by Marter, Ian
Sarah threw herself forward, barring his way. ‘No, Harry… you could kill the Doctor if you interfere with the circuits,’ she cried.
Vira gave orders in a clear, firm voice. ‘Rogin: the Armoury. Bring the Laser Lances.’ Rogin ran out into the Access Tunnel. Vira turned to Harry who was anxiously eyeing the grilled duct-openings set high in the walls of the Access Chamber; he knew that at any moment the larvae might burst in upon them. ‘Go with Rogin,’ she commanded. Harry glanced inquiringly at Sarah. She hesitated, then nodded.
‘Good luck, Harry,’ she said.
‘And to you, old girl,’ he replied, spinning round and out in pursuit of Rogin.
As the panel closed behind Harry, Sarah looked back to the video screen. The Doctor had grown strangely silent, and on the screen a blurred and bulbous image of the Control Centre had appeared. The image swung up and down, and from side to side, as if showing the view through the eyes of something which was moving slowly and awkwardly about the chamber. Suddenly, the screen whitened with a blinding glare. The image of the Control Centre reeled wildly about. Burst after burst flashed over the screen.
The Doctor began to struggle violently, fighting against the tight loops of wire which bound him to the chair, his face folded in pain. In the foreground of the picture, Sarah and Vira saw a blur of tentacle shapes flourishing defiantly. Sarah glanced from the screen to the Doctor’s thrashing limbs; then she stared at the inert lump of the Wirrrn’s brain tissue.
‘It’s the Wirrrn Queen…’ she gasped in horror, pointing to the video screen.
The Doctor uttered terrifying cries as, on the screen, the Electronic Guard discharged its lethal bolts at the Wirrrn Queen, which was now fighting its way into the second Control Chamber… showing them all exactly what had happened in reality. Once again, the Doctor began to breathe in hoarse panting sounds; his head nodded eagerly, and his hands made rapid gripping movements in the air. As they watched, Sarah and Vira saw the tentacles come into view again; they began prising open a section of control panelling. Thick bundles of cables were ripped from their mountings. The Doctor’s body became hunched, his jaw tensed open. Then, with a grotesque growling noise, he snapped his teeth shut; on the screen, severed cable-ends flew in all directions. Then the picture dissolved into static.
Sarah felt Vira’s hand grip her arm sharply. She had heard it too, a distant crackling – like a bonfire at the end of a long tunnel. They stared up at the vents…
Harry and Rogin emerged from the Armoury carrying short, rifle-like objects with dish-shaped shields fitted round the barrels. As they raced round the Cincture Structure Gallery, Rogin explained to Harry how to operate the deadly laser guns. They had to pass through the junction section where the Access Tunnel to the Solar Chambers joined the curved gallery of the Cincture Structure. As the shutter opened, they found themselves facing a monstrous apparition. Noah, his back hunched menacingly, glared at them with the huge ochre-coloured eye which occupied the whole of the left side of his head. The entire left side of his body had swollen and burst through the radiation suit, and the skin was hard and polished. In place of his left arm, three stumpy tentacles thrashed about, centimetres from their faces.
‘Human fools…’ Noah’s hideous croaking made the hair rise on Harry’s neck. Rogin fired his laser lance at point blank range, cutting a deep trench in Noah’s glossy, shell-like body. Noah reeled back against an observation port in the outer wall of the gallery. Pressing themselves to the inner wall, Harry and Rogin inched their way through the bulkhead panel, their weapons scoring a macabre criss-cross pattern in Noah’s side. They managed to slip past him, just out of reach of the knife-like hairs bristling over the jabbing tentacles.
‘You… cannot… stop us…’ Noah croaked, turning his head as the panel began to close between them. Rogin gasped, and stopped firing as he glimpsed the still recognisable features of his Commander staring at him in agony. Then he fired a last burst of laser as the shutter slid home.
For a few seconds, Sarah and Vira had forgotten the Doctor as they stared fearfully up at the wall vents of the Access Chamber; the crackling sounds were growing louder every second, and the closed panel into the Cryogenic Chamber was beginning to vibrate like a drumskin, as if something was beating violently on the other side. Then Vira suddenly gestured in horror at the video screen. ‘Dune…’ she gasped. ‘… Technop Dune…’ On the screen Sarah saw the image of a young man, dressed in the Tech Personnel uniform, lying helplessly in his pallet. The image came nearer and nearer. Tentacles reached out and opened the pallet shield.
