Doctor Who_ Last Man Running - Chris Boucher [38]
Then, like an answer, the water erupted and Leela was gasping on the surface and struggling to get Pertanor’s face in the air. ‘It’s coming after us,’ she managed to shout. ‘Help me get him out!’
The Doctor ran backwards holding the vine rope, and Leela clung on to Pertanor as they were both pulled across the surface. A wide pink worm flicked at them and missed as they passed and rolled into the shallows. While Leela was staggering to her feet, Rinandor rushed into the water, heaved the unconscious man on to the bank and immediately started to work on resuscitating him.
The Doctor trotted back to where Leela was standing breathing deeply, trying to get her head clear and her strength ready. ‘How big is it?’ he asked, urgently.
Leela cut the slimy vine off herself with the knife she had been holding all this time, even when she was swimming out the last of her breath. Your knife makes you a warrior. Lose it and you are not a warrior, nor have you ever been. She knew it was primitive nonsense – the Doctor told her it was primitive nonsense and so did her head – but her hand would never drop the knife by accident. ‘I do not know,’ she said.
‘Bigger than that thing that chased you but slower, I think.’
‘If that was its tongue,’ he said, ‘that won’t be slower. We have to move. Get in among the trees.’
‘Maybe it is not a problem now we are out of the water,’
Leela suggested hopefully, following the Doctor to where Rinandor was frantically trying to revive the unresponsive Pertanor.
‘Wake up, Pe. Come on, toody, stir your outrageous skinny bones,’ she was muttering as she worked. Pertanor was breathing but barely. ‘You’re not going to die on me. Not here, Pe. Not on this miserable crapsoid.’
‘We can’t stay here,’ the Doctor said to her. ‘It’ll be safer in the cover of the trees.’
Rinandor shrugged off the Doctor’s hand as he tried to get her to stand up. ‘You go ahead. We’ll follow.’
‘We tried that,’ the Doctor said. ‘It’s why we’re in this mess.’ He made a more determined effort to get her on her feet. ‘There’s no time for this.’
She resisted. ‘Pertanor will die!’ she shouted at him, twisting away.
‘He will if we don’t get him away from here,’ the Doctor said calmly, and, deciding that it would make better sense to concentrate his attention on the more reasonable of the two, he pushed Rinandor firmly to one side and set about lifting Pertanor.
Leela had to prevent her from attacking the Doctor. ‘You can’t do that!’ Rinandor protested, hysterically.
There was an element of wry truth in that, the Doctor thought, as he staggered under the dead weight of the plump young man. It suddenly looked a lot further to the trees and it would have been difficult enough even without Rinandor lunging past Leela and making grabs at him. But then when she actually managed to get hold of the unconscious Pertanor it became impossible. ‘Leela,’ the Doctor grunted,
‘get her off me.’ Stumbling to his knees he noticed with a lurch of understanding that Leela and Rinandor were beside him with Leela half supporting, half restraining the distraught young woman and shepherding her towards the trees.
The Doctor twisted round to look. In the middle of the lake a huge squat head had emerged from the water. It seemed to be a vivid purple but, as the Doctor watched, the colour quickly changed to red and then to orange and then to yellow. Faster and faster the rainbow waves washed over and through the animal’s skin. It was oddly compelling. The Doctor stared. Only the animal’s eyes remained unchanged.
They were black and opaque, like gaping tunnels of darkness. The Doctor felt himself drawn to them. There was something there that murmured of rest and peace.
Abruptly the animal rumbled with pain and the low-frequency sound waves it used to panic and sap the will of its prey moved into the fully audible range.
‘Doctor!’ Leela shouted as she pulled her knife from the amphibian’s tongue, which was wrapped round Pertanor once again, this time round both his legs. But this time the tongue did not bleed copiously and, despite the evidence of