Doctor Who_ The Gallifrey Chronicles - Lance Parkin [78]
As for the monsters, the swarm had long departed but small groups had remained behind. The army were containing them, keeping them away from the population. Attack one, though, and every Vore in the area came crashing down on the person who’d fired the shot. It was a good deterrent.
It was unclear what the monsters’ aims were. So far, observatories had seen no Vore on the surface of the new moon, so there wasn’t even a proven link between it and the monsters. Jodrell Bank wasn’t picking up any radio activity from the planet. The creatures did not have any obvious high technology, not even tools or weapons, and certainly no vehicles or spacecraft. There had been no attempt at communication, let alone any demands.
At the end of the first day, all anyone could do was wait and see.
The courier plane was cleared for landing. Fitz had guessed this already from the manoeuvrings, but the captain had just buzzed the news over the intercom to confirm it.
‘For once, we won’t be held in a stack,’ Trix told him.
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Fitz glanced out of the window. Fields and towns, strings of lights along roads. Nothing like the maps ever looked. He turned back to Trix, who was packing her laptop away.
A flash of silver in the window opposite.
Fitz tried to get a better look, but whatever it was had gone. It must have been a trick of the light.
‘What is it?’ Trix asked.
The plane was buffeted a little and Fitz and Trix exchanged nervous, amused glances. Fitz had flown enough to know that this usually happened around landing. He tried to comfort himself with the thought it was probably the undercarriage deploying, or something to do with layers of air.
The plane banked unexpectedly.
Trix seemed unsure whether to unbuckle or sit tight. Fitz put his hand on her leg.
‘Stay seated,’ he warned.
She nodded. There was a scratching from the rear of the plane. It was impossible to tell whether it was coming from the inside or the outside.
Fitz looked out of the window. ‘We’re still pretty high up,’ he said. How could a layman judge altitude? None of the clues a human being used to judge size and distance applied when you looked out of a plane’s window.
The horizon was in a different place, there was nothing to scale the ground against. They were a lot lower than they had been, but the houses seemed a long way away. No doubt the thick plastic windows were distorting things too.
The plane rocked like a car that had just hit the kerb.
Fitz turned to Trix and saw she was wide-eyed, staring out of his window.
He turned back.
For the merest moment he saw a pair of insect eyes and a set of mandibles, then the face at the window was gone.
They’d both seen it.
Now a puttering sound: thump, thump, thump from just outside.
‘They’re all in Africa,’ Trix said.
‘No they aren’t.’
Fitz moved to unbuckle his belt.
‘We have to sit tight,’ Trix said.
‘I just told you that,’ Fitz reminded her. He strained to see out of the window.
‘Oh. . . ’
‘What is it?’
The wing was heavy with insects, each his height, hanging on with what was clearly quite some effort. It was like an Indian train, passengers on the roof and hanging from anything they could grab on to.
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That wasn’t all of it, though. The insects were taking turns to leap off the front of the wing, like they were performing a parachute jump. As they did, they were sucked into the engines and there was a thump. Fitz described the process to Trix, who didn’t believe him, and moved him out of the way to get a look for herself.
‘It’s deliberate,’ Trix said. ‘They’re killing themselves.’
‘It’s going to bring us down,’ Fitz replied. Of course it was. He’d read about birds and bits of stone being sucked into the jets, crippling some important piece of the engine. ‘Do you think the captain knows?’
The plane was tipping one way, then the other. They quickly got back into their own seats.
‘I guess he does.’
‘Can you fly