by Ian Marter
Inside the conduit, Sarah was drenched in perspiration despite the intense coldness which numbed her fingers. She had to fight for every breath. Her knees and elbows were raw from scraping against the sides of the narrow shafts. Her hair repeatedly caught itself between her shoulders and the metal sides of the conduits, forcing her to continually retreat a few centimetres in order to release it. The smooth sides afforded her nothing to grip on. She could move only with a kind of caterpillar action which was terribly exhausting; she contracted her body, pressed her knees against the shaft and then straightened her body, pressed her elbows outwards and finally drew her legs along after her by contracting her body. She had to repeat this awkward sequence over and over again. She was often close to despair as the cable snagged, or the bulky knot which Harry had tied jammed itself between her hip and the side of the shaft.
Now she was twisting this way and that in a frantic attempt to free the cable; but it refused to budge, and the more Sarah wriggled, the tighter she became stuck. Tears of frustration welled up in her eyes. Her skin seemed to adhere to the cold metal shaft, and would only come away with a sharp and painful wrench. She could see absolutely nothing. She gasped for oxygen. She could move neither forwards nor backwards. 'It's just no good...' she sobbed. 'I'm sorry, I can't do anything to...'
All at once she felt the cable tugging. For a horrifying moment she thought that something was in the shaft with her, and trying to drag her back towards itself. She had a fleeting vision of the Wirrrn larvae bubbling up through the shaft and engulfing her in a searing, suffocating mass. Then she realised that the jerking of the cable formed a regular pattern; it seemed like a morse code message! After a few minutes concentration she deciphered it: 'COME ON OLD GIRL... YOU CAN DO IT.' Instantly Sarah's energy increased a hundredfold. 'Patronising male chauvinist,' she muttered through clenched teeth, visualising Harry's anxious face at the other end of the conduit.
With a supreme effort she eased herself forward a few centimetres. To her amazement and joy the cable did not resist. 'Just... you wait... till I get out...' she panted.
'Please repeat your last message,' requested Rogin's puzzled voice over the communicator.
Sarah heaved herself forward. 'Message cancelled,' she replied. At once she was confronted by a bewildering array of shafts branching off in all directions. Even following Rogin's careful instructions, it was almost impossible to orientate oneself in the pitch darkness. Sarah knew that if she took a wrong tunnel, or came to a dead end, she had no chance of making her way back again.
A faint glimmer of light ahead spurred her on. 'I can see light,' she whispered excitedly into the tiny microphone.
'Yes,' came Rogin's encouraging reply. 'You are entering an old Hydrodynamics System. It runs right through the Solar Chamber—move as quietly as you can.' To her horror, Sarah found that the conduit had become tubular in section, and even narrower than before. She now had to stretch out her arms ahead of her, and to move forward by turning her whole body like a corkscrew. She ceased to be aware of her badly grazed elbows and knees, of the burning sensation in her lungs, but forced herself onward through the tube. Her painfully slow progress was further hampered by her legs becoming inextricably tangled with the cable as she rotated her body.
She soon found herself in a section constructed of translucent material. Her pounding heart missed a beat as she recognised, through the thick glass-like material, the subdued glow of the Solar Chamber. Rogin's voice came whispering through the earpiece; it seemed to come from the other side of the universe. 'Quietly now, Sarah...'
She froze as, from the depths of the Solar Chamber, there loomed two enormous eyes. Helplessly Sarah stared back at the Wirrrn crawling towards her, its gigantic mandibles working hungrily. The creature gripped the tube with its tentacles. In vain Sarah tried to flinch away from the slashing, razor hairs as they squeaked against the conduit only centimetres from her body.
The Wirrrn tried to take the tube between its mandibles. Sarah could see right into the dark red pulsing throat of the giant insect. She felt violently sick. Rogin's voice came urgently over the communicator. 'Sarah... what is happening... are you safe?'
The inside of the tube had steamed up so that Sarah could no longer see her attacker, but only hear the shrill scrape of its tentacles, and feel the shuddering of the tube as the Wirrrn tried to crush it. She marvelled at the extraordinary strength of the unfamiliar glassy substance which was all that kept her from the jaws of the creature. She felt like a fly trapped in a blob of amber which could at any moment be smashed to smithereens with a hammer.
