Part 5 (1/2)

He flung himself at the commu-screen and punched out the Superior's restricted code, no longer thinking of anything more than his own safety. Before the connection could be made, the whole console bucked beneath him and rode across the room, sending Darnak cras.h.i.+ng to the floor beneath it. He tried to force his overweight body out from under the machinery, but its bulk pinned him and he could only watch as the wall against 42 which it had previously stood was torn apart.

The visitors seemed frightened too: they dived for cover as a hail of shattered marble rained down on Darnak's meticulously tidied desk. When the barrage of stone at last ended, Darnak cautiously moved his hands from his eyes to a.s.sess the situation. He wished he hadn't.

Rearing over him at ceiling height was a gigantic lizard head, narrow yellow eyes burning into his scalp, mouth dripping acid saliva onto his face. The head was attached to a great, trunk-like neck and a long, leathern, four-legged body which had evidently just smashed its way in from the outside of the Citadel, through three internal and two structural walls and straight into the Politik's office.

Faced with this terrifying creature from his own nightmares, Darnak did the only thing he was capable of.

He screamed once, then fainted.

Even as prison cells went, this one was unimaginatively designed. Bare concrete floor, bare concrete walls, one lumpy mattress on steel-tubing bed . . . There was a high, narrow window - barred of course - and if air-flow was anything to go by, it led to the outside world. But the cell's occupant, even standing on the bed, was too short to see out of it.

The Doctor didn't understand this.

He remembered dropping Chris of on the crystal. The young man had waved and grinned and then the construct's surface had opened for him and he'd dropped in, freely floating downwards in gravity's absence. Bernice had been next: she had just gunned her skimmer and gone for it, an expression of determination on her face.

Then what?

He remembered piloting the TARDIS to its third location, his own drop-off point. He had primed his generator (which he still had in his jacket pocket) and waited for Roz to return to the console room for her briefing. After that, everything was blank and no amount of self-probing could make his mind surrender its hidden memories.

He had obviously entered the crystal as planned. It didn't 43 seem too far-fetched to imagine that it might have wrenched this particular image from his thoughts. He had seen enough cells in his time, and this one (as closer inspection proved) was definitely made up of fictional energy.

But one thing didn't make sense. He should have been travelling through his dreamscape. He had given himself, like the others, a powerful post-hypnotic suggestion to that effect.

So why was he stranded here? Why was his own mind confining him to this room, with time running out? Why couldn't he, clear-thinking as he was at the moment, countermand that subconscious imperative?

Why was there a painful egg-shaped bruise on the base of his skull?

This wasn't logical. Unless, of course, he forced himself to disregard his working hypothesis. That didn't make for any sort of pleasant notions.

Okay then, so he wasn't inside the crystal. So that meant this place was of someone else's construction. But still fictional.

And where did that leave him?

Frustrated by an unaccustomed lack of answers, the Doctor drove his fist into the outer wall.

The building blinked out of existence.

Jason was starting to enjoy himself.

The mutant lizard reared up and smashed its head through the ceiling without any noticeable signs of pain. Jason coughed as another masonry shower kicked up dust about him, then gasped as his companion knocked him to one side, away from a particularly large chunk of falling stone. He sprawled onto his back and looked straight up into Detrios's beautiful obsidian sky.

He realized that Darnak was awake and screaming again, still pinned to the floor. But the monster had s.h.i.+fted its attention to the dozen heavy-booted, combat-armoured guards who had appeared in the corridor and were shooting at it. At first, Jason thought their black, lumpy s.p.a.ce-guns looked cool - but the white beams they spat were less impressive, deflected with little effect by the creature's hide. Jason watched in fascination as its 44 head swooped downwards and it plucked one attacker up in its mouth. The man screamed as it tossed its head back and flipped him into the air, into a double somersault and a perfect landing straight down its maw.

By now, the other guards were running for cover and only a couple were still firing. The lizard flicked its segmented tail and swept three of them into and through the great fountain in the main square, forty feet away. They didn't get up.

'We've got to do something about the Politik,' Jason's companion shouted over the din. He nodded and they rushed to where the trapped man was thras.h.i.+ng about in vain and - astonis.h.i.+ngly, Jason thought - crying desperately. With the advantage of leverage and with the monster temporarily distracted, it didn't take much to lift the shattered machinery and drag the panicking Darnak out from under it.

