Doctor Who: Festival of Death: 50th Anniversary Edition (31 page)

The man activated the communication panel. ‘This is Captain Rochfort speaking. Byson?’

‘Yes, sir?’ came the crackling reply.

‘Have you cleared all passengers from the Great Hall?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And the woman?’

Byson paused. ‘Still secured, sir.’

‘Excellent.’ Rochfort switched on the public address system.

‘Calling all Arachnopods,’ he said, his voice booming out of loudspeakers throughout the ship. ‘Go to the Great Hall on the upper level. I have prepared a meal for you.’

The Doctor’s mouth dropped open. Wasn’t that where Romana was…

Rochfort laughed, and leaned closer to the microphone. ‘Bon appétit!’

C
HAPTER
F
IFTEEN

KEEPING HIS EYES
fixed on Rochfort’s back, the Doctor slowly crept across the wall to the door.

Rochfort switched off the comms unit and lifted his face to the ceiling. ‘ERIC?’

> I’m sorry, Captain Rochfort, I’m sorry
, cried ERIC. >
What more do you want from me?

‘I shall be leaving you shortly,’ said Rochfort. ‘I am taking the passengers away from here.’

> Where… where are you going?

‘That does not concern you. What does concern you, however, is that you have been responsible for all this suffering and destruction,’ said Rochfort. ‘Think on it. From now on, I want you to devote every circuit, every subroutine to reminding yourself that you are to blame. I want it indelibly wired into your conscience. Do you understand me?’

> I do
.

‘Your guilt will be your punishment,’ said Rochfort. ‘You will never forget. Never!’

The Doctor had heard enough. He wanted to grab Rochfort and shake him until he realised what he was doing to ERIC. Obeying Rochfort’s instructions, the poor computer would be condemned to centuries of self-loathing. But there was nothing he could do.

As Rochfort shook with mocking laughter, the Doctor slipped out of the room, got his bearings and made his way down the bare, dark corridor.

Tarie tiptoed to the edge of the balcony. It overlooked a deep shaft,
dozens
of identical balconies sinking away into a lake of darkness. Below, the grown-ups were circling down the stairwell making their way deeper into the gloom. The darkness frightened Tarie; it seemed old and sad and evil, but the grown-ups seemed to accept it.

Byson stood to one side, scanning the surroundings nervously. Tarie approached him. ‘Where are we going?’

‘Quiet,’ he hissed. ‘Just keep moving.’

She tugged on his shirt. ‘Where?’

Byson crouched down. ‘Don’t worry. We’re going somewhere safe.’

‘Will my mum be there?’ Byson looked away.

Tarie began to cry and returned to the balcony. She thought about running away to find her mum. Except she knew that her mum wouldn’t be in the lounge any more. She had gone somewhere else, to the place where the dead people go.

And the place where the dead people go was down there, thought Tarie.

The two heavy, iron doors to the Great Hall stood wide open. The Doctor strolled the last few metres, bunching his scarf up around him to avoid making any sound. Holding his breath, he peered into the hall.

It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. There were shapes moving about, their stick-like legs scrabbling at the floor, their beady red eyes searching hungrily for food. Arachnopods, six of them. The Doctor watched as one upended a food crate, and sniffed at it, shaking it with one claw. Finding the crate empty, it flung it to one side.

Another Arachnopod scuttled to the far end of the hall and began to rummage through some tablecloths. Peeling back one of them, it revealed a withered corpse. The creature struggled with the cloth, accidentally draping it over its eyes, and then brushed it away. It examined the body and its eyes lit up. ‘Eats!’

‘Must have eats! Must have eats!’ jabbered the other Arachnopods as they clattered over to the makeshift morgue. One by one they
lifted
the corpses free of their shrouds and dropped them into their slavering mouths, crunching away at the bones and swallowing the bodies whole. They fed in a frenzy, slashing at each other, fighting over the scraps.

The Doctor pulled back, and let his breath out. There was no sign of Romana. Not for the first time in his life, he had been too late. He would never forgive himself.

He felt a tap on his shoulder. Almost leaping out of his skin, he whirled around. Romana smirked back at him cheekily. ‘Hello, Doctor.’

‘Romana!’ gasped the Doctor, choking with delight.

She smiled, and flicked away an idle hair. ‘Do you have a problem with your throat, or are you just pleased to see me?’

