Doctor Who_ Last Man Running - Chris Boucher [47]
He set about analysing what he had so far. It was not promising. The entrance was disappointingly simple, little more than a manhole set in the rock of a crumbling limestone outcrop, which jutted out of the soil at an angle of about forty-five degrees. The outcrop looked real enough but oddly out of place, like a very good museum exhibit. The manhole cover was not locked, nor was it protected in any standard way, though it was cold to the touch and unexpectedly heavy. The shaft was a narrow tube which went straight down into darkness. It seemed to be wide enough for a man to move through, but there were no mechanisms, no ladders or ropes, so there was no way of doing it unless you were prepared to climb down with your back braced against one side and your legs pushing against the other. The Doctor leaned in and felt the lining of the shaft. It was cold, like the cover. Whatever it was, it wasn’t limestone. He hunted round in the tumbled rock and found a small piece of loose shingle. He reached back in to the shaft and used it to scratch at the surface of the lining.
It made no impression but, more strikingly, it made no sound.
He tapped the rock against the lining and there was nothing, a dead and deadening silence. Apparently the material was tough and readily absorbed certain wavelengths. He dropped the rock down the shaft and, as he expected, it disappeared soundlessly into the dark.
Leela could not decide whether the Doctor knew the warriors would not attack him or whether he was just trusting to his luck. ‘Trust to your luck and be glad you’re alive, and march to your front like a soldier’ was a chant of Kipling the storysinger that he liked to speak. It seemed like a strange choice for a shaman whose power came, he said, only from understanding things. You could not understand luck. There was no explanation for it.
‘ But what would happen if you were convinced that something was beyond all understanding? That it did not have an explanation. ’ ‘ Then I should know it did not exist. ’
She must put that to him next time. She watched him poking about in the mouth of the shaft. Did he know that was where the warriors came from? Yes, he would see that even if he had not seen it happen. He must not take too long scouting the hole, she thought. If those three finished before he did and they wanted to go back... Walking past them was one thing, but standing in their way could be a dangerous mistake.
It was then that Leela noticed that their movements were changing. All three of them had their crests erect and they had lowered their spear blades into what looked to her like a first-attack position. They were all looking in the same direction, but luckily it was not at the Doctor or at her. At least, she thought it was lucky – until she saw what it was they were looking at.
The Doctor decided to finish his investigation of the access shaft. He needed a route into the subterranean levels but one that did not require prodigious gymnastic feats or suicidal plunges. Hearing that the sounds the warriors were making had altered, he stood up, and dusted himself off, and prepared to charm his way back into the shelter of the trees.
The warriors had their backs to him and for a moment or two he couldn’t work out why.
‘Friends of yours, Thedoctor?’ Kley shouted as she led the patrol into the clearing. They paused just clear of the trees and spread out in an untidy line. Fermindor and Sozerdor stood either side of Kley with Belay at one end of the line. At the other end of the line was Pertanor with Rinandor standing inside and slightly behind him. They had all drawn their guns, though this was largely for effect since only Kley, Belay and Fermindor had fully functioning power packs.
‘If you back away slowly,’ the Doctor called, trying to keep his voice flat and relaxed, ‘back into the trees, without alarming them, I may have a chance to leave without finding out how good they are with those spears.’
‘Don’t worry about that,’ Fermindor called back. ‘We’ll cover you, come on!