Youth is Wasted on the Young p.4
"Janine, get the ATV ready, I'll be there in 15 minutes," the sheriff said into the microphone. He started the car. The Doctor laid a hand on the window.
"I'd like to come along," the Doctor said.
"No offense, Doctor, but this isn't work for civilians," the sheriff said.
"I'm a Special Investigator for the Unified Intelligence Taskforce," Doctor said. He took out the psychic paper and flashed it at the sheriff. "We specialize in odd happenings like this. My experience might be of use to you," the Doctor said.
The sheriff took the wallet, read it, then leaned back and typed something into his dashboard computer. He consulted the psychic paper and typed in a few more numbers, apparently reading it off the blank paper.
Amy poked the Doctor in the ribs, he straightened up with a jerk. "He's going to find out that's a fake," she whispered fiercely. Rory looked worriedly back and forth between the Doctor and the sheriff.
The boy handed the wallet back to the Doctor. "According to the interplanetary database,” he said, “you, and any associates you may have, have full clearance and a ‘Render All Aid’ tag attached."
Rory and Amy gave him double takes. The Doctor smirked.
“What is your name, anyway?” the sheriff asked. He waved at the computer. “I never asked, and the records don’t say.”
“I’m afraid that’s ‘need to know,’ sheriff, just call me the Doctor, and this is Amy and Rory. And you are?”
“Dutch Anderson, Land County Sheriff,” he shook the Doctor’s hand and nodded at them, then stared hard at the Doctor. "If you knew something was going on, why didn't you notify the local authorities when you arrived?" he demanded.
The Doctor shrugged and pocketed his psychic paper. "I'm just here on vacation. I wasn't expecting trouble."
"That alone should have warned us," Rory muttered.
The Doctor chose not to hear it.
"Well,” the sheriff said. “Never look a gift horse in the mouth. Get in. God willing, this is all some mixup and we won't need your help," he said, putting the SUV in gear.
They piled into the back of the land rover. As Dutch pulled out, sirens wailing, Rory leaned over and whispered. "Since when are you a member of UNIT?"
---
The ATV (Aerial Transport Vehicle) turned out to be the counterpart to the sheriff's SUV. Not big enough to be called a plane, but not small enough to be anything else.
Two pilots chairs in the front opened up to a wide aisle down the center of the craft, with narrow benches along each wall under large windows. It was designed for carrying equipment, emergency personnel, prisoners, or evacuees from disasters. There was plenty of room for the Doctor, Rory and Amy, but it still felt like flying in a jeep.
The Doctor crouched his way back into the open area behind the driver's seats, ducking down to avoid the low ceiling. The countryside flowed around them outside the large windows, endless plains covered in bison.
"I'm surprised you’re not up there telling him how to fly this thing," Rory said.
The Doctor pointed back over his shoulder, toward the child sized pilots seats. "The seats are too small," he said.
Amy leaned forward, elbows propped on her knees. "So, 300 people on one farm?" she asked. “Isn’t that a bit extreme?”
"These aren't the family farms you’re probably thinking of, Amy," the Doctor said. "Despite being settled for centuries, Feyanora’s still a sparsely populated planet. In order to bring in extra money for the local economy, Feyanora has become one of the breadbasket planets. They grow food for the other inhabited planets in the area. Farms here cover thousands of acres and are worked using huge harvesting machines that would make your 21st century combines look like push toys,” the Doctor said.
"Wait a minute," Rory said. "You said that Fayanoran plants were poisonous to humans."
The Doctor looked at him, "Who said their customers were human?" he pointed out. “There are other races that aren’t bothered by the inhibiting chemicals. They need food too."
It only took about 20 minutes to reach the Kitterang Farm, nearly 200 miles south of the city. The ATV settled gently to the tarmac of the farm landing area. The door opened with a hydraulic hiss and Dutch dodged his way past them to the open door. He stopped and turned to them.
“If you intend to investigate, please don’t touch anything,” he said, holding up an admonishing finger, looking at each of them. “We may need to call in forensics, we don’t want any evidence ruined.”
The Doctor nodded. Amy and Rory followed suit.
The sheriff nodded, satisfied and jumped down to the tarmac. “Jeff!” he waved as another boy trotted up to him.
Jeff was a thoroughly ordinary looking boy with straight brown hair wearing the tan uniform of the sheriff’s office and a deputy badge on his shirt pocket. He was also wearing a holster slung on one hip. The heaviness of that gun and the weight of his expression belied any thought that this was just a boy playing “policeman.”
“Sheriff,” he nodded a hello at Dutch and looked past him at the grown-ups.
“This is the Doctor, a Special Investigator who has offered his help, these are his assistants, Rory and Amy,” Dutch introduced quickly. Jeff nodded at them. “What have you found out so far?”
“Like I told you on the radio, the regular hauler came out and found the place deserted. We’ve been looking but we haven’t found anyone. The local tracking station isn’t picking up any of the tracers and my portable kit isn’t finding anything within its search radius. There’s no indication of theft. All the vehicles that weren’t out on duty are still here. But we’re not getting any response from any of the harvesters in the field either.”
“Any signs of violence?” Dutch asked.
Jeff shook his head. “There’s some disorder, a chair tipped over, little things, but no signs of blood or a struggle. It’s like they all just up and vanished.”
Amy and Rory paid attention to the conversation as the Doctor half listened, swinging around on his heel to scan the area. They were parked on a huge expanse of tarmac that must have covered several acres. There was a short flight control tower at the corner of the asphalt, and a variety of small cars and trucks parked neatly at the curb. The only other vehicles were two large aerial transports that looked like they were for hauling feed or produce, and one truly huge cargo transport the size and shape of a wheat silo lying on its side that dwarfed all the other vehicles. It was pink.
