The only movement was at the base of the drill tower.
He squinted. He could hardly make out what was going on. Three of the settlers had pushed one of the quad bikes up to the base of the drill. On the back was something fat and cylindrical – it could only be the bomb. Behind it, two more had unrolled a huge drum of cabling, letting it spool out loosely on the mud – yards and yards and yards of it, back to the Nerve Centre. Even if he ran down there at full tilt, it’d be too late now.
As he watched, the settlers heaved at the bomb and it tumbled from the back of the bike – and vanished out of sight into the drill shaft.
Like battery-operated toys whose power had just run out, the settlers fell over and lay still. The cable, looped on the ground in great scribbly swirls, began to unravel, following it down the hole.
‘We’re too late,’ said the Doctor softly, a bleakness in his voice that Martha had never heard before. ‘They’ve done it. They’ve dropped the bomb.’
Without looking round, he reached out to his side and found Martha’s hand. If this was how it ended, then it would be like this. The two of them. Together.
‘It’s been fun,’ he whispered, looking down at her.
He felt her fingers tighten in his.
‘The best,’ Martha said without a trace of sadness. ‘Smith and Jones.’
‘Smith and Jones.’
There wasn’t anything else to say.
In silence, they waited.
And waited.
And, just for good measure, they waited a bit more.
‘Maybe it’s still falling,’ Martha ventured.
‘Maybe it is.’
So they waited just a bit more. Until the end of the cable – the end that, really, should have been plugged into a little box with a great big handle on the top – flicked into sight like a snake’s tongue – and vanished down the hole after the bomb.
‘You know,’ said the Doctor slowly, as if trying not to be too presumptuous, ‘I always said the Chinese did the best fireworks displays.’ He glanced at Martha. ‘This one’s rubbish, isn’t it?’
And before she could say anything, he grabbed her in a whopping great hug and lifted her off her feet, swinging her round in the air a full three turns, before plonking her back on the ground, still laughing.
‘Like I always say,’ he grinned like a loon. ‘Technology – it’s all rubbish in the end!’
‘What happened?’ Martha said eventually, as dizzy from the hug as she was from the realisation that the bomb hadn’t gone off – and wasn’t going to.
‘At a guess, I’d say our moist little friend forgot to plug something in. Either that, or—’
He stopped as the sound of an elephant crashing through the forest broke the silence. Both of them jumped as Ty and Orlo stumbled out of the bushes. With a huge grin, he gave them both a hug – but not, thought Martha, as big as the hug he’d given her. Instantly, she felt cheap for even noticing.
‘Candy,’ Orlo panted.
‘It’s just food, food, food with you, isn’t it?’ said the Doctor, rolling his eyes. ‘Hang on – I might have a biscuit here somewh—’
Orlo shook his head, catching his breath. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Candy. Candy.’
‘Candice? What about her?’
‘She… she did it.’ Orlo pointed a trembling hand towards the drill site.
‘Candice did what…?’ Realisation suddenly dawned on him. ‘Candice did that? She sabotaged the bomb?’
And as if Candy had heard him, a little face appeared around the side of the building, peering cautiously up at them.
‘Candice Kane!’ bellowed the Doctor. ‘Get yourself up here! Now! There’s a serious hugging waiting for you!’
Ty couldn’t believe it – somehow Candy had stopped the bomb. And with just seconds to spare. She watched as the girl raced up the slope towards them.
But she wasn’t alone: seconds later, she was followed by a tiny, scampering procession of otters. For a moment, Ty froze, wondering whether the Doctor’s sonic doohickey had recharged. But then she noticed something about one of the otters: the grey, smudgy patch on one ear. These were her otters.
Candy skidded and slipped a few times in her haste, but soon she was with them and they threw their arms around her, squeezing her until she squealed. The otters lined up a few yards away, holding each other’s paws like well-behaved junior school kids.
Orlo gave her an embarrassed hug too. ‘Your spelling’s terrible,’ he said with a grin.
Candy pulled a uh? face.
‘Your Morse code,’ Orlo explained. ‘How d’you spell “sabotage” again?’
She punched him playfully on the arm.
‘What did you do, though?’ asked the Doctor, clearly still puzzled, his eyes flicking to the silent line of otters, all looking up at them expectantly.
‘Common sense,’ grinned Candy. ‘Like you said. I thought it through. Whatever that thing was dropping down the drill shaft had to be bad, didn’t it? And when I saw the cable it was trailing, I tried to unplug it. Only it was locked in – and then these guys turned up.’ She turned and smiled at the otters, which made appreciative squeeing noises, dancing from one foot to the other at the attention they were getting. ‘I thought I’d had it – that they were going to attack me or something. And then…’ She smiled and shook her head. ‘They started talking. Can you believe it? Talking! “We help,” they said. “We help!” Thought I was going mad but then I thought, “What the heck.” What did I have to lose? So I pointed to the cable. It was unravelling but there was still a lot of slack in it. And I told them to cut it.
