Doctor Who_ Last of the Gaderene - Mark Gatiss [94]
‘No! No! ’ snarled the Master as the Spitfire entered the blue light and spiralled round and round towards them. The ninth key slipped back into its socket without a sound.
The Doctor stepped out of the column as though hopping off a bus. In seconds, the intensity of the light increased again.
He could see the Master as though through a sheet of ice.
Their eyes met for a long, long moment. Two Time Lords.
So similar in so many ways. Yet separated by a gulf as wide as the Universe itself. Two Time Lords. One safe. One doomed.
The Master held up his hand but the gesture was unclear.
Then, with a tortured whine, the Spitfire crashed into the centre of the column.
The Doctor threw himself to one side, rolling over and over until he deemed it safe to look back.
The column of light lit up with a new and fiery radiance as the aeroplane exploded into flames within it. There was a colossal boom and then a horrible, tortured, wretched scream blasted through the night. It echoed across the aerodrome and out over the wide, flat fields.
Within the column, the Gaderene shimmered and began to diminish, stretched into fibrous shapes as they were sucked backwards into the heavens. Light seethed over them, splitting them into tiny pixels of flesh, blood and bone, as the nine keys disintegrated in the firestorm and the aliens were dragged back along their dimensional pathway.
The Doctor peered ahead, struggling to make out the Master, but there was no sign of him.
He got to his feet and ran back towards the column. There was a final juddering scream, then it was all gone. The column of light. The roar of its energy.
Suddenly there was nothing but a devastating silence.
The Doctor sank back on his haunches.
Release... It felt her passing and it mourned. Every fibre of. its hideously mutated flesh cried out in agony. But now it could let go. The struggle was over...
Sergeant Benton had his rifle trained on the worm, ready for one last desperate assault, when the creature suddenly and inexplicably crashed to the ground, quite dead. Benton looked up, not quite daring to believe his eyes.
Its flesh was steaming, like overcooked meat. The Brigadier came over and gave the worm’s carcass an experimental kick. It didn’t move.
Around them, dazed villagers were slowly coming round, expelled Gaderene embryos hanging from their mouths like ectoplasm.
The Brigadier looked over towards the airstrip where he had seen the Spitfire crash. There was absolutely no sign of it.
And now the searing column of light streams back along the path it followed, rippling like a ribbon, crazed, unfettered, out of control. Blazing through the poisonous atmosphere of the planet, it thunders into the steel palace, vaporising the entire structure, along with the Apothecaries who have laboured so long and so hard.
But the destruction of the palace is lost in the global catastrophe as the planet ends its days. Tectonic plates crumple into one another, great volcanic masses vomit fiery lava into the black, black sky.
The ground rolls and splits and engulfs itself.
And the last of the Gaderene are no more...
Chapter Thirty-Five
Peace-time
Max Bishop was more surprised than he could adequately express to find himself lying in a wet field with his brother by his side.
He looked up at the sky, which was just showing the first streaks of dawn, and blinked repeatedly. There was a very nasty taste in his mouth.
Glancing down, he could just make out a small, almost formless thing, lying in the corn to his right. It was rather like a crab, or some kind of worm, but its flesh was blackened, twisted and dead. There was another one lying by Ted who was slowly coming round.
Max sat up and shook his head. His clothes were filthy and wet. His favourite bow tie was torn and hanging over one shoulder. But he was all right.
He glanced across at his brother and tried to smile. It hurt to do so. Max settled instead for a touch on his brother’s hand.
‘Hello Ted,’ he said quietly.
Mrs Toovey was already moving between