The dome loomed up out of the darkness, suddenly just there like a sleeping whale, discovered amongst the kelp and weeds. John had expected something, but not this. The sonar - in one of its brief, functioning moments - had given a clean, sharp pulse, something incredibly dense and suspiciously big. Something forty yards below the boat, where, by rights, nothing like it should have been. As he swung the lamp across it, the beam glimmered back; muted and tinted greeny brown by the silt and the algae in the water, the reflected light flashed across him, as if someone inside was as curious about him as he was about it.
He angled the lamp downwards and manoeuvred himself closer to the behemoth. As he reached out to touch it, he felt an odd tingle in his arm, like a tiny electrical current - not painful, but disconcerting. What was even more disconcerting was the matching arm that reached out of the depths of the thing, a mirror image of his own. As he drew closer, the arm likewise reached out for him, until their fingertips touched at the surface. The thing was slippery... no, not slippery. Skiddy. If there was such a word. As though the chromed surface was pushing him away, reluctant to be touched. It was a sensation he'd never experienced before. Like a kitten in front of its first mirror, John moved from side to side, watching his own dimmed reflection, slightly stretched out like a comedy face in the back of a spoon. He craned his head back, restrained by the helmet, and pointed the lamp up. The curve of the object faded away into distant darkness in all directions.
He moved back, sensing the water tingling around him, silently seething with forces and energies that scared him. Perhaps it was these energies that were making him feel nervous, edgy; not the fact that, buried in the seabed off the Orkney islands was a huge, mirrored hemisphere; not the fact that, as he stared into its glassy depths, it almost seemed to be looking right back at him.
He shuddered, realising how cold he was, and checked his watch - about eight minutes of air left. Just time for a quick swim around the thing. He pushed away from the seabed, the water thickening even more with the flurry of sand, and began to move around it. It was very disorienting: even as he knew he was moving, the featureless surface of the dome gave the impression that he was standing still. Only the odd floating clump of weed or other debris, caught in the beam from his lamp, convinced him that he was actually moving. Five minutes later, he was on the point of giving up and returning to the surface: he could only get a vague impression of the dome's size, judging by its curvature. But for all he knew, he could have circumnavigated it totally, and be back where he started. But then he saw something on its surface that he hadn't seen before.
A couple of feet up from where the dome (it only then occurred to him that he'd been assuming it was a dome - for all he knew, it could be a sphere, half buried in the seabed) met the sand was a dark, starfish shape, the size of a spreadeagled man. He swung the light over it, noticing the dull, reflective glint of metal under the thick accretion of barnacles and weed. It looked like a five-legged metallic spider, hugging the surface of the sphere. At the centre where the thick arms came together was a lump, protruding a few inches.
Tentatively, he touched it, poking through the accumulation of marine life on its surface. There was a gentle, tingling vibration, a more intense version of what he could feel in the water all around him. He gave an experimental tug - and floundered backwards in surprise as it came away in his hand: a fist-sized lump, roughly circular, like a large pewter doughnut with a cricket ball embedded in the hole. Seaweed trailed from it like matted hair, streaming out in the water, and he couldn't help but be reminded of a shrunken human head. With flailing arms and legs, he steadied himself, clouds of silt puffing up around him. He brought the object closer, examining it in the spotlight. Remembering his air levels, he decided to save the examination until he'd got to the surface. With one last, disbelieving look at the kraken in front of him, John kicked out and headed upwards, into the light.
******
When the Doctor knocked gently on Ace's door, she was sorely tempted to tell him where to go. But she remained face down on the bed, silently reading some rubbishy teen magazine that she'd found at the back of a cupboard. In the white spaces on the advert pages, a childish hand had scrawled
naĂŻve copies of some of the simpler words in black marker pen. Ace flicked desultorily through it, trying to find something that related to her own teen life. Not surprisingly,
there were no letters from Disenchanted and hacked off from
Perivale complaining about time-travelling old men. Just
the usual boy-obsessed dorks: Dear Annie, My mother hates my boyfriend, but I really love him and he says he loves me. What shall
I do? Debbie, age 14.
Get a life, thought Ace. 'Ditch the boyfriend and go travelling through space and time with a weird codger who doesn't tell you a thing he's thinking.'
There was a another tap on the door.
'Ace? Mind if I come in?'
'I don't suppose it'd make any difference if I did, would it?' she muttered.
She was right; it didn't.
Ace felt the gentle pressure of the Doctor sitting at the foot of her bed. She glanced over her shoulder and saw his sad, puppy-dog expression.
'Don't start that,' she warned. She wasn't going to let him win her over.
'Ace...'
'You're not going to tell me, are you?'
'Ace, I've told you -'
'And stop putting my name at the start of all your sentences. I hate that! You sound like a teacher.'
'Sorry. It's just that there are some things I just can't tell you. Not yet. Not til they've happened.'
Ace sat up, flinging the magazine across the room, fluttering like a frantic bird, where it joined the pile of clothes, boots and assorted rubbish against the far wall. 'And what would be the point of telling me then, then?'
He gave a little shrug and she shook her head.
'It'd be a lot easier to take you and all this time-travel business seriously if you actually looked like an alien,' she said.
'Rather than just the man who runs the Perivale hardware store?' he completed her thought for her and threw her a mock-offended look. He reached into his jacket pocket.
'And if you pull out those bloody spoons, I'll slap you!'
He withdrew his hand slowly, empty.
'And it's hard to remember that you know more about this time travelly stuff than I do; webs of time, paradoxes. All that head-screw stuff.'
'I'm not infallible, Ace, whatever what you think I think. Almost, but not quite. Ten centuries of time travel gives you a nose for these things. It's not that I don't trust you. It's that I don't trust me. I don't trust me to tell you things that I think you ought to know. I need to keep the bigger picture in sight. It's too easy
to get so close to the trees that you can't see the wood - only to watch the whole forest go up in flames because you forgot to put out the camp fire.'
Ace stared at him. 'You haven't got a clue what you're talking about, have you?'
He drew himself up, mustering as much dignity as he could manage. 'I couldn't possibly comment,' he replied, sounding vaguely hurt - and then batted her gently with his hat and stood up. 'Anyway, we've landed in Scotland,' he announced, as if it were a natural sequitur. 'Come on. And no, you can't wear a kilt.'
