Doctor Who_ The Zarbi - Bill Strutton [66]
Suddenly all the Zarbi, including their leader froze. The creatures stood like graven images as the charge carried Barbara, Prapillus and the other two Menoptera clean through their ranks. Barbara paused for a moment of wild disbelief as she looked back and saw the Zarbi still halted where they were.
‘They let us through!’ she shouted unbelievingly. ‘They didn’t do a thing to stop us! Why?’
Prapillus paused, looked back, and then ahead —
ominously.
‘We were expected,’ he muttered. He braced his shouldders. ‘Well — let us not disappoint... whatever awaits us.’
He pointed at the door before them with the fierce glow of light beyond it, and took the lead again, marching grimly towards it.
‘It may be expecting us — but I doubt if it will be expecting this,’ Hilio said, and tapped the Web Destructor he carried.
As they reached the vast web doors they paused a moment, wondering how to force them. Hlynia looked back. She nudged Barbara and pointed.
Behind them the Zarbi had turned and had moved silently after them, not attempting to molest them —
merely shadowing their progress. The Zarbi halted now and watched from a distance.
Hlynia was uneasy. ‘Whatever is in there thinks itself strong enough without them,’ she murmured.
Then the big web doors swung back silently inward and the intense light beyond it bathed them all in its glare.
Barbara and the Menoptera moved warily in, Hilio with the Web Destructor at the ready.
They halted and blinked and could see nothing in the blinding glare which now enveloped them. No sooner had they entered than they suddenly felt the pull of an immense, unseen power. The force of it made them lurch forward clumsily, clouding their thinking, their resolve, so that they had stumbled several paces before Barbara shouted.
‘Stop! Wait! Don’t go any farther!’
But the powerful force field in this dazzling chamber seemed to have affected the Menoptera more than Barbara.
They did not appear to have heard her. The three of them
— even the valiant Prapillus — were shuffling, blank-eyed towards a fierce, blinding core of light which pulsed and glared in the centre of the chamber.
‘Hilio!’ Barbara shouted. ‘The Destructor...!’
Hilio turned and stared dazedly back at her — but made no other move. It was as though he no longer had a will of his own. Barbara darted forward and snatched the Web Destructor from the Menoptera’s nerveless hands. She wheeled and pointed it towards the source of all this light
— the great, revolving bladder-shaped organ which breathed, whose brilliant glare stung her eyes and dazzled her.
Several paces in front of Barbara, and now perilously near to the blazing centre, Vicki — dazed, sleepy as though drugged, but still resisting — heard Barbara’s voice. She turned.
‘Barbara?’ she called weakly. ‘Barbara...?’
Dimly, as she narrowed her eyes, Barbara made out the silhouette of Vicki ahead of her, haloed against the great light... then the frock-coated figure of the Doctor, oddly pathetic and helpless as the old man stood and fought against the power that drew him into its vortex. The silvery head turned. Hazily the Doctor saw Barbara.
He called hoarsely, ‘Use the Destructor... use... the...
Destructor...!’
Barbara lurched forward, pulled violently, and brought up the Web Destructor, peering to find the centre of the target in the blazing fog of light.
‘The dark side...’ she muttered despairingly. ‘Hilio said... I must aim at... the dark side...!’
She summoned her strength and darted across to one side, her steps stumbling and sluggish against the immense pull inward. She wheeled, shading her view, her hand trembling on the lever of the Destructor.
‘There is.... no dark side...!’
Then she heard the Voice boom out. ‘... your struggles...
are futile-ile... Approach... earth people... approach...!’
Barbara saw the helpless figures of the Doctor and Vicki as they moved inward, their legs braced and struggling as if caught