By this time, white-gloved hands in the corridor outside were poised over a wall unit which controlled temperature and ventilation inside the Oyxgen Room. Across the unit were printed the words: EMERGENCY VENTILATOR. White-gloved hands turned the dial switch to OPEN.
Victoria turned with a start. There was an electronic hum coming from somewhere behind her in the dark. Instinctively, she fumbled for the light switch on the wall, and, to her surprise, this time it came on. Her attention was immediately focussed to the other side of the room. The flaps of a huge ventilator grill were sliding open.
The electronic hum continued for what seemed like an eternity. Victoria's nerve was beginning to break, and she started tapping gently on the door. 'Hallo!' she called, hardly daring to raise her voice. Is anyone there? For goodness sake, where is everybody?'
As she spoke, the electronic hum came to an abrupt halt.
In the few moments of silence that followed, Victoria, face pressed up against the door, closed her eyes, hoping that what was happening to her was nothing but a terrible dream. Or was it a nightmare? Her heart was pounding, thumping. At least, that's what she thought she could hear. But the sound was becoming too loud, too intense. And then suddenly, there was another sound - a hissing and popping. Victoria's eyes sprang open, and she gasped with horror. On the other side of the room, a vast mass of white sea foam was bursting through the ventilator grille. And while Victoria looked on helplessly, something began to emerge from the foam...
The Doctor and Jamie had found their way to the Impeller Area. The place was deserted, but, by peering through a transparent connecting door, they could see Robson, van Lutyens, and the crew, all working in a tense atmosphere in the Control Hall. The noise from the giant impeller was deafening, so the Doctor signalled to Jamie to follow him through another transparent door, this one marked: PIPELINE ROOM.
The Doctor peered around the door. No-one there. He entered cautiously, with Jamie close behind. The room they were now in was large and rectangular in shape, with a complex of vertical pressure tubes running up the walls. And once again there were ventilator grilles everywhere, including one enormous grille cut into the wall in a far corner of the room.
Jamie was immediately interested in a huge section of transparent pipeline, which curved down from the ceiling and disappeared into the floor. 'Is this the pipeline?' he said.
'Yes, part of it.' The Doctor climbed up two steps to the observation platform. 'All these pipes are a continuation of the pipeline we found on the beach.'
'Aye. But you can see inside that bit.'
The Doctor was taking a close look at the pipeline tube section. He breathed on it, rubbed it with his coat-sleeve, then peered inside. 'The transparent part is for checking for condensation,' he said. Then he turned to Jamie with a wry grin. 'And anything else that might get inside...'
In the Oyxgen Room, Victoria was too chilled with terror to call for help. Her eyes were transfixed on the ventilator grille, where the tendrils of an enormous seaweed creature were rising up out of the mass of white foam, which was now gushing into the room.
The weed creature had no shape or form. There seemed to be no head or eyes or mouth, no features of' any kind to compare it with any known form of marine life. This was a living algae, grown to mammoth proportions, hissing and popping, slithering its way through the ventilator grille, into the very heart of the Refinery itself.
Victoria, cowering against the door, was finding it difficult to breathe. The atmosphere was stifling. She started to cough. Finally, in desperation, she started thumping on the the door as loud as she could.
'Let me out!' she yelled. 'Somebody let me out of here!'
The foam was spreading across the room, closer and closer towards Victoria, whose calls for help were being completely overwhelmed by the swelling sound of the creature's heartbeat...
'There it is, Jamie! Can you hear it?'
The Doctor was listening through his stethoscope, which was pressed up against the wall of the transparent pipeline tube. His face was tense and anxious.
Jamie could also hear the deadly sound, pulsating, thumping, pounding through the pipeline. He swallowed hard, and said, 'Aye. What is it?'
'It's the same sound I heard in the pipeline on the beach. I tell you, there's definitely something inside the...'
A penetrating scream suddenly echoed along the pipeline. There was no mistaking who it belonged to.
'Doctor! Jamie!' Victoria was screaming hysterically. 'Help me!'
'That's Victoria!' said Jamie, staring inside the pipeline tube as if expecting to see Victoria trapped inside.
