- You may be looking for the Short Trips audio story.
Collector's Item was the sixth story of the audio anthology The Christmas Collection.
Publisher's summary
After discovering an impossible sculpture on a small planet, Bernice decides to call in Braxiatel to help figure out what it could be - with alarming consequences for both of them...
Plot
Benny is trying to decide what to get Braxiatel for Christmas, a task which is particularly difficult given that his future self often posts him what he wants the moment he decides that he wants it. She remembers something that happened years ago, before she started working at the Braxiatel Collection.
Benny is hired by ALS to ringfence sites of archaeological interest on Juana Somata in the Piatek system and does not trust that the leader of her team, Professor Lucas Chilwell, has not been bought off. In her third week, she finds old stone buildings and a seemingly impossible glass sculpture which impresses Chilwell and Leeta, the ALS representative, but she does not think that evidence that the planet once had life will make ALS change their plans. She messages Braxiatel.
Braxiatel shows up at the camp and tells her that he has been pressuring ALS to resurvey the planet and scale back their plans and has contacted some local politicians that he knows. Benny shows him the sculpture and he notices that the material is not glass, as it does not reflect, and is not being held up by anything; he uses some equipment from his travelling case to confirm that the pieces are frozen in time. The stone ring above them rotates and light streams onto the panes of the sculpture, which begin to show images of different people and places.
Benny and Braxiatel come to the conclusion that the sculpture holds the history of the planet's former inhabitants and that they need a protection order for the planet, but ALS are likely to appeal and could damage the sculpture and Braxiatel suggests that they steal it to move it to the Braxiatel Collection for its safety. Leeta takes Cairns, the boss, to see the sculpture, the properties of which Benny and Braxiatel are unable to display due to them not knowing how to activate the stone ring.
to be completed
Characters
References
- Anderson Lee Stractiphy mines the lucanol-rich deserts on the equator.
- Bipedal tigers live on Juana Somata.
- Leeta has children.
- Braxiatel eats grapefruit.
- Braxiatel reads the autumn 1959 issue of Man About Town magazine.
- Benny has coffee, porridge and melon.
Notes
to be added
Continuity
to be added
External links
- Official Collector's Item page at bigfinish.com