She is NOT my mother,” Julia repeated, a little indistinctly but as emphatic as ever.

“Please….” The woman began. “Won’t you let me….”

“No!” Julia cried even more loudly. “No. Don’t talk to me. Don’t look at me. Leave me alone… whoever you are.”

She jumped from Chrístõ’s knee and ran out of the room. As light on her feet as she usually was, they all heard her running upstairs to her bedroom.

Chrístõ started to go after her, but Marianna interceded.

“This is one of those times when a girl needs a woman to talk to,” she said and hurried upstairs. Chrístõ turned and immediately noticed the expression on Helena Sommers’ face. Jealousy was the closest word to describe it. Marianna was in her mother’s role, caring for her daughter. That would be a hard thing for any woman to accept.

That was, of course, if she WAS Helena Sommers. Julia was convinced she wasn’t, and that left everyone in a difficult position.

“Look….” Chrístõ began with all of his diplomatic training pulled into operation. “This has been a shock to everyone. Julia needs time to adjust. Everybody does.”

“When they told me that my daughter was alive and well,” Helena Sommers said, in response. “I was so happy. I had lost so much…. But my daughter.… I never expected her to reject me.”

Chrístõ knew he ought to feel sympathy for the woman who had gone through so much, but something held him back from offering any comfort to her.

Something felt wrong.

“How did the authorities know that you were Julia’s mother?” he asked. That question was nagging at him all along.

“All of the refugees were DNA tested,” the Lieutenant explained. “And cross-referenced with possible blood relations. In this case, Miss Sommers’ DNA is on record, already.”

“When she competed in the Olympics….” Herrick reminded him. “The first rule is that all participants are Human and of their stated gender.”

“Besides… why would I lie about it?” Mrs Sommers asked.

Good question, Chrístõ thought. One of many to which he wanted to find answers.

“All those years on the slave ship. It was hard just remembering my own name. I had tried to forget there was anyone I loved. I thought they were all dead. I had so many hopes when they told me….”

Another emotional appeal. Still, Chrístõ felt unmoved. There was something not quite right about it all. Something twanged his telepathic nerves.

Something felt like a lie.

But the DNA was incontrovertible, surely? If the refugees had all been tested, they had to be who they said they were… human beings who had been dealt a cruel fate.

“Julia….” Marianna said when her niece was ready to talk to her. “I’m not saying I don’t believe you. I’m as astonished as you are by all this. But WHY do you feel she isn’t your mother? I know it has been a long time. You’re both older. But….”

“I saw my mother’s body. My father’s too. They died together on the ship… their blood sucked dry by the most evil creatures you can possibly imagine. I was just eleven years old. I shouldn’t have seen things like that. But I did… and I will never forget as hard as I try. My mother is DEAD.”

Marianna held her as a fresh flow of tears came and regretted asking such a question. She had never asked Julia anything about what she had seen on that ship before Chrístõ had reached her. She wished it hadn’t been necessary, now.

“All these years,” Julia managed after a while. “You were like a mother to me. I never called you that. It never seemed quite right. But you were… you ARE… the only mother I have, the only one I need. I want you to know that. It… is something I should have said ages ago, and I’m sorry I didn’t.”

“It never needed saying,” Marianna assured her.

“But that woman... ISN’T and never will be my mother. I’m sorry if my saying it causes problems for you and uncle Herrick, but I can’t… I can’t accept a lie.”

“You don’t have to,” Marianna promised her. “Not if you really feel that way. But…”

Herrick came to the room, quietly. Julia hugged him. He had been the only father she had known in her teenage years. She didn’t need words to tell him, that.

“Julia… something has been decided,” he said awkwardly. “You see… the Lieutenant was hoping that Helena would have family she could live with. They are trying to do that for all the refugees….”

“Not… here?” Julia gasped. “Not with me and Chrístõ.”

“No. That is impossible,” Herrick agreed. “But… I said she could stay with us. It… seemed the best thing… the only thing… to do. Otherwise she would have to stay at the emergency centre.”

Marianna was as disturbed by the idea as Julia was. Both women were silent for a long minute.

“If… she stays with you… do I have to see her?” Julia asked.

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” Marianna assured her. “But… if she stays with us… if you DO want to talk to her….”

“I don’t… I won’t…. EVER….”

“If you do… we’ll be there, too,” Herrick assured her. He nodded to Marianna who stood to leave, assuring Julia that she could call, any time.

Julia said nothing. She waited until she heard the front door close and a car drive away before she crept downstairs. Chrístõ was waiting for her.

“Please… tell me you believe me… about her.”