'We have to think up a plan,' said Jason earnestly, both hands on the Politik's shoulders to steady him. 'You're down to about three guards.' Darnak howled.

The lizard brought one ma.s.sive, three-toed foot down, then lifted it to reveal a red stain on the floor.

'Two now,' said Jason. There had to be a way out of this.

It's the lizards' secret weapon, that's what it is,' moaned Darnak. 'I knew there had to be one. ”Eradicator” indeed.

We're doomed!'

The two guards had leapt for cover. The creature turned its attention to Jason, who stood and faced it squarely. It flicked its tail in antic.i.p.ation of the feast, and Jason's jaw dropped as, suddenly, the monster lizard gave an anguished roar of pain.

Its tail had inadvertently pa.s.sed through the fountain's waters!

Darnak closed his eyes and hid behind Jason for protection.

The young man rubbed his hands together and turned to the others triumphantly.

'I know what to do,' he said.

Darnak caught his breath as Jason scurried with great excitement across the office and barely avoided the lizard's tail, which swept past his head. 'It's vulnerable to water, can't you 45 see? I need to get to the fire hose!'

'You need what? But we don't have one!' he protested.

There was something, nevertheless, on the far wall: a red, circular, metal holder which the Politik had never seen before, from which Jason unwound a thin length of black tubing. 'You do, you know,' he said, flas.h.i.+ng Darnak an odd look. He fumbled with some sort of nozzle on the tube's end.

The monster had turned its attention towards him now, regarding the tiny figure with malevolent eyes. Darnak couldn't help thinking that that was the last he would see of the stranger.

He winced, not wanting to know what happened next, but unable to tear his eyes away.

Then, unexpectedly, Jason turned and yelled: 'Eat dirt, buster!' and a powerful jet of cold water shot from the hose and struck the surprised lizard full in the face, with immediate and devastating effects. The monster staggered back, screamed out its rage and almost stepped onto Darnak, who squealed and fell over and tried to roll behind his upturned desk. The last wall of the office crumbled and the room completed its collapse about its remaining occupants. But Jason didn't seem to care as he leapt happily over two corpses and continued to blast away.

Miraculously - and Darnak still couldn't see why - the lizard toppled. It hit the ground with a horrific slap, its great body crus.h.i.+ng the last two cowering guards and, it seemed, almost contriving to bring down the remainder of the devastated building. It lay still, with Jason blasting afresh at any part of it which dared twitch. Then, before Darnak's disbelieving eyes, the creature melted, a pool of green slime was left behind, and began to evaporate so that soon no trace would remain.

And that, as Darnak slowly realized in the heavy silence which followed, was that.

He climbed, shaking, to his feet and stood in the ruins of what had once been Detrios's finest building. His lower lip trembled as the full extent of the decimation sunk in: the Citadel was little more than a demolition site now, festooned with corpses and smelling of death. What was more, beneath the black sky and the Miracle's heatless glow, it was - as Darnak was only 46 now beginning to appreciate - quite freezing.

He wished this hadn't happened on his s.h.i.+ft.

He pulled his tunic tight about him and wondered what he could say to the Superior. She would be here shortly, as presumably the utter destruction of her proudest achievement might just const.i.tute a purple-grade situation for her. She couldn't possibly blame him, could she? What more could he have done?

He became aware that his younger visitor was by his shoulder; he turned to him and was astonished at the broad grin on Jason's face.

'Cheer up,' he said, clapping Darnak companionably on the back. 'We won!'

The forest was composed of majestic scarlet-barked trees, twenty or more feet in height, sprouting helical brown leaves and red flowers. The Doctor didn't recognize their type, which meant he had probably never visited this planet before. He was at the edge of a large clearing, in the shape of a perfect rectangle. Too perfect, in fact: at its edges, the trees had had their branches neatly shorn, and a few had even had trunks cloven. It was as though someone had cut out the shape here with no regard for flora. Not long ago, though; the gra.s.s was flattened yet still moist and green.

A chill wind rippled through the Doctor's rumpled linen suit and silk s.h.i.+rt. He moved into the comparative shelter of the trees and kicked at the undergrowth as he silently weighed up his situation. Was he still in a fictional world? He wasn't sure.