Beyond the tarmac stretched endless wheat fields all around the complex. A quiet, sweet smelling breeze flowed over them, emphasizing the deserted silence.
A white-pillared antebellum mansion, with half a dozen smaller houses, stood on the south side of the tarmac, with forest behind it. A double row of gigantic silos lined the east side of the tarmac, the silos all connected by a vast web of machinery, delivery pipes, scaffolding and ductwork.
“It looks like half airport, half industrial complex, and half Old South Plantation,” the Doctor said, swinging back around on his heel.
“That’s three halves,” Rory said.
“Exactly.” The Doctor grinned, then turned and interrupted the sheriff and deputy. “Lets get started. Perhaps you’d better introduce me to these haulers.”
The haulers were Tripods. Little pink aliens two feet tall composed of dusky pink skin, a smooth ball shaped body about 8 inches across and three featureless, stiltlike “legs.” They looked like a piece of extremely simple CGI.
In fact, Rory would have thought he was hallucinating, if one of the aliens hadn’t extended one “leg” in a handshake. “I’m Captain Schwillic, pleased to meet you.”
“R-Rory Williams,” he stuttered back. The creature’s skin was cool, but warm enough to be endothermic, and Rory could feel the faint bulges of cartilaginous “bones” inside, like a chain of ball joints. It gave the legs almost the flexibility of a tentacle, but with what felt like knuckles under the skin. Close up, the skin wasn’t even the flat fake pink he’s assumed, but had the lightly mottled, look of real skin, showing the faint tracery of tiny veins, like a close up of a person’s cheek.
They had no eyes, or any discernible features. And they spoke by vibrating their skin.
Rory felt a bit of culture shock, seeing something so completely alien in a human setting. Amy was grinning, delighted. And the Doctor was interviewing them as casually as he talked to any other person.
“Aren’t they cute?” Amy said, bouncing up to him and squeezing his arm. She looked back at the three Tripods which were apparently all the crew there was of the huge pink cargo carrier that towered over the tarmac.
“Cute. Yeah.”
The Doctor rejoined them as Sheriff Anderson, Jeff and the aliens left to continue their search grid. The aliens had agreed to stay and help.
“Captain Schwillic said they arrived on schedule for their normal pickup, but weren’t getting any answer from the tower. They didn’t think anything of it, just assumed somebody was on a coffee break. They landed anyway and Schwillic and Toftoc, his first officer, went up to the main offices in the house expecting to find someone there. All they found was some knocked over furniture, but no humans.
Their third officer had gone to the silos to arrange loading and found much the same situation. They tried calling out on the house’s broadband, assuming there’s been some disaster on the farm elsewhere that everyone was dealing with. When they got no answer they called the sheriff’s office in Landing.”
“So what do we do?” Rory asked.
“We look around, see what we can find,” the Doctor said. He suddenly gave the both of them a gimlet look. He turned and yelled over his shoulder, “Oi! Dutch!”
The young sheriff broke off his conversation with his deputy and trotted back over. “Did you think of something, Doctor?” he asked hopefully.
“Yes. You said that everyone outside the cities wears trackers, “ the Doctor observed.
“Yes. It’s too easy for people to get lost on a frontier world otherwise. But we aren’t picking up any of their traces.”
“No, I know that,” the Doctor waved that away. “Do you have any more of the trackers anywhere?”
“Sure, they’re standard issue with all emergency field kits.” Obviously wondering what the Doctor was getting at, the sheriff led them back to his ATV, leaned in, and popped out an emergency medical kit that was latched onto the wall just inside the doorway. He handed it to the Doctor.
“Excellent!” The Doctor opened the kit, rummaged around and pulled out a small vial of tiny silver disks. “This them?”
“Yes,” the sheriff nodded. “Do you think you’ve found a way to track them?”
“No,” the Doctor said, pulling out a pneumatic injection gun. “But I’ve found it’s a good idea to keep track of my assistants when on a new planet, “ the Doctor said.
Amy stuck her tongue out at him.
She gave the Doctor her arm with a long-suffering look. With a “shunk” of the hypospray injector she felt a sting like a mosquito bite, and an itchy red welt showed where the tracker was now imbedded under her skin.
The Doctor did the same to Rory. He returned the equipment to the medical case and flicked out the sonic screwdriver. He waved it over their arms, calibrated something on the side, then held the screwdriver up in the air, turning in a slow circle, obviously scanning for something.
He pulled it down and looked at it.
“Did you find anything?” Rory asked impatiently. The sheriff just looked hopeful. The Doctor grimaced. “No, just you two. Still, at least now I don’t have to worry about losing you out here. I’ve grown inexplicably fond of you.” He grinned.
“What’s the range on that?” the sheriff said, nodding at the sonic screwdriver.
The Doctor became more serious. “Suffice it to say, if they’d been within a couple of hundred miles, this would have found them.” He picked up the vial of trackers and shook it. “I assume these work on all the normal frequencies?”
The sheriff nodded and rattled off a spate of technicalities that neither Amy or Rory understood. The Doctor nodded.
“If they are still in the area they’re either shielded, or inactivated.”
“Once the trackers are activated they can’t be deactivated except by destroying them. They’ll still signal even if the owner is dead, so we can find the bodies,” the sheriff said.
The Doctor sighed, and looked around, “Then we need more information. Rory, you come with me. Amy, you go with the sheriff. Look for anything unusual, anything that doesn’t seem to fit.” He nodded and stalked off toward the mansion. Rory looked back and forth between him and Amy for a confused moment then trotted after the Doctor.
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