'Help me!'
The Doctor and Jamie wasted no more time. They left the pipeline tube, and rushed straight out of the room.
Victoria's frenzied calls for help were soon reverberating around the entire Refinery.
In the Control Hall, the commotion caused chaos amongst the crew. Everyone was trying to establish where the screams were coming from. Van Lutyens rushed off to the Impeller Area, leaving Robson to stare in confused disbelief at the pipeline tube running around the walls.
'Doctor! Jamie! Help me!'
Victoria's calls were becoming more and more desperate, more and more hysterical.
The Doctor and Jamie were rushing from one corridor to another, but although Victoria's voice seemed to be getting closer and closer, they still couldn't fmd out how to get to her.
'Victoria!' yelled Jamie at the top of his voice.
'Victoria!' The Doctor's shouts were becoming frantic. 'Can you hear us, Victoria?'
A penetrating, prolonged scream.
The Doctor and Jamie stopped dead, and turned simultaneously.
Both of them were staring at the door of the Oxygen Store Room.
The thumping heartbeat sound was almost deafening. And, as thick white foam surged uncontrollably through the ventilator grille of the Oxygen Room, the tendrils of the Weed Creature weaved and quivered towards Victoria, closer and closer, hissing and popping...
Victoria screamed just one more time.
4
Mr Oak and Mr Quill
'Gas!' said the Doctor, listening to the hissing sound coming from beneath the door of the Oxygen Store Room.
Jamie was unable to answer. He was almost overcome by a violent fit of sneezing.
The Doctor tried to open the door. It was locked, with no sign of the key. 'Victoria!' he shouted, thumping on the door. 'Are you in there?'
Victoria's reply came almost immediately from the other side of the door. But her voice was now faint and barely audible. 'Doctor...'
'She's in there!' yelled the Doctor. 'Come on, Jamie!'
'Doctor... help me...
'We're coming, Victoria! Hold on!'
The Doctor and Jamie folded arms, and stood back a pace or so. 'One... two... three!' With one enormous effort they lunged at the door, which burst open immediately.
Victoria was lying in a heap on the floor of the Oyxgen Room. Her eyes were half-open, and she could hardly breathe.
'Quick, Jamie!' said the Doctor, covering her mouth with his hand. 'Get hold of her!'
Jamie let out the most deafening sneeze, then helped the Doctor to lift Victoria and carry her out into the corridor.
'What's going on here?' Robson's rasping voice boomed out from the other end of' the corridor. 'Who let you three out of the cabin?'
The Doctor and Jamie ignored him. They were too busy helping Victoria to revive.
Robson came hurrying clown the corridor. Van Lutyens and the Chief Engineer were with him, but they went straight into the Oyxgen Store Room.
'Did you hear what I said?' Robson was yelling again. 'I gave strict orders that - '
'Mr Robson!' Van Lutyens, covering his mouth with his hand, was at the door of the Oxygen Room. 'In here. Gas!'
'Then find out what it is.'
Van Lutyens disappeared back into the Oxygen Room.
The colour was gradually returning to Victoria's pale che
eks. 'It was horrible!' she said to the Doctor, still struggling to breath clearly. 'That awful creature. What was it?'
The Doctor was immediately tense. 'Creature?'
'You... you didn't see it?' She turned around to look back into the Oxygen Room. 'In there?'
The Doctor, Jamie, and Robson looked into the room. It was now fully lit.
'It came... straight at me... an awful hissing sound... and foam... and it was covered in weed or something... oh, I don't know...' Recounting her ordeal was clearly distressing Victoria. Her eyes were wide with fear. 'It came closer... and closer. Then I screamed, and...' She covered her face with her hands, and dissolved into tears.
'It's all right, Victoria,' said the Doctor, holding her close in his arms protectively. 'You're quite safe now.'
Robson was glaring at Victoria cynically. 'Creatures indeed. The girl's hysterical!'
'Mr Robson!'
Robson turned to find the Chief Engineer standing in the doorway of the Oxygen Room.
'Some of the cylinders are empty! The seals are broken.'
Robson swung back angrily to Victoria. 'What have you been up to in there?'
