Doctor Who: Transit Read Online Free PDF Page B

and she was suddenly scared that it might topple over and crush her underneath. Down the platform she could hear a pair of heavy boots crunching towards her.
    Wind whispered through the station.

2: Crazy Paving Man

    Kings Cross (Central Line)
    Bernice decided that the Doctor had a cavalier attitude to first steps. In her experience the first step into a new environment could kill you faster than a bad-tempered Dalek. You were supposed to be cautious. The explorers' manual had a check list: check the atmosphere, check for bugs, animals, subsidence, solar radiation, check that the goddam landing ramp had extended properly. It went on for fifteen pages.
    Not the Doctor, though, Bernice thought. A quick look round with the TARDIS scanner, he puts on his hat, opens the door, and out he goes.
    It was the Doctor's assumption of invulnerability that worried Bernice. She hoped it applied to her as well.
    When she followed him out of the door, it was with the guilty assumption that anything nasty would have to go through him first.
    And that was her first mistake.

    STS Central - Olympus Mons
    The security feeds went down in a blaze of static.
    'What the hell was that?' yelled Ming.
    She switched a monitor over to English 37 and The Bad News Show, Yak Harris caught between slots, frozen solid with his mouth open. There was a sudden pixel flicker and Yak's suit changed colour.
    I'll be damned, thought Ming, he really is a computer program.
    'Well,' said Yak Hams, jerking into life. 'Well, we seem to be having some technical problems from the Acturus Terminus.'
    You and me both, thought Ming. Up on the status boards a silver line pierced into the station's heart. 'Give me an op-stat on the stellar tunnel.'
    'It's down,' said a controller.
    'Down?'
    'Just the carrier wave.'
    'Can't be down,' Ming checked the status board again. 'We pumped twenty-two gigawatts into the bloody thing.' Enough to fry a small town. 'Any contact with the terminal?'
    'Nope.'
    'Why not?'
    'Break down at the terminal end.'
    'Hardware or software?'
    'Your guess is as good as mine.'
    'Get maintenance for me,' said Ming, 'and the KGB.'
    The master console in her office chimed for her attention. Threat analysis catching up with the real world displaying an options panel on the screen. The computer wanted Ming to choose between a technical malfunction or external threat. She glared at the screen.
    Not yet, she thought, not until I know what's going on.
    A timecode at the top of the screen counted down from thirty minutes. When it reached zero the computer would make up its own mind. Ming wanted to know what moron had thought of that.
    It was three minutes since the Stunnel was supposed to have opened, four minutes since they lost contact with Acturus Terminal. Ming's instincts were to boot the problem upstairs but the senior management had all been attending the opening ceremony.
    She was on her own.
    She tore the comer of her last packet of zap and dumped one in a cup full of dead coffee. It started to fizz. She ordered the controllers to isolate the terminal and start pulling the trains out of the depots and whack them back into the tunnels.
    The President was at the opening ceremony too. Which meant she should have heard from the security services by now, from Event Horizon at the very least.
    On the media feed Yak Harris was talking to a panel of experts. A good sign that the media didn't know what had happened either. Ming wondered whether the pundits were computer-generated as well.

    The Stop
    The air was the colour of dust and there was no memory of a warning, no precognition, no transition, just a sudden birth into this confusion of falling stone. Instinct and training dragged her forward towards a rectangular patch of light ahead. Left hand clamped over her mouth, shallow breathing through her fingers, forcing herself to stay upright, smoke rises but dust falls.
    She had a sense of a heavy mass shirting above her and she stumbled faster. Shadows crashed down