Part 3 (1/2)

'No flesh-eating ghouls.'

'Ifrits, they call them.' He ticked them off on his fingers. 'Ifrits, which are ghouls; djinn, which are more like spirits; qutrub, which you might call werewolves, really, and kabikaj, and they are spirits with control over the insect world. They could set a plague of locusts on you, or -'

'You've brought me somewhere horrible again!'

He looked hurt. 'I think Hyspero is a sensational planet.' She tutted.

'Have you been bored yet?'

”That's not the point!'

'I think we should go and take a look at this captive of yours.'

There was a sudden thudding noise as that captive came down the stairs from the top deck.

'I take it you're Gila,' said the Doctor, going up to shake his hand.

The captive ignored him. He glared at Sam.'You took your time.' Then he started to inspect the whitened scales of his body. He was covered from head to toe. Some kind of genetic mutation, the Doctor thought. 'My skin looks terrible,' said Gila. 'She's kept me away from water.' He looked around.'Have you found her?'

'Who,' said Sam.'The witch that kept you prisoner?'

'He called her a witch, did he?'

'How else could she keep me,' moaned Gila,'without enchantments?'

'Iris was never without her enchantments,' the Doctor smiled.'But she isn't a witch.' Gila muttered.'Do you know where she is?'

'No,' spat Gila.

The Doctor suddenly felt unsettled. Here he was, once more aboard her s.h.i.+p, with all her gaudy, silly things about him, and yet somehow he didn't expect to see her again in the flesh.

'Doctor!' Sam let out a great yell.”They're all around us!'

They had been attracted by the unusual lights of the bus. Pallid, soft-bodied, bluish-coloured creatures like this weren't used to warm, friendly lights. They circled the vehicle gradually, muttering and chittering to themselves. Their noise grew greater as those above the bus realised they were being watched.

'Ifrits,' said the Doctor.

They brushed against the windows. Soft tattered flesh and leathery wings slid by. Once or twice Sam caught a glimpse of a chattering death's head. The eyes were lidless and puzzled-looking, gazing moonily at her.'Can we fight them off?'

”They won't harm you; said Gila lazily. 'I've sat in here night after night, locked in chains, and nothing bad happened to me.'

'All the same,' said the Doctor.'I don't like being stared at by zombies.'

'We aren't dead!' said GUa.'They aren't interested in us!'

The Doctor was at work on the snip's console.'I'm trying to home in on Iris. Her telepathic circuits work beautifully... Ah, there she is! She's alive, everyone!'

'Hooray,' said Gila caustically, and glared at the ghouls swis.h.i.+ng by outside.

'Are we going to follow her?' asked Sam.

He nodded, touched a few controls decisively, and the whole bus slid sideways into the vortex.

'At least we can't see those things now,' Sam said.

'Hold on tight, everyone,' said the Doctor.'I'm not sure how accurate her-'

They re-entered real time at the top of a great, steep hill, overlooking the desert. It was still night-time and as hot as an oven.

'She's here somewhere,' said the Doctor, once everything was still and all the wheezing and groaning was over.

'This is an amazing machine!' said Gila.

'It's nippy,' said the Doctor sniffily. 'I prefer my own, though.' He pulled a TV monitor down from the ceiling of the cab. It came on a snaking, unsafe-looking cable. He twiddled a few k.n.o.bs and the picture hissed into life. Black and white, like an old Sat.u.r.day matinee. 'Maybe we can find out why Iris has started kidnapping young men. Ah, here's a picture.'

The desert. It was what lay immediately outside, shown in smeary infrared. The scene resolved itself, and showed three colossal dogs guarding a hole someone had dug in the desert. They pawed the sand and growled, bearing their s...o...b..ry fangs in the moonlight.

”That's where she is,' said the Doctor. 'At the bottom of that pit.'

Chapter Four.

After AII I've Survived!

She was a woman used to being quite alone. For many years she had travelled by herself, considering herself to be excellent company, the best she could ever hope for. Her own jokes made her laugh, she had wonderful taste in music, art, clothes, food, wines, poetry, prose and places, she always made the appropriate comment, and had the most precise and pertinent quotation to hand. Any possible companion wouldn't stand a chance against the qualities she perceived in herself.

Once or twice she had tried out an a.s.sistant, to share expenses and nervous energy, to lighten the spiritual and psychological load on the longer, lonelier hauls through time and s.p.a.ce. But these people, once invited aboard her TARDIS, only ended up getting on her nerves. And she on theirs, she didn't wonder. They had been humans for the most part, and she deplored their limitations. Their endless what-do-we-do-nows and their come-and-rescue-me's. And for a while she had travelled with an obtuse shape-s.h.i.+fter who loved nothing better than to spend much of his time as a tippy and garrulous penguin.

In recent years Iris had been alone.

There was, however, one companion she had always longed for. One she had desired with both her hearts ever since the earliest of her voyages. That being whose own peripatetic career rivalled and was so oddly parallel to her own. Whose adventures took him in such similar directions to hers, and whose peril-strewn path she had sometimes purposefully crossed.

He was here, somewhere on Hyspero. There was something in the air.

She could sense him nearby.

And yet he wasn't here to rescue her. So near and so far.

Never had she felt more dismally alone than this - pitched into a well sunk deep into the crumbling sandstone of the desert. She wondered how stable the rock might be, what its condition was. Gloomily she imagined things getting much worse, and a grand creva.s.se opening up beneath her stout walking boots, and burying her for ever in the desert's bowels. But that was no good. Think on the bright side, Iris.