Doctor Who: Ribos Operation (14 page)

‘You need reinforcements,’ he murmured. ‘It’s high time I
changed sides.’

Flinging aside the skin curtain, the Doctor stealthily made
his way along the passage to the chamber where he and his two
companions had been imprisoned. He found the three sentries
lying under the table where they had been dumped, still out
cold. Selecting the one most similar to himself in size, he quickly
began to strip off the Guard’s heavy armour.

A tremendous cracking sound behind him made him freeze.
Slowly he turned, his body tensed at the ready and his fingers
feeling around for the controls of the charger unit and the laser-spear he had just prised out of the sentry’s unconscious grip.
Apart from the three slumped bodies beside him, the chamber
was completely deserted.

The Doctor jumped as the crackle was repeated. A bright
shower of orange sparks flared up into the chimney from a
damp log in the grate. With a snort of irritation at his own
nervousness the Doctor turned back to his task.

‘Anybody would think I felt guilty about joining the enemy,’
he muttered, his face darkening as he planned his next move...

Clawing and spitting and shrieking curses at the top of her voice,
the Seeker was dragged struggling through the Hall of the
Dead, and then brutally kicked and prodded into the tunnel
sloping down towards the Catacombs. There the Levithian
Guards flung her to the ground and the old woman immediately
sank into her customary trance.

‘Soon we shall have the truth, Sholakh,’ the Graff Vynda Ka
muttered. ‘and if the hag proves to be a charlatan you shall have
her carcass for target practice.’

Sholakh nodded eagerly and then suddenly turned round.
A solitary Guard was clanking towards them down the slippery
tunnel from the mausoleum.

‘Keep in formation there: no straggling,’ Sholakh rapped
frowning angrily.

The Guard halted, drew himself up smartly and slapped one
gauntleted hand across to the opposite shoulder in a crisp
hevithian salute. ‘I was covering the rear, Commander,’ he
explained, his voice muffled inside the heavy metal helmet, ‘just
in case those Shrieve scum tried any trickery.’

Sholakh nodded with approval. ‘You did well, but the
cowardly vermin will not venture here.’

As the Guard clattered over to join the others in the semicircle surrounding the silent and motionless Seeker. Sholakh
watched him closely. ‘I like initiative,’ he. smiled. ‘What is your
name?’

The featureless mask turned towards Sholakh and there was
a moment’s hesitation. Then the Guard saluted again:
‘Gammon.’ he replied.

Again Sholakh frowned. not recognising the name. ‘Ah yes,
from the Special Reserve Division?’ he suggested.

‘Yes, Commander.’ The Guard stood stiffly to attention as
the Levithian Commander looked at him for a moment before
dismissing him to join the ranks.

Taking his place with the squad, the Doctor blinked the
sweat out of his eyes and peered through the narrow slits in the
thick armoured mask. ‘So far so good,’ he murmured to himself,
‘though I only just saved my bacon that time.’ While he watched
and waited with the other Guards for the Seeker to come out of
her meditation, he began to wonder how Romana and Garron
were progressing deep in the heart of the labyrinth ahead.

With Garron following several metres behind covering the rear
with the laser, Romana led the way through the tortuous slimy
tunnels of the Catacombs illuminated starkly by the photon
radiaprobe projecting from K9’s muzzle like a tongue. At regular
intervals she stopped to take out the Locatormutor and check
the bearing on Unstoffe and the Jethryk, making the
adjustments as quickly as possible in case the Core’s penetrating
signals should rouse a nearby Shrivenzale from its slumber.

Eventually they reached an enormous cavern with dozens of
tunnels branching off in all directions. The stirrings of the
invisible monsters seemed to echo eerily from everywhere at
once. Romana stopped and glanced round to signal a brief halt.
Garcon was nowhere to be seen.

‘Garron? Garron, where are you?’ she called softly. There
was no reply.

‘Garron has departed, mistress,’ K9 informed her. Romana
looked stunned. ‘Departed?’ she exclaimed. ‘Whereto?’

K9’s memory circuits buzzed briefly. ‘To see a man about a
dog,’ he announced.

‘What?’ Romana cried, completely nonplussed.