Sarah struggled to calm the Doctor. His face was running with sweat and his teeth were chattering. He began to moan over and over again.
‘… Wirrrn… Wirrrnwirrrn… the… Wirrrn…’ Sarah tore the electrodes from the Doctor’s head and tugged feebly at the tight knots securing him. She turned to Vira.
‘Help me with him,’ she implored.
Vira was staring at the blank screen. ‘That… that was Dune,’ she whispered, her voice filled with shock and outrage. She looked at the Doctor’s shuddering body. ‘Stand away,’ she ordered Sarah, who glanced up to see her levelling the paralysator directly at the Doctor.
‘No… No, you can’t…’ she screamed at Vira.
‘Stand away,’ repeated Vira. ‘The Doctor’s mind has been possessed by the Wirrrn. He must be eliminated.’
Sarah threw herself at Vira and tried to wrest the weapon from her strong fingers. They struggled desperately while the Doctor remained slumped in his chair, moaning quietly as if in a trance.
‘Wirrrn… wirrrnwirr…’
Then, from one of the grille-covered ducts above them, there erupted a mass of crackling froth. Sarah shrank down behind the Doctor’s motionless body; Vira fired the paralysator at the gathering ball of larvae quivering over them. The weapon had no effect.
Sarah screamed in the Doctor’s ear. ‘Doctor, please help us… help us, Doctor…’ as the crackling grew to a deafening pitch all around them. The panel sealing off the Cryogenic Chamber began to warp and shudder; round its tightly fitting edges the larvae were oozing slowly through. Vira backed away, covering Sarah and the Doctor, and firing the useless paralysator at the apparently indestructible ‘creature’.
‘The panel is failing,’ Vira cried. The shutter folded up like melted plastic. In the entrance to the Cryogenic Chamber there hung a sizzling curtain of globules, all bursting and multiplying. Whiplash tentacles formed out of the undulating mass and flew towards them…
6
Time Running out
HARRY AND ROGIN rushed into the Access Chamber just in time to slice through the fronds of larvae with the laser guns. The smouldering fragments stuck like dried glue to the floor, centimetres from Vira’s feet. Raking the clustering larvae with the silent and invisible laser beams, they disintegrated the globules as easily as if they were cutting through snow with jets of water. The chamber was soon filled with a choking and sickening smoke. At once the larvae began to retreat through the ducts; the nightmarish curtain hanging in the entrance to the Cryogenic Chamber shrank away. Harry and Rogin advanced, forcing the larvae back.
The Doctor stood up, effortlessly snapping the wires that had confined him. He began to lurch towards the retreating larvae with outstretched arms.
‘Doctor… Doctor, come back,’ screamed Sarah, but the Doctor stumbled heedlessly forward as if obeying some primitive instinct.
‘Get back, Doctor,’ shouted Harry as the Doctor crossed into his line of fire. A corner of the Doctor’s jacket was sliced off by Harry’s laser and fell in a smouldering spiral. Sarah had dived forward and she brought the Doctor down with an unorthodox but effective rugger tackle. He fell with a crash.
‘Bravo, old girl,’ yelled Harry, as he and Rogin leaped over the Doctor’s prone body in pursuit of the straggling remains of the Wirrrn larvae, rapidly retreating into the Cryogenic Chamber.
For a few seconds, the Doctor lay quite still. Sarah bent ov
er him anxiously. Vira was covering him with the paralysator. Suddenly he leaped abruptly to his feet: ‘Good morning, Sarah. Is it time to get up?’ he asked brightly.
Sarah hugged the Doctor, tears of relief in her eyes. ‘Doctor, you… you were nearly…’ she stammered, scarcely able to speak.
The Doctor patted her on the head abstractedly, and seated himself comfortably at the control console. He took out the scorched bag of jelly-babies from his damaged pocket, prised one from the congealed mass, popped it into his mouth and offered the bag absently to Sarah. ‘Breakfast?’ he asked.
Sarah shook her head. ‘No thanks,’ she grimaced. ‘They remind me too much of that larvae stuff.’
The Doctor stared at the shapeless lump of melted sweets. ‘Why don’t they wait?’ he murmured to himself. ‘In their adult form the Wirrrn will be far deadlier.’