Victoria wiped tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand, then replied quickly. 'I was hiding. I heard someone coming, and just went in.'
Robson was glaring at her. 'You broke in, didn't you?'
'No!'
'This door is always kept locked. You broke in and emptied those cylinders!'
'That's not true!' Victoria was regaining her defiant spirit. 'The door was open. Someone locked it behind me.'
Jamie stepped forward. He looked as though he was ready to strike Robson. 'She's telling the truth,' he said menacingly. 'The door was locked from the outside.'
'Mr Robson!'
The interruption of van Lutyens's voice was good excuse for Robson to ignore Jamie's threatening glare, and to go off into the Oxygen Room.
Van Lutyens and the Chief Engineer were removing their gas masks as Robson, the Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria entered the Oxygen Store Room. Everything seemed to be perfectly normal, and not at all as Victoria had described her encounter with the Weed Creature.
'Now what?' snapped Robson, impatiently.
Van Lutyens finished closing a tap on one of the oxygen cylinders, then turned to Robson with a grave, puzzled expression. 'This room wasn't full of oxygen when we arrived,' he said. 'It was another gas, one of a toxic composition if I'm not mistaken.'
'Toxic?' Robson looked at the Dutchman as though he had gone stark raving mad. 'Are you trying to tell me it was a poisonous gas?'
'Exactly, sir.'
Robson paused a moment, trying to take it all in. His eyes flicked hurriedly around the room. 'Where did it come from?'
'From there possibly.' This time it was the Doctor who was speaking. He was inspecting the open ventilator grille.
The others came across to join him.
'Did you open this ventilator?' Van Lutyens asked Victoria.
Victoria was firm in her reply. 'No! It opened itself!'
'The person who locked you in must've done it,' said Jamie, running his fingers over the wire mesh of the grille. 'But how?'
The Doctor and van Lutyens were investigating the ventilator control panel on the wall. Its position on the dial was indicating OPEN.
Maggie Harris was having difficulty in breathing. From the moment she had been stung by the clump of seaweed, her mind had become confused and disoriented. In fact, there was very little she could remember of what actually happened to her, even though it had been less than half an hour ago. To add to that, she had a hacking cough, a piercing headache, and a pain in her injured hand that felt as though she was supporting a heavy weight.
'What is it, love?' Frank Harris was sitting with his wife on the bed, deeply concerned by her condition.
'I don't know... I feel so drowsy... and my hand...' Maggie was aimlessly rubbing her injured hand without actually looking at it.
'Let me see.' Harris gently took her hand, and looked at it closely. He could see no visible signs of any kind of sting, not even a swelling. 'It looks all right. What happened?'
Maggie had a vacant look in her eyes. 'I... I don't remember.'
Harris was watching his wife carefully. He was alarmed by her uncharacteristic lack of energy. He said quietly, 'You said you were stung or something?'
'Stung?' Maggie had to think about it for a moment. Then, without shifting her eyes, she said, 'Yes. Yes, it must've been that. I... I found the file you asked for... ' She stopped, turned to look her husband straight in the eyes, and gradually eased herself up from the bed. Her mind was wandering strangely. 'I wasn't allowed to take it.'
Harris stood up, cupped his wife's face gently between his hands, and asked, 'Who wouldn't allow you?'
Maggie had that vacant look in her eyes again. 'I... I don't know... ' Then, with a sudden flash of unexpected anger, she pulled Harris's hands away from her and said, 'It was the seaweed!'
Harris was just in time to catch Maggie as she collapsed. 'All right love,' he said, trying not to panic. 'Just lie down and rest.' He lowered her back onto the bed, and made her comfortable. He smoothed her forehead with his hand, then kissed it gently. 'What you could do with is some food.'
Although Maggie's eyes were closed, she managed a more characteristic smile. 'Poor darling,' she said softly. 'You can't even boil an egg!'
Harris laughed. He was relieved that this was more like the Maggie he knew and loved. 'It serves you right for marrying a scientist...'
Maggie's recovery was short-lived. Her smile quickly faded, and with her eyes still closed, she slowly raised her head from the pillow. She seemed to be listening to something.
