by Doctor Who
The Doctor rushed into the solar workshop, Dram thumping along behind him. ‘You created a compression field that could contain some of a star’s solar flares, right?’
Dram nodded. ‘The compressor beams out from an orbiting satellite.’
He stared round at the weird technology in the room. ‘What range does it have?’
‘I’m not sure. Maybe 100 million miles?’
The Doctor pulled the gravometer from his pocket and consulted the screen. ‘That may not be enough.’
‘For what?’
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‘For what I’m thinking.’ He gave Dram a wild smile. ‘Power her up, Dram! We have to try!’ He checked his watch. ‘Only ten minutes left.’
Flowers and Rose ran through the corridors. Rose had to keep stopping to let Flowers catch her up. She was trying very hard not to let her agitation show.
‘Sorry,’ Flowers wheezed. ‘But don’t worry. The hub isn’t much further.’
Rose dragged her along by the arm. Soon, Flowers swung her down a black-and-yellow side corridor.
‘It’s down here.’ Now Flowers led the way. She pulled out her passcard and fed it into the slot by the grey bulkhead door.
Rose watched the door slide open to reveal a room full of what looked to her like posh fuse boxes. ‘How long will it take to fiddle with the gravity?’
‘Not long,’ puffed Flowers. ‘Oh.’
One of the fuse boxes was bound shut with a huge chain and pad-lock.
Flowers bit her lip. ‘Seems Ermenshrew doesn’t like to fall for the same trick twice.’
Ermenshrew clutched hold of Don Arco as the lattice glowed with pristine white light, as the amplifier started to tremble with subtle energies.
‘The power-build’s beginning,’ she breathed, intoxicated not only by the moment but by the candle-fumes.
‘Where shall we go?’ wondered Don Arco. He giggled as a technician called up a star map on a nearby wall-screen. ‘How about somewhere local for starters?’
‘Say, within twenty light years?’
‘Somewhere with loads of people. . . ’
Ermenshrew gave a belly laugh. ‘Imagine how the human investi-gators will scurry about trying to work out what happened!’
‘Even if we told them they’d never believe it!’
And the two of them laughed and laughed till they felt sick.
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∗ ∗ ∗
Robsen was waiting helplessly in the sterile calm of the aqua-culture compound. For all he knew, the Blathereen’s first trip in Justicia could be to incinerate the world where his kids lived. They’d be wiped out in an instant. Them and billions of other lives.
And what was he doing about it? Waiting around as lookout for a couple of bug-eyed monsters.
He heard the cries and shrieks echoing down from the shaft. He peered up into the gloom.
‘Use the teleporter!’
‘I need both hands for that, I can’t move!’
‘What is it?’ Robsen shouted. ‘What’s happening?’
Then he became aware of a frantic rustling sound close by. It was coming from a tomato plant.
To his baffled disgust, a big, egg-shaped eye was jostling the plant’s roots and winking at him furiously. No, not at him – at something just behind him.
Robsen turned to find a Blathereen bearing down on him, reaching out with its killer claws. He dived aside, crashing into a bay of plants and flowers. As the Blathereen reached for him again, he rolled over backwards out of reach.
‘Always humans. . . ’ rumbled the hideous creature. ‘If there’s one thing I hate, it’s you ruddy humans!’
‘Then don’t look up that shaft,’ Robsen warned him. ‘There’s eight of us having a real party with your gravity warp.’
Enraged, the Blathereen swatted Robsen aside and started climbing up the inspection shaft. ‘Fun time’s over, little humans,’ it called. ‘I’m coming to get you. . . ’
Then, a few moments later, it screeched and fell with a resounding crash to the bottom of the ladder. It lay still. Robsen staggered up, and saw a cluster of weird, grey blob things nestled over the Blathereen’s head and neck like giant warts. Slowly they detached themselves and drifted back up the shaft like balloons. But the guard didn’t stir.
Robsen turned to the eye that had saved his life, lost for words. It stared back at him demurely.
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And then it fluttered its eyelashes.
Seconds later, Ecktosca and Callis scrambled down from the gloom, brushing more globs away from their heads and shoulders. The two Slitheen trampled the guard’s body in their haste to get clear.
