Doctor Who: Sontaran Experiment (4 page)

At that moment, there had been a hissing intake of breath: a nightmare gasp of anger and frustration. Three enormous talons sheathed in a heavy, paw-like glove had hovered over the mass of switches clustered around the screen. Then the ‘hand’ had swept down and cut the picture with a vicious jab.

Sarah did her best to keep up as the agile Roth led her swiftly towards the Galsec Colonists’ hideout. He leaped through gullies and over ridges as if he knew every single metre of the terrain. Suddenly he pulled her down into the reeds, and pointed towards the ragged cliff hanging nearby in the mist.

‘Your friend... the Doctor... he’s just aways up there,’ he whispered.

‘Come on then,’ Sarah panted, promptly setting off. But Roth remained crouching in the undergrowth, the whites of his eyes showing starkly as he glanced sidelong towards the base of the cliff.

‘What’s the matter?’ Sarah frowned, turning back,

‘What is there to be afraid of—they’re your mates.’ Roth shook his head vehemently.

‘Not Vural,’ he muttered.

Sarah flinched away in alarm as Roth suddenly seized her arm fiercely, fixing her with a crazed stare.

‘Vural’s hooked,’ he hissed. ‘The Scavenger caught him... took him to the crater... but the Alien let him go... I saw it.’

‘But you must help me reach the Doctor,’ Sarah pleaded, trying to free her arm. ‘Perhaps the Doctor can help you against the Alien.’ For a moment Sarah thought that Roth was going to go berserk. She wrenched herself away from him with a gasp. Then suddenly he grinned, pushing her gently in the direction of the cliff, and set off in a kind of frenzied dance, uttering wild shouts and waving his long arms in the air.

Krans paced restlessly in the entrance to the cave, gripping the ion gun in his big hands and muttering threats under his breath. Vural had recovered his composure and was closely questioning the Doctor in an attempt to trap him.

‘All right,’ he snapped, ‘how long have the Terra Novans been in deep-freeze?’

‘Perhaps fifteen thousand years...’ The Doctor shrugged, as far as his bonds would allow.

‘And you woke up before the others,’ scoffed Erak, taking a swig from the water-flask.

‘No, no, no,’ said the Doctor patiently. ‘I just happened to find them in the nick of time. Earth has been habitable for a few centuries, but their clock stopped and they overslept.’

‘Clock?’ echoed Vural, his clenched fists like marble.

‘Yes,’ the Doctor went on, ‘and since I am something of an expert where time is concerned, I just made a few...’

With a lightening movement, like a jack-knife opening, the Doctor sprang to his feet, taking the three Galsec crewman completely by surprise. ‘I say,’ he cried, jumping precariously onto a boulder, ‘It’s just occurred to me, I might well be able to help
you
—after all, you don’t want to be marooned here for ever...’ Vural and Erak slowly advanced towards the Doctor, while Krans covered him with the ion gun. ‘But first,’ the Doctor chattered on, tensing like a panther about to spring, ‘I’d like a couple of eggs lightly boiled and a slice or two of toast and honey...’

At that moment, wild cries were heard in the distance.

Erak whirled round. ‘Look... it’s Rothy,’ he cried, pointing into the valley. Vural and Krans turned and stared. Then all three began to run towards the weirdly capering figure of their lost crewmate. When Roth saw them approaching he streaked away, zig-zagging out of sight with the Doctor’s three captors in hot pursuit.

No sooner had their cries died away, than Sarah slipped along the foot of the cliff and started feverishly tugging at the knotted scarf.

‘Hallo, Sarah.’ The Doctor grinned delightedly, ‘Who’s your speedy friend?’

‘Explain later,’ Sarah panted, freeing the Doctor’s arms.

‘Come on,’ she cried, dragging him away along the cliff.

‘Where are we going?’ the Doctor shouted, clinging on to his hat.

‘To the pit, of course,’ Sarah cried impatiently.

‘Wait!’ the Doctor called anxiously. ‘The sonic screwdriver... I seem to have mislaid it... I feel quite lost without it...’

Sarah instantly produced the vital instrument from her pocket, and the Doctor seized it with a brilliant smile of relief. ‘Now I’m ready for anything,’ he beamed ‘Lead on MacSmith...’

