She tried the Doctor’s private channel, but there was no response from that either. There was no response on any channel. A flashing light on her wrist panel caught her attention, and with a shock she saw that her oxygen levels were dangerously low. She was down to less than an hour’s air left. She must have been unconscious for quite a while. A sudden panic filled her as she thought the others, unable to find her in the jungle, might have moved on without her.
Clara tried to keep her pulse rate steady and her breathing even. She forced herself to rationalise the situation, examine what had happened. She remembered the Doctor saying that another time flux was taking place, as the arctic conditions blurred and changed and then she couldn’t recall much else. Obviously she had travelled in time again, to another epoch, where the planet was covered with lush green vegetation. Probably it was the equivalent of prehistoric Earth. Perhaps there were even dinosaurs here.
None of this was actually helping. In fact, she was frightening herself even more.
Clara crawled along the branch until she reached what looked like the trunk of whatever giant tree she was in. The bark was covered with a thick, slippery moss full of flies. Trusting her spacesuit to protect her, she began to climb carefully down the tree.
—
Clara glimpsed a familiar, metallic blue colour below and felt a surge of hope. She climbed rapidly down and found a man in an Alexandria spacesuit slumped over a thick branch, half hidden by long, spiky leaves. She clambered around him and until she could see it was Raymond Balfour, completely unconscious. She rapped a knuckle on the helmet and, to her immense relief, Balfour opened his eyes.
‘Miss Oswald?’ He turned over and sat up groggily. He looked around in amazement.
‘I know,’ said Clara. ‘Jungle.’ But she couldn’t help smiling. She’d found someone else alive at least.
‘Where’s everyone else?’ Balfour asked. ‘Where’s Tibby?’
‘I don’t know. You’re the first I’ve found.’
Balfour’s face looked grim. Or was it simply determined? Clara couldn’t see any of the enthusiastic amateur explorer he wanted to be. All she could see now was a survivor.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We need to find the others.’
—
Balfour surprised Clara. He accepted the change of scene more easily than she would have guessed, and in fact seemed almost resigned to their predicament. He also thought of something that Clara had not, and she could have kicked herself: scanning for the signals of any other spacesuit transponders in the area. They picked up two clear signals, from Tibby Vent and Tanya Flexx. There was nothing for any of the others.
While they were planning how to coordinate a search, and how best to triangulate on each of the signals they had, the foliage started to rustle violently behind them. They whirled around, expected some kind of jungle predator, but there was nothing – until a thick curtain of vines was torn away to reveal two figures in Alexandria spacesuits.
‘Thank god we’ve found you,’ gasped Tanya.
Tibby was almost crying with relief. ‘We only just picked up your suit signals.’
‘Thank goodness you’re all right,’ said Balfour.
‘Took us twenty minutes to get through the jungle,’ Tanya said.
‘The signal range must be affected by the trees,’ Balfour surmised. ‘It’s playing havoc with the radios, too. But the others could be here somewhere; we just can’t track them.’
Hugs were exchanged, made awkward by the suits and helmets, but in truth it felt like there was little to celebrate. Clara tried repeatedly to locate the Doctor’s transponder, or contact him via the radio, but there was nothing.
‘So what now?’ asked Balfour.
‘I suggest we find a good hotel and book in for the night,’ said Tanya. ‘I for one could do with a long soak in a hot tub.’
They smiled dutifully but they were all too aware of the seriousness of their position.
‘I don’t know about you, but I’m getting really low on oxygen,’ said Tibby. She held up her wrist so that they could see the flashing light.
A long scream tore through the jungle and they all whirled to face the direction it came from.
‘What the hell?’ Tanya stood up. ‘That sounded almost human to me.’
Another scream. ‘Help me! Oh, for pity’s sake, help me!’
‘All too human,’ said Clara, moving towards the sound.
They followed the noise for a short distance, climbing down ten metres through the branches until they reached a matted tangle of undergrowth covering a long, wide bough. Long, sharp spikes of some horn-like material protruded from the undergrowth, reaching up into the fetid air like jagged knives. Next to them lay a man in a spacesuit, on his back, yelling and flailing his arms in the air.
