Doctor Who: Fury From the Deep (18 page)

Victoria crossed her arms and sighed despondently. 'Yes. I just wish we could go back to the TARDIS and get away from all this trouble.'

'Och, we couldna' do that! The Doctor would never leave all these people, not when they're facing up to so much danger...'

'Oh I know, I know!' snapped Victoria irritably.

Jamie turned to look at her, aware that she was in a bad mood again. 'You don't have to bite my head off, y'know!'

Victoria threw him a tetchy look without replying.

'The Doctor's got enough trouble on his hands trying to find out what's going on round here. You know, it's odd. He says there definitely is an obvious answer to this weed stuff.'

'Answer? What d'you mean?'

'You know, some way of fighting it.'

'It can't be that obvious,' said Victoria dismissively, 'otherwise he'd have thought of it!'

The Chairperson entered the Hall with Harris and Perkins.

They went straight to the Doctor.

'Well, Doctor, have you thought of any means by which we can attack this... weed?' The Chairperson had a way of sounding aggressive without actually being so.

The Doctor looked up from his reverie. 'Hmm? Oh... no, Miss Jones. Not yet, I'm afraid.'

'What about the weed? What do you think it will do next?'

The Doctor raised himself up from the step he was sitting on. 'I think it has little alternative but to attack us... right here!'

Once again everyone in the Hall turned to look at the Doctor.

'Here?' spluttered Harris. 'In the Refinery?'

'Yes!' The Doctor was quite firm in his reply.

'But what could make you think such a thing?' This was the first time Perkins had contributed anything to the discussion.

The Doctor put his hands behind his back and looked around the vast Control Hall. 'This Refinery is the pivot of the gas distribution network. If the weed is to survive and expand, it has to gain control right here! Our only hope is to find the nerve-centre of the weed colony - and destroy it.'

Everyone in the Hall exchanged glances with each other in stunned silence. Surprisingly, it was Perkins who asked the crucial question. 'But where is this nerve centre?'

'We don't know.' The Doctor was more grave-faced than either Jamie or Victoria could remember. 'That's just
one
of the problems.'

'And we're not sure yet quite how to destroy it, are we?' Harris brushed his usual troublesome lock of hair from his eye.

'No,' said the Doctor falteringly, 'but... there's something at the back of my mind which...'

'What about the oxygen?' suggested Harris.

The Doctor looked up sharply. 'The oxygen? Yes. It's a possibility.'

'Right!' said the Chairperson, quick to assert her authority.

Turning to Harris she bawled, 'Put the Oxygen Supply Room under guard - immediately!'

Robson was lying on his bunk where Megan Jones had left him. For once, his eyes were closed, and he was fast asleep.

Suddenly, his eyes sprang open and immediately focussed on the ventilator grille in the ceiling directly above his head. For several moments he kept absolutely still. Either he wouldn't move, or he couldn't.

To Robson, the grille appeared as a vast dark cavern.

Something was there looking clown at him, watching, waiting...

The thumping heartbeat sound was very faint. But as it grew in intensity, the expression on Robson's face was clear and decisive. He was receiving instructions.

In the corridor outside Robson's cabin, the armed guard, tired from long hours on duty, drooped with fatigue. Behind him, Robson's glazed, staring eyes watched him through the perspex panel in the door.

The door slowly opened, and in one swift moment, Robson's hand slammed over the guard's mouth. The hand was covered with a hair-like weed formation. The guard struggled, but Robson suddenly opened his mouth wide to emit a loud, hissing lethal gas. The guard's eyes gradually glazed over, and he slumped to the ground unconscious.

Robson stood quite motionless for a moment, staring down at the guard's lifeless body. Gradually the thumping heartbeat sound began to enter the dark caverns of his brain. His eyes flicked up sharply. He was listening, taking instructions again. In a moment, he was gone.

At the Control Cone, Harris was reacting with incredulity at the news Price had just passed to him. 'The whole of the Oxygen Store?'

'I'm afraid so, sir,' replied Price. 'There are no reserves left at all.'

Harris took a deep breath and turned to the Doctor. 'They seem to be one step ahead of us all the time.'

'Exactly as I thought,' said the Doctor, turning to look with deep suspicion at the group gathered around the Cone. 'Robson is not the only one here to be controlled by the weed colony.'

