Doctor Who_ Cat's Cradle_ Times Crucible - Marc Platt [46]
He waved again.
The four were still debating him when the other man, the outsider, pointed out along the bank beyond the Doctor.
A shadow was arching its way across the darkened plain. It had grown to the size of a fully fledged mammoth since the Doctor first encountered its trail in the TARDIS console room. At least his estimation of its form had been correct. It was some overgrown, underevolved species of annelid worm, squelching along like a voracious leech. It hissed as it progressed towards the silver stream. Once it reached the edge, it looped one foot over into the slow, mirrored torrent and began to gulp greedily.
Occasionally it lifted its footmouth up like a grotesque flamingo head. Mercury ran in silver streams down its flanks to scatter in globules across the bank.
An unreasoning rage took hold of the Doctor. This bloated and loathsome creature was responsible for the destruction of his home. It might have caused the loss of his friend. And it had marooned him in some colourless, lost desert away from help and hope. He began to march across the plain, intending to remonstrate with the culprit.
"You!" he cried. "I am the Doctor and I want a word with you!"
The monster lifted its blunt head towards him.
He caught its rotting stench and the slobbered hiss of its bony mouth. Ripples ran along its fins and the spiny claws glinted in the bright starlight. Its hide was a dark iguanodon red under the slime.
Its head spluttered down to the ground and became its foot. The other head arched up from behind and over as it moved forward to meet him.
He stopped in his tracks, amazed that anything so unwieldy should move with such hideous grace. A few dregs of reason not yet swamped by his fury began to suggest that one of his little chats might not necessarily solve this problem.
The problem, a bulky one, was advancing with alarming speed.
The Doctor fumbled in the pocket of his trews and produced the extending aerial. A Suyryte retainer cell in its base should have stored the charge from the electrified TARDIS console. He lengthened it out like a wand and prepared to do battle with the monster.
The thing loomed above him, hissing and gurgling like a boiling samovar. Its oval mouth was a circle of gristled teeth, ringed by beady black eyelets.
"Where is my TARDIS?" the Doctor yelled at it, reluctant to resort to unreasoned violence.
Its teeth flexed in its jaw.
The Doctor held out the aerial wand in a position of challenge. "Come on then, you overgrown leech. You knew exactly what to take once you'd got in. And now you've destroyed my ship and a good friend of mine in the process!"
The circular mouth contorted to form words it was not evolved to emit. "Now Process," it whispered hoarsely, as if it had just made a discovery.
It lunged at him with its footmouth but he darted to one side, only to find the rear foot rising up to strike at him like a cobra.
He flicked out with the wand as he dodged clear. There was a quick fizz of blue energy at the side of the monster's head. It bellowed in rage and slammed its raised head towards him, squelching to the ground at the very point where he had just stood.
The Doctor had darted forward to avoid the attack. For a moment he stood between the two grounded footmouths of the creature, under a perfect arch of heaving flesh. The stench was sickening and the clawed fins splayed out to snatch at him. With the precision of an orchestral conductor, he flicked round with the wand again, applying several beats of energy to the monster's underbelly.
He pulled clear as it shuddered and gave a muffled shriek. He was getting slime on his shoes.
"This isn't getting us very far, is it?" he called as its next head rose. He was aware that on the ridge he had a group of silent spectators who had never heard of audience participation. In the other direction, he saw the