3

Sweat poured into Harry’s eyes as he forced his way along the twisting, narrow tunnel, the roar of the avalanche still sounding in his ears. The shaft had soon turned upward at a steep angle, and now it was almost vertical. His thick duffle-coat afforded some protection against the treacherously sharp edges and nodules covering the inside of the shaft, but at the same time it seriously hampered Harry’s progress, and once or twice he feared he would be completely jammed. Occasionally, he reached a slightly wider section where the rock surface seemed smoother—as if it had been polished—and he found himself suddenly beginning to slide down again. His elbows and knees were soon raw with the effort of working his way back upwards.

Here and there he encountered other, similar shafts branching off at all angles. Harry ignored these and struggled on towards what he hoped would prove to be the surface. The same warm, sulphurous breeze issued from all the tunnels making the air thick and suffocating, so that Harry’s throat burned and his head throbbed. Whenever he paused for breath, curious distant sounds—like the pounding of machinery—reached his ears.

Eventually, something glinted far above him. Harry felt like cheering: it was daylight; it had to be daylight. He frantically redoubled his efforts, oblivious of the cuts and grazes on his hands and the stinging in his eyes and lungs.

But within seconds he realised that he was as far away from escape as ever. The shaft was steadily narrowing around him as he climbed. As it tapered more and more, he finally found himself completely stuck just within reach of safety. There seemed to be no way he could squeeze through the last couple of metres. Harry beat the sides of the tunnel in frustration, peering up at the tantalizingly close patch of sky from which the fresh air wafted down onto his burning face.

‘If only I hadn’t done all that rowing at medical school,’

he muttered, giving a last, futile shrug of his muscular shoulders in the narrow aperture. For a few minutes he gratefully drank in the cool air from above. Then gingerly he began working his way downwards again. He would have to try one of the other branching shafts after all...

The Doctor and Sarah Jane stood at the edge of the pit staring down at the tangle of boulders and branches in the half-light. The Doctor chewed thoughtfully on a reed.

‘He couldn’t just have climbed out,’ Sarah said after a while.

The Doctor grunted. ‘The machine you saw, Sarah,’ he murmured, ‘could that have lifted Harry out?’

Sarah shook her head. ‘He’d already disappeared when the machine came,’ she explained.

Suddenly the Doctor bent down and picked up a small piece of metallic material, half-hidden in a patch of scrubby fern at the edge of the hole. He studied it intently.

‘Your machine appears to be moulting, Sarah,’ he muttered. ‘What’s more, it’s made out of Terullian.’

‘Is that significant?’ asked Sarah.

‘Very,’ replied the Doctor frowning, and biting so hard on the reed that it snapped off and fell into the pit. ‘It’s an exceptionally rare kind of metal—half mineral and half organic—and it isn’t found in this Galaxy at all... in fact, it is quite... quite...’

‘Alien,’ rasped a voice behind them, making them both jump. Sarah clutched the Doctor’s arm in terror.

‘Just the word I wanted,’ cried the Doctor, recovering himself at once, and turning round with a grin. The crazed face of Roth was staring at them from among the nearby boulders. The Doctor advanced towards him with outstretched hand. ‘A most efficient decoy, if I may say so,’

he cried. ‘We are most grateful to you.’

Roth cowered back into his hiding place, pointing to the metal fragment in the Doctor’s other hand ‘Scavenger,’ he breathed, staring wildly at it.

‘Scavenger...’ the Doctor repeated, recalling something Vural had said to him during his interrogation at the cave.

‘Alien... Alien...’ Roth jabbered, nodding and pointing.

‘He’s afraid of everything,’ Sarah murmured, ‘even his old crewmates.’

The Doctor stared down at the metal fragment. ‘I don’t blame him for being wary of friend Vural,’ he said quietly.

Sarah shivered, and gazed anxiously around them.

‘Doctor, what do think this... this Alien can be?’ she murmured. For a moment the Doctor said nothing. Then he stuffed the piece of Terullian into one of his many pockets, and stood quite still, as if in a trance.

All at once he roused himself and gestured irritably towards the pit. ‘It’s just typical of Harry,’ he cried, without answering Sarah’s question. ‘How could anyone fall down a gaping subsidence like that...’ The Doctor paused and clutched his hat more firmly about his disordered curls. ‘Of course,’ he cried. ‘Subsidence... an old sewer perhaps... or even the Piccadilly Line.’

‘You mean there might be a way out at the bottom?’

Sarah asked hopefully, trying to follow the Doctor’s train of thought.