The Chairperson fumbled nervously with the string of pearls hanging around her neck. 'You mean, there's some kind of a spy amongst us?'

'Yes.' The Doctor was adamant. 'And maybe more than one of them.'

There was a tense pause. Nobody hardly dared to breathe.

Harris spluttered, 'But... how do we find out who they are?'

The Doctor shrugged his shoulders. 'That's the difficulty.'

Everyone in the Hall was now casting an uneasy glance at the person standing next to them. Megan Jones, the Doctor, Perkins, Harris, Jamie, the Chief Engineer, Victoria, Price, the Communications crewmen - all of them studied each other with the deepest suspicion. Victoria in particular did a double-take. She was alarmed to catch a glimpse of Mr Oak and Mr Quill hiding amongst a group of engineers on the other side of the Hall.

'We must have a personnel check,' called Harris urgently.

'Everybody in the Compound!'

Victoria quickly turned to Jamie to draw his attention to Mr Oak and Mr Quill. But by the time Jamie looked up, the indefatigable duo had gone.

Mr Oak and Mr Quill hurried down the corridor from the Control Hall. They couldn't run because they didn't know how to.

Their legs were clearly not used to such strenuous activity.

'Hey - you two!' Jamie was yelling from the other end of the corridor. Victoria was with him.

Mr Oak and Mr Quill turned to look, then hurried on. Jamie rushed after them, chasing them into an adjoining corridor. 'You'll not get away from me - you Sassenachs!'

Yelling out his deafening clan war cry, Jamie hurled himself at Mr Quill, dragging him down into a heap on the floor.

Victoria called from a safe distance along the corridor, 'Jamie!

Be careful!'

In the pandemonium that followed, Mr Oak stopped momentarily, then hurried off, leaving Mr Quill locked in a wrestling tussle with Jamie on the floor. This continued for several minutes until Jamie finally managed to bend Mr Quill's arm in a vice-like grip behind his back. 'Got you!' Jamie proclaimed triumphantly. But he was horrified to notice that Mr Quill's arm was covered in a hair-like weed formation. In that one moment of distraction, Mr Quill opened his mouth wide, and emitted the loud hissing sound of gas. Jamie took the full force of the fumes, released his grip on Mr Quill's arm, and fell back. Mr Quill seized his opportunity, and tried to make a quick escape. But Jamie grabbed hold of Mr Quill's white jacket, swung him round, and threw a punch at him. All this provoked a piercing scream from Victoria. Mr Quill's entire body seemed to quiver. He clutched his head in agony, and fell to a heap on the floor.

'Jamie!' The Doctor called from the other end of the corridor.

Harris was with him.

Jamie recovered himself, wiped his eyes free of the lethal gas fumes, and stood up. 'Well, I took care of him all right,' he said proudly as the Doctor and Harris approached.

The Doctor quickly inspected the slumped and lifeless body of Mr Quill, as Jamie admired his fist which had apparently just numbed Mr Quill. 'There's a wee bit of power in a McCrimmon punch.'

'I'm sorry to disillusion you, Jamie,' said the Doctor, examining Mr Quill's prostrate body, 'but I don't think it was the punch that did it.'

Even as the Doctor was talking, a remarkable physical transformation was taking place in Mr Quill. Jamie and the Doctor watched in amazement as the fern-like fronds on his hands gradually retracted. Whilst this was happening, the Doctor turned around to give a curious look at Victoria.

'Mr Harris!'

Harris turned with a start to see the Chief Engineer calling from the other end of the corridor.

'You'd better come, sir. The pipeline room!'

The Doctor, Jamie, and Harris reached the pipeline room at exactly the same time as the Chairperson and Perkins. What they found there absolutely shattered them. The transparent section of the pipeline tube was jammed tight with weed clumps and bubbling white foam. And behind it, the thumping, pulsating sound of the alien heartbeat.

'What's happened to it, Doctor?' asked Jamie incredulously.

'It's beginning to expand, the same as it did in the TARDIS.'

The Doctor moved a few cautious steps towards the pipeline tube. He was absolutely fascinated with the weed's capacity to reproduce and multiply so much.

Jamie called from a safe distance. 'Is there no way to stop it?'

The Doctor shook his head gravely. 'No. I should have realised this was going to happen.'

