by Doctor Who
She heard a squelching noise up ahead. ‘Yeah, taking a bit of an interest, aren’t they? Quick, Dram! How close are we?’
‘Not far to –’ He broke off, gave a surprisingly shrill shriek of pain.
‘One’s got me! It’s got me!’
Flowers cringed as a glob squelched softly on to the back of her neck. ‘Ermenshrew must have reprogrammed them to attack anything up here!’
‘Thanks very much,’ huffed Ecktosca. ‘We were perfectly safe up here till you came along!’
‘Shut up and keep moving,’ snapped the Doctor. ‘They’re sluggish.
Getting a feel for their new programming. There’s still time. . . Look, we must nearly be there! There’s light at the end of the tunnel!’
Flowers wasn’t sure if he was speaking in metaphor or if he could really see it – because a glob was pressing itself into her face like a bad kisser. She tried to pull it free, but she needed her elbows to keep herself moving. Any minute now the globs would start sponging off her energy. . . draining her dry. . .
‘We’re here!’ gasped Dram. ‘Aquaculture compound.’
‘Too far to jump,’ the Doctor realised. ‘Way too far.’
Flowers clawed the glob on her face to one side, squirming as it latched on to her hair instead – just in time to see the Doctor throw himself from the rocky perch. . .
‘Of course,’ breathed Ecktosca. And like a bouncy ball he hopped and jumped out through the hole after the Doctor. Dram followed him without hesitation.
145
Suddenly, Flowers understood. Summoning all her strength, she wriggled sluglike to the opening and propelled herself off the edge.
At once the globs kicked into action – and held her in midair. Presumably the Doctor had reckoned on the fact they couldn’t let any of them die. They were programmed to punish, not to kill.
That was Ermenshrew’s job.
Flowers stared down over the aquaculture compound. It was a big, circular chamber. Around the perimeter, and in a large circle in the middle of the room, trees and plants stood in bays awash with nutrients. They were fed through ribbed pipes that hung down around them like vines from occasional metal silos. The white walls behind them glowed with simulated sunlight.
There was no one else here besides the Doctor, who was staggering about with two globs on his shoulder and one on his leg. Flowers found her own globs to be quite obliging as they swooped her down over the centrepiece of bushy plants then deposited her gently on the ground beside him.
Then, to her surprise, they hopped straight off her and on to the Doctor.
‘Out of their lair, out of their hair.’ He spoke through gritted teeth, forcing his limbs to move him along. ‘You don’t have the implant.’
‘Ermenshrew was hoping they’d hold us up there?’
‘Then herd us off to wherever she’s waiting,’ the Doctor agreed. ‘Get them off me!’
‘Globs, leave him,’ she commanded. Nothing happened. ‘Let him go!’
‘No good. She’s taken away your control. Don’t waste time. Find the portal. Only chance.’
‘Where are the Slitheen?’ she asked, looking round frantically. ‘They could help!’
‘Might already have gone.’ Another four blobs swooped down from the darkness and thudded into his torso, slurping greedily. He gasped and sank to his knees. ‘Portal. Quick!’
146
Flowers tarted haring about the aquaculture compound in a flap.
What would the gateway to a tunnel through space look like, anyway?
‘What’s this?’ she heard the Doctor croak.
She turned back to him, and gasped with horror. The globs were swarming over him – thirty of them at least, glowing and throbbing darkly. His hand stuck out of the mass, pointing to the nearest metal pillar.
‘It – it’s a nitrogen feed,’ she told him. Two more globs plopped down to join the scrum, one on his thigh, one slap bang on his face.
‘Don’t worry, Doctor, I’ll find the portal –’
‘Thought it was a nitrogen feed. Feeding from where?’
‘The planet’s surface. There’s a pipeline that stretches right up. Now let me go and –’
‘The atmosphere’s nitrogen?’
Flowers wrung her hands, feeling utterly helpless. ‘Almost all of it. As we reach the furthest point from the suns, it freezes and falls as nitrogen snow. It’s processed in the silo here, combined with ammonia and fed to the plants –’
147
‘Open the feed,’ he gasped, dragging himself towards it.
