Doctor Who_ Alien Bodies - Lawrence Miles [113]
Kortez finished rummaging, then held out his hand. Sam peered at the object sitting in his palm. It was a circle of metal, the same shape as a discus, and about the same size. The thing was Saab-black and Saab-smooth, but marked with a series of fuzzy pink pictograms around the rim. The symbols flashed and changed as Sam watched, though they didn’t seem electronic. They looked more like they’d been painted on.
The Doctor seemed alarmed. ‘A bomb?’
‘Yes. Saskatoon. You remember, Doctor. It was a good day. We made sure the will of the eternal consciousness was done.’
‘A thermosystron bomb,’ breathed the Doctor. ‘I thought I made sure they were all destroyed.’
Kortez nodded. ‘They were. Except for this.’
‘You didn’t report it to the General?’
‘Destiny. I knew that somehow, some day, this device would have a greater part to play in the web of karmic fate. Today is that day. We must stop the enemy. It’s the will of the one true mind of all things.’
Sam coughed nervously. ‘Er, Doctor...?’
The Doctor swept up the bomb, then slipped it into his pocket. ‘Thank you, Colonel. Now, if you’ll excuse me?’
He darted up the steps. Sam watched the Colonel turn away before she followed. The man looked content. Satisfied. Like he thought he’d done his duty, and done it well.
Sam drew level with the Doctor halfway up the first flight of stairs. ‘He’s mad, isn’t he?’ she asked.
‘He’s a little upset,’ the Doctor admitted. ‘Saskatoon was a very difficult affair.’
‘You mean, he’s mad.’
‘Well, in a manner of speaking.’
‘And that stuff about destiny?’
‘His imagination’s getting the better of him. There’s no room for destiny in a universe this small.’ The slightest of frowns appeared on the Doctor’s face. ‘With one or two notable exceptions.’
They reached a small landing on the first floor up. Various gloomy archways led to various gloomy corridors, and there was a stairway up to the next level off to one side. ‘What about the bomb?’ Sam queried. ‘I thought you didn’t like using weapons. Especially not those sorts of weapons.’
‘I don’t. But if somebody’s going to be walking around with a piece of Selachian maximum impact implosive in his pocket, I’d rather it was me than the Colonel. Oh.’
The Doctor froze. Sam froze, too.
They were at the bottom of the next stairway by now. Standing at the top of the flight, on the second-floor landing, was the alien Sam had seen waddling past the guest room. It had turned to face them, and now it was covering the lower landing with one of its wobbly limbs. The arm ended in a thick tube, Sam saw, open at the end. It reminded her of a bazooka. Big, chunky, lethal-looking.
The Doctor grabbed the sleeve of her t-shirt. It tore as he tugged it, but the tug was enough to make her stumble back towards the top of the last stairway. They ducked through the archway, as the landing in front of them was filled with a dense white smoke. Sam squinted into the haze. No, it wasn’t smoke. It was a cloud full of crystals. Tiny, razor-edged crystals.
The cloud began to settle. She heard the sound of heavy footsteps, climbing the stairs above them. Sam moved forward, to re-enter the landing.
The Doctor pulled her back again. Shaking his head, he reached into his jacket, and pulled out what seemed to be the first thing that came to hand. It was a fairy-cake, covered in fluff. The Doctor looked puzzled, clearly having no idea where the item had come from.
He lobbed the cake onto the landing. As it flipped through the air, small holes opened up in its surface, as if hundreds of tiny invisible mouths were trying to get at the currants. By the time it hit the ground, the cake was nothing more than a collection of crumbs.
‘Each of the crystals is a miniature corrosive device,’ the Doctor mumbled. ‘A cloud of them is enough to gnaw an organic life-form to the bone in seconds. They disperse the waste material as dust. The corrosive’s more powerful than I expected, though. Even after the cloud settles, the atmosphere’s still deadly. Now we know what happened