‘There usually is,’ the Doctor replied, quickly testing the knot which secured the two halves of his scarf together, and then making several turns with one of the free ends around a stunted pillar of rock beside the hole. He thrust the shorter end into Roth’s trembling hands and motioned Sarah to take hold as well. Before she could protest, he had flung the longer end of the scarf into the pit and was preparing to climb down.

‘Hang on,’ he cried, ‘I shan’t be long.’

Sarah looked at him in horror. ‘Doctor,’ she shouted, ‘if you fall, we’ll never get you out.’

The Doctor gave a swashbuckling wave of his hat. ‘I’m sure you won’t let me down,’ he cried, and slid abruptly out of sight.

Sarah watched the thick, woollen stitching stretch into a taut, narrow rope as it took the Doctor’s considerable weight. The turns about the spike of rock held, and Roth and Sarah felt the vibrations of the scarf as the Doctor lowered himself down, hand over hand.

‘I hope it’s long enough,’ Sarah murmured. She turned to Roth. His swarthy face had gone deathly pale. Suddenly he began to gibber, his whole body shaking.

‘Na... na... na...’ he muttered.

Then Sarah heard it: the undulating hum of the Scavenger approaching over the boulders behind them.

She clung tightly to the vibrating scarf. ‘Doctor,’ she screamed, ‘it’s here... it’s here...’ There was a sudden hissing through the air and a segmented strand of wire lashed itself around her wrist, gripping it so fiercely that in a few seconds her hand was completely numbed. With another whiplike sound, Roth was similarly caught. The scarf slipped from their grasp and started to unwind from its anchorage around the stump. There came a muffled cry from the pit and the scarf went slack.

Sick with fright, Sarah glanced round. The robot was hovering a few metres away, at the head of the ravine, its baleful, electronic eye fixed on her and Roth. It swivelled its scanner and all but wrenched them off their feet as it rose and began to glide away out of the ravine, drawing the defenceless humans screaming and stumbling in its wake.

The Doctor lay among the tangled reeds and boulders, the end of the scarf loose in his limp hands. Blood welled up from a deep gash in his ashen forehead. The breath gurgled in his throat, and he lay utterly still.

Harry felt his way along a tortuously narrow fissure which led first upwards and then downwards; to the right and then to the left, and which sometimes twisted round and round in a spiral. The heat was rapidly becoming unbearable, and he could scarcely touch the sides of the shaft. The strange rhythmic pulses surging through the rocky labyrinth were beating in his head like a monstrous drum, and the suffocating fumes grew thicker at every step.

As he stumbled through the choking fog, Harry felt the tunnel begin to open out. The drumming gradually reached a climax, and he suddenly found himself in a kind of chamber which was dimly lit by a natural phosphorescence of the rock walls and roof. In the centre of the chamber floor, huge, murky bubbles were forming in a pool of hot, viscous mud and bursting in clouds of dense gas whose detonations echoed around the network of tunnels.

Clasping his handkerchief tightly over his nose and mouth, Harry began to skirt round the sides of the molten cauldron, seeking a way out of the chamber. Suddenly he stopped dead in his tracks, pressing himself back as close as he dared to the scorching rock, and straining to see through the acrid gloom.

Something was splashing heavily about in the middle of the bubbling lava. The hair prickled on Harry’s neck as he detected a slow, ponderous breathing sound above the noise of the exploding bubbles. He could see nothing. His head was reeling with the intense heat, and for a moment Harry feared he might collapse into the boiling mud. The splashing stopped. His heart hammering against his ribs, Harry listened to the monstrous, laboured breathing only a few metres away from him. He fought desperately against the choking cough trying to rise in his throat.

Suddenly, the ground shook under his feet as something began to move away with a stamping tread. The breathing grew fainter and fainter... Banishing his fear in his panic to escape from the scorching underground maze, Harry edged his way as quietly as he could round the chamber. He soon came upon a large aperture—big enough for him to enter upright—in which the air seemed slightly clearer and cooler. With frequent pauses to check for the slightest movement in the darkness, Harry crept cautiously along the tunnel. Its twists and turns soon revealed a circular patch of light ahead.

Eagerly he hurried forward, and was about to break into a run when something appeared to step out of the tunnel wall just in front of him. He went rigid. The distant patch of daylight was momentarily blotted out by an obscure, massive shape which began to move ponderously away along the tunnel. Harry watched in horrified fascination as the heavy footsteps pounded along accompanied by stentorian breathing.