Doctor Who: Ribos Operation (15 page)

‘If I ain’t standing on your foot, my son, this gadget has to
be Japanese,’ hissed a familiar voice.

Unstoffe dropped the flint as a welcome torchbeam flashed
over his pinched features. ‘Garron!’ he cried. ‘Am I glad to see
you!’

‘Likewise, my dear,’ Garron replied, surveying his trembling
accomplice.

‘But how did you find me?’ Unstoffe asked in astonishment.

Garron waved the Locatormutor Core under his nose. ‘The
wonders of modern technology,’ he beamed. ‘I just happened to
come across this handy little electronic bloodhound. Sniffs
Jethryk like a dream.’ Garron thrust the Core into his belt and
directed his torch at Unstoffe’s bulging pouch.

‘Do I hear the chink of the Graff’s gold?’ he grinned,
ripping open the flap and staring hungrily at the contents of the
heavy leather bag.

‘Listen, mate, first things first,’ Unstoffe began, still suffering
from shock and anxious to find a way of escaping from the
underground warren.

‘Just what I always say,’ Garron muttered, picking out the
Jethryk and watching it flash and sparkle. ‘I’m very attached to
this.’

‘Listen, money isn’t everything, you know,’ Unstoffe
exploded, ‘and right now we ought to be...’

‘So who wants everything?’ Garron interrupted, pulling out
the pouch and shaking it in his face. ‘I’ll settle for ninety per
cent, my son—any day.’

After recounting his own exploits at some length and with
certain embellishments, Garron listened to Unstoffe’s account of
his escape helped by Binro with sceptical amusement.

‘You really believe he’ll come back down here?’ he chuckled
cynically.

‘I know he will,’ Unstoffe retorted, ‘after he’s risked his life
scouring the city to find you.’

‘That’ll take him hours,’ Garron said in a suddenly
chastened tone, shining his torch up and down the tunnel with
an uneasy frown. ‘Let’s hope the Graff doesn’t get to us first.
He’s press-ganged some old hag to sniff us out.’

For a while neither of them spoke.

‘What about this Doctor bloke and the girl?’ Unstoffe
suddenly burst out. ‘Perhaps they’ll find us,’

‘Not without this they won’t, I’m glad to say,’ Garron
muttered, patting the Locatormutor Core stuck in his belt.

Unstoffe looked genuinely shocked. ‘They helped you
escape and you stole that from them,’ he cried. Garron regarded
his outraged apprentice with condescending sternness. ‘They
were temporary allies in adversity, my lad,’ he shrugged. ‘And I
wouldn’t trust ’em further than I could fling ’em.’

‘What’s happened to them now?’ Unstoffe demanded.

Garron waved his podgy hands dismissively. ‘The Doctor
went off to spy on the Graff—or so he said—and the girl’s
wandering about down here somewhere.’

Unstoffe stared in utter disgust. ‘Down here? Alone?’ he
exclaimed. ‘You just nicked the whatsisname and then left her?’

‘Oh I am quite sure that Madam can take rare of herself,’
Garron retorted in a refined voice.

Unstoffe broke angrily away. ‘How could you,’ he cried, ‘you
slimy old hypocrite.’

At once Garron’s practised ears caught the faint jingle of
coins. Training his torch on Unstoffe’s pale ferret-like face, he
advanced on him and plunged his hands into the lining of his
young associate’s furs.

‘I do admit I had an epic struggle with my conscience,’ he
hissed, seizing the hundred or so gold opeks Unstoffe had
counted out earlier. ‘But unfortunately, my lad, I won.’ Garron
poured the coins into the purse he was holding and then
grabbed Unstoffe by the collar.

‘I... I can explain.’ Unstoffe stammered. ‘I was only counting
them to check...’ He knew Garron would never believe him.

‘I ought to skin you alive, my lad.’ Garron growled, shaking
Unstoffe like a leaf in a gale. ‘Make no mistake, when we get out
of here I’ll...’

Garron’s threat was cut short by a titanic bellow which tore
suddenly through the tunnel. Garron dropped his torch which
smashed to pieces and clung to Unstoffe like a frightened child
in the dark. ‘You’ll what?’ breathed Unstoffe mockingly in his
boss’s ear. ‘Come on Godfather. What will you do?’

‘I’ll... I’ll see you get your rightful share, my boy,’ Garron
stuttered clinging on for dear life.

Unstoffe listened a moment. ‘It’s the one I was following,’ he
whispered. ‘It’s coming back. It most have smelt you, Garron.’
And he started to drag the terrified Garron back along the
tunnel towards the cavern where he had first encountered the
Shrivenzale, as the voracious beast thundered closer and closer...

