Doctor Who_ The Zarbi - Bill Strutton [3]
‘Doctor! Some of our instruments are responding!’
He pointed. The time pointer was wavering unsteadily near the A.D. 20000 mark.
Doctor Who crossed to his side.
‘So it is. Hmm. Now the question is, what’s been causing these failures? What kind of... force, eh? Look –
dimension scale – negative response. Astral computer – out of order! Gyros at Zero. Now what can be holding us here?’
‘Holding us?’ Ian said. ‘Couldn’t it just be that something is wrong with Tardis ?’
‘Certainly not!’ Doctor Who snapped. ‘We did not stray into this place through any mechanical fault. We’ve been plucked off course by... something. Now – is it some natural phenomenon... or something intelligent...
deliberate? With... a purpose?’
‘You mean – something more powerful than the ship?’
Vicki asked a little wide-eyed.
Doctor Who waved a reassuring hand.
‘Whatever it is, I’m, er, sure I can find an answer to it.
Chesterton, we’ll try maximum power. Switch on boosters.
Let’s see if they’ll lift us clear of... this place.’
Barbara stared at the forbidding landscape through the inspection screen and shivered. ‘I hope so,’ she murmured.
Ian snapped on all five booster switches. There was a steady hum of machinery in response, rising slowly in volume. Doctor Who’s face cleared a little as he heard it and watched the power response dials.
‘Power’s responding,’ Ian reported.
‘Yes, yes. Wait till it reaches maximum before we switch on the motors.’
Behind them Vicki relaxed a little, her face clearing. She rubbed her temples.
‘I can’t wait for us to get away from here,’ she said. ‘I never want to hear that sound again. Not ever!’
The comforting hum of the ship’s motors continued to rise steadily. Ian looked across at Doctor Who, but the old man never took his eyes off the power response dials. He grunted, ‘Mm! Power build-up very satisfactory.’
He paused, waiting, watching the dials, his hand straying to hover over the motor levers.
‘Now – motors!’
He snapped the levers down and scanned the instrument confidently.
‘They’re responding!’
The police-box shape of Tardis , nestling in a space between the crags, gave out a powerful whirring from its motors and its outlines began to fade until it was almost transparent against the strange lunar background of the planet.
But away on a neighbouring crag, movement showed again – and sound. There was a slithering. The eyes of the watching creature shone out of the shadows. Its feelers came into sight, manhandling something, and a slim cylinder appeared from behind a ledge of rock.
It was manoeuvred into position and could now be clearly seen – a strange barrel, sleeved in a coil of something which looked like glass tubing, mounted on a conical base.
The slim, shiny forelegs of the creature swivelled this cylinder downward until it pointed directly at the fading shape of the Tardis .
The creature now lowered its shiny, insect-like head until it was peering through a sight mounted on the barrel
– a sight shaped like a small web.
A chirruping noise came suddenly, shrilly, from a near-by crag where the twin eye-lights of another creature glowed. As if this were a signal, the creature aiming the cylinder-gun moved a foreleg suddenly, slamming home a plunger in the rear of the barrel.
Immediately the coiled glass sleeve around the barrel glowed and crackled into life.
As it did so the shape of Tardis, which had all but melted and vanished among its surroundings, returned and grew more solid.
Its motors whirred frantically, and in response the shape of the ship again began to fade. A concerted chirruping sound echoed around among the crags where a number of pairs of eyes now shone. The gun aimed at Tardis glowed more brightly, its crackling drowning the chirruping of the companion creatures on the crags surrounding the ship.
The motors of Tardis, throbbing furiously to clear the ship from this place, faltered, failed. Its police-box outlines now materialized clearly until it cast its own shadow.
Doctor Who and his three earth companions all heard the change in the sound of Tardis ’ motors