Doctor Who_ The Bodysnatchers - Mark Morris [50]
Litefoot and Emmeline had joined them now. 'You all right, Em?' Sam asked for what seemed like the hundredth time.
Emmeline nodded.
"The moment of truth, eh?' hissed Litefoot excitedly, and reaching into his jacket pocket produced his revolver. 'With your permission, Doctor, I think perhaps I had better take the lead at this juncture.That way I can protect the ladies, if needs be.'
Sam opened her mouth to protest, but the Doctor effectively plugged it with a jelly baby which he produced out of nowhere, simultaneously closing his other hand around Litefoot's revolver.
'That -won't be necessary, Professor,' he said mildly. 'We come in peace.'
'Yeah,' said Sam, chewing,'but do they know that?'
The Doctor smiled.'Let's see, shall we?'
He slid-crawled down the last thirty feet of chute, paused a moment at the circular mouth to glance around, then dropped into the shadows. Sam followed suit, unable to fully shake off the notion that any second now she would drop into a vast stomach and immediately begin to liquefy in the acidic digestive juices that churned down there.
She gritted her teeth as she reached the end of the chute and dropped into darkness as the Doctor had done. Even though she bent her knees to cushion her body from the impact of landing, the unexpectedly short fall jarred her legs and caused her to lose her balance. However she managed to convert her momentum into a forward roll and sprang immediately to her feet in what she hoped looked a professional and athletic manner.
Even as Litefoot and Emmeline were being helped out of the end of the chute by the Doctor, Sam was looking keenly around at her surroundings.
Her first thought was that the four of them had emerged in a hobbit hole - or at least some kind of weird root system. The walls, floor and ceiling of the circular chamber they stood in appeared to be composed of a mass of orange and green fibres, so densely packed that it did not look possible to force even a coin between one strand and the next. There were no straight lines or sharp angles visible anywhere, and though the chamber was sparse it was certainly not featureless. Twisted nodules and protuberances jutted seemingly haphazardly from every surface, some of which resembled strange roots, some giant fungi, some monstrously deformed pieces of exotic fruit, and some fleshy, bell-shaped flowers without bloom.
There was some light here too, though not much. What there was seemed to come from the walls themselves, the entwined fibres releasing a greenish glow like rotting swamp moss. More light, of a more luminous green, was provided by a viscous substance which moved sluggishly through what appeared to be rope-thick, pulsing veins which criss-crossed the walls, floor and ceiling.
Aside from the mouth of the chute, the only other means of access to and from this chamber was an arched, tunnel-like opening covered by some kind of opaque, crystalline membrane in the opposite wall. As Sam noticed this, she became aware for the first time that the chamber was not silent.
From all around them, from within the walls themselves, there was a constant burbling-shushing noise, rhythmic, almost soothing.
It's like being inside a giant womb, she thought wonderingly. She was about to turn and share this observation with the others when a muffled but distinctive roar from somewhere beyond the arched opening froze the words in her throat.
Cyborgs! There were cyborgs down here! Sam suddenly had the horrible feeling that she and her friends had emerged in the equivalent of the lion enclosure at London Zoo. At least the Doctor had his sonic screwdriver, but how effective would that be if half a dozen of the things suddenly came at them? She turned to say something, but the Doctor was already at her shoulder. Absently he patted her arm. 'Brave heart, Tegan,' he murmured.
She didn't have time to ask him what he was talking about, because he was already past her, moving towards the opening. She hurried to catch up with him. 'Doctor, what are