Doctor Who_ The Zarbi - Bill Strutton [56]
‘Is, um, Chesterton not with you?’
Barbara stared back, her joy fading.
‘No... no! What... has happened to him...?’
They all looked at each other, troubled, wondering.
All was silent now in the underground tunnel. The figures of the pigmy-menoptera diggers, of Ian and Vrestin, were strewn about the floor like so many corpses.
One of the figures stirred weakly. It was Ian. He dragged himself to his knees and looked hazily about. He remembered, and sniffed.
The poisonous mist had thinned. The air was almost clear. He reached out a hand to touch the body of Vrestin, and stirred him. Vrestin groaned and moved. The Menoptera’s eyes fluttered open. He sat up with difficulty on one elbow and stared.
‘The gas – it’s gone!’
Ian nodded. On the other side of them Nemini was waking. The dwarf Menoptera peered dimly at the tunnel walls which enclosed them, and pointed. A large fissure showed.
‘Air currents,’ Nemini muttered, and coughed.
‘Pressures in these tunnels rise and fall without warning.
They cause rock falls... they press in fumes... then... suck them out, just as quickly.’
Ian got up. ‘We’re in luck.’
‘Indeed,’ Vrestin muttered. Hetra was reviving. He called weakly to the others, ‘We must continue our journey before it returns. Nemini...! Rouse as many of our diggers as you can...’
Nemini nodded and went among his workers, shaking them awake. Two of them did not respond. They remained huddled where they were, and Nemini halted, looking down.
‘Can we try reviving them?’ Ian asked.
Nemini shook his head. ‘The gases thinned too late —
for them,’ he said, and turned away towards the rock face.
He raised a spear probe and tapped at the wall. Nemini nodded at Ian.
‘Here... the wall is thinner! Stand back.’
Ian moved back to allow Nemini room. The stocky little Menoptera swung his digger and struck at the wall. A crack opened suddenly — and as it did so, fumes, then liquid spurted through. Nemini gave a yell and staggered back.
‘A leak — from the surface! Get back!’
‘The acid pools!’ Ian yelled. ‘Nemini, come away!’
But Nemini stood his ground. Ian wheeled to Hetra.
‘Order him back!’
Hetra shook his head. ‘Someone must block that gap!
Otherwise we shall all die!’
Ian made to leap forward, but Hetra raised a hand and two pigmy diggers grabbed at him and pulled him back.
Ian stared in fascinated horror as Nemini, snatching up handfuls of rock and gritting his teeth against the agonizing pain of the liquid that spurted through, splattering and drenching him, frantically worked to block the gap.
‘He doesn’t stand a chance!’
Hetra watched stonily, his lined old face drawn and tense. He shrugged.
‘It is a danger that is always with us,’ he said simply. He rounded on the other workers. ‘Try the other wall —
quickly!’
Somehow the reeling Nemini had succeeded in packing the seeping crack with loose rock and now he staggered back, groaning and weaving to and fro in agony. Ian started forward to help him but as he did so the short figure of the workers’ leader crumpled to the floor. Nemini stretched out and immediately stiffened.
Ian reached down to touch the dead pigmy Menoptera and halted in horrified amazement. The eyes were already sightless. The body, where his hand touched it, was brittle and crumbly, as though mummified. He remembered the hollow body his foot had crunched into when he and the Doctor had first emerged from Tardis to explore this planet.
It had happened in a matter of moments.
A call came from Vrestin, leading the other workers in an attack on another part of the cave wall.
‘Ian — we’re through!’
Hetra touched Ian’s arm gently. ‘Come...!’
Ian got to his feet. There was nothing anybody could do for Nemini now. Ian looked backward at the body as he walked and stumbled over rock.
‘Coming...’ he muttered.
Doctor Who stood in the centre of the ancient temple, looking down thoughtfully upon the map and the plan of Vortis that the others had drawn.
Vicki had directed the harmless Zarbi into a corner.
Hlynia stood at the door, waiting and listening, on guard,