Doctor Who_ St. Anthony's Fire - Mark Gatiss [7]
He looked about quickly, his head jerking back and forth, chicken‐like. The sound was getting louder. He could feel it thudding inside his head. He banged his fists against his temples, terrified.
The glass in the picture frame began to rattle. He glanced down at the shuddering floor and then, in a bolt of realization, at the ceiling.
The sound grew louder still, echoing the frantic hammering of his heart. The ceiling began to shudder.
In the next instant, the Pelaradator was blown off his feet, flying across the room to land in a crumpled heap by the remains of his desk drawer. He winced as a blast of intense heat slammed into his face, as though the door to an immense furnace had been thrown open. Something sharp and metallic was digging into his side and he glanced rapidly down.
The signalling device was his last point of contact with the outside world. The unwieldy conglomeration of valves, wires and keys was jammed into his ribs, having been blown off the wall. If he could get a message through…
The Pelaradator felt the floor rise up and crack against his chin, a delayed, muffled roar pounding at his ears.
The ceiling heaved and shattered, releasing shafts of blinding white light into the room. He squealed as the windows blew out, fragments of glass ballooning outwards into the sky. The lights probed around the room like anxious ethereal fingers, searching, analysing, recording.
The Pelaradator scuttled towards the sanctuary of his desk, the precious picture frame rammed against his ribs, dragging the signalling box with him. He was aware of a sharp electric tang in the air and motes of dust which swarmed in the shafts of light, forming strange geometric patterns. His foot crunched on a sheet of shattered glass as he hauled himself closer into the shelter of the desk.
The sound began to encroach once more onto his terrified senses. The soft spines on his neck rose and he hugged himself, convulsed with terror. Something was sliding over the top of his exposed office – sleek, black, impossibly massive.
The Pelaradator blinked slowly like a child woken from a deep sleep. The thing was hovering over the building, its sheer size causing the structure to groan and buckle. The floor began to shift beneath him, tiles and broken glass bursting into the air.
Out of the darkness, something began to form. The Pelaradator felt his lips trembling and an awful, gushing fear sweeping over him. Dazzled by the light and dust, he could nevertheless make out a change in the shape above him. The thing seemed to be blistering as though something inside were anxious to get out. Feeling his throat working up and down, the old man felt his way behind the desk, claws digging into the ruined floor‐tiles.
His clothes stretched and ripped as the thing dragged at him. His claws scrabbled desperately at the floor and he looked over his shoulder, stricken, as the white light turned to a hot, glorious crimson, like looking down a tunnel of flame. The Pelaradator groped for the signalling box and keyed in his final message with the sudden clarity of mind of a condemned man. Someone had to know.
Then the tunnel of flame erupted outwards.
The throbbing sound continued for some time, agitating the vortex of dust and glass it had created, as though contemplating its actions.
Then the blistered darkness resealed and the room was silent. The black shape slid away like a leech detaching itself from an exhausted host and hovered low over the dead city.
The Pelaradator’s children stared out from their watercolour world; innocent, painted eyes now spattered with the blood of their father.
* * *
2
Battle Fatigue
All things considered, reflected Bernice Summerfield, it had begun rather well.
Her researches into the decline and fall of the Shovoran dynasty had turned up some unusual data on the Tytheg, a humanoid race whom the Shovorans had subjugated through centuries of war and slavery. Interest in these long‐dead people had thrown light on the planet Massatoris and its (mildly) famous colonies.
Even a