Doctor Who_ Storm Harvest - Mike Tucker [39]
‘I think so,’ said the Doctor. ‘Where are we?’
‘We’re close to where we found the body. It’s just ahead. The entrance is above us.’
The Doctor’s light bounced feebly off the walls of a long, narrow trench.
‘Up we go,’ said Q’ilp.
The Doctor kicked hard and propelled himself uncertainly to the surface, where he bobbed looking about him at the low tunnel and the narrow, precarious ledge that ran along its edge and ended in a blank wall.
He scrambled awkwardly on to the ledge. The diving suit flapped, huge and ungainly, about his hands and feet.
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‘Careful, Doctor,’ said Q’ilp. ‘Remember what happened last time.
The place is falling to pieces.’
‘I know,’ said the Doctor. He began probing the blank wall with his gloved fingers. ‘It’s difficult to do anything in this suit. I can hardly see.’
He lifted the diver’s helmet from his head and peeled the gloves from his hands.
An image of the alien soldier loomed in his mind. Massive internal disruption. He had got this far, but then what? The Doctor ran his hands gingerly down the wall. Just above waist height he encountered the faintest of vibrations. He pressed, lightly at first, then harder.
‘Nothing,’ he said bitterly.
No. The vibration had increased – ever so slightly, ever so briefly, but it had definitely increased.
‘Hang on...’ he said.
It happened again.
‘What is it, Doctor?’ Q’ilp chirruped.
It happened a third time, more strongly.
‘It’s a sonic lock, said the Doctor. ‘The right frequency will trigger it. Shame I haven’t got my sonic screwdriver...’
‘You don’t need your sonic doodah, said Q’ilp. ‘You’ve got me.’
The Doctor rubbed his hands together in glee. ‘I have indeed,’ he said. He tapped his lips thoughtfully. ‘But that still leaves us with a problem... Defences.’
‘Defences?’
‘Let’s not forget what happened to our alien friend. Hmm... let’s see...’
The Doctor picked up his diving helmet and reached inside it.
Carefully he removed the little communication unit and placed it at the foot of the stone door.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘let’s get out of this tunnel.’
He edged back along the ledge. Q’ilp swam alongside him.
When they were safely round the corner, the Doctor said ‘All right, Q’ilp, let’s see what you can do.’
The dolphin began to whistle, to sing into his communicator, low at first, then rising in pitch. The Doctor peered round the corner. In the distance the stone slab began to tremble, he was sure.
‘Higher,’ said the Doctor. He could see a crack appearing along the edge of the slab.
Quite suddenly the slab whipped back, revealing a square hole of darkness.
Something was happening. The air in the tunnel began to shimmer, 74
to shine. The Doctor threw himself backwards. There was a deafening CRACK...
And then silence.
The Doctor inched forward into the tunnel.
‘It appears to be safe now,’ he said.
‘What was it?’ Q’ilp asked as they cautiously approached the doorway.
‘There,’ said the Doctor.
A disrupter nozzle, not particularly large or dangerous looking, but devastatingly destructive, was set into the stonework.
‘They really didn’t want visitors here,’ the Doctor said. ‘A quite dreadful weapon.
‘But why?’ Q’ilp asked. ‘I thought this was supposed to be a temple.
Why would they set a booby trap in a temple?’
The Doctor nodded through the door.
The chamber beyond was small and simple, with none of the ornamentation of the rest of the temple. In its centre a tall, elegant plinth stood on a raised dais. On the plinth was an object – a vertical-standing cylinder, transparent, with a ring of dull green rods inside and a series of metal protuberances, etched with patterns and alien script, outside. Light from the surface filtered down through an array of crystals set into the ceiling so that the cylinder was lit as though in a spotlight.
‘It was defending that,’ said the Doctor.
‘What is it?’ Q’ilp asked.
‘The holy of holies, said the Doctor. ‘The true Cross.’
‘Isn’t that a carrying strap on its side?’ Q’ilp chirruped, peering into the chamber.
The Doctor stepped inside the chamber and cautiously