‘How many of them will there be?’ said Vira. She had lowered the paralysator, but she watched the Doctor warily, still unsure of what effect the experiment might have had on him.
The Doctor chewed away thoughtfully. ‘At a hatching… perhaps a hundred… possibly a thousand,’ he said quietly. Just then, Harry and Rogin backed into the Access Chamber, covering the entrance to the Cryogenic Chamber which was once again humming gently to itself.
‘We’ll be ready for them,’ Harry said grimly, obviously elated by their spectacular victory with the laser guns.
The Doctor shook his head. ‘The lances will be virtually useless against a swarm of fully mature Wirrrn,’ he warned.
‘Then how can we fight them?’ said Sarah at last.
The Doctor glanced at the lump of Wirrrn brain, bristling with electrodes on the control console beside him. ‘Electricity of course,’ he shouted. ‘I remember now it was the electromagnetic OMDSS that killed me… I mean the Wirrrn Queen,’ he added hastily, noticing the paralysator still firmly gripped in Vira’s hand.
‘Yes, we saw.’ Sarah pointed to the video screen.
‘And you were correct, Doctor,’ said Vira. ‘Technop Dune was the host for the Wirrrn eggs. We saw that too.’
‘But how did the Wirrrn Queen get into the Cryogenic Chamber?’ asked Harry, shuddering at the recollection of the dead creature toppling out on him.
‘The most tenacious willpower,’ replied the Doctor. ‘I could feel it fighting off death until it had spawned; until its task was completed.’
He stood up, stuffing the sweets back into his coat. ‘We must get back to the Control Centre,’ he said. ‘There should be some way of electrifying the Infrastructure and the Solar Chamber from there.’ He strode towards the entrance to the Access Tunnel.
‘Noah’s out there,’ Harry cried, barring the Doctor’s way. He quickly related their recent encounter with Noah.
The Doctor slapped his forehead. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘That’s why the larvae emerged now; they can bypass the pupal stage by taking over fully conscious living tissue – like Noah’s body. That way they can accelerate the transformation into mature Wirrrn form.’ He glanced towards the Cryogenic Chamber. The panel lay buckled beside the entrance. ‘We’ve won a breathing space, but we’re trapped.’ His eyes roved around the Access Chamber, seeking inspiration. ‘We’ve got to reach the Control Centre.’
The Doctor’s darting gaze lighted on the Matter Transmitter Couch. He smiled at his companions. ‘Now that little gadget can be made to go backwards.’
Rogin shook his head. ‘To reverse the polarities would take us hours, Doctor,’ he objected. ‘There just is not time.’
The Doctor tapped the side of his head. ‘It so happens that I have a few short-cut methods of my own,’ he said, diving under the control console of the Matter Transmitter.
Rogin looked round unhappily at the others. ‘But if there should be the slightest error…’ he began.
‘Take your choice,’ came the Doctor’s muffled interruption. ‘… If this little trick fails, we shall either be gobbled up by the Wirrrn, or dispersed particle by particle into infinity. And I know which of the two fates I should prefer,’ he added, re-emerging from beneath the console and touching a switch.
The transparent shroud covering the couch slid smoothly aside. The Doctor motioned Rogin to climb on to it. ‘After you,’ he smiled. With a moment’s hesitation and a reluctant nod of assent from Vira, Rogin gripped his laser gun firmly and lay down on the couch. The shroud slid shut. The Doctor pressed a series of switches; Rogin faded to a ghostly outline and then disappeared. Harry’s eyes were almost popping out of his head.
‘You next, Harry,’ said the Doctor. In a daze Harry obeyed. He too faded and disappeared. As Sarah took her turn, the Doctor muttered confidentially to her, ‘Sarah, I’m so relieved – I was not at all sure it would work.’
Sarah smiled nervously. ‘Here I go again,’ she called as the shroud closed over her.
The Doctor operated the switches; Sarah became a ghost for a moment and then returned to flesh and blood reality. Through the transparent shroud she grimaced at the Doctor. He smiled apologetically and tried again. Sarah faded a second time and instantly reappeared.
At the same moment, the lights in the Access Chamber flickered and sank to a mere glimmer. Rogin’s voice crackled feebly over the intercom from the Control Centre. ‘Commander, we have a power fade in Section Three.’
Vira pointed to a warning display on a nearby console. ‘The Oxygen System has ceased operation,’ she murmured.