‘I am so terribly pleased to see you.’ The Doctor pointed into the Great Hall. ‘I thought you were in there.’

‘I was. I escaped,’ said Romana. ‘A fellow called Byson was kind enough to untie me. Thanks for coming to my rescue… though, I would appreciate it if you could be a little prompter in future.’

The Doctor grinned hugely.

The Arachnopod stuffed the eats into its mouth and swallowed. Eats! It could hear the various sections of its body clamouring for more. Each limb and organ had its own intelligence which, together with the head-brain, formed a gestalt consciousness. The thoughts of the head-brain governed the others; it was in charge of the mouth operations, and hence the supply of eats. All motive functions were the result of co-operation, each leg a committee of sections following directives from the head-brain’s cerebral cortex.

The stomach belched back reports of gastric gratification, and the relentless chorus of ‘Must have eats!’ was temporarily pacified as the limbs absorbed the fresh rush of proteins.

The pain of no-eats! The creature had been caged in the darkness, with nothing to chew, for months on end until every part of its body had been driven frantic with hunger. Hooked up, its nine companions swinging helplessly beside it. Then there had
been
the huge, smashing noise and they were joyously free. Eats on the ship, then down the tube for more eats. Eats! Those had proved to be particularly flavoursome, it remembered. But in the weeks since, eats had been few and far between and the meat had become increasingly stringy and tasteless. Kyuk! They had been forced to consume non-flesh, horrible plant and preservative eats. Kyuk! And then they had started on each other, until there were only six of them left.

Sniff, thought the head-brain, and the lungs expanded, the olfactory nerves monitoring the inrush of air for more eats-smells. The head-brain instructed the pincers to scrabble at a nearby cloth. The pincers obeyed, snapping away eagerly. They uncovered another eats, and the head-brain congratulated them. The creature gobbled up the flesh, licking the scraps from the floor, and moved on.

‘And then they took all the passengers down to Corridor 79,’ said Romana. She had explained her recent experiences, the Doctor listening with his eyes and mouth wide.

The Doctor stopped pacing down the corridor, and whirled. ‘The hyperspace–real-space interface!’

‘Yes. But the way Rochfort described it, it was like an opening into another world.’

‘An interstitial reality,’ muttered the Doctor. ‘A breach into another dimension.’

‘Of course. That would explain the geostatic leakage.’

A thought occurred to the Doctor. ‘Of course! That would also explain the geostatic leakage.’ He put an arm around Romana. ‘Have I told you how glad I am that you weren’t eaten? I mean… I expect you’re quite pleased about it, I would be if I were you, but all the same…’

‘Doctor?’ said Romana, in a get-on-with-it voice.

‘Sorry. Yes. Yes!’ The Doctor returned his hand to a pocket. ‘So they’re all going down to this corridor, where they walk into this other dimension and… pop!… what should happen but they
reappear
in two centuries’ time…’

‘… taking over the bodies of the tourists participating in the Beautiful Death.’

The Doctor made an encouraging fist. ‘Yes, but little do they realise that…’

‘… the Repulsion is using them as vessels to transport its life force into our universe at the same time.’

‘Exactly. Ah. Romana?’ The Doctor smiled toothily. ‘Shall we?’

‘Corridor 79?’

‘Corridor 79,’ he agreed and they set off.

The passengers had gathered in the corridor, waiting. Byson’s torch picked out hundreds of frightened faces, blinking in the brightness; an old lady, her bald skull protruding through wispy hair; a young woman in her twenties, her dress faded and torn; the small girl with the curious, expectant eyes.

Byson squeezed through the crowd towards the wall of blackness. The passengers eyed it warily, keeping their distance.

‘This is it,’ said Byson. ‘This is the gateway. All you have to do is walk straight in.’

The passengers refused to move. ‘Is it safe?’ asked one trembling old man.

‘Of course it is. Captain Rochfort himself went in there and came out unharmed.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ shouted the young man who had heckled Rochfort.

Byson raised his voice. ‘Look, we don’t have any choice.’

‘How do we know that we won’t get killed the moment we step in there?’ said the old man, staring into the swilling depths.

‘Yeah, this could just be a trick,’ added the heckler.