‘That was the information Garron imparted, Mistress,’ K9
replied. Again his circuits buzzed. ‘Three point two terrestrial
minutes ago,’ he added helpfully. Romana stared at the black
tunnel-mouths gaping all around the vast cavern and put her
hand to her belt to take out the Locatormutor. It was not there.
Frantically she searched her robe, but she found nothing. Then
she glanced back in the direction they had just come, but at once
realised that she would have heard it fall if it had slipped out of
her belt.

‘Garron must have taken the Core,’ she murmured, glancing
helplessly around.

‘Which route now, mistress?’ K9 enquired brightly. Romana
sank slowly onto a nearby boulder and looked gloomily into the
robot’s glowing red eyes. ‘How could I have been so careless?’
she murmured.

K9 tipped his head a little on one side. ‘Question not
understood, mistress. Please rephrase.’

Romana ignored the creature’s irritating chatter. ‘There is
no means of locating the Segment without the Core,’ she
muttered, ‘so what am I going to do now?’

K9’s circuits began to hum furiously as he reviewed the
situation at lightning speed.

‘I was not asking you,’ Romana snapped. ‘I was talking to
myself.’ She was inwardly raging at Garron’s sly treachery.

‘Not logical,’ K9 retorted briskly. ‘Purpose of speech is to
communicate information.’

Romana turned on the whirring mechanical hound in sheer
exasperation: ‘In that case be quiet until you have something
useful to tell me,’ she ordered angrily. K9 did not reply, but
continued humming gently to himself while Romana sat silently
brooding.

Eventually she turned to the Doctor’s cybernetic pet with a
smile of apology and asked him to advise her what to do next.

‘According to previous route-patterns, we should proceed
and seek in this direction,’ K9 answered, setting off jerkily
towards one of the tunnels on the other side of the cavern.

Glancing frequently over her shoulder, Romana followed. As
K9’s radiaprobe lit up the gnarled and fissured tunnel walls with
their glossy, fantastically twisted surfaces resembling the
fossilised remains of creatures long extinct, nightmarish sounds
began to echo in the gloomy depths ahead as the hungry
Shrivenzales stirred from their lair to hunt for food...

Unstoffe crouched on the boulder where Binro had left him,
trying not to listen to the ominous stirrings of the Shrivenzales in
their cavernous lairs scattered through the maze of tunnels
surrounding him. Now that he had no light and not even the
comfort of the miniature radio strapped to his wrist, he felt more
helpless and alone than ever. He tried not to think about what
would happen to him if Binro did not return for some reason.

To help pass the time he decided to count the gold opeks
which jingled temptingly inside the skin purse stowed in his
pouch. Fumbling in the pitch darkness he opened the fat heavy
purse and dipped in his hand. The small bevelled coins ran
through his fingers like grains of sand, and a shudder of
excitement shook his spare little frame as he stirred the invisible
treasure and listened to the thrilling chink of coin against coin.

One by one he began to transfer the gold opeks from the
purse to a large pocket sewn into the lining of his furs, counting
furtively under his breath: ‘Eleven, twelve, thirteen... forty-one,
forty-two, forty-three... eighty-nine, ninety, ninety-one...’
Gradually his hands moved faster and faster and his voice rose
from a whisper to a breathless chanting as his pocket began to
fill. And yet the purse seemed not to be emptying...

Suddenly the boulder on which he was perched shook
violently. Unstoffe stopped counting and listened. He realised
that not only the boulder but the ground under his feet was
beginning to vibrate with slow regular tremors. He became
aware of a distant panting sound which was growing louder and
nearer every second. Thrusting the purse back into his pouch,
he felt his way round behind the rock and jammed himself into
the narrow space between it and the cavern wall. An icy sweat
broke out all over him as he shrank into the smallest possible
shape and waited.

It was not long before something dragged itself ponderously
into the cavern, its stentorian breath filling the air with a stale,
clammy vapour as the massive lungs heaved and shuddered in
the darkness. The Shrivenzale stopped only a few metres away
from the cowering fugitive. Cramming his knuckles into his
mouth to stop his teeth from chattering, Unstoffe prayed that
the beast would not be able to sniff him out. He strained eyes
and ears in a vain attempt to discover what the vast creature was
doing.

