Doctor Who: Ribos Operation (11 page)

The Doctor crept away from the door and told the others
what he had overheard.

‘So we have until dawn,’ Romana murmured. ‘Which must
be almost upon us,’ the Doctor frowned. ‘I do hope that K9
hasn’t fallen asleep.’

Eventually Garron broke the gloomy silence which had
descended on the three prisoners. ‘If only we had some
bargaining power!’ he exclaimed, thumping the table. With a
gasp of pain he thrust his injured hand under the other arm to
ease the sudden throbbing. ‘If I still had the radio I could warn
the boy,’ he winced. ‘As long as he stays free we have something
to negotiate with...’

The Doctor rummaged through the remains of the tiny
device scattered on the table. ‘I’m afraid you made far too good
a job of it,’ he sighed.

Suddenly Garron jumped up, the pain seemingly gone. He
hurried to the chimney, felt about and held up the bugging
receiver. ‘A little something I rigged up to keep an eye on my
customer; he explained.

In one bound the Doctor crossed the chamber and snatched
the device from Garron’s plump fingers. ‘All we need now is a
call-up circuit so that we can attract Unstoffe’s attention,’ he
muttered excitedly. He took out his magnifier and studied the
bug carefully, then he sat down at the table and started sorting
through the fragments from Garron’s radio set,

‘Search the floor... search in every crack and bring use any
pieces you can find—however small,’ the Doctor instructed.
Then with nimble fingers he began to dismantle the bugging
receiver. ‘I assume that Unstoffe’s two-way is on the same
wavelength as this gadget?’ he suddenly asked.

Garron nodded. He and Romana knelt down and eagerly
started searching the chamber floor for the vital components.

They soon managed to salvage quite a few usable pieces
from the shattered wrist set and they watched anxiously as the
Doctor worked feverishly to adapt the bugging device into a
transmitter.

‘Of course I can’t promise that this little lash-up will work,’
the Doctor murmured, trying to twist several tiny platinum wires
together with his large fingers. ‘However, since we have no
receiver we shan’t know whether Unstoffe can hear us or not.’

‘It must he dawn by now,’ Romana breathed. Garron
nodded grimly and gave her a faintly sympathetic smile.

‘Put your little finger just there, my dear,’ the Doctor
muttered, indicating a complex knot of wires with his tweezers.
Romana obliged while the Doctor made the final connections.

‘Now, keep your fingers crossed—not you, Romana,’ he
frowned, bridging two sets, of contacts with the tweezers for
several seconds. ‘There. That should have caught his attention,’
the Doctor said, removing the tweezers. ‘You’d better talk to him
Garron—he knows your voice.’

‘But does he trust you?’ Romana said under her breath,
taking her finger from the bristling connection.

Garron bent over the table and spoke into the curious
apparatus which the Doctor had put together: ‘Hello... Hello
Unstoffe... This is Garron...’

Just then there was a sudden commotion outside the
chamber: the clatter of heavy armour and urgent muffled
shouting.

‘It’s too late,’ Romana cried. ‘It’s too late—they’ve come to
kill us all.’

Motioning Garron to keep talking the Doctor rushed over
and listened at the door. In just a few seconds they would know
their fate.

Outside the chamber the three Levithian sentries had been
startled by the sudden appearance of K9 round a corner some
way along the passage. With swift disciplined movements they
formed a compact defensive group, charged their laser-spears
and took careful aim at the strange device bearing down on
them. Meanwhile K9’s circuits were buzzing away, rapidly
computing their average bodyweight and the thickness of their
armour plating in order to calculate a suitable stun level.

Microseconds before the Levithians could press their
discharge buttons they were all three silhouetted in a brilliant
flash from K9’s muzzle, which sent them reeling back against the
door to their Prince’s quarters. Like three monstrous puppets
they slid clumsily down the rough woodwork into a tangled heap
on the flagstones.

K9 came to rest in front of them. ‘Most satisfactory,’ he
announced.

The Doctor flung open the door, revealing the three
Levithian Guards spreadeagled on the threshold and K9
standing impassively over his victims buzzing quietly to himself.

‘What kept you K9?’ the Doctor cried delightedly, stepping
over the unconscious sentries.’ We’ve been on tenterhooks for
hours.’

‘Topographical difficulties, master,’ K9 replied.

The Doctor patted the creature’s whirring head: ‘Of
course—you can’t manage stairs, poor old thing,’ he murmured
kindly.

