Doctor Who_ The Zarbi - Bill Strutton [62]
Barbara, Hilio and Hlynia relaxed their combined grip on their captive Zarbi and it, too, scurried away desperately down the main tunnel to join the retreating Zarbi.
Prapillus, pleased, stared down at the motionless sting grub. Hlynia rushed to the fallen Hrostar. She knelt over him and then looked up.
‘Hrostar is dead,’ she said dully.
At that Hilio moved, snatched up his spar, lashed it savagely across the thick back of the venom grub. The shell cracked. Like a, madman, Hilio lashed again. The evil snout snapped. The venom grub rolled over, twitched, and lay still. Only then did Hilio lower his arm. He stared up the corridor, his face dark.
Barbara protested. ‘Why destroy it, Hilio? Couldn’t we have used it against the Zarbi?’
Prapillus shook his head sadly. He held up the necklet.
‘This wouldn’t work on a sting creature in that way. It would simply cancel its power. The Zarbi would repel its venom – if they had the sense to realize that. All we can hope to do is to stop them from using it, and destroy these evil creatures.’
He pointed at the lifeless sting grub. Hilio reached and snatched up the necklet.
‘The next sting is mine!’ he snarled.
‘It will not be so easy – next time, Hilio,’ Prapillus warned him.
Hilio nodded and stared grimly up the corridor.
‘Follow,’ he barked, and moved along it watchfully.
Barbara, Prapillus and Hlynia moved after him. Barbara paused a moment. She looked at the dead Hrostar. His action had saved their lives – for the moment – at the cost of his own.
‘Let’s hope it was not in vain, Hrostar,’ she whispered, and went on up after the others.
Doctor Who and Vicki, surrounded by the jostling escort, had almost reached the end of the huge corridor.
A great webbed gate stretched across it, and through it glared a light of almost hurtful brilliance, pulsing and flashing, at the same time as the low, heavy throbbing almost shook their bodies with its beat.
The Zarbi halted their two captives before the enormous webbed door, and emitted a humming, chirruping call.
Vicki looked up at the door and the searing light beyond and tried to master the sickening fear that welled up within her. She tried bravely to joke.
‘We’ve arrived, Doctor.’
‘Yes, my child,’ the Doctor answered gravely. ‘At least we’ll see now what sort of creature this is...’
The huge webbed door slid upward and the Zarbi pushed the Doctor and Vicki roughly through it.
They paused on the threshold, blinking painfully as the full blinding power of the great pulsing light from within struck them like a blow. Vicki groped, her eyes narrowed painfully against its brutal glare, as terrified as if it were total darkness.
‘Can you see it... Doctor... can you see...?’
‘I... can see nothing, child.’
The Zarbi withdrew, closing the immense webbed gate behind them, shutting them in with the great light, the pulsing, the throbbing.
Then the Voice spoke. It boomed almost as hollowly and from as great a depth as it had within the Dome. It grated deeply and echoed all around the chamber.
‘Welcome... you are the first humans to... enter my kingdom-om...’
Vicki started to hear the Voice the Doctor had spoken of for the first time. Doctor Who raised a hand and shielded his eyes against the radiance. He spoke in the direction of the sound.
‘Who are you? What do you want?’
‘Come!’ the Voice ordered. ‘Approach, earth people!
Your cells, your earthly mental processes, will provide my most enriching sustenance yet.’
A realization of what this creature was suddenly dawned on Doctor Who with those words. It was as though all his guessing, his wondering about it had really been a groping search for the right key to the mystery of this Intelligence
— and these words had unlocked it in a single sentence.
‘You’re a parasite!’ he exclaimed. ‘A super-parasite. Of course!’
‘A super power!’ the Voice corrected him. ‘Absorbing not only territory, but the best of its riches — its energy, culture. The Menoptera are nothing — you and your