“I believe you,” he assured her. “And I intend to find out what’s going on. Don’t worry. I’ll make it right. Meanwhile… Marianna brought wedding presents. Do you want to open some of them?”

It was a sign of how deeply disturbed Julia was, that even this temptation couldn’t cheer her.

“I don’t even want to talk about the wedding until this is over,” she said. “At last, not this one. I wish… I really wish we could just go to Gallifrey right now and have the Alliance. I want to forget about this planet altogether.”

“That would be tempting,” Chrístõ admitted. “But you wouldn’t be able to. You’d drive yourself nuts not knowing what this is really all about. Have a little patience. I WILL find out what’s going on. I promise you that… on my honour as a Time Lord of Gallifrey. And… that’s a vow as sacrosanct as a marriage vow.”

“I know,” Julia whispered. She held him tightly, the very way she had clung to him when they were hiding from the vampyres on board the Aldous Huxley.

It was a desperation she hadn’t needed to feel since that day. Chrístõ felt a seething anger that she had been brought back to that state of grief and uncertainty, especially now when they were meant to be happy. Whatever it took, he would resolve this situation.

And then they could get on with the wedding.

Both weddings.

He wasn’t sure HOW he was going to start any sort of investigation. After thinking about it all night he had only one idea in mind. He put it into operation as soon as possible. Julia had been invited to spend a day with Glenda and some of the old ‘Chrysalids’ of their High School days. Chrístõ dropped her off and then made his way to a coffee shop rendezvous with somebody he knew he could confide in.

“Michal, thanks for coming” he said, shaking hands with Julia’s cousin, Ensign-Lieutenant Sommers, who looked every inch a military man even wearing casual clothing on home leave. They sat and ordered refreshments before getting down to serious issues.

“How… are things at your house?” Chrístõ asked.

“Not good. Mum doesn’t really want Helena there. I’m not sure dad does, either. But she is his brother’s wife. He feels obliged. Cordell is on mum’s side. Which feels wrong, anyway. Families shouldn’t pick sides.”

“What about you?”

“I’m not sure. I was on the Endeavour when the slave ship was found. Not that I had much to do with any of it. I was operating a floor cleaning robot on the aft deck.”

Michal grinned sheepishly. Chrístõ nodded in understanding. He had never been a junior member of any military organisation, but two decades as a tyro at the Prydonian Academy was probably as good an experience of life on the lowest rung of a hierarchical ladder.

“Still… if anyone was to ASK my opinion, I’d say there was something not quite right about the whole thing. I mean… those people had a really terrible experience as slaves… but sone of them… especially the ‘leaders’, the ones who actually fought the slavers… seemed a bit arrogant… not like people who had been treated so badly for years. I don’t know… maybe I’m not being fair. I’m barely twenty and I was on my first offworld voyage. What do I really know about humans who’ve undergone terrible experiences?”

“You’ve known Julia since you were a boy. She went through hell before she came to live with you.”

“And she never talked about it. She told me and Cordell about all sorts of things she saw with you, but never about the things that happened on that ship. Dad told us not to ask her, in case it upset her. I have wondered… especially just lately… if we SHOULD have asked… so that she faced up to it and got it out of her system.”

“No,” Chrístõ told him. “I’m sure the best thing was for her to get on with her life without being reminded. But now it’s all come back with a vengeance.”

“I’m sorry about that,” Michal admitted. “She doesn’t deserve that.”

“No, she doesn’t. Nobody does. I wonder how many other families will have to deal with people coming back from the dead like this.”

“A lot of them. That was the thing about colony ships. The passengers were nearly all sponsored by people who already came out here.”

“Yes, of course,” Chrístõ noted. “Your mum mentioned it when this started. So, all the refugees have families here in the Beta Delta system. Arrangements are being made to reunite them?”

“Yes. That’s the idea. They identified Helena easily because of Julia’s DNA profile. Most of the others are less closely related, but they’re planning to make contact with the other families in the next few days.”

“I wonder…..” Chrístõ murmured. Though he didn’t say exactly what he wondered. “Michal… do you know what happened to the Aldous Huxley after it arrived in this sector? What did the authorities do with it?”

He was surprised to see Michal suppress a shudder.

“It is still at the space dock, in geo-stationary orbit on the dark side of the Beta Delta moon. The company who owned it… they didn’t want anything to do with it. They claimed the insurance and built a new ship back on Earth… and it’s just there. It’s in a sort of dead spot, right next to the military hangars, well away from the civilian port, where it might upset people. Actually… the slave ship is parked right next to it, now, making the whole thing even creepier.”

