Part 16 (1/2)

Glitz rubbed his chin. 'Maybe there's some kind of back way...'

Peri, Merdeen and Balazar were surveying a hatchway set into a tunnel wall.

'Are you sure this leads into the Castle?' asked Peri.

'It must do,' said Merdeen.

Balazar nodded. 'There's nowhere else for it to go.' The hatchway was smeared with some kind of vegetable guck.

Peri looked at it dubiously. 'Talk about a tradesman's entrance...'

Glitz and Dibber came round the corner, laser cannons in their hands, covering the little group. 'Well, well,' said Glitz amiably.

'Glitz and Dibber,' said Peri. 'I wondered where you two had got to!'

'Where's your friend the Doctor?' asked Glitz.

'In the Castle,' said Peri.

Glitz gave Dibber a look. 'Didn't hang about, did he?'

'I'm worried about him, said Peri.

'So am I,' said Glitz.

Peri pointed to the hatch. 'Merdeen and Balazar think we can get into the Castle through this hatch.'

Glitz waved her onwards with his laser-cannon. 'Go on, then!'

Reluctantly Peri started to clamber through...

13.

The Big Bang The Doctor took an anguished look at the shuddering console. 'It may only be a matter of minutes, Drathro.

Can't I make you see sense?'

'It is finished, Doctor.'

'Look,' said the Doctor desperately. 'It's not just this planet. n.o.body knows what a black-light explosion can do, there's never been one.'

'There will be one soon.'

'Some people think it might set off a chain reaction which would roll on till all matter in the galaxy is exhausted. Is that what you want?'

'It is no longer of concern to me, Doctor.'

'Others believe an explosion of black light would cause dimensional transference - and that would threaten the stability of the entire universe!' The Doctor was shouting now.

Drathro ignored him. He was studying a monitor with a warning light flas.h.i.+ng above it.

The monitor showed a group of figures emerging into a food storage tank, its walls still dripping with green vegetable slime. They moved across it and climbed into an enormous tube, that gave pa.s.sage to the next chamber.

'Intruders in the food-production machinery,' rumbled Drathro.

The Doctor stared at the monitor. 'That's Peri! And Merdeen, and Dibber and Glitz. What on earth are they up to?'

Drathro at least had no doubts. 'So that was your intention, Doctor.'

'What?'

'To distract me, while your friends attacked.' Drathro moved to a sub console and began setting controls.

Suddenly the Doctor realized what he was doing. The robot was about to set the food-processing machinery into operation - with Peri and the others still inside.

'You can't do that,' shouted the Doctor.

He hurled himself on the robot in a vain attempt to drag it away. Drathro sent him flying across the control room with a casual swat.

Then the robot touched a control...

Suddenly the door at the end of the giant tube slid closed.

From the other end an enormous whirling blade, its circ.u.mference exactly that of the tunnel, began sliding towards them. With a sick feeling, Peri realized that the tube was a kind of giant blender in which vegetables of all kinds were reduced to the green slime they'd seen on the walls. Now something very similar was going to happen to them...

Suddenly heat rays began bombarding the interior of the tube. The vegetables weren't just minced, and shredded, they were cooked as well!

The enormous blade came nearer and nearer, reducing the s.p.a.ce in which they could stand...

The Doctor staggered to his feet. He staggered to the monitor and saw what was happening to his friends.

'No!' he shouted again, and made a second, equally futile attempt to distract the robot.

Once again it smashed him aside, and he lay half-stunned.

Inside the tube they had very little time.

'What are we going to do?' yelled Peri. 'If we're not ground to death, we'll be fried!'

'Stand back,' grunted Dibber.