Doctor Who: Galaxy Four (9 page)

This, too, finally came to an end and all the lights stopped flashing, except one. This was bright orange and fixed her with its glare. Then, to her surprise, words came from it, much too quickly, almost tripping over each other as she barely made them out: ‘Don’t do that, what do you want anyway, don’t do that, what do you want anyway don’t do that what do you want anyway don’t do that what do you want anyway.’

‘That’s much too fast,’ she said. At last they might be getting somewhere, though where Heaven only knew. ‘If you go more slowly I might be able to understand.’

‘That’s much too fast more slowly that’s much too fast more slowly more slowly, more slowly, more slowly, more... slowly.... more slowly

m-o-r-e s–l–o–w – 1 – y ’

It sounded for all the world like an old-fashioned hand-wound gramophone winding down, the voice growing deeper and deeper until it sounded as though it came from the grave.

She was in no mood to communicate with the dead. For all she knew she was about to join them anyway, so contact now would be superfluous. ‘That’s too slow,’ she said. ‘I won’t be able to understand that either.’

The Chumbley chattered to itself for a moment, then spoke in measured tones: ‘That’s too slow. I won’t be able to understand that either.’

‘You’ve got it!’ she exclaimed. ‘That’s more or less the right speed. Can you do anything better than repeat what I’m saying?’

The machine fell silent for a moment, then chattered to itself, stopped, then spoke. ‘I think so. Yours is a difficult language, but we have processed it and should be able to communicate. Yes, we have it now. I shall talk to you.’

‘Good. Now perhaps you’ll tell me why you’ve forced me in here.’

‘You came of your own choice.’

‘And we were leaving the same way until you brought the gate down on me and cut me off’

‘We are sorry to separate you from your friend, but it was necessary.’

‘To you, or to me?’

The shutter slid gently down and her heart almost stopped as she saw the huge eyes surveying her. It was not the eyes, but the scales about them that she found so fearsome. Reptiles had always given her the horrors and this one was no exception, especially bearing in mind the probable size of it. But she forced herself to return the stare, a cold shiver running up her spine as the purple eyelids gently closed, paused, then drifted blandly up again. ‘Who are you?’ she demanded.

‘Who are you?’ came from the Chumbley.

Vicki hesitated, wondering how much she should give away. Well, the truth would possibly do no harm. ‘We’re... we’re time travellers from the planet Earth.’

The huge liquid eyes seemed to be absorbing her. ‘I see. But you were sent here by the Drahvins?’ ‘Yes.’

‘To do us harm.’

‘No, no,’ she answered quickly, fearing unpleasant repercussions. ‘The Drahvins are holding a friend of ours prisoner. We had to do as they told us.’

‘And what was that?’

Vicki had not been harmed so far, so she stuck to the truth, though with some reluctance. ‘To help them capture your spaceship.’

‘Why do they want to capture it?’ the Chumbley asked. ‘We have offered to take them with us.’ ‘They didn’t tell us that.’

‘No. They would not. They would rather kill. It is regrettable, but they hate us.’

‘Well, you did kill one of them.’

‘We never destroy life deliberately. That is not our way.’

Vicki was aware of a growing bafflement. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘who is this talking? Is it this Chumbley or is it... someone else?’

‘You call the machines Chumblies?’

‘For want of a better name, yes.’

‘The Chumblies have a speaker in them,’ the voice said. ‘They are transmitting our thoughts. We do not speak as you do, because we have no vocal chords. We communicate telepathically. It is difficult to convert thought-waves into sound language, but our scientists finally mastered the art.’

She was feeling more at ease now. The statement that they never destroyed life deliberately had been a comfort to her. She had little choice but to believe them. She crouched and peered into the Chumbley’s visor. ‘But who are you?’

‘We are the Rills.’

She turned her gaze back to the eyes at the viewport. ‘That’s you, is it?’

‘Correct.’

‘Then why do you stay in there? Why not come out, so that I can see you?’

Again the eyes leisurely closed and opened again. ‘It is better that you do not see us. Not all the dominant species in the universe look like men. Our appearance might shock you as it did the Drahvins. It would not be the first time that has happened to us. It will not be the last.’

