Part 13 (1/2)

To his relief the Doctor's eyes opened. They were a muddy blue, their vacancy matching the Doctor's slack, expressionless face.

'Are you all right, Doctor?' Turlough said desperately.

' Please Please be all right.' be all right.'

The Doctor's eyes focused suddenly. He closed his mouth and Turlough saw his throat move as he swallowed.

'We have to get back to the TARDIS,' he said, his voice thick.

'What?' said Turlough. 'I... I don't understand. What happened?'

The Doctor tried to climb to his feet. Turlough helped him, then held on to his arm to keep him steady.

'I made contact,' the Doctor said. 'They know we're here.'

'This doesn't sound encouraging,' Turlough said bleakly.

'Go on.'

'I sensed... hostility. Raw and savage. Beyond reason.' He looked at Turlough earnestly, and with not even the faintest trace of fear in his voice he said, 'If they find us, they'll tear us apart.'

Turlough's ice-chip eyes widened, his face drained of what little colour it had. He plucked at the Doctor's sleeve with trembling fingers, and in a voice wavering up and down the scale, he pleaded, 'Please, Doctor, let's hurry.'

They did. Back through the crew quarters and the recreation area. Back through the agricultural section with its slimy rot. All the time they were running, Turlough fancied he could hear sounds around them: scurrying, scuttling, clattering sounds, as if there were giant insects moving behind the walls.

Happily they reached the cargo bay without incident and burst through the bulkhead doors to see the dark, shadowed block of the TARDIS waiting for them two hundred yards away - stoical, dependable, rea.s.suring. Turlough's breath was rattling in his chest and he felt as though his head was pulsing with a hot, juicy rhythm in tandem with his heart. All the same he was making ready to sprint across to the TARDIS when the Doctor stayed him with a hand on the arm.

'Listen.'

Turlough listened. He could hear nothing except the drip of water and the m.u.f.fled thumping of blood in his ears, and told the Doctor so.

'That's just my point,' the Doctor explained. 'The sounds in the walls have stopped.'

Turlough looked at him, appalled. 'You mean you heard them too?'

'Of course,' said the Doctor, looking surprised.

'I thought I was imagining them,' Turlough murmured miserably, then corrected himself. 'I hoped hoped I was imagining them.' I was imagining them.'

'Brave heart,' the Doctor said, patting Turlough on the arm.

'Come on, we'll keep together and take it slowly.'

They began to creep towards the TARDIS, Turlough's eyes darting everywhere, his imagination making him believe that each dense patch of shadow was a hiding place for something that would come whirling and screeching towards them. His footfalls, and those of the Doctor's, were the faintest of clangs on the metal floor, yet Turlough gritted his teeth in agony with each step, his senses so heightened that he felt as though they might as well be continually banging a gong to announce their presence.

They got halfway there, then three-quarters, then suddenly they had no more than twenty paces to go. It was still quiet, the coldness welcome now on Turlough's hot skin, his face running with sweat beneath the handkerchief that he wore over his mouth and nose. They came to a momentary halt, a natural pause before the final push for home. The Doctor took the TARDIS key from his pocket, gave Turlough a brief nod and they stepped forward again.

A shadow loomed from behind the TARDIS. Turlough faltered, gripping the Doctor's arm, but the Doctor merely patted him absently on the hand and took another step forward.

And then all at once, away to their left, a section of metal wall, some twenty feet square, crashed down like a drawbridge.

Turlough's heart gave such a lurch that he thought he was going to drop dead on the spot. He all but leaped into the Doctor's arms, who himself swung round, instantly alert.

Dust was spiralling up from the section of collapsed wall.

Beyond, there was only blackness.

The shadow behind the TARDIS bulged again, and suddenly something was emerging from it. Turlough couldn't help it - he screamed. The creature now scuttling into the semi-darkness of the cargo bay was like something from his worst nightmare. Its torso was roughly the size and shape of a bull's - powerful and huge-shouldered, packed with muscle.

However it moved on eight jointed, black, crablike legs, and from the tip of its hind-quarters a ma.s.sive scorpion-like tail curled upwards into the air like a giant black question-mark.

Its face, bristling with the quills that covered the rest of its body, was studded with bulging black eyes like those of a spider. As it moved forward with a hideous balletic grace to position itself between the two time travellers and the TARDIS, Turlough became aware that more of the gigantic arachnids were scurrying from the square of blackness where the section of wall had fallen down, moving forward to surround himself and the Doctor. Turlough was petrified, but the Doctor calmly doffed his hat and said, 'Good morning.'

The creature that had emerged from behind the TARDIS raised itself up on its legs so that its face was a good eight feet above the ground, opened a flap-like mouth beneath its myriad eyes and made a furious hissing sound, like water dumped on a pan of hot fat.

Part Three

Falling Prey

The creatures advanced slowly, tightening the circle around the two time travellers. As they moved, the bristles that covered their bodies rustled like wind through dry leaves, and their 'feet' clicked on the metal floor like tap shoes. The hot, musky stench of them was almost overwhelming.

Turlough, already light-headed with fear, felt certain he was going to pa.s.s out. He only managed to avoid it by clutching tightly to the Doctor's arm. He glanced at the Doctor and saw that his eyes were closed, his face serene. What did that mean? Had he already accepted his fate and put himself into some kind of self-induced trance - perhaps so that when the creatures began to tear them apart he wouldn't feel a thing?

If so, it was grossly unfair. Why should Turlough have to suffer alone?

He squeezed the Doctor's arm as hard as he could. Then, when that didn't work, he shook him. He tried to speak the Doctor's name, but his saliva had thickened to a gum that glued his tongue to the floor of his mouth. He tried to close his eyes, to blot everything out as the Doctor had done, but terrible though it was, he couldn't not watch what was going to happen. Any moment now, he expected the creatures to rush forward, making that awful hissing sound. The only thing he felt he could hope for was that his demise would be mercifully quick.

All at once the legs of the creature that had first appeared, the one blocking the way to the TARDIS, seemed to buckle slightly. The creature staggered sideways as if drunk, its legs sc.r.a.ping and clattering on the ground as it tried to right itself. It c.o.c.ked its head in a curiously dog-like way and this time its hissing sounded like an expression of bewilderment.

Turlough stared at the creature, dumbfounded, then gradually became aware that the others were behaving the same way. They were blundering against one another like cattle in the dark, hissing confusedly. One, at the outermost edge of the circle, was barged by its tottering fellows with such force that it crashed sideways to the ground, black legs pedalling frantically at the air.

The Doctor's eyes popped open so suddenly that it seemed to snap his head back. For a moment he stared straight ahead as if hypnotised, then he blinked and his features relaxed. He looked around him with an expression of mild curiosity. 'Interesting reaction,' he murmured.

Turlough, his mouth still too dry to speak, gripped the Doctor's arm even tighter. The Doctor winced and looked at him. 'Would you mind not doing that.'