She collected her wits, and frantically twisted herself along the tube. The Wirrrn followed, angrily wrenching at the conduit, its eyes burning at her through the tubing and its massive jaws completely enclosing her struggling body. Sarah glimpsed more and more of the fierce glowing eyes clustering around her as she fought her way through the final section of the Solar Chamber... She imagined herself crawling through the bowels of some prodigious mythical beast.
To her relief, the tube suddenly reverted to metal sections. She welcomed the darkness with its feeling of security, but she could not be sure that the Wirrrn would not eventually manage to shatter the 'glass' section and sever the vital cable—or even drag her backwards into the Solar Chamber again.
'Is... is it much further... ?' she implored, her imagination conjuring an endless maze of dark, stifling tunnels in which she was condemned to crawl for ever.
'You are almost there... another fifteen metres,' came Rogin's welcome reply.
'I do hope so...' Sarah gasped,:.. because I don't think I can go on much longer.'
.'Stick at it, old girl,' came Harry's cheerful voice.
'That's just the trouble,' Sarah snapped back. 'I keep getting stuck.' Then she managed a smile to herself as she visualised Vira's and Rogin's blank stares on hearing her little joke.
The Doctor had almost completed his preparations in the Cryogenic Chamber. For the moment, the Wirrrn seemed to be leaving him in peace, deterred perhaps by the discovery of the corpse of the Queen. Nevertheless, the Doctor remained fully alert as he crouched in the darkness, sonic-welding cables from the wall terminals into a large junction box by torch-light. From time to time, he crossed to the central shaft and listened for signs of Sarah's progress. It was nearly an hour since he had bid her good luck in the Cincture Structure. He knew that it could not be very long before the Wirrrn in the Solar Chamber reached imago form in overwhelming numbers, and returned to the attack.
There was a hollow, distant panting sound which suddenly reverberated in the central shaft. The Doctor raced across the chamber into the elevator cubicle where the Wirrrn Queen had been hidden, and put his car to the side of the shaft.
'Sarah...' he murmured. He tapped rhythmically and then listened. His tapping was repeated beat for beat. 'Sarah... Hurry, Sarah... hurry,' he called, shining his torch up into the darkness. Ducts and conduits ran into the shaft at right angles as far as the Doctor could see. He directed the torch-beam at each aperture in turn. 'Can you see anything, my dear?' he said. There was a pause, then Sarah's faint reply.
'No... not. yet. I'm now in some kind of coiled section, Doctor. I'm not sure I can get round the bends...'
'Of course you can, Sarah,' encouraged the Doctor, keeping a wary eye on the dark vault of the Cryogenic Chamber. 'You've got this far...'
'But, Doctor, I'm completely stuck this time,' Sarah 'whimpered. '... I seem to be glued to the sides.' The tall shaft rang with Sarah's sobs of frustration and fear. 'Doctor, I'm... I'm upside down... and I feel very very faint....'
The Doctor stared upwards, his face full of anxiety. They were so close to succeeding. Sarah could not fail now. He cupped his hands to his mouth and bellowed as loudly as he could up into the shadows. 'That's right... blubber away, Sarah... just what I expected of you.'
There was a brief pause, then Sarah protested tearfully, 'But, Doctor, .I am completely jammed. I can't go up or down.'
'Oh, stop whining, girl,' retorted the Doctor brutally. 'You are utterly useless.'
There was a shocked silence. 'Doctor,' Sarah's voice came through at last. 'Doctor, how can you...'
But the Doctor showed no remorse. Instead of apologising he went on, 'It was a mistake to rely on you in the first place .. Harry was quite right—It was no job for a girl...'
Sarah had heard enough. She wrenched herself round and round inside the tortuous spiralling tube in a frenzy, oblivious of pain, fear or discomfort. 'You wait... I'll show you...' she gasped.
The Doctor was smiling broadly to himself, delighted that his little ruse had worked so well. 'The future of Mankind at stake, and all you can do is lie there blubbering,' he called as a final goad to Sarah's temper.
But Sarah was no longer listening. Within a few minutes her head appeared out of one of the ducts high up in the shaft wall. In the torchlight the Doctor could see that her hair was matted and her face streaked with tears, but her smile was triumphant.
The Doctor grinned up at her. 'Splendid, Sarah. I knew you would do it,' he whispered.
Sarah peered down at him in amazement, dazzled by the torch. Then she smiled again. 'You are a brute,' she laughed, despite her exhaustion. 'You conned me completely.'