His hands well inside the grill now, the Doctor was investigating the top plates of the air converter. He hummed tunelessly to himself as his fingers moved lightly over them and found more-screws. Yes, he would be able to get the plates off in no time, then proceed with rendering it inoperable. It was his firm intention to do that not only to the converter, but the Rills as well. No step was too long if it meant getting Vicki out.

He moved his screwdriver in.

Vicki was puzzled. She was confronted with an anomaly and it irritated her. ‘You claim you never deliberately destroy life, but the Drahvin leader says you attacked them. Which is true?’

‘That certainly is not. We were investigating space above this planet when we encountered a ship of a type we had never seen before. Rills do not attack or kill without compelling reason, so we stopped our ship and waited. They also stopped. We hung in space facing each other, this planet turning beneath us and the suns above. We would have turned and left, but that would have made us vulnerable and we feared attack. We did all we could to transmit messages of peace, both by thought and by space-waves – we even tried radio–but no response came. We had to conclude that either they did not use such systems or they meant us harm, in which case we were best advised to stay where we were. So we hung there for four dawns and finally decided to take the risk and leave. As we were turning the Drahvins opened fire, hitting us on the side. To preserve ourselves, we returned the fire and were successful, rather more than they were because our armament turned out to be superior to theirs. Both of us managed to make a landing on this planet.

‘When we escaped from our ailing ship we found that we could not breathe the atmosphere here, but we had a small portable supply of our own and set out to see if we could help the Drahvins. We should not have taken the trouble.

‘The first one we found was badly injured, so we started to help her. We had taken medication with us and considered that we could save her life. This was our intention, but it was not to be.’

The Rill paused and considered: ‘You must understand that when I said it was best that you did not see us it was because we have learnt that our appearance, normal to us, is revolting to other species. We have heads, we are scaled and we have tentacles, six of which have hands much like yours and without which we could not have reached our present level of evolution. But we are ugly, perhaps sinister, certainly horrific in the eyes of others. This is a pity, because our appearance provokes revulsion and aggression. That is why we normally remain concealed when visiting other planets, at least until we know we are not going to be set upon.

‘We can understand Maaga’s reaction when she saw creatures such as us doing she knew not what to her soldier, with our machines busily helping, but we find it difficult to excuse the fact that she immediately raised her gun and opened fire on us. One of us was seriously injured before the machines could raise the force-shield about us, so we gathered him up and set off back to here.’

Vicki was absorbed in the picture his words had painted. ‘But why didn’t you shoot back?’

‘We could have done. Our weapons are superior to theirs. But our force-shield was sufficient protection and, as I said, we do not kill. The Drahvins do.

‘When we looked back we saw Maaga standing over the injured soldier. She pointed her gun down and killed her. It was a sad and brutal sight to see.’

Vicki was appalled. ‘But all the Drahvins believe you did it.’

‘We know. That is why they keep attacking us.’ ‘And would you really have taken them off with you in your ship?’

‘Why not? We could have arranged accommodation with air for them. What do we gain if they die? We found a way to convey this to the woman Maaga, but all she does is to curse us, to bury us in hate and to bury us physically if she can, though I doubt if she would honour us with such a dignity.’ The Rill had noticed Vicki shifting restlessly from one foot to another. ‘Something is worrying you.’

‘I wish I could see the whole of you,’ Vicki admitted.

‘It is better that you don’t. Besides, we cannot come out. In order to live we must have ammoniac gas. That is the atmosphere of our home planet. So we live here in a compartment where it is filtered in.’

Vicki was horrified. ‘You can’t breathe oxygen at all?’

‘No. We would die immediately.’

Vicki gasped, turned and tried to, make for the passageway from which she had recently entered. But the Chumbley balked her, dodging this way and that whichever way she tried to get round it. ‘For Heavens’ sake!’ she finally screamed. ‘Let me out, or you’ll all be killed!’

‘Killed? By whom?’

‘The Doctor. My friend.’ She was wild-eyed with panic. ‘He’s wrecking your converting machine! You’re all going to die!’

