Doctor Who_ Longest Day - Michael Collier [81]
Felbaac was looking at his wrist, then up at the sky, then back at his wrist.
Some sort of monitoring device? wondered Sam, vaguely. She looked around her. Could she move to somewhere a bit closer, somewhere with a bit more shade? She couldn't see anywhere likely - or much at all, really.
She guessed Sangton's ship must be somewhere to the east. Felbaac wouldn't have wanted the men to contemplate any other form of transport, knackered though it undoubtedly had to be.
Suddenly she grabbed at her ears, wincing as she pressed a hand against a bruise. A pressure was building in her head, her jaw ached all the more.
Then a noise like wind filled the air, a screaming noise, gradually lowering in pitch. A huge shadow fell over her as the sun was blotted out.
It was a spaceship, large and ugly, boxy and graceless. She saw the men pulling their tunics over their faces to keep the dust from blowing into their faces, and pulled up her own T-shirt to do the same, feeling tiny grains of sand peppering against and stinging her naked torso.
Through the white cotton fabric she saw the shadow of events taking place before her. Felbaac - she assumed it was him - seemed to be waving frantically at the craft as it descended uncertainly towards the huddled men below. She heard its huge engines roaring, retros thrusting indecisively in small bursts - or were they just failing to ignite, properly? She heard a voice yelling over the shriek of the engines. 'Back! Get back!'
She pulled her T-shirt back down to see more clearly what was going on, but sand was blasting into her hair, her eyes, her mouth, and she turned away, eyes streaming.
There was a sudden heat against the back of her legs. Twisting round, she discerned through the sandstorm part of the ship almost directly above her.
I'll be fried, I'll be crushed, I'll be roasted alive.
She staggered off through the blinding chaos of dust and sand, slipping down the other side of the rise she had climbed, stumbling blind, her ears splitting with the noise.
Chapter 10
Hopeless and Helpless
There was a sudden change in pitch of the craft's engines, a low rumbling noise that sounded ominously loud in her ears. Then with an angry whine she felt the shadow lift off her, the sun back at her skin through the dust cloud. Turning once again, she saw the craft pitching back suddenly away from her, and away from Felbaac and his group of men crouched in fear in the dust, as the storm subsided. And with a horribly loud thud the ship landed heavily against the rocky outcrop standing behind them, bringing an avalanche of debris down on top of the rear end of the vessel.
'What in the name of the deity was that meant to be, Felbaac?' snarled one voice. Sam recognised it as belonging to Crichter, a burly man who'd been complaining loudly in the queue for medical supplies earlier, although she could see nothing with half a sandpit seemingly lodged up her eyelids. Her eyes stung and watered, and as she rubbed them she realised just how badly burnt her eyelids had to be for them to be hurting quite that much.
'You could've killed us all!' came another voice she didn't know.
Then Yast: 'Look! Look at the state of it. Felbaac, what's happened?'
In the eerie stillness after the landing of the ship, Felbaac's voice sounded louder than usual, deliberately so, Sam reckoned.
'Nothing. There's nothing wrong. Just some minor malfunction of the drive unit.'
'But look at the state of it, Felbaac!'
Sam was desperate to clear her vision to see what Yast meant, her curiosity increased further by the astonished rumblings of the men taking the sight in.
'Never mind that,' came Felbaac's voice, followed by the noise of a mechanism being activated.'Let's get them off and get them on.'
'What do you mean?' came Crichter, warily. 'Who's on there?'
Sam heard Felbaac again, weary. 'You know your