‘You saved us,’ panted Ecktosca. ‘Enough globs attacked the guard to free our limbs, let us scoot down the ladder.’
‘For such pathetic animals, you humans do come in useful,’ Callis added. ‘On occasion.’
‘What about you?’ said Robsen. ‘Did you fix the gravity warp?’
‘No,’ Ecktosca admitted. ‘Barely even got started.’
‘Then we have to fix those glob things so they can’t stop you! That teleporter of yours! You. . . you could work in shifts, zip away every time it got too much.’
‘Now hang on,’ said Ecktosca. ‘Those globs really hurt.’
Robsen imagined his children staring up at the sky, gasping in wonder as three more suns appeared – then burning to dust. I. . . I could run up the ladder and let some of the globs get me. Distract them from you like the guard did – buy you time!’
They stared at him, their alien faces unfathomable.
‘ Please.’
Rose was running full pelt, looking for the maintenance cupboard in which Flowers reckoned she’d find some cutting gear. She kept re-peating Flowers’s directions, over and over. Sure, she was the faster of the two of them – but if she got lost now, or couldn’t find her way back. . .
Seven minutes left.
The Doctor sat poring over the controls for the solar flare compressor, referring to the gravometer now and then, barking out instructions at Dram.
‘You’re changing the direction of the compressor beam,’ the Slitheen noted.
‘But we don’t have the range.’ The Doctor thumped his fist down on the controls. ‘We need to boost it somehow.’
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‘Any extra energy will have to come from –’
‘The gravity amplifier! Yes!’ The Doctor gave Dram a big kiss on the head. ‘Can you feed the energy through from here?’
‘Everything in the SCAT-house runs through the same power relays,’
said Dram, calling up a screen full of complex equations. ‘But we won’t be able to get any of that energy until Don Arco hits the go button, tries to shift us all through space.’
‘Suits me fine,’ said the Doctor. He checked his watch. ‘Six minutes left. Can I help?’
‘Only by shutting up,’ said Dram.
Robsen cried out with pain as the globs bobbed out of the dark and settled on his shoulders. He hung grimly to the ladder as they throbbed with a vivid yellow light. He felt weak and sick. Burning up.
He could hear the Slitheen somewhere up above him, clanking and cracking at the cylinder. ‘Hurry!’ he shouted, willing himself to hold on.
Then two of the globs slithered up against his face. They were fat, round and incandescent, little suns. Like the suns that would blink into existence in some distant sky before. . .
His feet slipped off the rung, and he slid two metres down to land on the prone body of the Blathereen. The impact brought him back round.
Callis appeared beside him from nowhere, her claws on her brooch.
‘You’ll have to do better than that,’ she snapped, as Ecktosca’s shout of pained surprise floated down from the darkness. ‘Take it seriously!’
Robsen staggered to his feet, the world spinning. Hauled himself slowly back up the ladder.
‘How long till the power’s at optimum?’ asked Don Arco in excitement.
‘
Four minutes,’ a technician reported.
‘Here we are,’ said Ermenshrew, tapping at the star chart. ‘The New Washington system, 18.9 light years distant. Twelve worlds, four of which are inhabited.’ She chuckled. ‘They’re due to hold a peace conference on one of them next year.’
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Don Arco grunted. ‘They can hold a pieces conference.’
Ermenshrew cackled, and her tail wagged contentedly. ‘Technician, set in the co-ordinates.’
Rose had come across a cupboard. But was it the cupboard? It was locked. She pulled out the passcard, the white plastic slippery in her hand, and slotted it into place.
The door slid open. There were tools of various kinds strewn about.
Rose started rifling through them. Most of them were high-tech gadgets she didn’t recognise, and panic started to build.
Then finally her hands closed on a jemmy that was almost as thick as her wrist.
‘Yes!’ she gasped. ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ and sprinted back off down the corridor.
It had taken her three minutes to get here. She had to push herself faster. Faster.
‘I’ll have to leave you to it, Dram,’ the Doctor said. ‘I’ve got to reach the gravity workshop in time.’ He paused in the doorway. ‘Can I trust you?’