Harris, alarmed again, took hold of Maggie's shoulders. 'Darling? What is it?'
Maggie's face was absolutely rigid. Her mind was focussed elsewhere, drowned beneath a series of alien sounds which raced in and out of her subconscious like the endless roar of jetliners. The subliminal images she was receiving were coming from her own kitchen patio outside. She could 'see' the seaweed clump where she had thrown it, nestling in a bed of foam. And the bubbles and the weed popping, to emit a gaseous vapous. And the relentless hissing, thumping, heartbeat sound, growing in intensity, tearing into Maggie's brain until she could bear it no more...
Maggie's eyes sprang open suddenly. She was staring straight into Harris's face. It looked distorted, like a gargoyle.
'What is it, love?' Harris was shaking her. 'Tell me!'
His voice seemed to boom out like thunder, and Maggie clutched her ears in pain.
'Are you ill, Maggie? Tell me!'
It took Maggie a moment or so to focus. When she did, her voice was barely audible. 'I... I don't know,' she whispered. 'I just feel... I don't know...'
Harris became immediately urgent. He lowered Maggie's head gently to the pillow, and said, 'I'm going back to see if Doc Patterson's returned from the rig yet.' He stood up, pulled the duvet over Maggie, and tucked her in. 'Will you be all right?'
Maggie didn't answer. She closed her eyes again, and just nodded her head.
Harris kissed her gently on the forehead, then went to the door. 'If Doc Patterson's not back, there's another Doctor that's turned up at the Refinery. He may be able to help.'
Again Maggie didn't answer. She seemed to be falling asleep.
Harris took one last anxious look at his wife, then left.
For a moment or so, Maggie remained still and silent. She was breathing heavily, but felt no real discomfort.
As the thaw continued outside, long icicles from the roof began to melt. Their intermittent dripping sounds onto the window-sill could almost have been notes from a song. A warning song perhaps.
Maggie was falling deeper and deeper into sleep. The song of the icicles could have been a million years away in comparison to the sounds that were again creeping into her subconscious. Thumping. Pulsating. The pounding of a heartbeat.
Maggie's eyes sprang open.
But she was not awake. The thumping sound was closer, and she lay there listening to it. Then, almost as though on the word of a command, she threw off the duvet, rose up from the bed, and walked slowly towards the door. As she left the room, the last of the icicles outside finally melted.
Out into the hall, then into the kitchen. Maggie had no sense of where she was, or what she was doing. Her eyes were wide open, but she was fast asleep. She was living through a nightmare where some mystical force was commanding her to do something. But what?
As Maggie entered the kitchen, the heartbeat sounds were becoming louder and louder, faster and faster. The door! The door to the back patio! That's where Maggie was determined to go, had to go. But she didn't know why. Like an ethereal angel, she seemed to glide across the kitchen floor, step by perilous step, closer and closer towards her destiny. At last, she was at the door. Her hands blindly searched for the handle. They clasped it with a grip of iron. Slowly, it began to turn...
Maggie paused. Her own heartbeat was now competing with the one on the other side of that door. In one swift movement, she pulled open the door.
The noise was horrific. Thumping. Pulsating. Shrieking. Hissing. The seaweed clump was expanding in size, out of control.
Maggie clutched her ears in agony, slammed the door, and locked it. Rubbing her eyes, struggling to breathe, she just stood with her back to the door, totally bewildered. It was as though she had suddenly been awoken from a night-mare.
'What's all the panic?' Robson was pushing his way through a crowd of engineers who were anxiously watching a cluster of meters on the wall of the Impeller Area.
'It's the pump, sir!' said the Chief Engineer, urgently. The strain of the past few hours was beginning to catch up on him, for his eyes were glazed with tiredness. 'The revs have dropped.'
'The pump is slowing down, ja?' Van Lutyens was clearly shocked by this new development, for it was very rare that he slipped back into his native language, even one word of it.
The Chief Engineer tapped one of the meters with two of his fingers, then checked it for any change in movement. 'She's not holding steady even now,' he said nervously. 'I don't understand it!'
DOCTOR WHO - FURY FROM THE DEEP Page 4