‘Listen to me, it’s too late to go back now,’ said Byson. ‘Captain Rochfort –’

‘Yes, Byson?’ All heads turned. The light of a torch appeared at the end of the corridor and Rochfort strode into view. He marched up to the blackness, the crowd parting in respect. He took his place
beside
Byson and addressed the passengers. ‘In there is a realm beyond your wildest dreams.’ His eyes glittered. ‘All you have to do is enter and you will be returned, alive, to the year 3012.’ He paused. ‘The entity within the darkness is wonderful and kind. You have nothing to fear.’

‘But is it safe?’ croaked the old man.

‘Safe?’ Rochfort plunged into the blackness. The surface glooped up around him and then settled back to smoothness. Seconds later, the darkness broke up again and he emerged, smiling. ‘I believe that answers your question.’

He stood aside as the old man shuffled up to the darkness, gazed back at his fellow passengers, took a final breath and disappeared into the darkness. The next passenger followed and the rest of the survivors formed a steady queue. Each was swallowed up, one after the other.

Rochfort whispered to Byson. ‘Are they all here?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Excellent.’ Rochfort stared into the shadows and nodded, as if listening to something. ‘And you’re absolutely sure the woman Romana was secure in the Great Hall?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You heard my little announcement, I take it?’ Rochfort chuckled. ‘My plan to keep the Arachnopods out of our hair. And to dispose of our…’ He searched for the word, ‘… irritation. Kill two avials with one vaporisation pellet.’

The Doctor bounded down the stairwell, leaping the last few steps, and dashed over to the balcony. Romana joined him as he gazed down into the darkness. ‘Doctor. This Repulsion thing,’ she said.

‘Mmm?’

‘What do you think it is, exactly?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. A being exiled to the outer dimensions. Evil from beyond the dawn of time. The usual sort of thing, I should expect. Ha!’ The Doctor laughed humourlessly.

‘But how are we going to stop it?’

‘Ah,’ said the Doctor glumly. ‘I have no idea. But I shall defeat it, even if it’s the last thing I ever do.’

‘It will be the last thing you ever do.’

‘Oh yes. So it will.’ The Doctor took one last look into the depths, as if they were a visual metaphor for his own fate, and headed for the stairwell.

Romana suddenly gasped. ‘Doctor. It knew who I was!’

‘What?’

‘The Repulsion. It knew I was here. It gave Rochfort instructions to have me killed.’

‘I wonder… No, it’s impossible.’ The Doctor halted, halfway down the stairs, and held up a hand for silence. ‘Shh!’

‘What is it?’

‘Listen.’ In the distance, there was a brief clatter. The sound of footsteps on metal.

The Doctor and Romana exchanged worried glances.

‘Arachnopods,’ breathed the Doctor. ‘They’ve caught our scent. Come on!’

Eats! The air was thick with the smell of these running-about creatures. The Arachnopod drooled in anticipation of the forthcoming meal.

The other creatures clacked excitedly about the corridor, whipping their heads to and fro as they tried to locate the source of the scent. ‘Eats! Eats!’

As one of its companions passed nearby, the Arachnopod’s hunger overwhelmed the head-brain, and it reached out a pincer and grabbed one of its fellow creature’s legs. The leg snapped from the torso and flailed about, trying vainly to defend itself. An instant later, and the Arachnopod had the detached limb in its mouth. It swallowed it in a single gulp. Its stomach welcomed the eats.

The seven-legged Arachnopod turned and hissed angrily, ‘I am not for eats!’ But it was too late. The other creatures, sensing an opportunity, leapt upon it snatching away its other legs and gobbling them up.

Need more of me, thought the head-brain of the first Arachnopod. The creature scuttled forward and gathered some of the limb sections that had not yet been eaten. It then attached them to its own body, lengthening its legs. In its mind, it could hear the new voices of the added limbs as they joined its consciousness. It extended its legs experimentally, rocking back and forth until it was sure of itself.

The attacked Arachnopod now only consisted of a torso and head; all its legs had been either eaten or stolen. It lay on the ground, its jaws opening and closing uselessly. The other creatures savaged it, prising open its shell and scooping out the warm, sinewy flesh within. As its internal organs disappeared down their throats, its eyes dimmed. Moments later, its head was swallowed whole with a crunch.

Their meal finished, the five remaining Arachnopods scuttled down the stairs in pursuit of the eats-smell.

Rochfort watched as the two elderly gentlemen hobbled forward and disappeared into the liquid shadows. He turned to Byson. ‘Is that all of them?’