Doctor Who_ The Dying Days - Lance Parkin [116]
The gauge said that the cylinder was full to capacity. I bent over to double-check, resting my hand on the side of the container. Almost before my fingertips had touched the cold metal, whatever was inside surged towards them, clattering against the side like a bird in a cage.
I realised what it was.
Outside, Captain Ford and his men were planting explosives around an empty refinery. The poison gas had already been piped into the shuttle. The thing that had killed the Doctor was in here with me.
End of extract
***
'Sir,' the human female Hellmond squeaked. 'I've just had a phone cal from Downing Street. The Prime Minister isn't going to the Tower. His car is being escorted to Trafalgar Square.'
'What?' Xznaal bel owed, sweeping around.
'Did he explain why?' Xztaynz asked quietly.
'He is going to the Space Museum, sir,' the female said.
Xznaal glared down at the two humans. 'Why?'
'I have no idea,' Xztaynz muttered. He struggled with some mental activity - a feat of memory, perhaps. 'Unless he... he said something about an insurance policy, and that... the Orbiter.'
Xznaal's eyes narrowed. 'We musst follow him.'
***
Extract from the memoirs of Professor Bernice Summerfield
Have you ever heard the expression "her mind raced"? In adventure stories, when faced with insurmountable odds and imminent death, the author tells us that the heroine's mind "races". My mind did no such thing. It sat there, nursing the mental equivalent of a hamstring injury. The primal instinct in these circumstances ought to be "flight or fight" - kil or run away. I stood there.
I managed to muster enough presence of mind to duck out of sight as Vrgnur detached himself from the communications alcove. In something akin to his native atmosphere, his breathing was quiet - I hoped that I could say the same about myself: Martian hearing was acute, possibly sharp enough to pick up the sound of a human heart slamming against a ribcage. Although I couldn't see or hear Vrgnur, I could feel his vast bulk moving across the deck of the shuttle, the metal reverberating with each footstep. Vrgnur paused, close to me. There was a wrenching sound, a pneumatic hiss and then the cargo bay doors slammed shut.
104
I was trapped in here, alone with the Martian.
Within seconds, Vrgnur was lumbering out of the hold, away from me. "Relief" seemed like a rather small word to describe what I was feeling. The Martian scientist was heading away from the hold to the cockpit. I checked my watch. I had only a little over a minute to get clear before Captain Ford set off the bombs.
I eased myself out of my hiding place and tried to find the control that opened the cargo hatch. It wasn't difficult -
the lever was four foot long, and bright red. It wouldn't have been out of place in an old-fashioned signal box. To Vrgnur, releasing the control would have been as easy as changing the gears of a car. But humans found it less easy, as I quickly discovered when I tried to apply all my weight to get the thing to budge.
Reader, I swore.
The sound echoed around the cargo hold, and didn't go away however much I wished that it would or however much I gritted my teeth.
Twenty seconds later, I still hadn't been killed by a Martian, so I decided that Vrgnur hadn't heard me. He would be safely strapped into his pilot's cradle by now, a chunky visor over his eyes, his claws tugging at the controls. Which would mean...
The shuttlecraft lurched skywards on a column of magnetic energy. At precisely that moment, I could hear the rumble of explosions outside. It was like being caught in a tidal wave.
As a train begins slowing at the end of every journey, when it's coming into the station and everyone is standing up, draping their coat over their arm ready to leave, there's always someone who contrives to pitch over and crash around,