by Marter, Ian
‘… and so, across the chasm of the years, I send to you the hopes of all Humanity for a safe landing… safe landing… safe landing…’
The High Minister’s words became an exuberant refrain in Noah’s ears. He crawled across to the opening which connected the two chambers of the Control Centre, intent on vengeance against the hated Humans. He raised the paralysator, still gripped in his right hand, and directed the relentless pulses of energy at the body of the young Medtech until it had completely disintegrated into nothing. Then the weapon clattered from his grasp as Noah’s human awareness gained supremacy again.
He backed into the smaller chamber, his mind struggling to overcome the urge of his injured left hand to wreck the Cryogenic Systems Panel. The arm seemed to have an existence of its own, independent of his control. As he stared at it, the sleeve suddenly split wide open, spilling out a stream of viscous matter which rapidly hardened into a glistening, cellular tissue.
It was the flesh of a Wirrrn…
5
The Wirrrn
THE DOCTOR AND his companions stood silently as the serene voice of the High Minister flooded the Cryogenic Chamber. Vira had ascended to the second level of pallets, where the multiple humming of the Revivification process was increasing little by little as the occupants were brought gradually back to life. The Doctor had been squatting thoughtfully beside the crumbling remains of the corpse, poking about the exposed viscera of the alien creature. Harry and Sarah had been detailed to search for more of the trails left by the larvae, and to check for any other empty pallets where the creature may have laid its eggs.
‘Sort of pre-match pep talk,’ whispered Harry, as the High Minister drew towards the end of her message. Sarah was listening in rapt attention; she had heard the mysterious voice before, but where? Vira gazed slowly round at the ranks of her people. She could not understand what had happened to Noah, why he had ordered Revivification to cease. As she listened to the High Minister, she was filled with a renewed sense of her great mission.
The High Minister’s voice was brutally interrupted by a harsh, grating whisper which broke into sudden shrieks and gasps, becoming incoherent and then lucid again. ‘… Vira… Vira… Hear me… Expedite Revivification… Initiate the Main Phase now…’
Vira looked utterly bewildered. ‘Noah… Commander,’ she cried, ‘I do not understand…’
‘We… you are in danger… Take our… your people to Earth before they… before we…’ Noah’s voice became a distorted roaring. Vira turned from side to side, staring into the dark upper reaches of the chamber as if seeking Noah there. ‘They… We are here… in the Terra Nova,’ the rasping whisper continued. ‘We shall absorb the humans… the new Earth will be ours…’
Vira covered her face, rocking herself to and fro in terrified incomprehension.
‘We are in… Wirrrn my mind… no time… Libri is dead… the Wirrrn will absorb… Wirrrn will absorb the humans…’ The hoarse whisper of Noah’s threat reverberated for some time. Then silence fell over the vast chamber.
It was broken at last by the Doctor. ‘The Wirrrn… Wirrrn… endo-parasitism… multi-cellular larvae…’ he muttered, as if trying to recall something from the depths of his colossal, encyclopaedic memory.
‘Does that mean they’ll literally eat us alive?’ shuddered Sarah.
The Doctor nodded gravely. He swept his long arm in a broad gesture round the Cryogenic Chamber. ‘The Revivification process is much too slow,’ he warned. ‘If we do not destroy the Wirrrn larvae before they develop into pupae none of us will survive.’ He crossed the chamber to the base of the elevator shaft, where Vira lingered uncertainly. He took her gently by the arm. ‘If we can confront Noah in time – while he still retains some vestige of his humanity – we may be able to discover a way of fighting the Wirrrn. Come.’
Vira held back. ‘I cannot leave until the last of the Technop Personnel have safely revived,’ she protested.
The Doctor looked earnestly into her face. ‘You are the only one of us that Noah – or what is left of Noah – will trust. You must come with me – for the sake of your people.’
The Doctor quickly persuaded Harry that he had observed enough of the Revivification Process to take over from Vira for a short time, with Sarah’s assistance, of course. Then he led Vira firmly out through the Access Chamber in pursuit of Noah.
