Doctor Who_ Full Circle - Andrew Smith [34]
Login had watched with distaste as the Doctor produced the small pouch from his coat pocket, laid it down on the table, opened it and brought out the remains of the spider from the cave.
Now the Doctor was bending over the spider with a scalpel in his hand. He made one deep cut along the length of its underside and both he and Login were forced to turn their heads away from the malodorous fumes which drifted up to them from the creature's innards.
Lifting a pair of tweezers, the Doctor dug into the spider's insides and lifted out a smelly, steaming mush. Login was ready with a slide, onto which the Doctor placed his specimen.
'Now, let's take a look,' said the Doctor, placing the slide under Dexeter's microscope. He peered attentively into the eyepieces.
'The spiders only appear at Mistfall,' said Login. 'No one has ever analysed one before.'
The Doctor seemed not to have heard, and was muttering away to himself. 'Leucine, Isoleucine, Methionine... yes, there's the usual complement of amino-acids. This is oddly familiar. I've seen this cell shape somewhere before.' He lifted his head from the microscope, peering keenly at Login. 'What about Mistfall itself?'
Login was nonplussed by the question. 'Sorry? What?'
'Has anyone ever analysed that?'
Login became more than a little ill at ease. 'Well... yes,' he began, 'but that is one of the secrets known only to the Deciders.'
'I suppose it would be too much to expect that that might be one secret of which you have been informed? Would it?'
'The information is privileged, Doctor. Yes, I have been informed about the Mistfall analyses, but...' he hesitated. 'You understand, I couldn't - ?'
'My dear chap, that's perfectly all right,' the Doctor assured him. 'Don't you worry at all.' He bent to the microscope again.
Login weakened, as the Doctor had suspected - had hoped - he would. 'Doctor... every fifty years or so, another planet draws Alzarius slightly away from its sun. The cooling process... it's inevitable.'
'Yes,' the Doctor mused. 'The mists... and, you know, that would explain the bubbling in the rivers. An orbital shift like that is bound to cause a degree of seismic activity, releasing subterranean gaseous pockets. Yes.' He frowned into the microscope eyepieces. 'These spiders have an unusual amount of nitrogen in their cell structure.' He straightened. 'Mind you, it's not easy to judge - not knowing the norm for this planet. 'I'm going to need tissue samples from Dexeter and the Marshchild.' He froze, mention of Dexeter causing realisation to dawn. 'Of course! Now, where did Dexeter put that slide?'
He scuttled over to a nearby shelf, where he started going through a stack of slides and cultures, looking for what he wanted. He was still looking when the doors burst open and Adric rushed in, in a flurry.
'Doctor!'
'Not now, Adric.'
'Doctor, please, it's Romana!'
The Doctor stopped his search. 'What's happened?'
'She's gone - vanished!'
The Doctor stood framed in the doorway of Romana's room, Adric behind him. It took him a moment to register what he was seeing.
The room looked as though a typhoon had blown through it. Everything had been either thrown around or smashed or both.
As the Doctor moved among the debris, fingering some of the paraphernalia of the room, unpleasant associations with what the Marshchild had done to the Science Unit welled up in his mind.
There was no sign of Romana.
For a while they remained in silence, continuing to survey the destruction. Then Adric voiced their shared inner fear. 'Marshmen.'
'Marshmen?' The Doctor scanned the room with suspicious eyes. 'In my TARDIS?' He considered it for a moment, then turned on his heel and headed back out the door. 'Come on. Let's find her.'
Adric stooped to lift a small boater from the floor. Romana had told him while he was recuperating from his damaged