The Doctor beat his fists together in frustration. ‘We’re so helpless in here,’ he cried. ‘If we could only dispose of Noah we might have a chance of tackling the larvae while they are still in the chrysalis stage – assuming that they are by now.’ He glanced up at the vents. An urgent tapping reminded him that Sarah was still trapped in the Matter Transmitter Couch at his side.
‘Obviously I’m not going anywhere,’ she scowled as the Doctor released her. ‘Where are you going though?’ she demanded as the Doctor suddenly whirled round and made for the Access Tunnel.
‘I shan’t be long,’ he called. ‘Lock the door behind me – and don’t let anyone or anything in.’
‘Doctor,’ Sarah shouted vainly after him, ‘Noah is out there and you…’
But he was gone.
Every nerve taut, his senses as sharp as those of a wild beast stalking its prey, the Doctor sped through the dark, empty tunnels. At any moment he might encounter Noah or the larvae, and he had no weapon with which to defend himself. Although Sarah and Vira were armed with the paralysator and with a laser lance, he knew they were in terrible danger every moment he was away from the Access Chamber.
He soon reached the Radiation Shield leading into the Solar Chamber. The shattered helmet belonging to Noah’s protective suit still lay where it had fallen. With great care the Doctor opened the Shield and stepped warily into the Solar Chamber. At first he thought the chamber was deserted. He was about to switch on the torch to make sure, when he suddenly noticed that clinging to the softly glowing reservoirs of the upper levels were huge, ovoid crystalline objects. ‘The pupal stage…’ he breathed, peering up into the gloom. Every fibre alert, he advanced up the steel ladder to the first level of reservoirs. The Wirrrn pupae were transparent – like huge lumps of clouded glass – inside which the skeletal form of the adult Wirrrn was clearly visible, pulsating rhythmically like a heartbeat.
Stealthily the Doctor approached the broad centre shaft which contained the Solar Chamber systems controls and displays. He found the Section Three panel open, its interior totally wrecked. He set to work to try and salvage the oxygen supply circuits, at the same time forming in his mind a scheme to electrify the Solar Chamber and thus prevent the adult Wirrrn from breaking out once they reached the imago stage. An occasional sharp splitting sound came from the massed pupae above him, and the chamber was filled with subdued rustlings and movements as the Wirrrn chrysalises absorbed energy from the globes.
A shrill rattle, like the sound of a giant cicada, made the Doctor spin round. A Wirr
rn hovered over him, scraps of radiation suit still clinging to its body.
‘Noah,’ gasped the Doctor, pressing himself against the exposed circuits. The eerie rattling was made by the rows of scythe-like hairs rubbing together. The Wirrrn turned first one, then the other of its huge eyes towards him. Then, with a sudden contortion of its segmented body, it brought its tail up and over its head so that the murderous claw hung above the Doctor like the sting of a giant scorpion. The shrill rattling reached a climax as the claw opened. The creature seemed to purr with triumph, uttering its own name. ‘Wirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrn…’
The vicious claw swung down at the Doctor’s throat.
Suddenly a series of deep lines was scored across the underbelly of the rearing Wirrrn. It turned from the Doctor to face the attack. From somewhere below him, the Doctor heard Sarah screaming. ‘Run, Doctor. Run…’ He threw himself between the creature’s razor-bristling legs and rolled across the steel landing. He glimpsed the terrified faces of Sarah and Vira in the torch-beam. They were pointing the paralysator and the laser lance uncertainly into the half-light. The Doctor dived down the companionway.
‘Get out. Out. Both of you,’ he roared. ‘The radiation in here could kill you.’ Reaching them, and grabbing them by the arms, he steered them towards the open Shield and safety.
‘Stay, Vira, stay…’ The words seemed to come from the depths of the chamber itself rather than from the hideous apparition before them. Vira twisted free from the Doctor’s grasp and turned, letting go the laser lance which fell clattering into the darkness below them.
‘Noah… Commander…’ Vira cried, her voice choked with tears.
The Wirrrn moved gradually closer to them, its legs rustling like dry leaves against the metal struts. It stopped a few metres away, crouched on the edge of the gantry above them.
‘Abandon the Satellite now… Take the Transport Vessel… If you remain you will perish with the Sleepers…’ The hushed whisper enfolded them like a breeze. It was just recognisably the voice of Noah, but it issued from the huge quivering mandibles of the giant insect looming over them.