Victoria would not enter the room. The squealing mass of weed terrified her, and she was content to watch from the doorway behind the group. What she didn't know was that someone was creeping up behind her in the shadows. Within a few seconds, a weed-covered hand smothered her mouth, and she was dragged out of the room without a sound.

Although the thumping heartbeat sound in the pipeline was muffled, the Chairperson had to raise her voice to be heard. 'Doctor, are you telling us that this horrible stuff - is growing all the time?'

'I'm afraid so,' said the Doctor gloomily. 'In my opinion this is just the start.'

'Mr Harris please! Mr Harris please!' Price's voice was booming out on the tannoy system. 'Chief Robson's broken out of his cabin. He's attacked his Security Guard!'

'What!' Harris yelled back at the tannoy speaker on the wall.

'How the devil did...'

'Doctor - look!' Jamie was pointing in horror towards the pipeline tube. The transparent perspex section of the tube had suddenly fractured with a loud crack, right down the centre. This was immediately followed by a surge of white foam, which literally exploded out of the tube onto some of the engineers who were gathered in a group nearby. And behind it, the advance guard of seaweed clumps clearing the way for the quivering tendrils of the giant Weed Creature itself.

'Everybody out! Fast as you can!' The Doctor's shouts now had to compete with the deafening squeals and thumping heartbeat sounds, now released from the confines of the pipeline tube.

The room cleared in double-quick time. But the Chairperson was paralysed with fear, her eyes transfixed on the awesome scene before her, the snake-like tendrils of the Weed Creature stretching out across the room towards her. Everyone was yelling and shouting as they rushed out of the room splattered with foam, and it was left to the Doctor to grab hold of the Chairperson's shoulders and hoist her out of the creature's reach.

Jamie was last to leave. 'Victoria! Where's Victoria?' Jamie's frantic yells seemed to incite the weed and foam into an onslaught of squealing sounds, so he quickly followed the Doctor and Megan Jones out into the Impeller Area, making quite sure the door was firmly closed behind him.

'Where's Victoria?' Jamie asked again anxiously. He and the Doctor looked all around the Area, but Victoria was nowhere to be seen.

'Are you sure she didn't leave with the others?' asked the Doctor.

Jamie had no time to reply. The tannoy speakers were blaring out another emergency message: 'RED ALERT! RED ALERT!

DOORS CLOSING!'

The Chairperson made a quick escape back into the Control Hall, leaving the Doctor and Jamie to continue the search for Victoria in the Impeller Area. 'It's no use,' said the Doctor. 'She's not here!'

The thumping heartbeat sounds were beginning to echo up from the impeller shaft.

'Let's get out of here!' yelled Jamie. He and the Doctor made a dash for the doors of the Control Hall. But they were locked.

'Too late!' called the Doctor. He turned, to see a red light flashing above the doors leading to the Compound corridor. 'They're closing too! This way! Hurry!'

They retreated from the Impeller Area just in time. The whole place was filling up with lethal gas fumes.

Not so far away, another red alarm light was flashing. This time it was above a door leading to the sea front. Robson appeared in the corridor leading to the exit. He was carrying the unconscious Victoria across his shoulder. As he reached the exit, a klaxon horn suddenly screeched out on the wall above him. Robson wasted no time. Within a few seconds he was gone, taking his hostage with him.

The sound of klaxon horns was now echoing throughout the Refinery. Emergency procedures were in operation as crewmen rushed in and out of the Control Hall on full alert. The whole place was buzzing with frenzied activity.

'Pipeline Room!' Harris was yelling to two engineers from the steps leading up to the inspection area. 'Seal it off! Quick as you can!'

The two men raced out of the Hall, leaving Harris to yell at another engineer, this time at one of the control gauges. 'Close all pipelines -

in and out!' The engineer looked at him in utter bewilderment. 'Come on, man!' Harris had never spoken so aggressively to anyone in his whole life. 'What the hell are you waiting fir?' The engineer immediately obeyed, quickly turning pressure wheels, levers, and other instruments on the control panel.

Meanwhile, the Chairperson went to Price at the Control Cone.

'Any news of Robson?' she asked.

'Not yet, madam. We've got a full alert out on him.'

The Chairperson was not satisfied. 'Get on to Security!' she demanded. 'Tell them to search everywhere. Whatever happens - they
must
find Chief Robson!'