Doctor Who_ The Zarbi - Bill Strutton [35]
Now he heard an ominous humming-and-chirruping, approaching. He could hear it even above the warning hooters. At his feet the Zarbi guard was now weakly trying to rise.
Ian sprang past the Zarbi to wrest again at the outer door. As he did so a venom grub appeared in the corridor, and behind it a swarm of Zarbi guards. He heard their chirruping and turned as the grub rushed swiftly down towards him. Outside the webbed trap which now caged Ian in, it paused. Its Zarbi controller halted, raised a foreclaw. Ian hurled himself to the side of the cell formed by the two webbed gates. The venom grub spat fire.
The webbed outer door crackled, flashed, and a column of acrid smoke billowed up as the grubs’ blast tore a great hole in it, revealing the open landscape of Vortis beyond it.
Ian scrambled to his feet and clawed his way through the burning hole. He staggered out and ran blindly on.
Dimly ahead of him he saw a crag which reared out of the sparse landscape. He raced for its shelter while behind him he heard the massed chirruping and the humming of the Zarbi swarming at the gate.
He paused at the crag, looked back, then around him, and ran on.
Suddenly the control room blazed into life. The web maps glared, their shapes outlined in glittering buttons of light.
The big central light pulsed. A humming broke from the speaker.
Doctor Who and Vicki looked up, startled, from their astral map. The Zarbi had sprung to life, too – and a venom gun controller among them turned and was suddenly menacing the Doctor and Vicki with the squat malignant shape of a sting grub, its master’s claw poised ready to fire it.
Beyond the control room a further humming and chirruping echoed inward from distant tunnels, together with the wailing of warning hooters.
‘Already?’ Doctor Who muttered. ‘It can’t be! Yet it sounds as if we’re under attack!’
Vicki caught at his arm despairingly. ‘It’s Ian – I know it is! They’ve found him!’
A Zarbi was now pointing at Doctor Who, and indicating the Dome. It slid down towards the Doctor from the ceiling. He stepped obediently beneath it, and the tirade which greeted him nearly knocked him over.
‘You were warned!’ the Voice thundered. ‘Your request was a trick – to cover the escape!’
Doctor Who drew himself up. ‘Nonsense, nonsense!’ he snapped back. ‘We are not responsible for that young man’s behaviour!’
‘You plotted with him-im...!’
‘Really? If it was a plan – then why did I not go with him too? Eh?’
At that the tirade halted. Then...
‘You will no longer be trusted.’
‘Were we ever?’ Doctor Who answered coldly. He sighed. ‘Very well. Then I take it that the information I have gathered is of no use to you...’
The Voice interrupted him. ‘Information? Of the Menoptera invasion?’
‘What did you think I was talking about – the weather?’
Doctor Who roared back irritably.
‘Speak!’ the Voice commanded.
Doctor Who hesitated. ‘I’m... still collating my instrument readings...’
‘– you lie! It is another of your tricks!’
‘That is for you to decide. Am I lying? Or do I really have something of importance for you? Think, before you make up your mind!’
The Doctor clamped his mouth shut, expecting another outburst all around him in the echoing Dome.
Instead, abruptly, it lifted, and he was free of it. Vicki moved to the Doctor’s side. He was looking upward with a faint, pleased smile. He turned. A signal hummed from the control panel, and the Zarbi leader guarding them scuttled across to answer it. Doctor Who noted that and moved
back to his astral map. He straightened, relaxing.
‘Well, it appears we have won another breathing space, my dear.’
‘What did you tell them?’
He grinned. ‘Nothing. Absolutely nothing!’
‘Will you tell them — about the Menoptera?’
‘Only as much as I feel I safely can. Come, child, we must appear to be busy.’
‘But what are you going to do now... to get us all out of here...?’
At that Doctor Who halted, thoughtful. He wagged his head slowly, baffled, and said simply. ‘Frankly, as yet I have no real idea... The answer is’... he looked around