‘It’s OK, Marco,’ said Clara. ‘We’re here. Calm down or you’re going to waste what’s left of your oxygen.’
Marco scrabbled into a sitting position. Inside his helmet his face was a twisted mask of pain and terror. His gloved hands were scratching at the visor. ‘I’ve got no oxygen! It’s all gone! The air’s all gone! My helmet’s cracked! Oh, for pity’s sake help me!’
They checked his helmet and Balfour quickly found a narrow gap in the glass and a series of small cracks. ‘These are supposed to be indestructible,’ he muttered, with the air of a man who’d paid a lot of money and not got what he expected.
‘Almost indestructible,’ said Clara. ‘Maybe it was weakened by the acid rain.’
‘He must have hit one of these spikes,’ Balfour said. ‘It’s cracked the visor and broke the transponder and radio.’
‘I’ve lost all my oxygen!’ wept Marco. He shook his wrist at them to show the air indicator. It was glowing a solid red. Empty.
‘And yet,’ said Clara, ‘you’re still breathing.’
‘And yelling,’ added Tibby.
‘You’re lucky those spikes only cracked your helmet,’ said Tanya. ‘A bit further to your left and they would have gone straight through you.’
Marco gazed at the carpet of spikes and turned pale. Gradually he began to calm down.
‘The air here must be breathable, though,’ Clara realised.
They looked at each other, hope suddenly rising inside. Balfour ran a check on his suit diagnostic panel. ‘Scanning now. Mainly nitrogen…fair amount of oxygen…’
Tanya was already reaching up for her helmet seal. She didn’t wait for a full analysis. She unlatched the helmet and tore it off with a gasp of relief, her black hair falling in a tumble around her head. She took in a long, deep breath and then slowly exhaled.
Clara, Tibby and Balfour watched her closely.
‘Oh, that is good,’ Tanya said, closing her eyes. She breathed deeply. ‘Boy, could I do with a drink just now.’
‘If there’s air here then there might be water,’ said Tibby.
‘Never mind about that,’ said Marco Spritt. He got to his feet, shaking his arm free from Clara. He fiddled with the latches on his broken helmet and took it off. ‘I could have suffocated. I might have died!’
‘But you didn’t,’ Balfour said.
‘The helmet was faulty,’ Marco said. He threw it violently away into the jungle. ‘I’m holding you responsible for that, Balfour.’
‘Hey,’ said Clara. ‘Stop being so ungrateful. It was the acid.’
‘Ungrateful? There’s nothing to be grateful for! And where the hell are we, anyway?’
Clara took off her own helmet. The air was warm and humid and full of the rank stench of rotting vegetation, but it felt like the most beautiful air she had ever breathed.
Tibby and Balfour took off theirs too and for a minute the four of them just stood and breathed.
‘I don’t know about you lot but I’m sweating like a pig in this suit,’ said Tanya. She unsealed the steelex and then quickly pulled the whole suit off, before anyone had a chance to protest.
‘Maybe we should keep them on…just to be safe,’ su
ggested Tibby.
‘Safe?’ Marco snorted. ‘We haven’t been safe since we came out of the wormhole!’
‘There could be another time flux,’ Clara said. ‘We don’t know where we’ll end up, or what the conditions would be.’
Tanya didn’t seemed concerned. ‘Suit’s not much use if there’s no air in the tank,’ she said as she screwed the steelex material up into a ball and shoved it inside her helmet. Then she dropped the helmet on the ground and stretched like a cat. ‘Ye gods, but I’m tired.’
‘Can’t we replenish the oxygen tanks from the air?’ Clara asked.
‘No,’ Marco said bitterly. ‘They use solid-state oxygen. Can’t be done.’
‘I don’t really understand any of this,’ said Tibby. ‘Snow one minute, jungle the next…What’s going on?’
‘The Doctor said we were dropping back through time,’ Clara said. ‘Millions of years, maybe, slipping through various eras in the planet’s past. This could be prehistoric, before it was all destroyed by the ice age.’
‘And it could happen again?’
‘Yes. Any time.’