As they were whisked along the Access Tunnel on the conveyor, the Doctor outlined his theory. ‘I postulate a multi-nucleate organism with a shared consciousness,’ he concluded. ‘The larvae clustered in the Solar Chamber in order to pupate and we – first myself, then Noah – disturbed them.’ They had reached the Decontamination Airlock which sealed off the Cryogenic Sector. As the shutter opened they came face to face with Noah. He was hunched in the confined space of the cubicle, still wearing the white radiation suit which was now split open down the entire left side and oozing the green, treacly bubbles of the parasite larvae. Choking fumes from the smouldering suit curled around him.
Conquering her fear and revulsion, Vira stepped towards her Commander with outstretched arms.
‘Do not touch me,’ Noah rasped. His face was turned away from them, but he covered them with the paralysator.
The Doctor seized Vira’s arm and pulled her behind him. He then spoke rapidly to Noah. ‘Tell us one thing, Noah. How much time do we have?’
Slowly Noah turned his head fully towards them. The whole of the left side of his face was transformed into a shapeless, suppurating mass of glistening green tissue, in the midst of which his eye rolled like an enormous shelled egg. As they stared at him horrified they could almost detect the spreading movement of the alien skin.
‘It… it feels near… very near… now,’ he croaked. As he tried to speak, a ball of crackling mucus welled out of the dark slit that was his mouth and trickled down the front of the suit. He stumbled forward. ‘Vira… Vira…’ He threw the paralysator at Vira’s feet. ‘For pity’s sake… kill me… kill me now,’ he pleaded, his voice barely intelligible. Then he reeled back with an appalling shriek into the airlock as, with a crack like a gigantic seed pod bursting, his whole head split open and a fountain of green froth erupted and ran sizzling down the radiation suit, burning deep trenches in the thick material. The shutter closed.
Vira stared at the closed panel, pale and shaking. ‘I am sorry,’ she said at last. ‘I showed weakness.’
‘No, I could not have done it either,’ said the Doctor, picking up the weapon. ‘Come, there is little time.’
For a moment Vira did not move. ‘Noah… Noah and I were pair-bonded for the new life,’ she said. Her eyes were full of tears. The Doctor gently led her away, back down the Access Tunnel to the Cryogenic Chamber.
Much to their own surprise, Harry and Sarah had successfully supervised the revival of two Technops: Lycett and Rogin. At first dazed and suspicious, the technicians had soon revealed themselves to be almost friendly after Harry’s and Sarah’s breathless explanations. They were much less formal than Vira had been, and Rogin did not seem too surprised that things had gone wrong.
‘We should have taken our chance in the Therm Shelters, and stayed on Terra Firma,’ he said wistfully.
‘How much Anatomy do you remember, Harry?’ the Doctor cried, sweeping into the Cryogenic Chamber and going straight over to the corpse of the Wirrrn Queen.
‘Quite a bit, I hope,’ said Harry, joining him. ‘But you’d need an Entomologist for that thing.’
Vira greeted the two Technops with obvious relief, glad to have the company of her own people again. ‘We will commence Main Phase at once,’ she ordered, leading them to the Access Chamber Control Suite.
‘But the safety procedures…’ protested Lycett, shocked.
‘We shall override them,’ said Vira. ‘I am Commander now, it is my decision. Take your operating stations.’
‘Curious lung structure,’ remarked Harry as he watched the Doctor probe through the remains of the Wirrrn Queen for
some clue as to its origin and possible weaknesses.
‘A superb adaptation,’ the Doctor agreed. ‘Its lungs recycle the creature’s wastes… almost certainly by enzymes of some kind… carbon dioxide back to oxygen
‘Like plants,’ suggested Sarah, craning to see.
The Doctor turned his attention to the huge head. ‘Exactly, Sarah… It seems capable of existing in Space, just occasionally visiting a planetary atmosphere for food and oxygen.’
‘The way a whale rises to the surface…’ Sarah added.
The Doctor was staring at the Wirrrn’s gigantic yellow eye. Suddenly he leaped to his feet and rushed through into the Access Chamber, where Vira and the two Technops were initiating the Main Phase.
‘Wait,’ he shouted. ‘The Main Phase must wait.’
