Cold Fusion - Lance Parkin [56]
As if to confound him, she broke into a smile as he came to a halt.
‘I think we’ve climbed down about twenty levels,’ he told her. She nodded, as if she understood.
She was pointing at something coiled around the girder.
The Doctor edged towards it. A red ribbon was dangling from it. The Doctor took it in his hand, then gave it a tug.
The rope ladder unfurled, dropping down and down until the end disappeared into the shadows.
‘Good heavens,’ the Doctor said.
‘Doctor? Is that you?’
The Doctor looked around. ‘Tegan?’
The Patient indicated the wall. Tegan’s unmistakable voice was coming from the other side. The Doctor shuffled over, foot over foot.
‘What are you doing there?’ the Doctor asked her. A reasonable question in the circumstances.
‘I was arrested. It’s a cell.’ The wall between them was made from elongated strips, each about fifty centimetres wide.
‘Wait, I’ll use the sonic screwdriver to loosen one of these panels.’ The Doctor moved across to the metal panel, looking for screws. One of the strips came away in his hand. ‘How odd,’ he concluded.
Tegan almost toppled out of the cell. Between them, the Doctor and the Patient managed to catch her. She found her feet, and clambered out into the ducting. It took her a moment to adjust to the darkness, the warmth and the tenuous footholds.
‘Hello, Doc,’ Tegan said as she looked around. ‘Who’s your friend?’
‘She’s a Time Lord. If she has a name, she’s forgotten it.’ The Doctor removed Tegan’s robocuffs with the sonic screwdriver. The cuffs fell, squealing, down the ducting.
‘Why do I get the feeling that this is going to be a long story?
‘The explanations will have to wait, I’m afraid.’ The Doctor replaced the panel, screwing it shut. It wouldn’t do for an Adjudicator to find it.
Tegan eased across the girder, careful not to look down.
‘I’m impressed. You’ve got an escape route planned for once. Is there a getaway car at the end of that ladder?’
‘Where’s Nyssa?’ the Doctor asked softly.
‘She’s back at the hotel, safe as far as I know. Adric?’
The Doctor looked away.
‘Adric?’ Tegan repeated.
‘I’m sure he’ll be fine. We had better get going before the Adjudicators miss you.’
The battle was going badly.
Adjudicator armed response teams had sealed off level three-zero-eight. Evac teams had moved the civilians out and shut down or rerouted the lifts. They’d set up barricades and force barriers, brought in wardroid units and broken out the energy rifles and full combat armour.
Hovertanks were converging on Scientifica, some units were already massing in the piazza on the western face.
The ghosts had responded by dropping through the floor.
Now they were on level one-zero-zero. There were five six or seven of them, the exact number shifting from moment to moment. They weren’t carrying any weapons or other technology. Although they uttered harsh alien syllables every so often – echoey noises that sounded more like grunts and snarls than words – they didn’t appear to be communicating with one another. The extrasensors weren’t even picking up any telepathic signals. That wasn’t conclusive: the various sensors and scanners were only picking up the intruders intermittently. They weren’t inhaling or exhaling air, or displacing it as they moved.
Computer analysis offered no explanation as to where they went when they faded from view. They weren’t responding to the negotiating team, they didn’t even acknowledge them. A couple of the Scientifica xenopsychologists had been drafted in, but they were just as baffled by the ghosts’
behaviour.
The scanners continued to amass information: the exact nature of the weaving on their cloaks, their retinal patterns, their height, their average rate of movement: The creatures didn’t have any visible hair, skin pores or nails.
Their shoes appeared scuffed, indicating that they didn’t always float: they had walked on the ground. They moved through level one-zero-zero with intent, only bothering to attack