‘Where is the Doctor, though?’ asked Balfour. ‘And Mitch and Hobbo and Jem? They must be here somewhere…’
‘I hope so,’ Clara said. She could feel the perspiration all over her body, seeping its way into every part of her spacesuit. Tanya was right; it was getting uncomfortable, especially wearing their own clothes under the suits. With the helmets on and sealed, the suit thermostats had kept them warm in the snow and cool in the jungle. But without them they were unprotected.
‘Hey, look what I’ve found!’ Tanya’s voice drifted back through the undergrowth.
Clara felt a flash of worry. ‘We should stick together,’ she said, as they climbed through the foliage to find Tanya. She wanted to organise a search for the Doctor and the others, and this was just a distraction.
Tanya had found a pool. It looked like clear water, rain water perhaps, gathered in a shallow dip in one of the broad branches of the trees. There were a number of pools where the water had gathered in deep gouges in the bark. Thick, rubbery leaves formed a low ceiling over the area, draping it in shade. It felt marginally cooler here but there was a strange, fetid smell. Around the edge where a number of dark, mustard-yellow blooms speckled with black patches.
‘Not deep enough for a bath,’ Tanya said, bending down to look into the nearest pool. ‘But I’m not complaining.’
‘It might not be safe to drink,’ Clara warned, although her mouth was tingling with the prospect. ‘It could still be full of acid.’
‘How do you even know it’s water?’ asked Marco crossly. ‘You should check it first.’
‘You’re right,’ said Clara. She turned to Balfour. ‘Can we do some sort of test? Check whether it’s water or not?’
‘What’s this?’ asked Tibby, examining the blooms growing around the edge of the area. The mustard-coloured petals were thick, fibrous hand-shapes cupping a deep, dark centre. Each of them was full of something that looked like tar, but there were bubbles floating on the surface.
‘Looks a bit like frogspawn,’ said Clara. ‘Only it’s black.’ She didn’t like it. It looked as if something was concealed beneath the surface, quietly seething, waiting. And the smell was very odd; meaty and threatening. It made her nose wrinkle, and she was worried the others were getting too close. ‘Maybe we should stay away from them,’ she advised.
‘There’s more over here,’ said Tanya. ‘In fact all the plants are full of this stuff…’
There was a noise like a sneeze and one of the plants suddenly closed up, the petals snapping shut like a Venus Fly Trap. The black goo inside sprayed all over Tanya and she staggered back with a cry.
‘Get away from it!’ Clara yelled, but it was too late. Tanya’s bare arms and shoulders were spattered with the tar-like substance.
They pulled her away from the plants, stumbling back through the undergrowth until they were clear of the area.
‘It’s stinging,’ Tanya gasped.
Balfour tried to get some of the dark slime off her arms, wiping at it with his spacesuit gloves still on, but the goo was thick and seemed to have stuck to the skin.
‘Find somewhere for her to sit,’ Clara said. Tibby and Balfour helped Tanya back the way they’d come, with Marco clearing a rough path through the foliage.
—
They sat Tanya down against the bole of a tree. The frogspawn seemed to be spreading, thinning out as it expanded. Some of the larger patches were already joining up.
‘Should’ve kept my suit on,’ Tanya said. Her arms, shoulders and part of her neck were covered in the tar. As they watched, it spread further, oozing slowly over her flesh.
‘There must be something we can do!’ Tibby looked desperately at the others.
‘It’s quite interesting, I suppose,’ Tanya said. She winced, clearly in pain, and struggled to continue. ‘I’m an exobiologist, after all, as well as a medic. You were right, Clara – it’s like frogspawn; some kind of amniotic fluid containing eggs.’ She held up her left arm, which was now almost completely covered. ‘You can see them as it moves, like tiny little balls in the slime.’
‘It’s disgusting,’ said Marco.
‘But why did the plant spray it over you?’ asked Balfour.
‘What does all life need to thrive?’ Tanya asked him. ‘Food. Protein. I must’ve looked like a good bet.’
The black spawn had spread further as she spoke, oozing up her neck and towards her face.
‘What can we do?’ asked Clara, feeling sick with helplessness. ‘Can’t we try to wash it off…use the water?’
‘We can’t be sure the water is safe,’ Balfour objected. ‘If it even is water.’
