Doctor Who_ The Bodysnatchers - Mark Morris [77]
The Doctor looked around, trying to get his bearings, and saw that the only exit, apart from the gaping opening above his head, was a cylindrical tunnel away to his left, which looked large enough for him to walk along in a stooped position. He sloshed his way over to it, the ground giving a little beneath his flippered feet. The texture of the walls and floor and ceiling was more fleshy than fibrous here, the ever-present nodules and ganglions and tentacle-like appendages resembling soft organs rather than knots of root.
It was hard going along the tunnel, even when he removed his flippers, rather like walking on a half-inflated bouncy castle. The walls glistened like slug flesh and were so clotted with shapeless growths from which feebly waving tentacles dangled that it was akin to wading through a sewer pipe infested with small octopuses.The tentacles slid across the Doctor's face and shoulders, trying to tug him back, but he pressed on doggedly.
Eventually the tentacular growths became less and the tunnel widened out.
It didn't exactly come to an end, but all at once the Doctor was walking straight-backed through a large open area rather than stooped through a narrow tunnel.
He came to a junction where tunnels led off in four different directions. He paused for a moment, assessing them, checking them for light and signs of usage, listening for sounds in the walls. 'Eeny, meeny, miny, mo,' he began, pointing with the flippers which he now carried in his hand. Then his voice trailed off and he looked once again at the left-hand tunnel. He wanted to get to the nerve centre of the ship and his instincts told him to take that route.'Eeny,' he said firmly, and strode into the tunnel. What was it Ace had once said to him? That he must have a homing pigeon in his head.
Not that he was always right, of course. life would be boring if he was always right. He was right only ninety-nine per cent of the time... well, ninety-nine and a half per cent, maybe.
He wandered through the ship for twenty minutes or so, following his instincts whenever he came to a junction. He knew he was heading in the right direction: the veins in the walls were thickening into major arteries, the rooms were becoming larger and more packed with Zygon technology, and there were increasing numbers of Zygons wandering around too.
For a while the Doctor played a cat-and-mouse game with them, dodging into alcoves or narrow tunnels or hiding behind instrument banks whenever they appeared. Fortunately there were rarely more than three of them together at any one time and he was able to avoid them fairly easily.
Eventually, stepping through one of the many crystalline doors on the ship, and hoping that he wouldn't be met by a Zygon heading the other way, the Doctor found what he was looking for.The door led him out on to a creaking walkway that appeared to be composed of a great knot of cable-like roots.
Below him was a vast cavern, on the floor of which lay a number of Skarasen, their limbs twitching and their eyes rolling sleepily as though anaesthetised. The Skarasen were each connected via their bellies to a profusion of suckered tentacles which descended direct from an enormous ovular receptacle, like a gigantic wasps' nest, attached to the wall just below the ceiling, above and in front of the Doctor. The tentacles were pulsing, and making a peculiarly greedy gulping noise as they extracted what the Doctor knew was lactic fluid from the Skarasen's milk sacs. From the bottom of the ovular tank, more pipe-like tentacles, hanging in loops, carried the lactic fluid away through the walls, presumably to an area where it would be treated and made fit for Zygon consumption.
'The milking shed,' the Doctor murmured, noticing that at the far end of the walkway a number of gnarled protuberances jutting from the wall formed a set of steps leading down to the floor of the cavern. He made his way along and down and less than