Frozen Beauty (short story)

 was the second short story in Time Lord Fairy Tales.

Publisher's summary
A spaceship crash-lands on a mysterious planet, the crew frozen in cryogenic suspension, unable to save themselves from the slithering dangers that lurk outside. Can a handsome space captain find the sleeping travellers before it's too late?

Plot
The Stella Fire, the most advanced ship in the Leviathan Fleet, is in the 50th year of its voyage through the Andromeda System, when its engines mis-phase, causing it to crash-land on an uncharted planet. The Captain's younger brother, Abadon Glammis, organises a rescue mission to try and find his missing sister. Despite his youth, he has a lot of experience as an Officer in his fleet.

Many years later, Abadon dies of old age without ever reuniting with his sister and the Stella Fire and its crew fades from memory. One hundred years later, the rescue ship detects the Stella Fire's remains, thus awakening the ship's captain from his cryogenic sleep. After reviving the rest of his crew, the captain leads them into the forest and warns them to accompany him for the last few miles.

As the crew searches for any survivors of the crashed spaceship, a large chasm opens up in front of them, prompting them to fashion some ropes out of the hanging creepers to swing across.

A few days later, the crew finds the wreckage of the Stella Fire covered in vegetation. Unfortunately, something seems to have found its way into the ship. The Captain cautiously leads his crew into the ship to find the ship running on emergency power. Passing through the cryogenic section, the crew hear something scuttling away from them.

Eventually reaching the sleeping passengers, they find out that some of the caskets have failed while others have been smashed open. In one of them, they find a strange green object falling onto the floor. The Captain recognizes the object as a Wirrn grub and explains how the Wirrn lay their eggs inside of the humans and absorb their minds, memories and experiences as well as their flesh. The Captain resolves to rescue any survivors and bring them back to their own ship.

The Captain orders his forces to guard the entrances to the cryogenic chambers. The Captain asks his technician how long they've got until the revival process is complete, to which the Technician tells him that the systems are damaged, so they need the ship's main computer before they can reawaken any survivors. However, the computer needs an access code and the only one who has the code is the Captain of the Stella Fire.

First, the rescue crew have to escape from the Wirrn who are now at every doorway. One Wirrn grabs a young member of the crew, but 2 other crew members save him before driving the Wirrn off. On the way through the ship, the crew find a section of the floor ripped away by the forest's vegetation. Here, the Captain gets attacked by a Wirrn, but he manages to kill it with his blaster.

The crew manage to reach the chamber where the Stella Fire's captain is resting, but the door only opens enough for the captain to get through. Inside the chamber, it seems the Wirrn haven't gotten inside yet, and the Captain is now wondering how to wake the Stella Fire's captain. Suddenly, a Wirrn attacks him, but he manages to kill it. The Technician can shut down the cryogenics and restore the Stella Fire's captain's temperature to normal, but without the access code, it will be up to the woman herself to breathe.

As the temperature returns to normal, it appears that the woman is not waking up and the Wirrn are getting closer. The Technician informs his Captain that if the woman doesn't breathe, she will die. The Captain tries to use CPR to revive her but this seems to fail at first. On his second attempt, the woman wakes up and is helped out of the casket by the Captain, who gives her his jacket to keep her warm. As he tells her about what has been happening, the Technician access the main computer to find the access code to revive the other people.

The other caskets begin to open and the survivors of the Wirrn's attack begin to awaken. The 2 crews decide to work together to fight off the Wirrn who soon retreat.

Once the mission is over, everyone goes back to the rescue ship and the Stella Fire's Captain thanks her rescuers.

Characters

 * Captain
 * Technician
 * Wirrn

Continuity

 * Wirrn were previously seen growing on people in a dilapidated spacecraft in TV: The Ark in Space.