Doctor Who_ The Gallifrey Chronicles - Lance Parkin [102]
‘Humans don’t matter,’ Marnal stated, and the way he was fussing around the Doctor you’d have thought he was pregnant. ‘We have to get you to a place of safety, and you have to stay there. Your TARDIS will be your sanctuary. We will marshal our resources, summon what allies we can. Together we will construct a city for the saved.’
‘No,’ said the Doctor. ‘We go back to Earth.’
‘The code of the Time Lords states –’
‘Phooey to the code of the Time Lords,’ the Doctor said angrily. ‘In fact, I’m sure we’re quorate, so let’s vote on changing Time Lord foreign policy right here and now. I warn you, I do have a block vote.’
Marnal raised his gun.
The Doctor held out his hands, inviting Marnal to shoot. ‘Remember?’ he asked, impatiently.
Marnal scowled and lowered the gun. ‘We only need your brain,’ he said darkly.
‘Well, it’s coming with me, back to Earth,’ the Doctor insisted. ‘I have the feeling I’m going to need it.’
As Marnal, the Doctor and Rachel made their way across the terrain they were beginning to get a sense of it, even in the darkness. Marnal knew this would make a fascinating entry for his diary, and found himself trying to commit as much as he could to memory.
211
The food cave was the size of a city. It was a natural bowl in the rock –
Marnal thought it had originally been an impact crater and had been covered over by Vore builders. The soil was thick, with the consistency in places of a peat bog. Rachel had added to the Vore’s stockpile of chyme a couple of times at first, but now said she was used to the smell. The Doctor was alert, looking for the best exit.
There were pathways running down the sides of the crater. Off the path, individual Vore scurried like rats on a landfill. They must have been tending the mushroom garden, although it was impossible to make out exactly what they were doing.
Down in the valleys there were mile-long, perfectly straight lines of Vore everywhere. They trudged forwards, carrying pulped-up spheres of mushroom paste as big as they were. They moved in perfect unison, all of them swaying slightly, but exactly the same way. There was no sign of the beginning or end of the line, no sign of the Vore who must have chewed up the mushrooms to turn them into paste, or the ones set the Sisyphean task of rolling the paste into balls.
The whole place was quiet, the layer of fungus acting to absorb sound, the Vore going about their task with the silence and dedication of monks.
‘No obvious physical differences to indicate a caste structure,’ the Doctor said to himself. ‘Perhaps a slightly higher intelligence means they can be generalists.’
The three of them were about halfway up a slope, heading towards a small tunnel opening that hadn’t seen much Vore traffic. The creatures weren’t reacting. The Doctor’s supposition that they operated by smell, and so perceived the three of them as oddly mobile food, was almost certainly flawed, but was the best theory they currently had to go on.
The Doctor reached the opening first, and gave Rachel a hand up on to the small ledge that marked it.
‘If I’m right. . . ’ the Doctor began. ‘Yes! Look, the TARDIS.’
The tunnel was only a few feet long. At the other end was the cavern the TARDIS had landed in. The time ship was visible about four hundred yards away. The cavern buzzed and droned with Vore activity. The creatures crawled over every surface, even over each other. The air was thick with them. They were keeping a respectful distance from the TARDIS itself, and it was Marnal’s fancy that those nearest it were facing it with the same deference that a primitive faced an altar or idol.
‘I should have packed a dog whistle,’ the Doctor muttered, incomprehensibly.
‘They don’t seem to notice us. Can we make a run for it?’ Rachel asked.
‘I think the Vore in there are guards. They’ll be on the lookout for us. A 212
four-hundred-yard dash over uneven rocky terrain, then hold them off long enough for me to unlock the door and the three of us to get through it?’
‘I’ll get us there,’ Marnal