The Doctor knew better than to hurry things. When confronted with circuits as complicated as these, despite their relatively simple purpose, calmness was the order of the day. Haste would only produce delay. ‘Gently, gently,’ he murmured to himself, delicately lifting out yet another part of the circuitry and dropping it into the various items he had already removed.

In went his hands again. It would not take long now.

Steven still feigned sleep, breathing deeply and regularly, but slowly opening his eyelids a fraction to look at his guard. He sighed inwardly as he saw that his hopes had been realised. She was nodding with sleep over her gun. All was quiet, not a sound or movement to be detected. The poor thing had had a long day. If he had anything to do with it, it was going to turn out rather longer than she anticipated. Taking great care not to make the slightest noise which might awaken her, he raised himself to a sitting position. Having achieved that, he raised his legs and turned so that he could stand. There was a tiny squeak from the material beneath him. The Drahvin’s head jerked a little and she mumbled something indistinguishable, then it nodded again and she returned to her dreams of death.

Now he was sitting directly in front of her, holding his breath and praying that this was going to work. He raised his hands, one aimed at her mouth, the other at her gun. Then he lunged forward and kept going. The chair went over backwards, but the gun was in his grasp and pointing threateningly at the disarmed woman. There was no need for it, however. Her head had thudded against the deck when she fell. She groaned and rolled over, unconscious.

Steven crouched and examined her briefly. There was no sign of blood and he could hear her breathing, almost snoring, so he straightened and listened. The chair had clattered a little as it went over, but all else remained silent. Satisfied that all was well for the moment, he trod gently to the lever set in the bulkhead and pressed it down. The door began to hum open, when he heard Maaga’s voice from behind him. ‘Quick, he is escaping.’

Steven rushed into the airlock, intending to escape through the outer door, but it was sealed. To the side he saw two buttons and promptly hit the top one. The door behind him hummed shut and he turned to see a furious Maaga staring through the window at him. Her harsh voice came to him from a speaker above his head. ‘You cannot escape. Give up and we will not harm you.’

‘I’d be a fool to believe that, wouldn’t I?’ he replied. ‘Give up!’

‘Drop dead!’

He saw her hand reaching for the opening lever and his mind raced. The airlock was sealable so that a person could leave without anything from a hostile environment leaking into the main body of the ship. It therefore followed that if the outer door was open there was no way in which the inner could be at the same time. It was worth a try. He stabbed the lower button. The outer door slid open and he heard Maaga shout, ‘The machines will kill you!’ Her voice had a hint of hysteria in it.

But that concerned him not at all. Holding the gun before him, he stepped out into the half-light that this planet knew as night, the three suns being too widely spaced to permit real darkness. Pausing a moment, he breathed deeply of air that was fresher than that of the ship, then set off in the direction Vicki and the Doctor had taken.

However, he took only a few steps and halted. A Chumbley was moving toward him and looking to him as though it meant business. He stared at it in disbelief. How many of them could there be? They were everywhere. And worst of all, one of them was here, just at the wrong moment.

He stood briefly in indecision, then, seeing nothing else for it, dived reluctantly back into the airlock and pressed the bottom button. Through the viewport he saw the Chumbley come to a halt. It stayed there, clearly with no intention of going until something further developed. His escape route was blocked. He turned hopelessly toward the inner compartment of the ship.

Maaga was watching him. The smile on her face held more threat than humour.

Air was still being drawn into the vent, but the Doctor knew he had reached the heart of it. He was beginning to understand how ingenious a piece of technology it was. There were so many failsafe devices in it that no sooner had he cut one out than another took its place. But now there was only one left. Very delicately he poised the screwdriver above it and almost jumped out of his skin as Vicki’s voice screamed from behind him, ‘No, Doctor, no!’

It took him several seconds to collect himself. ‘Bless my soul, girl, try not to do that when I’m concentrating, will you? It does my heart no good at all.

‘I was afraid I’d be too late.’

He turned and saw her looking through the grill, a Chumbley close behind her. ‘Too late for what?’