Doctor Who: The Sunken Vessel

4. The secret cocktail bar

As soon as they were through they thumped to the side. Clearly the gravity was still normal in here.

    “Amy, the door! Get the door!” Rory called as they got up, water swirling around their legs. A sinister hissing and spitting confronted her at the entrance together with a whine that filled the air. A sleek, snake-like creature was fighting the current pulling it into the corridor.

    “I can’t – there’s something in the water!” She grabbed an arm and helped drag their friend along. The Doctor moaned in protest. His head lolled back and his eyes rolled in their sockets.

    “No ... help her ...” He seemed to mumble, “... she’ll drown.” Amy’s sodden feet squelched in their boots.

    “Come on Doctor, hang in there.” They splashed round a corner, Rory barely holding the Doctor’s weight, trying to pull away his arm. God, ‘just bruised’ is it? Amy thought. Why does he have to try and seem like a big man now, feeling no pain? Now I have to do all the work. They opened the first door they could find. “Quick, in here.” They dived through and shut the door behind them. The Doctor staggered past clutching his head.

    “Whoa” said Rory “Isn’t this usually the squash courts?” Amy looked around.  He wasn’t wrong. They were standing in some sort of vintage 1980’s lounge with an old fashioned cocktail bar on one side. The room was dimly lit from a low ceiling and sported ornately fashioned furniture and cushions. Wow, I did not know we had a bar on the TARDIS, she thought, ohhh there have been so many times on this ship when a bottle of wine would have gone down real nice. And why are the squash courts so close to the console room anyway? Who plays squash?

The Doctor groaned. He had found his way to a mahogany coloured couch and collapsed into it.

    “Ohhh my head ... “Amy and Rory hurried over to him. Rory knelt and inspected the Doctor’s inflamed lump and mismatched eyes.

    “Ok Doctor you’ve got concussion. Just lie back and rest now, try not to move too much. Amy pass me those cushions please.” She did so and he propped them under the Doctor’s head. Getting up, Rory headed towards the bar and leapt over the counter. Amy’s clammy wet clothes clung to her skin. She walked round the Doctor’s couch and sat in an armchair facing him.

    “Looking pretty raggedy there, old man” The Doctor turned to her and laughed, wincing at the effort.

    “Huh? This is new.” He sat up and looked around. “Where are we?”

    “Some lounge in the TARDIS.”

    “Oh ... I did not know I had one of these.” He chuckled.  Rory returned with a dozen ice cubes wrapped in a dishcloth and a wad of napkins. He handed them to the Doctor who looked at them quizzically.

    “It’s alright Doctor, I’m a nurse. I can help.” The Doctor held the makeshift icepack to his head. Rory slumped squelchily into a sofa. Amy removed her boots and poured what must have been a pint of water from each. Rory took off his jacket and wrung it out over the carpet. They sat back and looked up at the ceiling. There was a moment’s silence as they all tried to take in everything that had just happened.

    “Well, I didn’t want to say it but – I told you so.” Rory said indignantly. They all laughed.

    “Yes Ok, you win Rory.” He looked satisfied at that. It was only now that Amy realised how cold she was. The water had been icy and the wet material was sapping the warmth from her skin. She hugged her arms in tighter.

    “So what happened back there with the gravity and everything?” Amy asked.

    “Well,” The Doctor swivelled round and gasped.

    “No sharp movements” warned Rory.

    “Right, yes ... sorry. Well, we’re clearly underwater, perhaps Earth but probably elsewhere. That’s what that sinking feeling was. We didn’t activate the protocol in time so the TARDIS console short circuited in contact with the water. That caused the artificial gravity for that particular room to switch off and the planet’s gravity took over. The fact that we fell suggests the ship is lying on its back. As for this,” he pointed at his forehead, “I hit the time rotor on the way down. Ow.”

    “That must have been the clang I heard” Amy realised.

    “Indeed. Geronimo.” He laughed dryly. “The whole ship is controlled by the main console so the basic functions could go off in any of the other rooms too. To be honest I’m surprised the lights have lasted this long.” The lights started flickering, then went out.

    “Jinxed it.”

    “Hey, there is no ‘jinxing’ in the real world Roranicus Pond” the Doctor defended, though he sounded pretty guilty. Amy freed her phone from her sodden pocket. It was still working. The light from the screen illuminated their damp faces.

    “Unbelievable.” The Doctor shook his head in disbelief. “My brilliant ship of highly advanced technology grown from the heart of a level 20 civilisation breaks when your little phone from a level 5 planet survives. And it was made in Woolwich!”

    “It was made in Taiwan actually” replied Amy, wondering where he got Woolwich from. Plus it’s waterproof down to 10 bar, she thought proudly, 10 more than your ship can handle. 

“Can’t we call for help then, now we have a phone?”

    “Rory, I’ve told you before, the universe really isn’t that small that someone will be anywhere nearby to help out. Besides we’re at the bottom of some ocean somewhere.”

    “Aren’t there any aquatic civilisations around?”

    “Well, maybe ...”

    “Doctor, I was right about the environment checks.”

    “Yeah he was,” Amy interjected “and besides, we might as well call for help. It’s only your ego that’s stopped us from doing that in pretty much every bad situation we get into.”

    “Alright, fine.” He looked annoyed “Give it here then.” He soniced the phone, but the screwdriver only sputtered feebly. “Darn, I really need to waterproof my stuff ...” He tried again. “Right there, distress signal sent.” He tossed the phone back.

    “Ok, so what do we do now then? Wait?”

    “No, like I said, it’s highly improbable anyone will come, which means we’ll have to find a way out of this ourselves.”

    "Alright, so how Doctor? What are we going to do?" Rory demanded. "We're stuck in a pitch black ship drowning at the bottom of the ocean on some god-forsaken planet. We can’t get back to the console room can we?”

    “No,” The Doctor looked grave, “we’re going to have to get to the secondary console room. From there we can activate Protocol 29 and cut off all connections to the main console and flooded areas. That way we should steady the ship and be able to fly out of here.”

    “Great, so that’s the plan. So, how do we get there?”

    “I don’t know now. I fear the short-circuiting is scrambling the TARDIS’s mind. She’s randomising the room structure. That’s why we ended up here. Plus I’ve never been here before so I wouldn’t know the way normally.”

    “Nevermind. We’re going to have to try.” Said Amy defiantly. She stood up and squelched over to a door on the far side of the room. The other two trailed after her in the dim light of her phone.

    “We have to hurry,” said the Doctor, holding the ice to his head, “the longer we take, the more the TARDIS will start to fail.”

   “Then let’s not waste any time.” Amy replied. She turned to the door.