“I never gave it a thought,” Chrístõ admitted. “It was me, you know. I set it on automatic pilot to its destination. I thought it was best to let the colonists know what had happened to their ship. But I never thought about what they would do with it.”

“They should have broken it up for scrap,” Michal said. “Even seasoned officers on the Endeavour look away as we go by it. A ghost ship… a bad memory nobody wants to bring to mind.”

“I think it is time it WAS brought to mind,” Chrístõ said. “It wasn’t one of my best memories, either. I was happy to let it be. But maybe I’ve buried it for too long.”

He stood up. Michal stood, too.

“Do you mean… you’re going there?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“I’ll be trespassing, big time. You can’t risk your career before its barely started.”

“Julia is the big sister I never had,” Michal insisted. “For her, I’ll risk a spell in the brig.”

Michal was firm in his intention. Chrístõ remembered him as the elder of a pair of mischievous boys who had given Julia the sort of trouble boy cousins were meant to give a girl. He had grown up well.

“Come on, then. If it all goes pear-shaped there might be a few strings I could pull… if I can get out of the brig myself.”

He had come to the city centre by car, and the TARDIS was back at his house. But that only delayed his plan by a half hour. A short hop to the dark side of the moon took no time at all.

“It really does look creepy,” Michal said as he looked up at the viewscreen and saw the dark, lifeless ship held in its place on the space dock by huge magnetic locks. It wasn’t rusty like an old sea-going vessel. There was nothing in the vacuum of space to make it rust. But he couldn’t help feeling it ought to be.

“A spaceship shouldn’t be dark,” Chrístõ explained. “It should have lights…. Hundreds of lives aboard. That’s what’s wrong. It’s what I felt the first time I set foot on it. The absence of life.”

“You still want to go aboard?”

“No… but I have to. I think I have my own ghosts to lay, apart from looking for clues to this mystery of ours.”

He reached for the short hop switch and a moment later the TARDIS materialised in utter darkness and airlessness. The life support systems had been off for a very long time.

“We’re on the Bridge,” he said as he turned on the external TARDIS lights. “The heart of the Aldous Huxley. The cold, broken heart. Wait a moment. I’m extending the TARDIS’s life support field. Otherwise it’ll be a matter of freezing and asphyxiating at the same moment.”

It took a few more moments, then he opened the door. He stepped out first, followed by Michal, and by the darkness creature Humphrey who slipped into the shadows under the silent computer array.

“It’s very…” Michal began, then stopped talking. His voice echoed in the silent room in a disconcerting way.

“Creepy. Still creepy,” Chrístõ confirmed. “I’m not staying long. I just want to… to try something.”

When he was here before he was too busy fighting for his and Julia’s life to attempt anything else. Now, he wasn’t sure he could do it. Twelve years was a long time.

But for most of those twelve years there had been silence and stillness. His attempt to ‘read’ the room’s past wasn’t as hard as he expected. He shuddered as the latent memory of those evil creatures taking over the ship came far too readily into his mind. His very skin crawled and when it was over and he let himself stare around at the abandoned Bridge it was several minutes before he could speak.

“No,” he said at last. “No…. There was no contact with space pirates. No passengers were taken from this ship. They were ALL murdered by those creatures. I almost doubted myself in these past days. But I wasn’t wrong. Neither was Julia. There IS a huge, huge lie going on. I don’t know how, and I don’t know why, but I WILL find out.”

He headed back to the TARDIS. Michal followed, gladly. Humphrey seemed almost as glad to get away from that sinister darkness.

“It was really horrible out there… especially when you were doing that psychic thing. I felt… as if I could see the monsters.”

“Sorry about that. Some of the ‘psychic thing’ must have seeped into your mind. Try not to let it bother you.”

“I won’t. But… did it help… doing all that?”

“In a way. I think we need to get onto the OTHER ship. The slave ship. You said it was docked here, too?”

“Yes. It’s under guard. I suppose that’s not a problem with the TARDIS.”

“No problem, but maybe you SHOULD stay in the TARDIS and save your career.”

Chrístõ wasn’t altogether surprised that Michal refused the offer of sanctuary and stepped out with him onto another Ship’s Bridge, this time under low power and minimal but usable life support.

“This is an Earth ship,” he noted, studying the layout of the Bridge carefully and then activated a console.

“The Boreax must have hijacked it before they started kidnapping people,” Michal suggested. “Maybe that’s why they were able to intercept our ships – pretending to be an Earth freighter.”

“No….” Chrístõ’s eyes flickered disturbingly as he read something like ten years of ship’s logs in a few minutes. ‘No… it’s even stranger than that. But Julia was right. That’s the important thing to remember just now. Let’s get out of here.”