‘But there must be something we can do!’
‘Very little, actually.’ Tanya grimaced, clearly in pain as the blackness spread. It was slowly becoming one solid layer. ‘Cell duplication is happening at a tremendous rate,’ she noted. ‘Wow.’
It rose further up her neck, over her chin. She pressed her lips shut as it approached her mouth. The others watched in horror as the tar flowed over her mouth, sealing it shut. Her nostrils were flaring in panic. Her eyes widened in fear and pain as, with abominable speed, the spawn enveloped her head, closing over her nose and eyes, as if her face was disappearing beneath the surface of a pool of ink.
‘It’s killing her!’ Marco said.
The entire upper half of Tanya’s body was now covered in a film of black spawn. She struggled weakly, and then stopped moving altogether. Her legs twitched once and then lay still.
Tibby covered her face with her hands, unable to look. Balfour put his arm around her, pulled her away from the scene.
Clara, numb with revulsion, couldn’t tear her gaze away. The glistening black shape of Tanya had begun to lose definition, the nose flattening, her head compressing, arms drawing in across the body as the spawn contracted, or consumed, what it contained. The spawn oozed and pulsed, hard pustules growing out of the surface – little eggs, perhaps, ready to hatch.
‘It happened so quickly,’ said Balfour, in a disbelieving whisper. ‘I can hardly believe it.’
Tibby was sobbing. ‘There was nothing we could do…nothing…’
‘We’ve got to get away from here,’ Clara said, standing up.
‘That’s wonderful advice,’ Marco sneered. He gestured to the thick jungle surrounded them. ‘But where exactly do you suggest we go?’
Chapter
14
The Doctor stood on a metal wall overlooking a dark, craggy landscape swathed in mist.
The sky was as black as dried blood; what passed for night on this world of neutron dusk. He could see the land around him because the soil appeared to contain some kind of slow-decay isotope that imbued it with the faint radiance of putrefying meat. He could breathe the air because the latest time flux had carried him to some distant epoch in the planet’s long history when nitrogen and oxygen wer
e the primary gases making up the atmosphere. He sniffed, lifting his long, aquiline nose to trace a particular scent he couldn’t quite place. Ozone? Cordite? He sniffed again, but it was gone. It was as if the luminescent ground had somehow absorbed the odours of a battlefield from a hundred thousand years before.
‘Any sign?’ asked Mitch Keller, climbing up onto the wall next to him. His baseball cap was pulled firmly down, his ship overalls crumpled and dirt-smeared. Like the Doctor, he had removed his spacesuit. They’d run out of air anyway and the suits had quickly become an encumbrance.
‘Nothing,’ said the Doctor. He had been scanning the area from this vantage point, looking for Clara and the others. In the distance they could see the hazy orange fire of volcanoes. Perhaps it was the sulphurous fumes, borne on the wind, that he could smell.
‘They must be around here somewhere,’ Mitch said. He looked back into the crumbling ruins behind them, where Hobbo was sitting with Jem. Mist, illuminated by the soft glow of the earth, coiled slowly around their feet.
The Doctor looked sceptical. ‘The time fluxes are unpredictable at best, but something’s brought us back in time, further than ever. We’ve been separated from the others and I’ve no idea why.’
‘You make it sound like it’s deliberate.’
‘I’m beginning to think it is. There’s an intelligence at work here – something with a purpose. I just don’t know what it is yet. As for Clara and the others, well, they could be anywhere…and any when.’
Mitch scratched the stubble on his chin. ‘I just hope they’re all still together.’
‘We’ve all stayed together; there’s no reason why they shouldn’t.’
If Mitch thought the Doctor was just trying to sound positive and keep his hopes up, he didn’t say anything. He watched the Doctor take out his sonic screwdriver and switch it on. The green light blinked rhythmically.
‘The TARDIS?’ asked Mitch.
‘It’s distant in terms of time rather than space. But we’re closer than before.’ The Doctor shut the screwdriver down. ‘At least the time fluxes are taking us in the right direction chronologically. The problem is that the signal itself is getting weaker. We have to find it soon or else we might lose it altogether.’
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