As he marched forward with the other Levithian Guards, the
Doctor kept careful watch on the Seeker through the eye slits of
his helmet as she led the Graff Vynda Ka and his retinue
through the Catacombs, the bones gripped in her outstretched
hands seeming to twist and turn with a power all their own. He
was trying to decide whether the wizened crone did indeed
possess special powers, or whether she was merely a crafty
charlatan leading them all to their deaths.

Suddenly Sholakh ordered them to halt. ‘Over there,
Highness. something moved.’ He pointed to a cluster of massive
fallen rocks strewn around the huge cavern they had just
entered.

The Guards trained their lasers on the spot where Binro was
cowering, dazzled by the torches. Two of them seized the sinewy
little figure and flung him at the feet of the Graff.

‘What are you doing here?’ the Prince demanded as the
Guards jerked back Binro’s head by the strands of his grey hair.

‘Looking for fossils, sir,’ Binro croaked. ‘Just fossils.’

‘Grave robbing more likely,’ the Graff snarled, slashing at
the old man’s face with his gauntlets as he tried vainly to shield
his watering eyes from the cruel glare.

The Doctor gritted his teeth and forced himself to remain
silent inside the borrowed armour.

‘I sell the fossils, sir,’ Binro pleaded. ‘I cannot work.. my
hands are crippled.’

Sholakh reached down and forced open Binro’s tightly
clenched hand. Behind his anonymous mask the Doctor’s eyes
widened as he saw Unstoffe’s wrist radio clatter to the ground.

‘A rare fossil indeed,’ the Graff murmured as Sholakh
handed him the tiny device. ‘Where did you get this?’ he
demanded with a vicious kick at the frail figure crouching in
front of him.

‘I found it, sir,’ Binro mumbled, flinching away from the
young Prince’s heavy boot.

Sholakh shoved his laser-spear against Binro’s wrinkled
brow. ‘The truth, or I ’ll blast your head off,’ he snapped.

But the Graff Vynda Ka held up his hand imperiously and
stared thoughtfully at the miniature radio. ‘Bring him,’ he
ordered, and spurred the Seeker onwards with a flick of his
gloves.

The two Guards yanked Binro off the ground and joined
ranks, dragging the helpless old man between them like a sack.

‘We seem to be getting warmer at last,’ the Doctor
murmured to himself, blinking the sweat out of his eyes and
peering intently at the wizened little figure dangling pathetically
in the cruel grip of his two enormous captors.

For some time Romana had been following K9 through the
endless tunnels and caverns, inwardly fuming at Garron’s
audacious trickery and her own carelessness. ‘I am certain that
we have been this way before,’ she complained wearily, ‘it all
looks very familiar.’ She was becoming less and less confident of
K9’s sense of direction.

‘Affirmative and Negative, mistress,’ the robot replied
buzzing busily ahead.

Romana stopped, hands planted firmly on hips. ‘Whatever
do you mean?’ she demanded, staring with sinking heart at the
maze of branching tunnels in the light of K9’s radiaprobe.

‘We have traversed this section twice previously, but my
scanners detect many differences,’ came the prompt, mechanical
announcement as the Doctor’s pet ground to a halt.

Romana glared. ‘Do you think I enjoy walking round in
circles?’ she snapped. The robot was almost as infuriating as his
master.

K9 considered for a moment. ‘Enjoyment is a humanoid
emotion,’ he rasped. ‘My circuits are not programmed to analyse
the condition.’

Romana threw up her hands. ‘Don’t lecture me, K9. Just
indicate a route we have not already covered,’ she pleaded.

K9 swivelled his antennae obligingly and jerked abruptly
into motion.

‘It is so frustrating to have to rely on inferior equipment.’
Romana said to herself as she followed her whirring guide into
yet another warren of identical tunnels in their seemingly
hopeless quest.

Suddenly, K9 jerked to a halt a few paces ahead of her with
a curt warning. ‘Danger, mistress,’ and Romana quickly flattened
herself against the tunnel wall.

She waited apprehensively while the mechanical hound
buzzed away analysing something he had detected. Then she too
heard it: a heavily rhythmic breathing coming from a few metres
round the bend ahead of them.

K9 began to reverse, trundling past her and backing away
up the tunnel.

‘What is it K9? Where are you going?’ Romana whispered in
a panic.

‘Tone analysis indicates large carnivore. Species
unidentified. Intentions hostile,’ he replied quietly, spinning
round and retreating rapidly back the way they had just come.

