Doctor Who: Sontaran Experiment (5 page)

As the sounds receded, an enormous figure—like the statue of a huge, thick-limbed man somehow brought to life—was gradually silhouetted against the circle of daylight. As it lumbered out of the far end of the tunnel into the open, Harry glimpsed its coarse greyish hide—like pumice stone—shuddering at each step. He began to shiver in a sudden cold sweat.

‘It... it can’t be...’ he gasped, as the gigantic figure stamped away into the distance, ‘... it isn’t possible... but it looks like the Golem...’

For several minutes Harry stood motionless in the dark tunnel, staring at the gradually diminishing form of the monstrous creature. His imagination conjured up visions of a ruined world populated by colossal human mutations produced as a result of the Solar Flares which, the Doctor had explained, had rendered the Earth uninhabitable by normal animal and vegetable life.

Gradually he pulled himself together and cautiously edged forward towards the mouth of the tunnel. He was desperately anxious to escape from the labyrinth of subterranean shafts and chambers, and yet he was filled with foreboding as to what might await him in the open terrain. Keeping at a safe distance, he followed the tunnel towards daylight...

The Scavenger dragged its two victims brutally through rocky gullies filled with great clusters of giant thorns which tore at their clothes and threatened to lacerate their faces. Deposits of orange dust rose in choking clouds and sucked them down like quicksand. Whenever Sarah or Roth hesitated or stumbled, the robot would pause, rotate its scanner towards them, chattering angrily to itself, and then viciously jerk the culprit to his feet with a twitch of its gleaming tentacle. In one place, where the thorns were several metres deep, the machine had simply blasted a pathway through them with a dazzling spray of white fire from its sensors.

‘We’re obviously wanted in reasonable condition...’

Sarah had muttered to herself, sickened by the oily, black smoke billowing from the molten undergrowth.

With her free hand, she frequently clutched at the withered and numbed object hanging limply from her other wrist—caught in the robot’s relentless grasp. Her face was streaked with tears, dust and dried blood.

Beside her, Roth flapped along as if in a trance, whimpering his ceaseless refrain, ‘Na... na... na...’ until, after what seemed hours, the Scavenger suddenly slowed and they entered a shallow, bowl-shaped area in the centre of a vast crater. Deep ‘V’ shaped canyons radiated from the rock-strewn hollow in all directions, leading to the encircling range of cliffs. Roth immediately pitched forward to his knees, staring and gesticulating towards a massive spherical object dominating the middle of the hollow. The Scavenger stopped and lowered itself so that it hovered a few centimetres above the ground. Then, after emitting a series of extremely high-pitched bleeps, it fell silent.

Sarah stared at the enormous dimpled sphere in front of them. It was the size of a large house and resembled a giant golf-ball. The red sun was brilliantly reflected from its metallic surfaces as if it were encrusted with rubies. Roth was now silent, mesmerised by the extraordinary globe.

The Scavenger’s tentacle had slackened a little and Sarah massaged her wrist and waited with thumping heart, her eyes fixed on an oval opening in the lower side of the sphere from which a ramp led down to the ground.

After a while, the Scavenger’s relays clattered and it stirred slightly. In a flash, Sarah forgot the agonising pins-and-needles sensation in her hand and the pains throbbing in her bruised and exhausted body: from the dark opening in the huge sphere came a strangely familiar, but not at once recognisable, sound. It was the laboured breathing of some vast nightmarish bellows, and it sent icy shudders through Sarah’s limbs.

All at once, the gaping oval panel was filled by a squat, lumbering shape like a monstrous puppet. Its domed, reptilian head grew neckless out of massive, hunched shoulders. Each trunk-like arm ended in three sheathed talons and was raised in anticipation towards her. The creature began to lurch down the ramp on thick, stumpy legs, the rubbery folds of its body vibrating with each step.

Mean eyes burned like two red-hot coals amid the gnarled, tortoise-like features, and puffs of oily vapour issued from the flared nostrils. As it approached her, the creature uttered a raucous gasp of satisfaction, ‘Aaaaaaaaaaaa... The female of the species...’

The blubbery, gasping voice sent a tingle of recognition through Sarah. ‘Linx...’ she murmured in disbelief, flinching away in disgust at the warm, sickly breath as the creature stood over her. The wobbling folds of its lipless jaws were suddenly drawn back, baring hooked, metallic teeth. Sarah stared transfixed at the ghastly smile while the creature slowly shook its domed head.

