Part 10 (1/2)

Polly winced. 'Were you all right?'

They had to stick me in a cryo-tank. Saved my life. But they froze the damage in with me.' He raised his free hand, felt the little b.u.mps and ridges. 'The shrapnel's a part of me now. They offered me a new face entirely but I decided to stick with the old one. Every day... I never forget the sc.u.m that did this to me.'

'You were in a war, then?' she asked.

'This was the big Schirr raid, two years ago,' Shade said casually. 'DeCaster and his wannabe Morphieans, they tried to take out the Pentagon sub-router on New Jersey.'

'New Jersey?' Polly seized upon about the only words she'd understood. 'New Jersey in the United States?'

Shade stared at her now like she was mad. 'No.'

Polly jumped as a burly, hard-faced woman strode round the corner. Armed to the teeth, dressed in the same futuristic combat fatigues as Tovel and Shade, this could only be their Marshal Haunt. The woman fixed Polly in her sights and zeroed in without hesitation.

'So.' Haunt swung up her gun and nudged it against Polly's temple. Polly looked beseechingly at Shade. He looked on, stoically; she supposed he was hardly likely to go up against his superior officer over her. 'Here you are, just like your friends said. I suppose it's been you leaving little markers at the tunnel mouths?'

You've met the Doctor and Ben?' Polly said, trying not to whimper. 'Are they all right?'

Haunt snorted. 'I don't know what they are.' The gun barrel was digging into Polly's head so hard she felt her skull would crack. 'Perhaps you could tell me?'

Polly wished the ground would swallow her up. She scrunched up her eyes tightly as she tried to think up an answer that might satisfy this maniac.

'We've... we've been travelling,' she said.

'Through the Morphiean Quadrant?' Tovel looked at her suspiciously.

'She and her friends here claim they're refugees,' Haunt told her soldiers.

'That's what I meant!' said Polly. 'Please, could you take me to them?'

Suddenly the ground beneath her started to shudder. Polly cancelled her earlier wish.

'We should move,' Tovel warned. He shot a look at Shade.

'We must've weakened this whole area with all that firepower.'

'It doesn't feel like a tremor.' Haunt looked around her, suspicious, as if the answer to the puzzle was somehow staring her in the face, mocking her.

The tremors, meanwhile, seemed to be getting worse.

Cracks and fissures were opening in the walls and the roof.

Streams of black choking dust seeped from them. Polly wondered how far she'd get if she tried to make a run for it past Haunt, and decided she'd rather take her chances with falling boulders.

Haunt's gaze settled on Tovel. 'What do you make of it?'

'Vibration.' His head was c.o.c.ked slightly to one side, as if listening to something none of them could hear. 'Like something powering-up.'

'The countdown,' breathed Polly. 'Didn't I tell you something was going to happen!'

Haunt ignored her. 'All right, let's join the others.' She looked Polly up and down. 'I can see I'm not going to learn anything from you.'

How about the importance of moisturiser and dieting for starters, you bullying b.i.t.c.h, thought Polly. If only she could be safe with Ben back in the TARDIS, listening to the engines grind and grate, leaving this horrible place far behind them...

A thought struck her as she was shoved along the pa.s.sage in the direction Haunt had come from. These tremors,' she said, turning to face them. 'I know what they remind me me of.' of.'

'What?' asked Haunt, looking as if she already regretted asking.

'Our s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p,' Polly said, 'when it's getting ready for takeoff. Only a thousand times stronger.'

A s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p?' Shade echoed in disbelief. Inside an asteroid?'

'It's not so strange, is it?' Tovel muttered, a surprise ally.

'That's where ours is.'

Haunt, for her part, said nothing. But before Polly was pushed onwards unsteadily through the rumbling tunnel, she at least had the satisfaction of seeing the marshal's face darken into sudden concern.

VI.

Ben hung on for dear life as his ladder bucked and almost threw him clear. There was a terrible splitting sound from somewhere above him, and then a shadow fell swiftly over him. Ben twisted and swung on his ladder as a jagged piece of slate the size of a dinner tray hurtled past.

'Doctor!' yelled Ben desperately as he peered up into the brilliant light, and as more and more rock fragments started raining down around him. He felt the ladder lurch sickeningly. A spindly figure was suddenly clinging to one of the rungs above him, the Doctor, it had to be, Frog had pa.s.sed him over. But then a boot was pressing down hard on Ben's fingers. He gasped and tried to pull them free. 'Get off!'

he yelled.

'I'm sorry, my boy.' The Doctor's confused voice floated down with a cloud of rock dust. 'I... I didn't see you...'

The Doctor's boot lifted, and Ben felt his fingers throb, as if about to swell to cartoonish proportions. He ignored the pain, gripped the sides of the rope ladder and slid smoothly down.

But when he hit the bottom he found it was like standing on deck in a stormy sea. The ground bucked beneath him. A large boulder tore down from above and pounded into the ground beside him, inches from his foot. He was choking on dust, it was everywhere. The shaft of blue light turned it into a dense luminous fog.

'It's an earthquake, Doctor!' he yelled.

'I don't think so.' The Doctor was crawling, painfully slowly, down the ladder, as showers of pebbles rained down around him. Afraid a more serious rockfall was likely, Ben staggered forward and tried to lift the Doctor clear.

'Put me down, young man,' the Doctor thundered. He disentangled himself from Ben's grip. 'I will not be carted about by all and sundry like a sack of potatoes!'

Ben held up his hands in meek apology.