Vira turned to the Doctor in astonishment. ‘But Noah said we should expedite Revivification and get our people to Earth.’
The Doctor waved his arms impatiently. ‘The process is much too slow,’ he cried. ‘The Wirrrn larvae will have pupated to imagos long before the last of your people are fully revived. We may have only hours before the Wirrrn overrun the Satellite.’
Vira looked defiantly at the Doctor. She seemed to have regained her former cold authority. ‘You have an alternative plan?’ she challenged.
‘The larvae must be entering the pupal stage now,’ explained the Doctor. ‘Before they develop into adult Wirrrn form, they will be relatively dormant. If we can only discover their weakness we may be able to destroy them. I wonder…
‘I need everyone’s assistance,’ he suddenly shouted, bolting back into the Cryogenic Chamber. For a moment nobody moved. Sarah’s face lit up in anticipation as she realised the Doctor was about to launch one of his improvised experiments. For the next five minutes the Doctor rushed from one chamber to the other, issuing rapid instructions. Harry was persuaded to try his surgical skills in removing a section of the Wirrrn Queen’s giant brain.
Vira reluctantly ordered Rogin and Lycett to abandon the Main Phase procedure. At first they resisted, but they grew more and more co-operative as they realised the extent of the Doctor’s knowledge. They agreed to assist him in rigging up a Neural Amplification System…
After an hour of frenzied activity, the Doctor made the final adjustments to his ‘apparatus’; what looked like a lengthy piece of crochet, made out of metres of cable and connectors, hung from one of the Access Chamber Video Cabinets. Several wires stretched from the incredible tangle across to a large segment of the Wirrrn’s brain tissue. The electrode terminals on the ends of the wires were inserted into various parts of the gelatinous grey substance.
Vira had stood apart from the others, looking on suspiciously while they worked. ‘What are you attempting to do?’ she asked sceptically as the Doctor completed his adjustments.
‘In certain kinds of tissue, neural impressions can sometimes be revived by carefully controlled stimulus…’ began the Doctor.
‘I’ve never heard of that,’ Harry interrupted, frowning.
‘Yes, there were theories,’ said Vira in a cold, clinical voice. ‘But our research was in its infancy when the Earth had to be evacuated.’
The Doctor grinned mischievously. ‘Well, you see I have something of a head start in such matters.’ He winked at Sarah, who winked back.
‘Gypsies used to believe that the eye retained its last image after death,’ she said. Vira stared at her impassively.
‘Anyway, here goes,’ said the Doctor, signalling to Rogin to switch in the video unit and the amplifier lash-up. ‘It should at least give us an idea of the Wirrrn Queen’s last moments.’
The video screen was at once mottled with white flashes of static. With great care the Doctor altered the positions of the electrode probes inserted into the Wirrrn’s brain tissue. The screen showed nothing but dizzy zig-zag patterns as the Doctor connected different areas of the Wirrrn Queen’s brain to his ‘machine’. He sighed with disappointment.
‘It’s no good,’ he muttered. ‘The neuron matrix isn’t sensitive enough. It isn’t going to work.’ The Doctor stared sadly at his ‘crochetwork’, his chin sunk on his chest.
‘I am going to link in my own brain,’ he announced suddenly.
Vira immediately stepped forward. ‘I cannot allow it,’ she cried. ‘The power could burn out a living brain.’ But the Doctor was already rummaging about among the circuitry.
‘An ordinary brain, I agree,’ came his muffled voice from inside the video cabinet. ‘But mine is rather exceptional.’ He grinned over his shoulder before ducking back in again.
‘Doctor, it’s an appallingly dangerous idea,’ Harry objected.
The Doctor stood up. ‘It’s the only way,’ he said.
The others watched apprehensively as Rogin and Lycett attached electrodes to the Doctor’s temples, and connected the wires into the maze inside the cabinet and to the probes stuck into the Wirrrn brain. The Doctor pointed to the video cabinet, to the brain tissue, and then to his own head. ‘Piggy in the middle,’ he smiled.
Sarah shuddered. ‘Do you have to do this, Doctor?’ she pleaded.
Vira moved between the two Technops and the equipment. ‘I forbid this,’ she said. But Rogin and Lycett seemed to be fascinated by the Doctor’s plan.