‘What?’
‘Sonic screwdriver! Inspection plate, there!’ Five more globs gathered over him; he was all but buried. ‘Hurry! Ermenshrew will be on her way!’
Flowers pointed the device at the inspection plate. The screwdriver whirred but the energy released was feeble. The pinhead screws barely jostled in their housings.
‘Give it a thwack!’
Flowers whacked the shaft of the screwdriver against the silo. The blue energy waves gave a sudden crackle and the inspection plate burst open. Flowers screamed and leaped back as a lethal blizzard of nitrogen escaped at high pressure.
It sprayed out into the walkway and all over the Doctor.
Or rather, over the globs that smothered him. With an unpleasant squealing noise, they wobbled off him like lumpy icicles, fell and cracked on the floor. The Doctor struggled clear of the freeze. A pat-tern of hard frost rimmed his jacket, but aside from a few red patches on his face and forehead he seemed unharmed.
‘Well done,’ he said to her, kicking aside the dead globs and crossing to help her up. ‘I meant to say, get out of the way.’
‘How did you know that would happen?’
The Doctor started looking around. ‘This planet’s been moved 20
million miles further out from the suns, remember? That’s frozen more of the atmosphere into nitrogen ice, brought it twinkling down to the ground ready for processing – far more than that thing was built to cope with.’
Flowers wasn’t satisfied. ‘There must be something more to it than that.’
He scrutinised a nearby tomato plant. ‘You explain it, then.’
‘The thing they’re using to make the space tunnels – the gravity warp!’ cried Flowers. ‘They’ve built it up on the planet surface, haven’t they? Where no one would ever see it!’
‘What, and you reckon the short-wave gravity field forced that near-liquid nitrogen out at high pressure?’ He looked at her and smiled.
148
‘Oh, so that’s what happened!’
Flowers own smile was stifled by a sudden sharp tang in the air.
‘What’s that smell?’
He sniffed the air himself. ‘Ammonia. We must have ruptured the nutrient tank, it’s escaping into – ah!’ Abruptly, he gripped the trunk of a tall, graceful sapling, littered with burgundy leaves. ‘And on the subject of escaping. . . ’
Flowers clutched his arm. ‘You’ve found the portal?’
‘This is a poppito tree. Native only to the Slitheen planet.’ He gripped it, pulled it, peered all around it. ‘Got to be a clue, right?’
‘What a genius you truly are, Doctor.’
Flowers looked up in alarm at the grating alien voice.
Ermenshrew, still in her true and slavering form, had entered the compound. She was watching them now through black and narrowed eyes.
The thought that Maggi Jalovitch was desperate to see him filled Robsen with disquiet. It was probably nothing – probably a wind-up. He knew he already had a reputation as a bit of a soft touch. But Maggi was friends with Kazta, and there was always the chance that she could know something he didn’t. Something that Kazta would never dream of telling a screw.
Something about Blanc.
He kept thinking back to the voices he’d heard coming from Blanc’s room, and the gloating look on her face when she’d played him the recording. He’d been forced to accept her argument that those were the
voices he’d heard. But deep down he knew she’d been having a conversation with someone in the room with her. So where had that person gone?
He kept thinking back to Rose Tyler’s crazy talk about monsters. . .
Maggi had an extra kitchen shift today; it was Sunday, and the usual circus of full-block dinner awaited them all, even the Governor. In the meantime, Robsen decided he would go to see Blanc, and ask her a few more questions, now that he’d time to think things through.
149
He checked the roster in the canteen. She was on shift in the washrooms. Perhaps he could sneak into her room and have a quiet poke about. . .
If he were caught he’d be sacked and shipped back home with a six-month pay penalty. He was crazy. He’d only signed up for the money, and now he was ready to blow the whole point of his coming here. All those months away from his kids, leaving them in the foster home. . .
But when he reached Blanc’s door, still fretting over how he might break inside, he found it a fraction ajar.
A gift. Now he was doing nothing wrong. He was investigating –wasn’t Blanc meant to be on shift? If so, why had she left her door open?