‘But... but Linx is dead...’ she managed to blurt. ‘You were destroyed... in the Thirteenth Century...’

The creature continued to shake its head. ‘You may have witnessed the demise of one of our number,’ it gasped,

‘but we are many.’ The shrivelled, tortoise face thrust forward, its red piercing eyes boring into her. ‘I am Styr...

Sontaran Military Assessor.’

Sarah forced herself to stare defiantly back. ‘And what are you assessing?’ she found herself retorting with a contemptuous toss of her head.

There was a menacing pause and then the creature seized Sarah’s arm in its leathery claw. ‘I shall continue,’

gasped the wobbling mouth, ‘with
you
.’

At that moment Roth, who had been cowering silently at Sarah’s side, sprang up, taking advantage of the loosening of the Scavenger’s tentacle. ‘Not me...’ he shrieked, breaking into a run. ‘Na... na... you won’t hurt me again...’ and he made off towards one of the nearby ravines.

Styr raised his arm and aimed a small device like a wristwatch, which was incorporated into his sleeve. The fleeing crewman was enveloped in an intense white light and crashed lifeless onto the rocks.

Sarah found that anger and contempt were beginning to conquer her fear. ‘That was senseless,’ she cried. ‘He was harmless.’

The Sontaran turned on her with a snort of oily vapour.

‘And quite useless,’ he gasped, gripping her arm even more fiercely. ‘He was of no further significance to my programme.’ Sarah tried to wrench herself free, averting her face from the Sontaran’s nauseating breath, but he lifted her roughly against his pulsing, rubbery abdomen.

‘Whereas you,’ Styr hissed, ‘you are of much greater value for my purposes.’

Styr drew a small spherical microphone, attached to a retractable cable, from a battery of strange instruments arrayed round his belt, and without relinquishing his cruel grip on Sarah’s arm, began to gasp excitedly into it,

‘Assessment Period Gamma... Solar Interval Eleven...

Human Female—First Specimen...’ His sparkling eyes glittered centimetres from Sarah’s face. ‘... No apparent strategic significance... presence on Earth Planet unexplained... result of tests will follow...’ The microphone snapped back into its housing and the Sontaran tapped out rapid instructions on the touch-button panel in the front of his belt.

At once the Scavenger clattered its relays in acknowledgement. It retracted its tentacles, rose a metre into the air and glided out of the hollow into one of the ravines, its scanner sweeping from side to side as it hummed out of sight.

‘Soon I shall have your companions,’ hissed Styr, dragging Sarah along as he lumbered towards one of the gullies on the far side of the hollow, ‘but for the present...

we shall proceed with
you
...’

The Doctor moaned and stirred slightly. Then he began to thrash about in spasms of panic. The TARDIS was surrounded by a host of colossal rats, their teeth squeaking against the frosted glass windowpanes and their claws tearing at the creaking woodwork of the battered police box. The wretched machine was completely out of control, and nothing the Doctor could do would make it respond. It had drifted too close to the edge of a rotating black hole and been pitched and tossed like a cork in a typhoon, hurling the Doctor against the controls. His head raging with pain, he struggled to activate the stabilisers as the voracious rats gnawed hungrily at the windows, fighting to get at him.

Just as they seemed to be on the point of breaking in, a huge black cat, its fur on end and its claws gleaming viciously, sprang out from the TARDIS’s Control Assembly, spitting and snarling, and devoured all the rats in an instant. Then, purring contentedly, it stretched out on the Doctor’s chest and went to sleep. The Doctor lay on the floor of the TARDIS, struggling for breath beneath the heavy, furry body pressing against his face.

‘Off... Off Greymalkin... Off...’ he panted, grabbing the warm fur in both hands and trying to fling the enormous creature aside...

The Doctor came to in the semi-darkness. He was flat on his back among sharp rocks, his whole body aching. He was clutching his hat screwed up in both hands at arm’s length above his face. He raised his head and blinked a few times, wincing with pain. After a minute or two he shook himself.

‘Rats...’ he muttered scornfully and dragged himself slowly to his feet, rubbing his eyes and peering around. He pushed his hat back into shape and set it gingerly on top of his throbbing head.

