Beyond the Sea (audio story)

was the forty-first Bernice Summerfield audio story released by Big Finish Productions. It was the first story of the ninth season.
== Publisher's summary ==
A new phase in the never-dull life of Bernice Summerfield opens as she arrives on the human colony world of Maximediras, with her son Peter in tow, to begin work on a much-needed freelance assignment. Relics from a hitherto unknown civilisation have been discovered on the sea bed and Bernice has been hired by the planet's tourist board to travel out on one of their cruises and undertake a survey.
Bernice is suspicious of her employer's motives from the start, but becomes more uneasy as time goes on. Is she being taken advantage of? Is her reputation starting to cause trouble for her? More seriously, she starts to realise that she's travelling on a cruise ship with an unusually high suicide rate.
What is causing this? Or who...?
== Plot ==
In need of money and wanting some stability for Peter, Benny accepts a job recording a documentary for a heritage tour of Maximediras as part of a drive by the planet's new owners, an affiliate of the IMC, to promote it as a tourist destination. She and Peter board the ship they will be travelling on for the tour and she meets Kerry Lyle and Tate Booker, the producers, and Rick Hertz, the cameraman. Talking to Rick, she learns that IMC's Underwater Survey Team found no sign of historical sites and that the company was at a loss with what to do with the planet, 97% of which is water, after stripping it of its minerals.
Although Kerry and Tate want Benny to "sex up" the documentary and privately consider making up traditions to make the planet more attractive, Benny, needing money but still an academic, insists on making it a serious piece. She goes for dinner with Rick after he gives her a regulation medical scan and she is surprised by the brightness of the bioluminescence in the sea, which is visible through the restaurant's glass floor, and later gets a computer to analyse the micro-organisms causing it. The results are gibberish, however, so she orders more advanced equipment.
The next day, Benny and Rick, who tells her about a passenger who threw herself overboard two nights ago, descend in a diving bell to record footage at an underwater settlement and, afterwards, Kerry and Tate give her the task of speculating what sort of life form might have lived there. She is uncomfortable with this, however, and confides in Rick that she believes that the settlement is a fake given its condition and that the passenger going overboard is more likely to have been a murder than a suicide. When she and Peter hear something being thrown overboard in the night, she contacts security and later learns that six people have killed themselves. She, Rick and Tate are unable to locate the twelve-metre statue said to be at the second site and Tate kills himself by smashing his helmet with a rock.
Tate tells Benny about how a woman on his team, Natalie, killed herself the same way during the initial survey of the planet, something that he somehow forgot about until now. Benny is confused, even moreso when her computer begins to announce a message from the Government of Maximediras despite the planet being governed by a Planetary Council. She is interrupted when Kerry informs her and Rick that Tate's body has disappeared and accuses them of stealing it to cover up their involvement in his death, but the ship stops suddenly and they find that Tate's corpse has been possessed and is bringing the animated corpses of the passengers and others aboard.
Benny, Rick and Kerry run as the seemingly invulnerable zombies start drowning people by regurgitating water into their mouths and find that the suicide victims recovered from the water have also been animated. They head to the main hall to find Peter, who has savaged three zombies with his claws and, despite Benny's protests, helps Rick retrieve his medical scanner at Kerry's suggestion due to his strength. Benny, disturbed by her son's actions but not wanting him in danger, punches Kerry for making the suggestion. Rick deduces from Peter avoiding the question that he had killed somebody before and, when the two of them return, he privately asks Benny about it and she shares how she has been unsure of how to treat him since Jason's death; Rick tells her to give him a break given how many lives he has saved.
The medi-scanner detects microscopic life inside the zombies and Benny concludes that the micro-organisms in the water have been able to gain enough control over those who have been drinking them to get them to commit suicide. Only those who have been drinking alcohol have been safe, so Benny and Rick fill hypo-sprays with vodka at the bar whilst Kerry stays with Peter and the other surviving passengers. The vodka harms the zombies and they lock themselves in with Tate when he arrives, learning from him that a small faction of the organisms want everybody off their planet and that the non-violent leaders had the fake historical sites created in the hopes of ensuring the sea's protection from pollution. Benny remembers the Government of Maximediras.
Returning to her room with Rick, Benny confirms that thousands of representatives of the Government of Maximediras are inside the sample she took and that they have connected with her computer to communicate. The Government apologise for the faction's actions and Benny agrees to return them to the sea, a task which is made easier by the fact that the ship is sinking. Once the Government are returned, the ship is brought to the surface and Benny is reunited with Peter, who almost drowned with Kerry because the main hall's watertight doors were keeping water inside. She suggests that Kerry make a documentary with a microbiologist rather than an archaeologist and intends on speaking up on the Maximedirans' behalf, promising Peter that she will do her best to ensure that they do "something cool" afterwards.
== Cast ==
* Bernice Summerfield - Lisa Bowerman
* Peter Summerfield - Thomas Grant
* Rick Hertz - Jeremy James
* Kerry Lyle - Alice Barclay
* Tate Booker - Ralf Collie
== Worldbuilding ==
* Benny produced the documentary Our Martians, Ourselves during a research term at the University of Vremnya in the late 2590s.
* Tate drinks ash tea, made from the ash of the boragella tree on Paramour.
* Peter mentions orbit hoppers.
* Maximediras is a tax haven.
* Maximediras used to be owned by the Interplanetary Mining Corporation.
* Benny drinks orange juice.
* Rick used to work for IMC's Underwater Survey Team.
* Volturnus is named after the Roman god of water.
== Notes ==
* The title of this audio, "Beyond the Sea", is likely a reference to Beyond the Sun, which is the second Bernice Summerfield story Big Finish Productions ever produced.
* This story was recorded on 28 July 2007 at the Moat Studios.
* A download version of this story was released on 23 May 2022.Weekly Deal announcement for Bernice Summerfield Series 9-11 available on download
== Continuity ==
* Maximediras will play an important role in the events of AUDIO: Resurrecting the Past and AUDIO: Escaping the Future.
* Benny mentions that she was born on Beta Caprisis. (PROSE: Love and War et al)
* Maximediras was previously owned by the Interplanetary Mining Corporation. (TV: Colony in Space et al)
* Benny mentions the circumstances of her leaving the collection. (AUDIO: The Wake)
* When asked by Rick, Peter tells him that he has killed before. (AUDIO: The End of The World)
* Benny previously encountered microscopic organisms living in a sea. (AUDIO: The Poison Seas)
== Footnotes ==
== External links ==
Category:Bernice Summerfield sources
Category:Series 9 (BFBS) audio stories
Category:Stories set in the 27th century
Category:One part audio stories