Doctor Who: The Ark (7 page)

‘Yes.’

‘Just wondered. So much else has changed I thought perhaps... but never mind. You have a nervous system.

That means it can be attacked... and has been. Our reply is to identify the type of germ and then develop the agent that will put up a defence against it.’

‘The antibodies that you mentioned?’

‘Yes,’ replied the Doctor. ‘Oh, this is going to be fun!

Working together like the Curies or some such.’

‘Curies? Is that a species, or a race of beings?’

The Doctor shook his head. ‘Oh, no! Marie and Pierre Curie – a husband and wife team of scientists of the nineteenth century...’ His voice trailed away in the face of the blank, uncomprehending stare that Rhos gave him.

‘Anyway, what we seek to develop now will be called a vaccine...’

‘Vaccine?’

‘Yes. A natural compound derived from animal blood.

We need only take single specimens and then we can release theanimals again. And we also need plant derivitives. Then, mixed and prepared in the right order, they will give us the basis of the vaccine we require.’

‘That means a large hunt and search will have to be mounted,’ Rhos reflected.

‘Yes. I told you the task won’t be easy, and it may not even work the first time. But that chap Zentos should be able to organise something. In fact I think he’d be rather good at that kind of thing.’

‘I’ll speak to him right away.’

Rhos turned and left the room. The Doctor examined Steven and his expression of concern deepened as he discovered that the fever was still raging and that Steven’s temperature had risen even higher.

Zentos had divided the jungle up into zones, to give maximum coverage, and deployed pairs of hunters, each pair comprising a Guardian and a Monoid.

A couple of them closed in on a goat. Hearing them coming it darted away to find cover, but the Guardian signalled to the Monoid to move in behind the copse where it was sheltering. The Guardian called out, beating on the foliage while he pursued the goat, driving it straight into the arms of the waiting Monoid.

He held it by its horns as it struggled, seeking to break free, then twisted it gently so that it was brought to the ground, its legs still kicking in futile protest. The Guardian joined the Monoid and together they prised open the goat’s jaws. The Guardian examined the frothing tongue and then reached into the goat’s throat with a swab-probe, extracting saliva. Satisfied, he placed the saliva in a container. In the same moment the Monoid released the goat, which staggered to its feet and then bounded gratefully away.

Other pairs of Guardians and Monoids were combing the jungle and hunting down various animals, birds and insects. In some cases they obtained just the saliva; in others, they carried out small operations to remove blood samples.

Plants were also harvested, bundled and carried back to the city. By the end of the day the Doctor was informed that the search was yielding the required results.

His reaction: ‘More! More of the same thing and other varieties as well! We must have every possible combination of ingredients to arrive at our final compound.’

Patiently and efficiently, the Guardians and the Monoids carried out his bidding, searching high and low for at least one specimen of each life form that teemed in the jungle.

In the TARDIS Dodo and Manyak collected together the items the Doctor had demanded.

‘A tray from the shelf near the Space Longitude Indicator,’ Dodo read out. She indicated. ‘I think that’s this one here. Looks like the sort of thing dentists use in their surgeries.’ She placed it on a pile with other items already collected.

‘Dentists?’ Manyak asked.

‘You know – those horrible people who drill your teeth and insist on talking to you when your mouth is already numb from the stuff they inject so you’re not supposed to feel a thing.’ She shivered. ‘Yuk!’

‘But why would they want to drill your teeth?’ asked Manyak in astonishment.

‘To put in fillings... you know, take out bad parts and then put in good bits. Or so they say.’ Manyak still shook his head, obviously baffled. Dodo was intrigued by this.

‘Do you mean to say that you don’t have dentists?’ she asked. ‘That your teeth never ache?’

Manyak shook his head. ‘No!’

‘Hey, yours isn’t such a bad life, after all!’ Then she again consulted her list. ‘A thermometer – centigrade and fahrenheit readings – in a drawer near the Main Thrust Control.’ She looked around. ‘I think this is the Control...’

she opened a drawer ‘... and here’s the thermometer!’

Manyak watched her and gazed around in amazement at the interior of the TARDIS, as he had done from the moment he had entered it.

‘This... this machine... the thought of it travelling anywhere defeats me!’ he marvelled. ‘And according to all three of you, it not only travels through space but through time?’