Romana pulled herself together and caught up, glancing
repeatedly over her shoulder as she ran. ‘But you can’t be
afraid—fear is an emotion,’ she murmured. ‘So why are you
running away?’

Just then a gigantic roar shuddered through the tunnel and
Romana felt a hot clammy draught on the back of her neck.

‘Suggest mistress arranges immediate protection for her
circuitry,’ K9 advised as he juddered along beside her.

The ponderous leathery scrabbling sounds gained on them
as the Shrivenzale smelt a meal within its grasp and forced its
way through the tunnel, its claws and scales shrieking as they
scoured the jagged rocky surface in its wake.

As the frustrated roars of the approaching Shrivenzale rang
around the cavern, Garron fumbled in the pitch darkness and
drew the laser-spear out of his belt. ‘I wonder how this little
trinket works,’ he muttered breathlessly, his fingers groping
frantically among the controls bristling from its slim barrel.

‘Sssssh,’ Unstoffe suddenly hissed, dragging Garron back
into a deep fissure he had located behind them. ‘I see lights.’

Seconds later the blackness was criss-crossed by a dozen
sharp torchheams as the Seeker led the Graff Vynda Ka and his
men into the cavern. The Seeker clutched the bones to her
forehead and then stretched them in front of her to form the
point of a spear, moving her arms in slow circles as if feeling for
the exact spot where the quarry lay.

‘The one you seek is here,’ she breathed. The sweeping
torchbeams probed a cluster of rocks by the cavern waall.
Garron and Unstoffe shrank back as the lights blazed around
them.

‘No... No, it was this way... this way...’ Binro screamed,
abruptly tearing free from his captors and scrambling towards
one of the gaping tunnel mouths scattered round the cavern
walls.

‘Hold him,’ Sholakh ordered, his eyes still fixed on the
cluster of rocks pointed out by the Seeker. ‘Unstoffe! Run...
Run...’ Binro shrieked, ducking and swerving around the centre
of the cavern. Unstoffe leapt out of his hiding place just as a
searing volley of photon bolts burst from the humming laser-spears and blew away almost the whole of one side of Binro’s
frail body. He caught his dying friend and lowered him gently to
the ground.

Binro’s eyes stared wildly. He struggled to speak. Unstoffe
just managed to catch a few faintly gasped words: ‘Binro, the...
Heretic... truth...’

‘Yes, Binro was right. He told the truth,’ Unstoffe
murmured, averting his gaze from the limp remains of Binro’s
charred body.

Within seconds the old man was dead. Unstoffe sprang up
and reached across to grab the laser-spear from the cowering
Garron. ‘Murderers!’ he screamed, pointing the unfamiliar
weapon crazily at the Levithian on the other side of the cavern
who were priming their own lasers with a sinister whine. A burst
of photon beans ricocheted off a nearby boulder sending
splinters of rock slicing in all directions. Clutching his shoulder,
Unstolfe dropped the laser-spear and collapsed whimpering
with terror. A few seconds later Garron emerged from the
crevice with his arms raised high in surrender.

As Garron advanced towards the Levithians dazzled by the
merciless torchlight, there was a sudden muffled cracking and
grating sound from the cavern roof followed by a hail of rock
fragments and dust.

‘Quick, over here!’ Sholakh yelled, glancing fearfully
upwards as he rallied his forces into a less exposed position.

Garron helped his shocked and wounded associate to his
feet and supported him as they scrambled across the huge
cavern to the waiting Guards. A fine rain of dust was falling and
the roof creaked threateningly overhead.

Binro warned me about the roofs down here,’ Unstoffe
gasped. As he spoke a thick slab of rock about a metre square
flew past them and shattered into tiny splinters. In the stark
torchlight a long crack was gradually beginning to open above
them.

‘The Jethryk... Where is the Jethryk?’ the Graff Vynda Ka
cried immediately as they approached him and were quickly
surrounded.

Garron unfastened the pouch from his belt and handed it to
Sholakh. ‘You will find everything quite safe, Your Highness,’ he
murmured humbly with a slight bow.

Sholakh opened the leather flap and the Graff Vynda Ka’s
eyes burned with triumph as he feasted them on the glinting
nugget and the purse bulging with gold opeks within. ‘Excellent,
Sholakh, excellent,’ he purred. ‘Now we have all that we want, at
last’

Then he turned his pale fanatical gaze upon the perspiring
Garron and his injured accomplice. ‘And now all that remains is
the disposal of these petty criminals,’ he sneered. ‘Where are
your other associates?’