The Doctor gestured towards the Cryogenic Chamber, humming faintly in the background. ‘The outcome of this experiment may save the Human Race,’ he said. ‘If it fails, then at least only the six of us will suffer.’ He settled himself into one of the control console seats. ‘It may be a trifle irrational of me,’ he smiled, ‘but humans are quite my favourite species.’ Then his face grew deadly serious. ‘Tie me to the chair,’ he ordered.
The Doctor was soon secured to the seat with a variety of complicated nautical knots tied by Harry in the thick insulated wire. The Doctor told Vira to take the paralysator from his pocket. ‘Do not hesitate to destroy me should anything go wrong.’ Sarah looked at Harry in horror as Vira took the weapon without a word.
‘Switch on,’ said the Doctor. Lycett and Rogin operated a sequence of buttons. The Doctor’s body shook and then arched sharply over the back of the seat. His eyes bulged out of their sockets, his mouth gaped, and he uttered a chilling gasp. Then he slumped heavily forward.
Vira moved closer to Harry and Sarah. ‘He is joining his mind to the Wirrrn’s,’ she murmured. ‘If the experiment works, he may remain part of the Wirrrn’s consciousness for ever.’
Following the Doctor’s instructions, Sarah and Harry, each holding an insulated electrode, systematically probed the lump of jelly-like matter from the Wirrrn’s brain. Occasionally, the Doctor’s limbs jerked; his head snapped suddenly upright, then lolled forward again on to his chest. On the video screen the flashes of static began to form vague shapes which dispersed and re-formed rapidly, as if some image was trying to establish itself. Sarah and Harry forced themselves to continue, despite the Doctor’s agonised gasps and spasms as they moved the electrodes.
Rogin suddenly pointed to the screen. ‘Look,’ he cried. ‘It is working.’
A faint, ghostly outline was steadily resolving into a clearer and clearer picture. The Doctor uttered brief whimpering sounds, as if willing the image to become more sharply defined.
As they watched the screen with bated breaths, they heard a distant hissing and buzzing from the Cryogenic Chamber. Rogin and Lycett leaped to their feet. There was a deafening noise, like the cracking of an ice floe, followed by the sound of a damp fire crackling.
‘What is that?’ whispered Vira.
The two Technops rushed through into the adjacent chamber. The others remained gazing at the screen where the shadowy image had sharpened into a distinct picture of a massive Satellite revolving slowly against the heavens like a giant spinning-top. The central hub-structure was composed of a cluster of gigantic tubes, bristling with antennae and reflector dishes. The radial tunnels, or spokes, which ran outwards to the great circular rim, swelled here and there into s
pherical chambers and sub-structures, all inter-connected with a glinting steel-lattice framework.
The Doctor sighed, as if with satisfaction. Sarah and Harry noticed that he was smiling, and rocking his head gently from side to side. On the screen the image of the Satellite was also swinging in the same rhythm. It came steadily closer until the whole screen was occupied by a close-up of a kind of entrance hatch. The Doctor began to pant, as if in anticipation. Tentacles snaked into view in the foreground of the picture and fastened themselves about the steel handholds positioned round the edge of the airlock.
‘Look out, Lycett, behind you…’ came Rogin’s sudden shriek from the Cryogenic Chamber. Vira spun round.
‘What… what is it…?’ Lycett’s cry of incomprehension rose to a piercing scream that rang through the chambers. For a second, Sarah and Harry stood transfixed as Lycett’s cries of agony combined with the Doctor’s strange moans into a grotesque medley of sounds. Then Harry sprang to life and rushed through into the Cryogenic Chamber. He caught a momentary glimpse of the glistening, bubbling creature he had seen before in the gallery. As it rolled in a great hissing ball towards him, he collided with Rogin who hurled him back into the Access Chamber and swiftly operated the shutter control. As the panel glided shut, they all watched the heaving, crackling mass wobbling across the floor towards the narrowing gap. The panel closed just in time.
‘Lycett’s been absorbed by the larvae…’ screamed Rogin.
Harry dived for the video console. ‘Stop the experiment… let’s get out of here.’