‘Can we trust you?’ Dram countered, his claws tapping at the touch screen, making the connections.
Rose threw herself down the small side corridor. ‘I’ve got the jemmy!’
she shouted.
Flowers grabbed it off her and set to work on the chain that held the fuse box shut. ‘I’m used to tools a touch more delicate,’ she admitted.
‘Then give it here!’ Rose wrested the jemmy away, rammed it between the chain link and the fuse box, and heaved on it. The chain rattled but didn’t break. ‘All right, this needs both of us. Help me!’ she gasped.
The Blathereen technician rose from the amplifier. ‘Power build-up completed.’
‘I think the honour of hitting the on-switch should be mine, Ermenshrew,’ said Don Arco grandly. ‘Don’t you?’
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He shuffled towards the console with his entourage, claws extended.
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Flowers lent Rose her strength and the two of them pulled with all their might on the jemmy. Finally the chain cracked open, and dragged the jemmy with it as it fell to the floor.
Rose’s hands were throbbing and red. Flowers opened up the panel.
‘I have to cut the gravity in the workshop area.’
‘You said it wouldn’t take long, right?’
‘How long do we have?’
Rose checked her watch. ‘Oh, God, thirty seconds!’
Flowers peered at the controls. ‘My glasses are all steamed up,’ she complained.
‘Quick!’
‘Happens when I get flustered. . . ’
‘Fifteen seconds, Flowers!’
‘Can’t localise it! I’ll have to zero-grav the entire SCAT-house. Hang on!’
Ermenshrew squawked in alarm. She was floating.
‘What’s happening!’ shouted Don Arco as he too rose into the air.
His entourage clung on to his great fat limbs in alarm as they slowly 203
spiralled upwards together.
‘Doctor!’ yelled Ermenshrew, struggling uselessly against the air.
‘It’s you, I know it is!’ She stared up into the darkness of the ceiling.
‘Watch out for him up above! He’ll be trying to get in through there!’
But Don Arco was pointing downwards in horror.
‘Look!’
he
croaked.
‘It worked!’ cried Rose as she started drifting up into the air.
‘He won’t have long,’ fretted Flowers, clinging on to the fuse box to steady herself. ‘Just a few minutes before normal gravity is reset.’
‘Let’s hope it’s enough.’ Dennel’s lighter floated out of Rose’s pocket.
She grabbed it, and started nervously thumbing the flints. ‘ Whoa!’
The lighter didn’t produce the usual spike of yellow flame. Instead a weird blue blob, undulating like mercury, glowed from the metal. Tiny little specks of blue fire detached from it. The lighter grew suddenly hot and Rose had to let it go.
‘That’s it!’ Flowers gasped. ‘Fire in zero gravity behaves completely differently. That’s what the Doctor’s up to!’
Without gravity, flames can’t rise upwards – and so Don Arco’s candles had become spitting balls of intense blue flame. A technician drifted helplessly on to them, screeching as the fire scored holes in his flesh and the hot wax seared the wounds.
And there was nothing to make the healing smoke rise either. Don Arco’s precious fumes were palling close to floor level, where they started to smother the crackling flame-balls.
‘No!’ he croaked, slowly somersaulting, struggling to reach them.
‘My lungs! My lungs won’t cope!’
‘Where are you, Doctor?’ shouted Ermenshrew, still scanning the ceiling for any sign of him. She didn’t notice the injured technician smash the door controls, desperate to escape to safety. As he left, the Doctor, who’d been gripping hold of the doorframe outside, swung himself into the room.
‘Come out and face me, Doctor!’ shouted Ermenshrew.
‘OK!’ said the Doctor, drifting underneath her and waving.
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‘Guards, get him!’ she shouted.
A guard floating nearby made a lunge for him. But the Doctor braved the smog to kick up a storm of spluttering candles. The blue blobs of flame multiplied, spat away from the wicks, blinding the guard with their incandescence. But now another guard had drifted close enough to grab for the Doctor’s arm. In a gruesome ballet, the two skirted past each other, narrowly avoiding contact.
