Doctor Who BBC872 - To the Slaughter

‘Rocks?’ Halcyon turned to Falsh, his lip curling down. ‘These planetoids
were not discovered at the same time.’ He spoke slowly, as if explaining to a
child. ‘The KanYu philosophy describes the observation of forces between the
heavens and the earth. The knowledge that a body exists lends it heightened
influence. As awareness of an object grows, so does the hold it exerts on the
mind – and so the KanYu formulae are affected. . . ’
‘Are you not done with that salad yet?’ hissed the waiter.
Jolted away from Halcyon’s bizarre lecture, Trix saw the waiter had created
a beautiful, decorous dish for Halcyon – while she had only managed to pile
up some weird kind of lettuce around a few slices of chiggock. She plopped a
green tomato on top. ‘Finished.’
Halcyon was still gassing on as the waiter presented his dish. He failed to
react at all. Trix placed her sad salad in front of Falsh, and while Tinya gave
it a funny look, Falsh’s attention was elsewhere. She and the disappointed
waiter retreated discreetly back to the buffet table.
‘What about the other two?’ whispered Trix. ‘What are they having?’
‘They’ll eat when their superiors have eaten!’
Unlucky, thought Trix. It didn’t seem likely that Halcyon would finish any
time soon.
‘. . . and now you expect me to recalculate the environmental formulae,’ he
complained, ‘when I had already achieved the perfect balance for the Grand
Orchestration!’
He paused for breath and Tinya jumped in. ‘NewSystem Deconstruction
are setting charges to demolish the remaining moons even as we speak. And
they are, undertaking a feasibility study into reshaping some of the retrograde
moons into a new planetoid, one with mass equivalent to Carme.’
‘An artless imposter. . . ’ Halcyon looked grave. ‘Carme has been a fixed
point in Earth’s heavens since its discovery almost 400 years ago!’
‘In 1938,’ said Tinya knowledgeably, ‘with Lysithea discovered the same
year.’
Sook raised an eyebrow at her, and even Halcyon paused.
‘Indeed,’ he said icily.
Trix felt a moment of disorientation. So this was the year, what, 23something.
‘A man named Seth Barnes Nicholson found her,’ said Halcyon, staring off
through his shades into the middle distance. ‘He waded for weeks through
stacks of primitive optical slides until there she was: a tiny point of shifting
light. . . ’ He was getting louder, carried away. ‘Named for Zeus’s lover! Mother
of Britomartis!’
‘We take your point,’ said Tinya bravely, ‘but we did design and construct a
new Mercury.’
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