There was a sudden rustling and scrambling sound above him. For a second the Doctor hesitated, not quite sure whether he was still dreaming, or whether he really was awake. He looked up at the daylight. The pit seemed even deeper from where he stood now.

‘Sarah... Sarah Jane?’ he called softly. The sounds abruptly ceased. Something brushed the Doctor’s face: it was the scarf. He tested the swaying, woollen ladder. To his intense relief it held.

‘Sarah... I’m coming back up,’ he cried. Still there was no reply. The Doctor shrugged and began to pull himself slowly and painfully upwards.

When at last his head appeared above the edge of the hole, he saw a blurred, triple image of Roth watching him from the cluster of boulders.

‘Hallo,’ he cried, blinking furiously, ‘I really must have banged my head down there. Where’s Sar...’ The Doctor’s cheery voice died away: the spacesuited figures of Vural, Krans and Erak stood watching him with ironic smiles.

Vural was gripping the end of the scarf securely round its anchorage, while Erak held an ion gun levelled straight at the Doctor’s head. Sarah and Roth were nowhere to be seen.

The Doctor grinned faintly. ‘Oh... it’s you again,’ he murmured.

‘Keep climbing,’ Vural snapped. ‘And no tricks.’

The Doctor shook his head. ‘Absolutely no tricks,’ he agreed, his eyes flickering up for a second to something which had suddenly appeared above and behind his three captors. ‘Not
this
deal anyway,’ he added, starting to heave himself up on his elbows. Krans started forward threateningly, a machete gleaming in his hand. At the same moment, the Scavenger whirred into the air above the boulders. Before the three crewmen could react, its tentacles had whipped through the thin mist and snared each of them simultaneously.

With a choking cry, Krans flung up his hands and tugged helplessly at the loop around his neck, the ion gun flew out of Erak’s numbed grasp, and Vural, both arms pinioned tightly to his body, tried to back away, shaking his head in panic and muttering, ‘Not me... no... the others... but not me...’ while the electronic scanner fixed him with its expressionless stare.

‘Trumps!’ cried the Doctor, and with a victorious wave, he slid swiftly back into the protective gloom of the pit...

4

After his narrow escape in the subterranean labyrinth, Harry had stalked the monstrous figure of the ‘Golem’

through the rocky wilderness. From a vantage point high on one of the ridges radiating across the crater, he had witnessed Sarah’s terrifying encounter with the creature in front of its hidden lair. He knew he had no chance of rescuing Sarah single-handed; his only hope was to discover where Sarah was being taken, and then to try and find the Doctor.

As he scrambled through the maze of canyons and intersecting gullies criss-crossing the crater in pursuit of Sarah and her hideous captor, Harry racked his brain to remember the story of the Golem—the manmade effigy brought to life by means of the Shem, the magic charm, destruction of which would render the creature lifeless again... But it was all too fantastic, he told himself as he dodged between pinnacles and buttresses of rock, in a landscape which suggested the petrified remains of a medieval city, melted and deformed by some catastrophe.

The similarity sent a shiver through him, and he quickened his pace, anxious not to lose sight of his quarry.

The wind moaned through the twisted rocks and echoed around him like the cries of ghostly victims or unknown and unimaginable beings. He felt sure that at any moment the luminous hovering shape of the robot would come gliding suddenly out of some concealed niche, or that a host of gasping, lumbering creatures would trap him in one of the defiles which branched in all directions.

All at once Harry stopped, biting his lip in frustration.

Sarah and the Golem had vanished. He had lost them. He glanced up at the glowering sun, trying to orientate himself. The whining breezes mocked him. It was hopeless. Then, from a nearby cleft in the rock, there came a chilling cry of agony. Arming himself with a small boulder, Harry approached.

‘Sarah... Sarah, is that you... ?’ he called softly. A feeble, cracked voice tried to answer. Cautiously Harry squeezed in among the thorns.

A young man, emaciated and deathly pale, with long matted hair and beard, was manacled to the rock by his wrists so that his arms were fully stretched above his head and his feet scarcely touched the ground. The ripped-open top of his spacesuit hung in ribbons round his waist, and Harry winced at the sight of the wasted torso with sharply protruding ribs.

‘Who did this?’ he breathed, tugging vainly at the strange metallic shackles which seemed to be welded into the rock.

‘Wa... water... wa...’ the prisoner gasped through cracked and blackened lips, his head lolling from side to side.