‘That’s right!’ Dodo replied cheerfully.

‘Frankly, we didn’t believe... but there’s one thing I cannot reason out, now that I am aboard.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Well, from the outside it’s the size of a box, only large enough to contain one, perhaps two, people. But once inside there seems to be room for six – maybe ten – or even more!’

‘Ah!’ Dodo exclaimed. ‘Lots of people have been fooled by that. But the explanation is simple...’

‘It is?’

‘Optical illusion!’ she explained. ‘That’s what the Doctor calls it. And since he owns it he must know what he’s talking about.’

‘I... I suppose so,’ Manyak replied, weakly. ‘And these instruments, these machines... ?’

‘Oh, don’t ask me about them. He controls them... and in a way that only he knows about! It’s just double-Dutch to me.’ She checked her list again. ‘Well, that’s it. The lot.

So let’s take it to the Doctor.’

Manyak nodded and gave her a hand in carrying the items. But before he left he turned back to take one final look round the TARDIS, slowly shaking his head in despair.

A Guardian was stalking a deer. It had been grazing in the open, but as the Guardian closed in on it, it moved under the cover of some trees. The Guardian followed it, stooping low so as not to startle it. Hearing a slight movement overhead, he glanced up. As he did so a fully grown boa constrictor dropped from the overhanging branches and, in a quick movement, wrapped itself around the Guardian, its muscles tightening as he cried out and attempted to shake himself free.

To no avail. The grip was vice-like and the Guardian’s flailing arms and legs could find no escape. In mounting terror he cried out again and, after a moment, the Monoid who had accompanied him shuffled up and stood transfixed, staring as the Guardian struggled futilely in the grip of the reptile.

‘Help me! For pity’s sake, help me!’

The reptilian Monoid seemed fascinated by the action of the boa constrictor. By its scaly skin that was so much like its own, by its obvious strength, and by its aggressiveness.

Then, as the Guardian writhed and was brought to the ground, the Monoid stepped forward, reached out and touched the snake’s head. It started to stroke it, gently, moving its own soled hands along the body, back and forth, caressing it. After a few moments the boa constrictor eased its fierce grip on the Guardian as though having picked up a message from one of its own kind.

The Guardian felt the grip on his body relaxing and, as soon as he could do so, he pulled himself free and swiftly crawled away out of reach of the snake. He lay on the ground, breathing in great gulps of air. Then, as his senses returned and with them a feeling of safety, he watched, fascinated, as the Monoid continued to stroke and soothe the boa constrictor. After a moment the snake started to weave away, finally returning to the tree and climbing it, its tongue flicking in and out as it disappeared from view.

The Monoid walked over to where the Guardian lay on the ground. He reached out his hand to help the man to his feet, but for a moment the Guardian resisted the offer, staring guardedly at the Monoid. Again the Monoid thrust his hand forward. This time the man accepted the offer.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

The Monoid bowed, then pointed to the deer, which was now grazing a short distance away. The man nodded and they both closed in to capture it.

The Doctor was in his element, organising his research clinic. Machines to weigh and evaluate, to grind and mix, had been lined up in a factory-like assembly within a long room. On the Doctor’s instructions the whole area, already impeccably clean, had now been sterilised by the use of sharply directed steam jets.

‘Primitive,’ he observed. ‘Going back into medical history... but it will have to do for our immediate purposes.’ He picked up some phials that had already been prepared. ‘Oh, I know I’m something of an old quack, but the combination of these samples, together with some plant extracts, a little at a time, should do the trick.’ He glanced at Rhos. ‘But might I be given a look at the medical record of one of you?’

‘Why?’

‘To find out if any changes have taken place in the human body in ten million years.’

‘Oh, yes, of course,’ Rhos agreed. ‘As a matter of fact I had thought of that too. So I’ve prepared this scan summary of a body for your observations.’

He beckoned to the Doctor to follow him and led him to a monitor screeen. He pressed an operating key and a body appeared. Then with further flicks of the keys layers were peeled from the example, revealing the inner workings of the Guardians’ bodies.

The Doctor stared at the images thoughtfully, muttering his immediate impressions. ‘As I rather suspected; the musculature is greatly reduced. Enough to motivate the body walking and so on... but not enough left for any kind of heavy work.’