Romana clambered past the huddled bodies followed closely
by Garron. ‘Are they dead?’ she asked with a grimace of distaste.

The Doctor gave her a shocked look. ‘Of course they aren’t
dead,’ he cried. ‘What an idea.’

‘Negative, Mistress,’ K9 added. ‘Stun was calibrated at zero
nine atmospheres.’

‘They’ll be out for hours,’ the Doctor muttered, dragging
the first of the limp bodies through into the Graff’s quarters.

‘Correction, master: period of immobilisation estimated at
three point two nine hours,’ K9 announced crisply.

‘All right, all right. Stop showing off,’ the Doctor scolded
irritably as he and Garron dealt with the other two Guards.

Shutting the door firmly behind him, the Doctor asked
Garron to lead the way to the Concourse. Sticking the laser-spear and charger unit which he had taken from Krolon into his
belt, Garron set off quickly along the passage.

‘Don’t stop at every corner, K9,’ the Doctor called. ‘We have
very little time.’

Romana looked extremely unhappy as she and the Doctor
hurried along behind the waddling con-man. ‘You are going to
trust that petty trickster, Doctor?’ she whispered incredulously.

The Doctor nodded vigorously: ‘No more than he is going
to trust us, my dear...’ he murmured.

‘Then why are we helping him?’ Romana demanded in an
undertone grabbing the Doctor’s sleeve and attempting to slow
him down.

The Doctor continued to forge ahead. ‘We are not helping
him,’ he muttered out of the corner of his mouth. ‘He is helping
us.’

Romana cast her eyes upward and shook her head, dumb
with exasperation. She had the Locatormutor Core safely tucked
into her robe, and it was becoming increasingly apparent to her
that she would be forced to continue the search for the First
Segment of the Key to Time all by herself...

The strident warbling from Unstoffe’s wrist seemed to shatter
the silence around Binro’s tiny hovel and echo among the
columns of the colonnade. Unstoffe immediately flung his arm
into the furs and pulled a bundle of rotting skins over them to
help deaden the sound. Binro squatted wide-eyed and open-mouthed, staring at Unstoffe until—after what seemed like an
age—the warbling stopped.

At once Unstoffe put the wrist set to his ear. Garron’s rapid,
clipped voice burst through loudly and clearly: ‘This is Garron...
repeat, this is Garron... Listen carefully—you can’t call me back
any more so don’t waste time trying—you’ve been traced to the
Concourse and the Shrieves will be making a full-scale raid any
minute... Get out now... I repeat...’

Unstoffe snapped off the speaker. ‘We heard you the first
time, Daddyo,’ he muttered.

Binro looked warily at the device strapped to Unstoffe’s
wrist. ‘Truly you are from another world,’ he marvelled.

‘I need to be on the move again,’ Unstoffe said scrambling to
his feet, ‘but where can I go now so they won’t find me?’

Binro sprang up with surprising agility, thrusting a tattered
skin into Unstoffe’s trembling hands. ‘Cover yourself with this,
my friend,’ he croaked. ‘You have only one chance now—you
will have to take refuge in the Catacombs.’

Unstoffe hesitated, his mouth suddenly feeling very dry and
his heart beginning to race. ‘The Catacombs?’ he gasped,
shivering and swallowing hard. ‘What are they?’

‘Come,’ Binro murmured, blowing out the oil lamp and
thrusting it into his rags. ‘You must follow me.’

They slipped out of the flapping hovel and into the wind-swept colonnade just as the first green streaks of daylight began
to slash across the sky.

Reaching the far side of the city, they descended a long
steep incline which led into the ground, keeping themselves in
the shadow of the stone embankment rising higher and higher
on each side of them. The dull green and orange sky cast a
poisonous aura over the snowdrifts, and Unstoffe constantly
shivered with cold and apprehension. At the bottom of the
cutting they reached a broad, low entrance whose arched portico
was carved into fantastic gargoyles, their monstrous shapes
exaggerated by a stark layer of hardened snow.

‘Good. It is as I expected. The Shrieves have all gone to
search the Concourse,’ Binro muttered as they approached the
deserted doorway. Striking a flint against the rough stonework,
Binro coaxed a spluttering flame from his horn lamp.

