Doctor Who_ Illegal Alien - Mike Tucker [40]
'See what I mean?' the caretaker said. The pumping machinery's going full pelt.'
Ace nodded. Her plan was a risky one. The Doctor would have been proud of her. She had she hoped arrived by pure logic at the solution to their dilemma. There was no means of exit on the ground floor that much was clear. She had gone up and found none. Logically, there was only one thing to do: go down.
At first her companion had dismissed the idea out of hand. No one, he had assured her, could get out through the sewers. Even at the best of times they were dangerous pitchdark, winding labyrinths of human ordure, pestilent with poisonous gases, and now, thanks to the bombing, structurally in ruins and, it would seem, flooded.
'How long have the pumps been going?' she whispered.
'Ever since they arrived,' came the whispered reply.
'So with any luck they'll have got rid of the flooding.
'It's not that simple!' He was scared. His voice was beginning to rise. 'It depends on a lot of things. The extent of the bombing, the level of rain the storm drains empty into the sewers, you know.'
She placed a gentle finger over his mouth.
'I can't do it on my own,' she whispered. 'It's our only chance.'
'I know,' he whispered back. 'I agreed, didn't I? This way.'
He led her away from the awful voices and down another dark, stone corridor. Pipes cut in and out of concrete, hissing and humming. Other corridors intersected; they turned first left, then right, right, then left, until Ace was hopelessly lost.
'This is nothing compared to underground,' her companion assured her.
'Sssh!' she replied. It seemed to her that their voices and footfalls echoed horribly down here.
The caretaker placed a hand on her shoulder. 'Wait a minute,' he said. Set into the wall to their right was a cupboard, its wooden doors painted a familiar corporation green. He opened the doors. Half a dozen torches, some rope, a fireman's axe. The caretaker took out two of the torches and handed one to Ace. 'We'll need these,' he said.
The passageway was completely dark, except for their torch beams dancing on the walls. They came to an entrance.
Beyond was only blackness and the constant rush of water, deep underground. The caretaker let his torch play on the inky dark. Dimly, Ace could make out an array of manholes dotted over the
floor; raised columns of brick, and on top of each a cover of heavy, disc
shaped metal, hinged, each capped by a horizontal metal anchorwheel.
'Come on.' Gingerly, she stepped into the room and made for the nearest of the drains. Her hands gripped the wheel and she applied all her strength to it. It didn't budge.
Her companion joined her; together they strained and heaved.
'It's no good,' he finally gasped, his voice barely audible over the crashing and sloshing of water below them. 'Rusted shut. These places have been badly neglected since the war started. Let's try another.'
'Wait!' Ace froze. So, she hadn't just imagined it.
Something had definitely brushed against her foot. Slowly she lowered the beam of her torch.
The floor was alive a squirming mass of metallic silver grubs, all identical, all about the size of rats. Ace had never seen such things before, but they reeked to her of Cybertechnology.
She struggled to master her rising panic, to assess the situation coolly. The things seemed docile drugged, almost.
She guessed hoped that they required some specific task before becoming active.
'D'you have Rentokill in the 1940s?' she asked.
'What?'
'Never mind. Just don't look at the floor.'
There were sixteen manholes in the room. They picked their way from cover to cover, treading with agonising, faltering precision among the horrid bed of Cyberthings.
Every manhole cover was rusted solid.
'The axe,' Ace said, suddenly.
'What?'
'The axe that was in the cupboard. Where we got the torches. We can put it between the spokes of the wheel and use it as a lever. Wait here.'
'I'll go,' the caretaker said, insistently. 'You'd only get lost.'
She nodded. He was right; all the passages had looked the same to her.
'I won't