'Just trying to encourage you, my dear, that's all,' the Doctor murmured innocently. He shone the torch around the sides of the shaft. Sarah was stranded a good thirty metres above him. 'Now all we have to do is get you down,' he said.
'Oh, please don't worry about me. I'll just jump,' retorted Sarah. 'As long as you get the cable down safely I'm sure I hardly matter.'
The Doctor swept the, torch round the cubicle. 'If we had any power I could fetch you down in the lift,' he said.
There came a sharp rattling sound from the Access Chamber. Instantly the Doctor began working away with the two lengths of his scarf. Sarah could not see what he was doing, but she gasped in astonishment and admiration when, after a few seconds, he flashed the torch quickly over the giant 'cat's cradle' he had fashioned across the bottom of the shaft, using the framework of the open elevator cubicle on which to secure the scarf-ends.
'Jump, Sarah, jump,' the' Doctor hissed.
Without pausing to think, Sarah obeyed and leaped into the dark abyss. She landed in the safety-net the Doctor had improvised. A pair of strong hands came out of the darkness and lifted her gently but quickly down.
'Harry's tied the Gordian Knot here all right,' whispered the Doctor, feverishly trying to undo the cable from around Sarah's waist.
Over the Doctor's shoulder, Sarah suddenly noticed the unmistakable glow of a Wirrrn's eyes on the far side of the Cryogenic Chamber. Only minutes earlier she had been struggling between the jaws of one of the fearsome creatures inside the conduit. A violent shudder shook her body and she thrust her fingers into her mouth to stifle a scream. At the same moment, the Doctor freed the cable. Something was pushed into her free hand. It was the torch. 'Try to distract it, Sarah,' murmured the Doctor, moving stealthily away from her with the cable.
'What... ?' she gasped. But. there was no time to protest.
She switched on the torch and shone the beam up over her face from under her chin, transforming her features into a macabre mask suspended in mid-air. She felt the Doctor detach the communicator set from around her head.
'Splendid idea,' prompted his voice in her ear. 'But whatever you do, keep away from the walls.'
Sarah began to sidestep away from the Doctor, her eyes fixed firmly on those of the Wirrrn. The huge, ochre globes swung steadily towards her; she could hear the heavy, leathery body dragging itself across the chamber floor as she backed away from it. Still very dazed from her ordeal inside the conduit system, Sarah struggled to visualise the exact shape of the Cryogenic Chamber so that she would not back into any of the walls; she knew that hundreds of thousands of volts would surge through them when Rogin switched on the power. She could just make out the Doctor's whispered instructions to Rogin through the communicator. Counting her faltering steps, Sarah knew she must be very close to the chamber wall. Still the Wirrrn bore down upon her.
Suddenly, to her left, she heard the Doctor whistling as if he were calling a dog. 'Here... Here, boy...' he coaxed. The Wirrrn's eyes turned away from her and began moving towards the sounds. The Doctor fell silent, and the Wirrrn hesitated. Then it resumed its pursuit of Sarah. She switched off the torch, darted a few steps to the right in the pitch darkness, then crouched quite still, holding her breath. Again the Wirrrn stopped. Its eyes began to glow a bright fierce orange. The menacing rattle sounded. Sarah found herself mesmerised as the Wirrrn's eyes swung hypnotically before her. She could feel it tantalising her. Then her blood ran cold as she heard what sounded-like sharp intakes of breath which rapidly grew into a rhythmic roaring, like the sound of a gigantic bellows. The creature was sniffing her out...
The Doctor whistled again, this time from her right. The Wirrrn hovered uncertainly a moment, then moved swiftly towards the invisible figure.
'Torch, Sarah. Torch,' screamed the Doctor. Sarah switched on the torch and waved it recklessly about. The Wirrrn swooped towards her. She crept backwards, step by step, shining the torch-beam directly into the creature's eyes. With a rattle of triumph the Wirrrn reared up over her. She froze as something crumpled against the backs of her legs. She dropped the torch and toppled backwards into the disintegrated corpse of the Wirrrn Queen... At the same instant she heard the Doctor shouting into the communicator. 'Now, Rogin. Now.'