“Quickly….” Michal added, pointing to an alarm signal that was flashing mutely on another panel. “Security is on its way.”

“Get in the TARDIS,” Chrístõ ordered his young friend. With one eye on the monitor that showed armed guards heading to the Bridge, he took a few seconds more to jam his sonic screwdriver into a multi-device aperture and download the information he had found. Then he raced for the safety of the bulkhead door that lead to ‘nowhere’. When the guards arrived there was nothing to find but a control panel inexplicably activated on an empty ship.

“I probably could have talked my way out of trouble,” Chrístõ admitted as the TARDIS dematerialised. “It would only be trespassing, really. But I’d rather not have the hassle. I’ve got to get to Julia… then I need to talk to your Lieutenant Gray.”

It all took some time. The Lieutenant was the hardest to convince, even with the evidence Chrístõ had collected. It was late afternoon before they finally arrived at the Sommers house in a military vehicle. Herrick’s company car had pulled up a few minutes before. He and his younger son, Cordell, both looked puzzled and worried when they saw the arrivals.

“What’s going on?” Mr Sommers asked as his eldest son, Chrístõ, Julia, and the Lieutenant all ran up the driveway towards him. Then he looked around at his own house from which the sound of two women screaming at each other could be heard. “What in hell….”

It was nearly a dead heat, but Michal and Cordell Sommers got through the front door just before their father. In any case, everyone could now clearly hear what the argument was about. Helena Sommers was objecting, loudly, to the imminent wedding.

“I cannot believe you are going to let my daughter marry that strange boy,” she insisted vehemently. “I won’t permit it. I will put a stop to the whole thing.”

“You’re not even invited,” Marianna responded with equal vehemence, something that surprised her husband, sons and niece. The remark was followed by the unmistakeable sound of a slap, then shrieks and the sounds of a struggle before the whole party reached the drawing room and the two boys pulled Helena away from his mother.

“I’m training to be an officer,” Michal said to the still struggling woman. “Which in an old-fashioned sort of way means being a gentleman, too. That means I shouldn’t hurt women, but you hurt my mum, so don’t bet on it.”

The other men, including his superior officer, nodded their approval of that. Herrick and Julia both ran to Marianna and comforted her. Helena looked at them all with burning eyes.

“How could you side with her… against me?” she demanded of Julia.

“Aunt Marianna was right,” Julia responded. “You’re not invited to my wedding… or anything else. Michal, Cordell, don’t let her go. Uncle Herrick… Marianna… you need to hear what Chrístõ has to tell you. It’s going to be another shock, but you must know the truth.”

“Truth about what?” Herrick asked as he brought his wife to the living room sofa and held her tenderly. Chrístõ and Julia sat, too. Lieutenant Gary remained standing, very pointedly ‘on duty’. Michal and Cordell pressed Helena into an upright chair by the window and flanked her like guards.

“The truth about her… my so-called mother… and a huge lie that has been told ever since that so-called slave ship was found,” Julia answered. “But Chrístõ knows the most about it.”

Chrístõ held her hand as he began to explain what he had found out.

“The ship wasn’t a pirate one, or a slave transporter,” he said. “In fact, it left Earth four years ago as the PS Hougoumont. PS, of course, stands for….”

“Prison Ship….” Herrick said with a puzzled expression.

“Exactly so,” Chrístõ confirmed. “And in some kind of poetic irony, Hougoumont was the name of the last ship to transport prisoners from Britain to Western Australia in the nineteenth century of Earth history.”

None of the humans around him knew that detail of their planet’s history, but the implications sank in quickly.

“I don’t know if transporting criminals to penal planets is the best thing humans can do,” Chrístõ continued. “It is certainly no worse than the way other races deal with their worst offenders. I think it is probably a little bit kinder than the cryo-prison Shada that my people have. But the fact is that two hundred really unpleasant people were en-route to such a place when they broke out of their cells, killing their guards and the ship’s crew.”

“Prisoners… criminals… not slaves?” Marianna questioned. “Then….”

Again, everyone was starting to understand, but they let Chrístõ continue to explain the plot in full.

“Among the prisoners was a man called Silas Exeter. I don’t imagine any of you have heard of him. He was an eminent surgeon on Earth… a plastic surgeon. He was convicted of helping criminals escape justice by changing not only their faces, but their very DNA using a revolutionary technique he had developed. He was able to give them entirely new identities, even background information about dead people whose lives they could impersonate – not just learnt, like a script, but implanted in their minds like a second set of memories.”

As one, the Sommers family turned to look at ‘Helena Sommers’. The woman returned their gaze but with something of a defeated air.

