Doctor Who_ Longest Day - Michael Collier [107]
Her vision spun crazily as she twisted round to try to drag herself along on her front. She glimpsed the Doctor, his fingers moving over the digitpad.
She saw a dark arch of metal above a large rubber wheel. This purple thing had to be a vehicle. How was she meant to get in?
The Leader reached out a sharp-nailed hand towards her. She saw all six fingers splayed out, ready to grasp her flesh.
The pipe hit the Leader's arm with enough force to knock his hand down.
She raised it again, and pushed it into his eye. The Leader's angry roar became one of pain, and he lashed out, sending the pipe flying across the other side of the room into a dark bank of machinery.
Anstaar reached out to a protruding piece of metal and chrome and pulled herself up and away from the thrashing Kusk's reach. There was a handle, a crack in the metal. A door.
She almost screamed as she put her weight on her smashed leg to throw herself inside to the soft seat. Facing her were instruments, a black plastic wheel and a key in a mechanism.
It didn't seem to want to turn. Outside, she could hear the Leader punching at the undercarriage, seemingly trying to force a way in through the bottom of the vehicle.
***
Sam felt the next tremor even through whatever shielding the matter transmitter was providing. She could see the Kusk before her clutching at its tendril-like ears, screaming out a sound that was surely too high-pitched to come from such a creature.
As she watched helplessly, its skin dried out and cracked, becoming the texture of ancient parchment. The Kusk's ruddy brown colour faded to a cold grey before the beast seemed to shrivel, its eyes narrow and a sickly yellow.
The luminance of the transmission mechanism hid from her the rest of the creature's bizarre death, but its screaming lingered for several seconds before joining the host of demonic sounds from outside. She couldn't feel relieved, not in this horrible, bizarre condition, half in, half out. A spectator in her own body, scared, desperate for a way out - or in -back to safety, back to the Doctor.
Then she realised, as rubble fell crashing in front of her, that the entire cave was falling in.
***
'Come on...'hissed the Doctor.'Now!' He punched in the final codes.
Chapter 14
The After-Hours
Nothing happened.
A collapsed monitor, the hazy picture on its screen rolling over and over, showed the pink mass of Hirath bright against the blackness of space.
And where Anstaar's cable piping, thrown across the room by the Kusk Leader, had hit the exposed innards of the bank of machinery near the matter transmitter, it had pushed together a group of wires that finally conducted enough energy to send a faint radiance of power flickering over the circuitry.
***
At last the key turned in the mechanism. The engine the Doctor had promised her roared into life. But the smashing against the underside of the car was getting louder, more desperate. The car shook with the chugging of the engine but the Leader's hard, bony fist was hammering closer and closer. Anstaar could hear metal tearing.
***
Sam could feel the force of the rocks hitting the ground in front of her. The platform was vibrating now. If it toppled over...
Then she felt hundreds of tiny mouths biting at her flesh with renewed vigour. Felt her mind spinning round, tired giggles spill out of her, consciousness fading, rocks falling, her flesh being forced down a plughole with the milky water all around -
***
'What am I missing? What am I missing?' The Doctor coughed slightly on the exhaust fumes filling the chamber and stared at the pitching picture of Hirath on the monitor. 'Don't go away,' he muttered.
***
Anstaar could hear the Leader snarling,