Doctor Who_ Atom Bomb Blues - Andrew Cartmel [61]
‘It is. Look around you. A spaceship. Extraterrestrial craft, daddy-o.’
‘Crap,’ said Butcher.
‘Look at the floor,’ said the Doctor. ‘You see that large dimple in it. Go and peer out, or rather down. Go ahead Major. You can see the ground below. The hillside where you were standing just a little while ago.’
Butcher peered down through the clear dome in the belly of the ship. He stared down at the Apaches on the hillside. All he said was, ‘There are those bastards who got the drop on me. They wouldn’t have been so cocky without their rifles.’
‘I might have to disagree with you there, Major. But that’s not the issue at hand. Look at that structure you’re peering through. What does it remind you of?’
Butcher stared into the transparent hemisphere. He said, ‘Gun turret in the belly of a bomber?’
‘Precisely.’
Butcher grinned. Colour was returning to his face after a prolonged absence. His confidence seemed to grow with every word. ‘So, it’s like a B29
bomber for little green men?’
‘If you like, yes. Although less warlike analogies would be more appropriate.
Luckily for us all, this craft is not dedicated to killing.’
‘Then where are the little green men?’
‘Zorg,’ said the Doctor. And for a moment Ace had no idea what this mono-syllable might mean. Then the lights in the room started to flicker and everyone looked up at the ceiling where the chandelier glowed. The chandelier was twitching and curling, the long tube-lamps that spread across the ceiling were retreating and shooting back into the glowing centre of it. As they retreated, the uniform light in the room shrank to a glow on the ceiling, centred on the sphere at the heart of the ‘chandelier’. The tentacles were absorbed back into 107
it in a fashion that reminded Ace of something. Then she realised what it was.
Like the transport tentacles that had brought them onto the ship.
The glowing ball in the middle of the ceiling flashed with coloured lightning and suddenly began to swell downwards. ‘What’s happening?’ said Butcher in a worried voice. ‘What’s happening to the light in here?’
A blob of opalescent jelly was bulging down from the ceiling, shot through with scarlet and azure and piercing green. It was like wax melting, a flood of glowing gel that reached the floor and formed a large mound that stratified and solidified and took on a new shape utterly different from, yet strangely reminiscent of, the jellyfish chandelier that had been clinging to the ceiling.
Finally the thing took on the form of a huge crablike creature, with soft, giant limbs that hinged in odd ways. It had a face, of sorts, in the middle of its stomach, and the face made a horrible attempt to smile.
‘Greetings, Zoctor,’ said the thing.
‘Ace, allow me to introduce Zostrathnia Otocr Regus Gelb. Zorg to his friends.’
‘Greetings Zace,’ said the thing, shuffling its numerous limbs so its pearly, bulbous obscenity of a body was facing her. The thought of a crab that big, even a dazzlingly beautiful one with flashes of radiant colour, made Ace feel queasy. The disgusting pliancy of its limbs, the fatness of its torso. Ace had seen plenty of aliens, but if she wasn’t careful this one would give her the heebie-jeebies. Maybe it was that horrid approximation of a face where no face should be. She decided that thinking of it as a kind of giant crab was at least better than the other thought that came to mind – a huge soft jelly of a giant tarantula, wobbling around full of venom. Ace very firmly put the giant tarantula thought away and concentrated on thinking of Zorg as the intelligent alien life form he – it? – so clearly was. It sounded like a he.
Indeed when the creature spoke, its voice had a perfect command of English, in a pleasantly low-pitched masculine voice. It was a smooth and clear voice, yet there was something disturbingly unmodulated about it. Ace wondered if this alien blandness of expression came from the creature itself, or was a consequence of some kind of device it was using as a translator.
‘And who are my other guests?’ said Zorg.