Doctor Who_ Ghost Light - Marc Platt [31]
Slowly driven back, the husks bellowed in fear. The voice continued to shriek its ineffectual orders. Ace clung close to Nimrod as they tried to force a way towards the tunnel.
‘They don’t like the light, do they?’ she yelled over the racket.
Nimrod gave her the strangest look and the voice, as if it had heard, snarled out a new instruction. ‘Destroy lamp!’
The reptilian husk lunged at the lantern, knocking it from Nimrod’s hand to the floor where it shattered.
‘I’ll sort you lot out!’ shouted Ace. She grabbed the silver cane from the floor and began to swing it in front of her.
Nimrod grasped her arm, pulling her backwards into the gap between the crystal console and the pulsing membrane on the wall.
‘Round here,’ he said. ‘They won’t dare come near the core.’
‘Why? What are they scared of?’ Ace was spoiling for a fight. Use the resources available; that’s what the Doctor always does.
‘Oi, you in there!’ she called to the cell door. ‘What’s it worth not to smash the place up?’
‘No!’ whispered Nimrod, shaking his head. ‘You don’t know what you’re doing.’
But Ace’s approach was working; the husks had stopped moving. Ace raised the cane and held it close to the membrane.
‘Call them off or I’ll start with this!’ she shouted. Ace saw the eye at the spyhole widen in shock.
‘No!’ howled the creature. ‘Hide me!’
The husks started to stagger backwards to form a shield in front of the door.
Nimrod leaned over to snatch the cane from Ace’s grasp, but she dodged clear, still keeping close to the membrane.
‘I mean it, Tarzan, I’ll do it!’ she warned.
‘No letting it out!’ wailed the voice behind the door.
‘Light burning with angriness!’
Nimrod could see the shadow behind the membrane beginning to stir. He tried to stay calm and reached out again for the cane.
‘Give it to me,’ he begged. ‘You are profaning the Temple of Light.’
‘I’ll profane you in a minute!’ she retaliated. She had got this far without the Doctor and she wasn’t going back now.
The thing behind the door was still wailing; it was getting on her nerves.
‘And shut that thing up too!’
Nimrod edged towards Ace, but she saw him and brought the cane up between them. He tried to reason with her.
‘You are afraid and do not understand, miss. The Burning One must not be woken!’
He grabbed hold of the cane and tried to wrest it from her. Ace would have given back as good as she got, but the Neanderthal was much too strong. She lost her footing and they both toppled sideways, crunching against the brink surface of the membrane. Energy exploded out and danced around them, hurling Ace and Nimrod to the floor; the whole chamber shuddered as jets of steam like the outlets of giant pistons hissed from vents in the stone buttresses.
Behind the door, the creature howled and remembered its name. It was Control and there was no escape!
The Doctor had spent some time acquainting himself with the layout of the house while avoiding the maids in the process. His main task was to find Ace, but she had not returned to the TARDIS as he had expected. As he came back down from the observatory, he had to dodge a group of maids carrying something of extreme bulk up the narrow spiral staircase. He hid behind a stuffed white peacock, whose fan of tail feathers obscured his view, leaving him none the wiser about the nature of the maids’
burden.
Behind a locked door on the second level, he heard Redvers Fenn-Cooper deep in conversation with himself.
‘They gave Redvers a bed, but he’s slept on the bare ground since he was a boy... under the stars, huh, under the trees... under canvas, under the bed.’
The Doctor smiled. He thought it was a fortunate man who could choose his own friends.
On the first floor, he overheard Josiah conversing with Mrs Pritchard in the trophy room. They were cataloguing the stock of breech-loaders and pistols needed for their