Chase The Wind: Doctor Who/Studio C [Book 1]

What Comes After 42?

What Comes After 42?

(Post-'42' Interlude)

In the end, it was Matt's dance with death that had saved the day.

It was only after the Doctor succeeded in dragging them back from the sun that, staring out of the airlock, he realized it.

"It's alive."

The Torajii sun was alive... and the Doctor, with hardly any shielding, had looked into its heart.

Just under nine minutes to impact, Mallory had been dimly aware of Matt and Riley leaping from the pod, and of McDonnell arriving, and of the captain sending Riley back to continue opening the doors with Scannell... but it was on the Doctor where her attention had been focused. Even know his words rang through her head.

"...Stay away from me!... it's your fault, Captain McDonnell!... you mined that sun! Stripped its surface for cheap fuel! You should have scanned for life!... That sun is alive, a living organism! They scooped out its heart, used it for fuel, and now it's screaming!"

"What do you mean?" McDonnell had demanded. "How can a sun be alive? Why's he saying that?"

"Because it's living in me."

Mallory shuddered, wishing she wouldn't have to remember the last few minutes as they continued to fall toward the sun—as the Doctor demanded they freeze the infection out of him, as nine minutes shrunk to seven, as they shoved Ashton's frozen body from the stasis chamber where McDonnell had lured him earlier, as the cracks in the Time Lord's facade began to show.

"I'm scared. I'm so scared."

The heat shields failed completely at five minutes... and in the back of the ship, Korwin cut the power to the stasis chamber.

It stopped at negative seventy degrees, far from the negative two hundred the Doctor had assured them he could survive just long enough to kill the infection. "You can't stop it! Not yet!"

The memories spun through her mind, more and more fragmented the closer they got to the sun and the higher the stakes got with every passing moment.

McDonnell's dark words, as she went to deal with Korwin. "Leave it to me."

Four minutes.

The Doctor's agonized command. "Get to the front! Vent the engines! Sun particles in the fuel! Get rid of them! Give back what they took!"

A mad dash to the front of the ship.

Three minutes.

McDonnell's voice over the intercom. "Riley. Scannell. I'm sorry."

The computer intoning, "Exterior airlock opened." The icy cold shock washing over Mallory as she realized exactly what McDonnell had done. She'd thrown herself into the sun and took Korwin with her.

81 seconds.

Riley and Scannell bursting through the last door and trying, in vain, to boot up the auxiliaries.

66 seconds.

Riley's voice from around the corner. "It's not working! Why's it not working?"

58 seconds.

Rounding the bend, Matt moments behind her, breathlessly demanding,"Vent the engines, dump the fuel."