A deafening crack split the air and the boulder was swept
across the cavern like a golf ball as the Shrivenzale flicked its
gigantic tail. Unstoffe pressed himself back against the rock wall,
now utterly defenceless with nothing between him and the
ravenous monster. Again the Shrivenzale lashed the cavern
floor, and Unstoffe caught a momentary glimpse of its colossal
armoured bulk in the light of the thick showers of sparks thrown
up by the hail of jagged flints and boulders flying in all
directions.

Instinctively, Unstoffe threw himself face down to dodge the
deadly missiles. Then he felt the ground shudder again as the
creature began to drag itself forward, and to his relief he heard
it crawl away across the cavern, bellowing hungrily as it entered
one of the tunnels on the far side.

Although he was in a state of considerable shock, it occurred
to him that if the beast was on its way to hunt for food then it
might lead him out of the Catacombs and back to the surface.

He decided to follow at a safe distance. But scarcely had he
picked his way painfully across the cavern and ventured
cautiously into the tunnel in the creature’s wake, when he
became aware of a scrambling noise behind him. When he
stopped to listen the noise also stopped, resuming as soon as he
set off again. Each time he looked round he thought he saw a
light flicker and then go out, leaving a faint pinkish glow that
seemed to pulse in time to a strange high-pitched bleeping.

‘Must he hallucinating,’ he muttered. All the same he
groped around and armed himself with a chunk of flint before
creeping onwards in pursuit of the Shrivenzale. It seemed that
this terrible beast might well give him his only chance of
escaping from the endless labyrinth. But as he crept cautiously
forward he began to realise that if there really was something
behind him, then he would be helplessly trapped, with no
chance of escape.

At last the Seeker emerged from her trance and uttering her
weird chant, she cast the bones onto the slimy floor of the tunnel
and studied their alignment.

‘I see him. The one you seek is near,’ she cried. But then she
clutched her temples and began to sway round and round like a
reed in the wind. ‘We shall never reach him,’ she murmured her
voice cracking like dry sticks. ‘I see Death standing between.’

Sholakh prodded her viciously with his laser-spear. ‘Death is
standing right here, sorceress,’ he snarled, ‘so lead on.’

Snatching up her bones the Seeker held them in her
outstretched claws and raked the semicircle of metal-masked
figures with her crazed eyes. ‘I will lead you if that is your wish,’
she rasped in a spine-chilling whisper. ‘But take good heed. All
but one of us are doomed to die. All but one.’

There was an uneasy stir among the Guards. Several of the
faceless masks turned to one another in unspoken alarm.

Sholakh paced angrily up and down the ranks. ‘What are
you?’ he growled. ‘Crack commandos of his Highness’s Imperial
Guard—or trembling Shrieves frightened by the spells of their
so-called priestess?’

‘Well, some of as might not be quite what we seem,’ the
Doctor murmured to himself, standing stiffly to attention inside
his cumbersome armour.

Sholakh stopped directly in front of him, gazing intently into
the eye slits of the Guard’s heavy vizor. ‘What was that?’ he
barked.

The Doctor gave him a stylish salute. ‘We shall follow his
Highness to the end, Commander,’ he said crisply.

Sholakh nodded. ‘A fine example,’ he announced to the
other Guards. Then he ordered the squad into marching
formation and prodded the Seeker forward into the Catacombs.

Unstoffe soon realised that he was not hallucinating at all. The
strangely flashing light, the eerie pinkish glow and the sinister
bleeping were real enough: something was stalking him and
coming closer every second. Forgetting about the Shrivenzale
lumbering towards the surface ahead of him, he wriggled into a
narrow crack in the tunnel wall, held his breath and listened.

The persistent bleeping had merged into a sustained high-pitched whine and a steady pink aura began to flood the tunnel.
Whatever it was, his pursuer could not be more than a dozen
metres away. Unstoffe raised the chunk of flint above his head,
his mind invaded by terrible images of Ice Gods and ancient
alien demons.

Suddenly the whining sound stopped and everything went
dark. Unstoffe tensed like a spring as a curious shuffling noise
approached through the blackness. There was also a muffled
asthmatic breathing which was somehow’ familiar, but Unstoffe
had no time to think. He drew back his arms...

Before he could strike something sank heavily onto his foot.
He yelped with pain and fright like a trampled puppy.