‘Well, for us, that’s a thing of the distant pest,’ Rhos observed.

‘Yes, of course. Everything done with the mind.’ He glanced at a nearby Monoid. ‘And if there is anything physically demanding to be done, then you have the Monoids.’

‘True,’ Rhos admitted. ‘But they seem to enjoy using their talents on manual tasks.’

The Doctor nodded, then stared intently at the amen.

‘What’s that?’ he asked. ‘I can see one heart on the left side where it should be – but there seems to be something like it on the other side.’

‘It’s the second heart,’ Rhos stated in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘Second?’

‘Genetically introduced many Segments ago. In case of malfunction to the first one.’ He shrugged. ‘Several vital organs have been duplicated for the same reason.’

‘H’m! I suppose it makes sense,’ said the Doctor. ‘But at the same time I notice that other things seem to have disappeared. The vermiform appendix, for example. Where is that?’

‘Appendix...?’ Rhos shook his head.

‘I see. Genetically removed so long ago that you don’t even remember it... along with the tonsils and other things.’ He studied the screen intently. ‘I have to take all this into account when it comes to practising my treatment.’ He nodded toward the Monoids. ‘I take it that you have similar charts of them?’

‘Yes,’ Rhos replied. He pressed another key and a similar detailed chart of the Monoids’ anatomy was revealed on the screen.

‘ Ah,’ the Doctor mused, studying the display.

‘Interesting. But wait a minute. Unlike you... us... they seem to have no heart at all.’

‘No. Instead they have several major pulses – here, here and there.’

‘They react to nerve stress?’

‘Yes.’

‘ Ah! So at least they have a nervous system.’ He glanced at Rhos. ‘The chances are that the treatment will help cure them as well as the Guardians.’ He moved away from the monitor screen. ‘Now let’s get back to work!’

He picked up a phial and poured part of its contents into a measuring jar. ‘Now that’s the animal compound I have produced, but where is the plant extract, h’m?’ As he looked around in search of it a Monoid located it and passed it to him.

‘Oh, thank you.’ He smiled at the Monoid. ‘Very kind of you.’

The Monoid bowed and continued with his work.

The Doctor turned to Rhos, addressing him quietly:

‘You know, those Monoids are very intelligent. Much more so than they appear to be at first sight.’

Rhos shrugged and then watched carefully as the Doctor mixed the two compounds together.

In the jail-room, Dodo was nursing Steven when the Doctor bustled in through the open door, carrying a phial containing the mixed compounds.

‘Ah, my dear Dodo, how is he?’ the Doctor asked.

Still feverish,’ she replied. ‘I took his temperature. It’s one hundred and two degrees. That’s four more than it should be.’

‘I’m aware of that!’ replied the Doctor testily. ‘But let’s see what a drop of this nectar does for him.’

He poured some of the compound onto a pad.

‘Aren’t you going to inject him?’ Dodo asked.

‘No need for that. No need to make a nasty hypodermic puncture. Just apply this pad – a device I borrowed from that chap Rhos – and the compound will be absorbed into the system through the skin.’

He placed the pad on Steven’s arm, then sat alongside him, reading his pulse. ‘You know, the Guardians are a somewhat changed species from the likes of yourself and Steven here.’

‘But not from you?’

‘I’ve had more experience of adapting,’ he replied. ‘For instance, they have a greater brain size, two hearts, two livers... and a greatly reduced intestinal system. That must be because of their changed diet.’ He paused in concentration as he felt a tremor in Steven’s pulse. ‘And as for the Monoids... well, I know you’re not too keen on them... but even their brain is larger than yours.’

‘Those things! Blimey! The next thing you’ll tell me is that they can do crosswords and play chess and all sorts of things!’

‘It wouldn’t surprise me one bit, my dear.’ He looked at her searchingly. ‘Can you?’

‘Well... er... I have played cards sometimes...’

Steven moaned and tossed about on the bench. He seemed to be in some distress and the Doctor looked worried. His pulse rate has shot up... pass me the thermometer. Quickly, girl!’

Dodo did as she was asked. The Doctor placed it under Steven’s tongue and held it there for several moments, then withdrew it. He studied the reading with apprehension.