall and slender image of Tarla McCail, looking as beautiful as the day she had died.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.