“He was good,” Chrístõ said, looking very closely at the woman. “Very good. The implanted memories might almost have obliterated the real ones given time. I think you very nearly believed you WERE Julia’s mother. Maybe you wish you were. Because your real identity is not very pleasant at all. You are Andrea Greene, who murdered her own husband and two children for the life insurance.”

“Oh my….” Marianna cried. She turned to Lieutenant Gray accusingly. “And… you let that vile creature stay under our roof….”

“I’m sorry,” the Lieutenant responded. “We had no way of knowing the truth.”

“Well… you did….” Michal answered him. “Sorry, sir, I know I’m speaking out of turn, and put me on a charge if you want… but it took Chrístõ ten minutes to download the Ship’s log and find out what sort of vessel it was. And another ten to find out about Silas Exeter, and about another prisoner who was a cyber-terrorist who was able to steal the digitalised DNA profiles of people who had died on ships like the Aldous Huxley. The Olympics isn’t the only organisation that insisted on proof of human status. Everyone going from Earth to colony worlds had to give a sample, too.”

“That’s how it was done, you see,” Julia cut in. Michal nodded to his cousin and having burnt his boats anyway, continued before the Lieutenant could speak.

“It’s your fault, sir…. I mean… the military commanders, not you personally, as such. But… the responsibility lies with you. Officers know that. And if all the men and women in command positions on the Endeavour hadn’t been so excited about finding the ‘slaves’ and wanting to bring them to their relatives, there might have been more investigation of the facts. It was a HUGE, stupid mistake and it is going to be embarrassing to all involve and upsetting to people like my mother and father who thought they were being reunited with a lost loved one… but at least it’s not TOO late. These criminals are mostly all in the transition centre, yet. They can all be arrested.”

The Lieutenant was silent for a long moment, then he nodded emphatically.

“You’ve got the makings of a very good officer,” he admitted. “Though you might have to curb that tendency to out talk your superiors. Yes, it seems as if we have been caught napping. And it WILL be dealt with. Starting with the apprehension of Andrea Greene….”

Michal already had a firm hand on the woman’s shoulder. Not that it looked as if she was going to attempt an escape. She was in tears as she heard the Lieutenant formally arrest her. She turned to look at Marianna and then Julia.

“He was right… I really wished I was Helena Sommers… instead of who I really am. I wish….”

“I’m not sorry for you,” Julia answered. “I wish I could feel that. I try to see the good in most people. But I can’t. You did a terrible thing to your own family and you could have done so much more harm to mine. And… on top of that… you insulted the memory of my real mother, who was a kind, good person who didn’t deserve to die horribly. So… just go away. Let us all forget about you.”

Michal took her even more firmly by the arm and with the Lieutenant she was escorted out of the house. Marianna and Herrick hugged each other and cried. Cordell, though he was a teenage boy, and didn’t do hugging as a general rule, embraced both of his parents. Chrístõ and Julia held each other tightly as the military car drove away.

The tears and the hugging only ceased a few minutes later when another vehicle drew up – a delivery van bringing yet more wedding presents.

“Yes,” Marianna said as she carried the boxes into the drawing room. “Time to get back to what really matters…. Deciding what you two are supposed to do with a THIRD automatic coffee maker.”

“I’ve got a kit for changing the plugs to take Gallifreyan electricity,” Chrístõ assured her.

A few days later, it happened as smoothly as clockwork. Chrístõ waited at the church altar in a cream silk suit, Cal Lupus at his side, while Julia and her entourage of bridesmaids walked down the aisle towards him. Her dress, as he had always known, was a copy of the simple but lovely satin gown worn by Julie Andrews in the Sound of Music, except allowing for the fact that Julia was a good three inches shorter than Julie. It was the dress she had decided to wear at least ten years ago, and she had never gone back on that idea.

Afterwards, there was a reception that was everything Marianna had planned for nearly as long as Julia had been planning her dress. After that was over, Julia threw her bouquet and it was caught by Glenda, who grinned widely at Cal.

And then there was a parting that brought tears. Julia was leaving Beta Delta to become a lady of Gallifrey and plan for her Alliance to Chrístõ. Her human family were joining her in a short while, but she was leaving a lot of people behind and it was a wrench no matter how long it was anticipated.

“I’m happy,” she assured Chrístõ despite the tears as she stood in the TARDIS console room, her wedding dress in a box and wearing a white linen ‘honeymoon dress’ and her fourth pair of shoes of the day. “I’m really happy.”

“So am I,” he answered as he set the drive co-ordinates for Gallifrey – for home.