Warily, he pushed it open.
Maggi was inside.
‘What the –’ Robsen’s hand went for his baton, but there was no need. The girl was red-faced and quivering with fear. ‘Jalovitch! What are you doing here?’
‘Oh, Warder Robsen,’ she babbled, a big tear starting down her face.
‘Blanc knew I was gonna tell you stuff about the monsters so she took me here.’
‘ She took you here? When?’
‘Just an hour ago, tied me up.’
There were signs of a possible struggle, Robsen supposed – a spindly plant with russet leaves had been knocked over. ‘Where is she now?’
‘Dunno, sir. Said she’d get me later.’
‘She marched you here in full view of everyone?’
‘We never passed no one, sir,’ said Maggi wretchedly. ‘She tied me up but I got free, see! I had to – she’s a monster, sir! She’s got this zip in her head –’
‘This crazy talk about monsters,’ said Robsen, shaking his head.
‘You’ve put each other up to it, haven’t you? It’s a pack of lies, isn’t it?’
He so wanted to believe he was right.
‘Ask yourself, then,’ Maggi protested. ‘Why would she bring me here?’
150
Robsen didn’t have an answer.
Then he saw that Maggi was
crouched in front of a large black disc.
‘She brings other people here too,’ whispered Maggi. ‘Other monsters. I’m not making it up, honest. This disc makes people appear from nowhere. And when they tread on it, they go back there too.’
‘All right,’ said Robsen. ‘Come on, we’ll go to the Governor. We’ll get Blanc there too. We’ll get this sorted out.’
‘But – the Governor’s one of them now!’ She looked wide-eyed, terrified. ‘He is!’
‘Just calm down, Jalovitch, or I’ll have you restrained –’
She threw her arms round him. ‘I’ll make you believe me!’
He was trying to pull himself free when she suddenly let go, and he staggered back on to the black disc.
There was a quick, greedy hum of power.
And with the sound of his own screams ringing and echoing in his ears, Robsen felt himself start to burn away, clutching the hot and shifting air with dissolving fingers until he fell away into nothingness.
Finally, panting and sweaty, Rose and Dennel reached the monitoring station. It was the size of a small bungalow and lay rocking feebly like some great wounded creature.
‘Anti-gravs,’ said Dennel. ‘Still trying to lift it up in the air.’
‘Nice to know we’ve all got something in common,’ she sighed as she clambered in through the gaping doorway. ‘Hopeless optimism.’
It may have been a monitoring platform once, but now it was more like a funfair ride. After their grisly find on the way over here, Rose fought to keep the contents of her stomach as well as her balance as it shifted from side to side. A hum of power whirred erratically through the air around her, and in the soft shine of fluorescent lights she saw that the floor – once a wide, curved wall – was filled with TV screens.
She tapped an ‘on’ button with her foot and a screen glowed into life. She tried another – nothing. But the one beside it snapped into life like an eye winking open.
Rosc grinned, kept switching on sets.
And then she realised what the monitors were showing.
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She supposed the humans round here had used this place Big Brother style, spying on the poor people trapped in their various prisons. But it seemed the Blathereen were using them to check up on their own kind. Little subtitles on the screens helpfully informed her of the various locations:
Justice Epsilon, High Minister’s office: a Blathereen sat in a big leather chair with its feet up on the desk.
Justice Alpha, Overseers’ Station: three Blathereen stood with their backs to the camera, stubby tails wagging as they looked out over distant pyramids. But there were other buildings under construction in the foreground, vast, graceless rectangles of heavy stone. What the hell were they. . . ?
Then her eyes fell on the screen by her right foot. Justice Beta, Detention Centre Six, Governor’s office. ‘Dennel, look at this,’ she whispered.
He joined her, silently staring at a Blathereen as it wriggled inside a cosy, fleshy sack. As it zipped itself into the Governor’s skin, pulling at the flabby folds on the neck and the cheeks. Straightening itself out, ready for duty.
‘Oh no. . . ’ breathed Dennel.
‘Why are the Blathereen doing this? What do they want?’