A blinding blue-white flash lit up the Cryogenic Chamber. Sarah glimpsed the huge pincer slicing down at her. There was an ear-splitting shriek, and the sound of a massive body thrashing about in agony. Something soft and rubbery brushed across Sarah's face. A sickly burning smell filled the darkness. She lay among the rotting tentacles of the Wirrrn Queen shivering with nausea and choking from the acrid fumes. Then came the sound of the crippled Wirrrn crawling slowly away from her, and moaning with a croaking, gurgling cry which reverberated around the chamber until it died away into silence. As it gradually faded, the comforting gentle humming of the Cryogenic Systems resumed and the familiar faint glowing reappeared in the pallets. All around her the Chamber came back to life. Sarah closed her eyes in relief but before she could haul herself to her feet, she suddenly felt extremely dizzy. She keeled over on her side in a dead faint just as the Doctor reached her...
8
A New Beginning
In the Flight Control Module of the Transporter Vessel, the tension was becoming unbearable. Harry, Rogin and Vira waited anxiously for news from the Cryogenic Chamber. Sarah's piercing cries and the bizarre shrieks of the Wirrrn still rang vividly in their ears. Harry was hunched over the communicator set calling again and again. 'Doctor... Sarah... are you all right? Come in please... Doctor, can you hear me...?' But there was no reply, only a relentless silence. Vira kept watch on the Launch Area through the video scanner, while Rogin, grim-faced, monitored the Transporter's generator systems.
'We cannot maintain this level of power indefinitely, Commander,' he warned.
As if in reply, the Doctor's voice suddenly came through on the communicator. 'Rogin, whatever happens don't let the power fade. We've won the first round... and I've managed to feed some energy into the Cryogenic Systems, but there's very little to spare...'
'You have done well, Doctor,' interposed Vira.
'Thank you,' came the Doctor's reply. 'But if the Wirrrn should detect our power source, you could be in grave danger. You had better electrify the Launch Dock.'
Rogin interrupted to explain that such a plan was impossible since the Transporter Vessel was moored to the Satellite by Synestic Locks.
'How very inconvenient, Rogin,' came the Doctor's disappointed voice. 'I should have realised: if you energise the Docking Area you may reverse the Synestic Fields and push the Transporter Ship out into Space.'
'Exactly, Doctor,' murmured Rogin.
There was a short silence. T
he Doctor spoke slowly and pointedly over the intercom. 'Well, you ought to think of something, Rogin, before the Wirrrn think of you...' The communicator went dead again. Harry tried to re-establish contact, but without success.
Rogin turned to Vira, his face filled with dismay. 'Commander, I shall soon be forced to reduce power... our generators will be needed for the transfer to Earth... we cannot risk a malfunction.' Vira nodded gravely.
Harry sensed a certain irresolution in the manner of his two companions. 'Don't forget,' he warned. 'If the Wirrrn should get into the Cryogenic Chamber there won't be any transfer to Earth.'
In the Cryogenic Chamber, Sarah sat propped against the elevator shaft, recovering from her ordeal. She had regained consciousness to find herself wrapped in the Doctor's voluminous jacket, and the Doctor bending anxiously over her. She was still shivering with cold, and beginning to notice the effect of the oxygen system being shut down. She kept a wary eye on the opening into the Access Chamber, just visible in the restored glow of the pallets, while the Doctor bustled about the chamber checking his circuits leading from the junction box. One set was feeding power into the pallet Revivification Systems, while the other supplied the improvised 'electric fence' around the lower section of the chamber walls, and also the trailing cable with which the Doctor had fought off the Wirrrn attacker.
'Not bad for a lash-up, eh?' he grinned. 'But I hope the insulation will stand it,' he added, gesturing round at the pallets on floor level which were still occupied by dormant humans.
Sarah nodded towards the Access Chamber. 'The Wirrrn know where we are now,' she whispered, clutching the Doctor's jacket closer to herself for warmth.
The Doctor waved the torch about under his chin. 'You pulled such faces,' he chuckled in an effort to reassure Sarah. 'I don't think the Wirrrn, will be in a hurry to come back...'
Without warning the Access Chamber was flooded with light. Sarah shielded her eyes against the intense glare which temporarily obliterated her view of the entrance. 'Why have they turned the power back on?' she cried. The Doctor shrugged. Still carrying the free-running cable, he advanced towards the Access Chamber, motioning Sarah to stay where she was. Just as he reached the entrance, a distorted gabbling suddenly burst out all around them. For a second Sarah imagined that the sleeping humans in the Cryogenic Chamber had suddenly revived, and that they were shouting in unison at her in a language she did not understand. She rushed to the Doctor's side in terror.