The massive door creaked slowly open as they both put their
shoulders to its gnarled frame. In the pitch darkness inside,
Binro’s lamp shed a faint eerie light onto damp moss-covered
walls as warily they ventured into the oppressively stale gloom.
Binro teased up the wick to give more light and led the way
forward. With a tearing, echoing rasp the great doors began to
close behind them. Instinctively Unstoffe turned back, but Binro
held him tightly to the spot until it shut with a shattering thud.

‘What... what is this place?’ Unstoffe stammered, glancing
fearfully around him.

‘We call this the Hall of the Dead,’ Binro replied, his voice
strangely muffled in the damp heavy air. ‘And beyond this
stretch the Catacombs themselves...’

They had entered a colossal vault—excavated out of the
swampy clay and lined with crudely fashioned stone blocks—
which was criss-crossed by a maze of tall galleries, several stories
high. Along each gallery were ranged tier upon tier of horizontal
niches with rectangular openings in the gloom.

Unstoffe glanced into the nearest hole and shuddered. In it
lay a filthy threadbare shroud with human bones sticking out
from tears in the rotting fabric, like the blunt spines of some
fantastic porcupine. As his eyes grew gradually accustomed to
the dank murk, he realised that he was being ‘watched’ by
endless rows of staring skulls lolling and grinning in their stone
graves.

‘There must be thousands and thousands of them...’ he
marvelled as they made their way past junction after junction
with the tiers of niches stretching away on both sides.

‘Yes,’ Binro croaked. ‘Everyone comes here in the end.’

‘Well I don’t want to stay... not just yet,’ Unstoffe muttered
faintly, keeping as close to his guide as possible.

Binro held the flickering lamp a little higher as they turned
into one of the side galleries for what seemed to Unstoffe like the
hundredth time.

‘Courage, my friend, the Catacombs are just ahead of us,’ he
said quietly. ‘You are not afraid are you?’

He led Unstoffe down a seemingly endless sloping tunnel
with rough-hewn rocky walls and a treacherously uneven floor
which connected the Hall of the Dead with the Catacombs
beyond. Here and there the tunnel swelled into large caverns,
and as it gradually penetrated deeper into the rock it branched
into more and more similar tunnels leading off in all directions.
Eventually they entered the labyrinth itself, struggling forward
with only the feeble light from the horn lamp to guide them.

‘How far do these Catacombs stretch?’ Unstoffe asked in an
awed whisper as he stumbled along behind his agile guide.

‘No one knows,’ croaked Binro. ‘They are partly natural and
partly excavated by our ancestors thousands of Ice Times ago to
provide a temple for their Ice Gods.’ He waited for Unstoffe to
catch up.

‘But... but... you don’t believe in the... Ice Gods?’ Unstoffe
stuttered, clinging to Binro’s twiglike arm.

Binro gave a toothless grin. ‘Of course not.’

A harsh roaring suddenly tore out of the pitch darkness
ahead of them and echoed round the maze of tunnels and
chambers for several seconds.

‘What was that?’ Unstoffe breathed, his thin face like chalk.

‘A Shrivenzale. There is a colony of the creatures down
here,’ Binro replied calmly.

Unstoffe gulped and clung onto him for dear life. ‘Like the
thing that keeps watch in the Relic Chamber?’ he said.

Binro nodded. ‘But that is quite a small one.’

Another shattering snarl seemed to split the cavern asunder.
This time it was much closer and it was followed by unmistakable
panting and scratching sounds.

To Unstoffe’s horror Binro began to creep cautiously
onwards. ‘Let’s go back,’ he pleaded, tugging nervously at
Binro’s arm.

Binro firmly kept going. ‘If you go back you will surely be
caught, my friend, and the fate of thieves is terrible in Shore,’ he
murmured, gripping Unstoffe’s arm persuasively.

‘Nothing could be worse than ending up as that thing’s
breakfast,’ Unstoffe protested, desperately trying to free himself.

Binro held onto him like a limpet. ‘There must be a way up
to the surface if only we can find it,’ he urged. ‘The Shrivenzales
hunt for food in the tundra. They only come here to shelter and
sleep.’

Unstoffe listened to the stirrings of the nearby monsters with
sinking stomach as Binro dragged him deeper into the
underground labyrinth. ‘So you reckon we can just tiptoe past
them, do you?’ he said in a wavering voice as they entered a
large cavern echoing with the creatures’ drowsy snufflings.

‘We do not have any choice, my friend,’ Binro whispered,
and shielding the light from the lamp he began to lead the way
among a cluster of gigantic boulders scattered over the floor of
the cavern like slumbering beasts...