‘They want us dead!’ snapped Dennel. ‘Like Ronika, Malc – all of them out there!’
‘No. Not all of us. They must need some of the people here alive, or why bother with the whole stealth thing?’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Dennel dully. ‘We can’t hide from them now.
There’s nowhere to go.’ He stared at her. ‘They’ve taken over everything.’
Flowers quailed as Ermenshrew took a sticky step closer. ‘What d’you want now?’ The Doctor sighed, looking quite affronted at the Blathereen’s sudden presence.
‘How did you free yourself of the globs?’ she hissed.
He shrugged. ‘Gave them the cold shoulder.’
152
‘I have had more than enough of your pathetic attempts to stave off the inevitable.’
‘Well, we were just off anyway,’ said the Doctor. ‘About to jump down your warren in space.’
‘And it is only ours,’ she hissed. ‘Our carapaces are strong enough to travel the warp-holes with no ill effects. Humans are not so hardy. It’s very inconvenient – if we could have risked bringing your pretty little human piggy through the portal, my cousin would still be well.’
‘But you’re not making these tunnels just for convenient travel, are you? With the gravity amplifier magnifying the energy of the warp-hole network, you can create tunnels through space a billion times bigger.’ The Doctor stared at Ermenshrew. ‘But why? Why d’you need such a big hole?’
‘You’ll find out for yourself soon enough.’ Her dark eyes glittered.
‘Your team are progressing so very nicely without you on the late shift, Doctor. Construction of the amplifier will soon be complete.’ Ermenshrew cocked her enormous head to one side. ‘Now that I’ve shown them what happens if they fail me.’
She threw something down on the floor. It landed with a wet slop.
Flowers stared, appalled, at a thick yellow puddle in which floated a single, sugar-frosted eye.
‘Oh, Nesshalop,’ she whispered.
‘And now, Flowers, I think it’s time you were dead.’
‘No.’ The Doctor was trembling with anger. ‘Before you do anything else, I should take a sniff with that supersno
ut of yours.’
And Ermenshrew did. ‘Ammonia?’
‘’S right.’
He gestured to the gaping inspection panel.
‘I pro-
grammed a hyper-destronic pulse into the nitrogen feeder. The ammonia’s acting as a carrier. Every passing second it’s transmuting the energy as we speak – ready to send it shooting up into your gravity warp above.’
‘You’re lying.’ She took a step forwards, raised her claws.
‘You’ve not got long to disconnect it. Any minute now, that warp’s gonna be scattered over half the frozen surface of this planet. And 153
that’ll make a mess of anyone who tries to go through one of your warp-holes, won’t it?’
Ermenshrew turned to a patch of glowing wall and hissed in anger.
It slid smoothly aside to reveal a vertical access shaft studded with meaty metal rungs. ‘For the record, I know this is a trick, OK?’
‘Sure you do.’
‘Just remember, there’s nowhere you can go to escape me.’ She ducked inside and started to climb. Her voice floated down to them in eerie echoes. ‘Even if you dared risk the portal, the controls can’t be primed by aliens. I’ll be seeing you very soon.’
The Doctor dashed to scoop up Nesshalop’s eye in its sticky fluid. It winked at him sadly, and he pressed a kiss against its wrinkled, frosted lid. ‘We’ll leave this in a nutrients tray. If it doesn’t dry out she may be able to reabsorb it.’
‘What’s the use?’ moaned Flowers. ‘That evil thing! She’ll kill Nesshalop, all of us! How can we possibly stop the Blathereen doing whatever it is they’re doing?’
‘How can I find Rose?’ He gently placed the eye at the base of a tomato plant. ‘Not by sitting here and crying.’
She wiped her eyes. ‘That’s the ammonia,’ she muttered, her throat starting to burn. ‘Leak’s getting worse.’
Suddenly the ground either side of her seemed to explode in a blinding charge of electric blue light. She jumped in alarm as, in the wink of an eye, two Slitheen were coughing their guts up beside her.
‘Thought you’d scarpered,’ grinned the Doctor, slapping them both heartily on the back.
