Doctor Who_ Full Circle - Andrew Smith [15]
The Doctor frowned. 'They've stopped moving, K9.'
'The observation is correct.'
The Doctor shifted his position experimentally. As he had expected, the eyes of the creatures didn't follow him.
'Come on, we'd better get out of sight,' the Doctor suggested.
'Slow movement is advised, master.'
They moved into the shrubbery, and the Doctor took up a position where he could watch events closely.
As he surveyed the terrifying figures before him, he remembered being told by Adric of the Mistfall rhyme which all citizens learned in their childhood, written by one of the first and wisest of all Deciders, a man called Pitrus.
The Doctor remembered one verse in particular:
When Mistfall comes
The giants leave the swamp
The Marshmen walk the world
The forestlands they haunt.
These were the giants.
These were the Marshmen.
'Decider Draith is dead?'
Varsh looked almost pleadingly at Adric, but his young brother nodded confirmation of his revelation.
Tylos was standing at Varsh's shoulder. 'Well... "leader"?' he inquired drily.
Varsh felt a lump of fear in his throat. He stood by the cave fire, staring into its flickering scarlet heart. 'All right,' he said. 'All right, maybe I was wrong.' He turned his head to Adric, his expression threatening. 'You'd better not be lying, Adric.'
'The Doctor believed me,' said Adric unworriedly.
Keara, leaning against the wall behind Adric, said, 'Hmph. This "Doctor". I wouldn't be surprised if he turned out to be some kind of hallucination himself.'
Adric, becoming increasingly annoyed by their attitude, reached into his pocket and produced the homing device given him by Romana. 'They gave me this,' he said.
Tylos took it from him, turning the small green orb over in his hand, inspecting it.
'It's a homing device for locating the TARDIS,' Adric explained.
Tylos pressed the button on the side of the orb, and smiled slightly as the bleep started up.
Keara came forward, interested. Taking up a position behind Tylos to peer at the homing device, she said, 'They've sealed the starliner. There's no refuge for us there. But this TARDIS. If it's as big as he says...'
Varsh smiled, glad of the opportunity to reassert his authority with a firm course of action. 'Right,' he said, drawing his knife from his belt and stroking the finely honed blade with his thumb, 'let's book ourselves a seat on this mysterious ship.'
'No!' Adric came forward, grabbing Varsh's wrist and lowering his knife. 'There's no need for that. I'm sure we'll be welcomed in the TARDIS. They're kind people.'
Varsh angrily jerked his hand free of Adric's grip. 'They're repairing their ship, you say. And they know about Mistfall. Adric, use your head. As soon as they can, they'll be leaving Alzarius. This is the only way we can make them stay.'
Adric looked all three of them in the face. Setting his jaw firmly, he said, 'I won't take you there.'
Tylos raised the orb in front of Adric's face, pressed the button and let the bleeps continue. He chuckled. Adric lowered his head, crestfallen.
The breathing of the Marshmen, the Doctor noticed, was beginning to regularise. They flexed their scaly arms, allowed their mouths, dribbling with hungry saliva, to gape. Scaly, metallic-looking eyelids slid back over black evil eyeballs, which then scanned the surroundings.
They started climbing from the marsh, mud slithering down their tall, horrible frames, heavy clawed feet finding a secure hold in the soil by the marsh.
It occurred to the Doctor that he had seen something like this before. The behaviour of the Marshmen was similar to that of beetles coming out of pupation. They needed time to acclimatise themselves, adjusting their physiology to fit into this new, gaseous environment as opposed to the one they had experienced under the marsh.
What the Doctor found quite staggering was the amazingly short period of time these beings seemed to require to carry through this acclimatisation process.
The Doctor