Doctor Who_ Beyond the Sun - Matthew Jones [36]
He felt his lungs begin to ache and he redoubled his efforts. A second huge cold hand was trying to grab hold of his free leg. He kicked down at the grip around his ankles and missed. His foot travelled further down in the water and struck something else – the creature’s head?
The effect was dramatic. The grip on his ankle loosened and then disappeared altogether. He turned and struck out for the surface, his lungs burning. He surfaced with a yell of fear, and had clambered on to the floating hatch before he was even aware of thinking of doing so. He stood shivering in the darkness, keeping his legs apart to maintain balance on the platform, eyes scouring the surface of the water for any sign of the horrific creature.
The shore suddenly seemed kilometres away, the line of the trees just visible against the night sky. Only minutes ago, he’d been standing safely on the sloping bank, under those trees. Now he was going to die in the lake. He realized that he was cursing desperately and continually through his chattering teeth.
He heard something break the surface of the water behind him. Here it comes, he thought. A huge head had appeared out of the water. It was more than twice the size of a human’s: dark and perfectly spherical. There was a faint hissing sound, like air escaping, and the entire front of the blank head slid back. A woman’s face was revealed beneath. Scott was astonished, the ‘head’ was a helmet, the dark blank ‘face’ only a visor.
‘Er, good evening,’ the woman said, and smiled awkwardly. ‘If this is your planet then I’m really very sorry for crashing on it. I didn’t have much choice. Some rather mean black spaceships took a dislike to me in orbit.’
Scott was so relieved that he forgot for a moment that the woman had tried to drown him and started to giggle, almost upsetting the platform in the process.
The woman must have thought that she’d scared him, because she lifted a large, gloved hand out of the water and pointed at herself. ‘There’s no need to be afraid: friend.’
‘I’m not afraid. Not now.’ He suddenly became aware of how cold he was and hugged himself tightly. ‘Anyway, what kind of friend are you? You tried to kill me!’
‘Ah, we can converse. That’s a relief. Actually, I thought you were a sea monster trying to kill me. I panicked. Sorry. It’s been one of those days. Death, disaster, leaving home without deodorant. You wouldn’t mind helping me with my friend, would you?’
‘What friend?’
As if on cue, a second similarly attired figure surfaced next to her, bobbing lifelessly on its back in the water. The woman doggy-paddled over to it, the torch on top of her suit cutting a beam in the darkness. She began to tug the prone figure towards the platform. ‘He’s in a bad way. You don’t happen to be a doctor, do you?’
Scott shook his head in puzzlement. Doctor?
‘That’s a shame. My skills don’t go much beyond administering aspirin and patting people on the head. How’s your first aid?’
Scott didn’t realize that the woman had been making a joke until he’d replied that he could dress a wound, resuscitate a heart and splint a broken limb. The woman looked at him bemused but impressed. ‘I bet they loved you in the cub scouts.’
Bernice watched the boy attend to Errol, who lay on the bank drifting in and out of consciousness.
Actually ‘boy’ didn’t quite describe him. He was humanoid, tall and slender with pale skin and shoulder-length hair that looked black in the darkness. He was probably a few years older than Emile, maybe eighteen. Her attention was arrested by the smattering of tiny, reptilian scales over his back, shoulders and arms. Droplets of water glimmered on them in the torch light. As she approached him she saw that his hair wasn’t black, but dark green in the artificial light from her suit helmet. The irises of his eyes were a metallic grey colour which Bernice had never seen before. Crouched over Errol, he looked like a creature from a fairy story. An elf or a sprite. Despite his otherworldliness, he appeared to be wearing a pair of very ordinary, brightly patterned boxer shorts.