Doctor Who_ The Gallifrey Chronicles - Lance Parkin [84]
173
There was no nuclear option. They’d thought about bombing the swarm over the Atlantic or Pacific, but there would be nuclear fallout and plans were shelved when someone wondered aloud if it might set off a tsunami. There was no delivery system capable of getting nuclear weapons to the second moon.
Enemy numbers were stable. Estimates had it that there was one Vore for every two people on Earth – this ratio was continually changing in the enemy’s favour, but this wasn’t because there were new monsters arriving. Six out of seven of the Vore were in the main swarm, 90 per cent of human casualties were caught in the swarm.
The situation, then, was settling into a predictable pattern. The Vore were in control, systematically taking the human race apart, but now it was possible to see how they would do it, and there was plenty of time to get people evacuated or into shelters. Some people even started talking about things being ‘manageable’. None of them, when asked, was able to explain how the swarm could be stopped or even slowed down, but governments around the world were beginning to feel the worst was over.
Then an analyst saw something, right on the edge of one of the African satellite images. And, once she’d worked out what it was, she panicked.
The Doctor had read all the books he’d brought with him. He knew a little more about his home planet now, but what he knew was hardly comprehensive. If he’d grabbed an armful of random novels from a London library, would he have a full understanding of the history and culture of Earth? He’d have to try it some time as an exercise.
For now, he’d got something else to do. The back wall.
The Doctor had found a cutting torch in one of the store-rooms. He had gone to the back wall and was burning his way through it. He’d cut a line up from the floor to the ceiling, now he began cutting a horizontal line. Even though the wall was damaged it was slow work, but it gave him time to think about what he’d read. Gallifrey was a contradiction. A world of futuristic control rooms manned by dusty old men in ornate collars. Monks walking on stone floors underneath which sat a black hole. Although Marnal’s narration revelled in the ritual, the repetition, the routine, the Doctor found himself unmoved. It was no way to live a life.
He moved the cutting beam down. Finally, he reached a long crack in the floor.
The rough oblong he’d cut in the wall hung there for a moment, until the Doctor pushed it over. Through the new doorway was. . . more corridor.
It was with a distinct sense of anticlimax that the Doctor stepped over the 174
threshold into the uncharted regions of his TARDIS. Fifty yards down the corridor, and his mood hadn’t improved.
‘There’s nothing here,’ he complained.
But he’d heard scratching at the wall many times. So this couldn’t be true.
The Doctor knelt down and examined the floor. Nothing.
At the far end of the corridor, round the first corner, he heard a whirring noise, like servo motors. It was heading this way. The Doctor stood, ready for the new arrival.
It was a robot. It moved smoothly, hovering a little off the ground. It was battleship grey, with what looked like a gun and some sort of sucker cup. It watched him with a single electronic eye.
‘You are the Doctor,’ it said in a metallic voice.
‘Yes. Delighted to meet you,’ he replied.
The machine considered its response.
‘I must kill the Doctor,’ it concluded.
The gun flared with light, and the Doctor dived out of the way. The beam shot past him and was absorbed harmlessly by the