‘My candles!’ sobbed Don Arco. ‘My lungs! Give up, Ermenshrew, he’ll kill me!’
‘I’ll slaughter you for this, Doctor!’ Ermenshrew promised. She grabbed big clawfuls of air, propelled herself towards him.
The Doctor couldn’t get clear in time. The talons reached out for his throat.
But then, with a ferocious squeal, a sticky great blob of sweetness collided with the livid Blathereen, knocking her clear. As Nesshalop spiralled upwards to accompanying cheers from her fellow prisoners, she winked at the Doctor with one of her remaining eyes, little sugar crystals spattering from her smile.
Yahoomer, the furry mammoth, meanwhile, had dug one ivory tusk into a bank of controls to anchor himself. With one trunk he hauled Nesshalop down from midair, and he stiffened another for the Doctor to hang on to.
‘Doctor, come on!’ Don Arco pleaded. ‘We can do a deal!’
Ermenshrew shouted, ‘Don’t be so pathetic, Don Arco!’
‘All right, yeah – we can do a deal!’ the Doctor agreed. ‘You hand yourselves in. You help the humans remove all the Blathereen from this place.’
‘I’ll pay you anything you want!’ Don Arco cried.
Ermenshrew frowned. ‘You will not!’
‘Stick your money. Those are my terms!’ the Doctor insisted.
‘Which we do not accept!’ Once again, Ermenshrew had manoeu-vred herself into an attack position, claws outstretched to rake his flesh.
‘I hate zero gravity!’
shouted Callis, clinging on to the spindly
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branches of the poppito tree in the aquaculture compound. ‘It gives me the trots! Let’s get out of here.’
‘That idiot human has floated up the access shaft,’ sighed Ecktosca, clinging to a rung on the ladder, staring upwards. ‘The globs will kill him.’
‘Never mind the human!’
But Ecktosca did mind. The thing had shown a bravery of sorts.
They’d never have been able to rig the gravity warp without his distracting the globs.
Now the bio-creatures clustered about the drifting Robsen, milking him of his remaining life. They would drain him dry. Grumbling, Eckt
osca propelled himself up the ladder, gripped hold of Robsen’s ankle in his massive claw, and pulled down hard.
The human bounced at the bottom of the shaft and the globs scattered. Ecktosca felt a familiar agony as the nearest ones bit into his own flesh.
And then the gravity kicked back in. With a yelp, Ecktosca fell to the ground below.
‘You silly, headstrong boy,’ Callis cried. ‘Now can we get out of here?’
Gravity snatched Ermenshrew away from the Doctor seconds before she could get him. She fell with a squelch and a crunch on top of the remaining candles.
The Doctor landed lightly on his feet, still supported by Yahoomer’s sturdy trunk. But smoke from the candles was suddenly free to squall up into the air, and it created a thick fug in the room. The bright white light of the wire lattice gave the smoke a sinister glow.
He turned to Yahoomer, gestured to the exit. ‘Everyone out! Go on, shift!’ Nesshalop and Blista took hold of a trunk each and bustled away with Yahoomer through the smoke.
‘Don Arco, where are you!’ shouted the Doctor. ‘We can still do that deal.’
‘You’re wasting your breath,’ hissed Ermenshrew from somewhere in the gloom. ‘My leader can’t speak to you.’
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Suddenly she loomed up, holding Don Arco by his bloodied throat.
Her talons had punctured the thick, blubbery flesh.
‘He seems to have something wrong with his neck,’ she said, black eyes agleam, standing between him and the door.
‘You’re bonkers, aren’t you?’ said the Doctor sadly.
‘I’m head of the family now! And my first duty will be to dispose of you.’
She raised her free claw. But then, with a disbelieving yell, Ermenshrew staggered forwards as if someone had pushed her. She smashed into the wall, while the Doctor ducked between her legs and came face to face with his rescuer.
‘Rose!’ he beamed.
‘You sure those things are made of living calcium and not brick walls?’ she asked him, coughing as she panted for breath, her eyes streaming in the smoke.
Suddenly the floor shook beneath them, and the sound of a colossal explosion carried. Rose clutched hold of the Doctor’s arm.