‘And before I knew it, they’d jumped on it and were chewing at it like mad.’ A shadow of guilt passed across her face. ‘I didn’t think, ’til afterwards, that it might be electrified.’
‘Nah,’ said the Doctor. ‘Only needed a tiny trigger signal.’
‘Lucky for them,’ Ty said.
‘Lucky for us,’ Martha added.
‘Trigger signal?’ Candy looked puzzled. ‘Trigger for what? What was that thing – a nuclear bomb or something?’ She laughed.
The Doctor gave a shrug. And a wink. ‘Something like that,’ he said.
But the feelgood factor didn’t last. Once she thought about it, Martha realised it wouldn’t.
‘We’ve got to get down there, and quick,’ the Doctor said, suddenly fired up. ‘We need to take that drill apart – with our bare hands if necessary – before slimey realises that his little firecracker’s turned into a damp squib. And we need to get the settlers out of there. They’ll be waking up soon and I don’t want slimey to get another shot at them.’
‘It’ll try again?’ Ty was aghast.
‘Wouldn’t you? It nearly worked the first time, and once it works out what went wrong, it’s bound to think about giving it another go. When the taxi for Mr Slime doesn’t arrive, it’ll poke its nose out, interface with an otter or two and work out what went wrong. And then it’ll have another go. There’s still the power core back in Sunday City’s generator station, remember? Come on!’
And before anyone could say anything, the Doctor was scrambling down the bank towards the drill.
‘How long will it take before they start moving?’ Ty whispered, as they threaded their way between the motionless otters.
‘Minutes,’ the Doctor said. ‘Hours, maybe. Depends when they were last in contact with slimey. As the proteins in their brains break down, they’ll go back to being just otters.’
One or two of them twitched slightly as the five of them made their way across the open ground. Little limbs paddled the air, like dreaming cats. Martha jumped as one close to her gave a tiny, plaintive squee. The others, the friendly ones, had stayed well clear at the Doctor’s instruction: if slimey decided to make a reappearance (and they were all still worryingly close to the water), he didn’t want them getting caught by it.
‘This is creepy,’ Martha muttered, and Orlo grabbed her hand. ‘If you’re wrong and they s
uddenly wake up, Doctor, we’re in big trouble.’
‘Nah,’ he said casually. ‘When they wake up they’re going to be just like they were before slimey arrived. They’ll be smart and friendly, just like your little pals back there. And this time, hopefully, they’ll have the common sense to stay away from the water.’
‘You better be right,’ she said as they reached the control room. ‘Where do we start?’ She stopped suddenly, aware of a sound she hadn’t heard before: a soft scraping sound, like a heavy body being dragged across dry soil.
Orlo clearly heard it too. ‘What’s that?’ he whispered as the five of them froze. Martha saw that the Doctor was looking up towards the roof of the control room.
‘It’s the man with the matches,’ he said softly. ‘Come to see why his firework display didn’t go off.’
Moving over the roof and descending rapidly towards them was the puppet-like form of Pallister, still suspended from the throbbing green tendrils buried in his skull. His flesh was even more disgusting, more decayed than before. And as the swamp creature lowered him, Martha could see the bones of his right hand and arm showing through the rotted flesh. The right leg was missing at the hip.
‘Back away,’ muttered the Doctor fiercely, pushing Martha behind him. ‘Move. Now!’
Martha turned instinctively – only to see a shimmering tide of green-black flesh oozing around the sides of the control centre like a huge hand reaching out for them.
‘You have interfered,’ came the creature’s voice from Pallister’s mouth. It was hardly recognisable as a voice at all, so damaged was the man’s body. Martha could see the bloated, black tongue lolling out over his lips, the jet-black eyes transfixing her with their dead stare. ‘The spawning time is here and you have interfered. You will interfere no more.’
And with that, two huge tongues of oily flesh licked out from around the building and lunged for them.
SEVENTEEN
‘Wait!’ shouted the Doctor, raising his hands. ‘Wait! Listen to me!’
‘Oh yeah,’ said Martha scathingly. ‘That’s going to w—’
She stopped, mid-sentence, as she saw, miraculously, the tendril pause in mid-air, hovering like it had done in front of her back in the otters’ nest. Orlo, Ty and Candy were staring at it in silent horror.
‘Why?’ said Pallister slowly.
‘Because I can help you,’ the Doctor said.
‘You what?’ Martha found herself saying.
‘Shush!’ the Doctor snapped without turning round. ‘I can help you find other planets to colonise,’ the Doctor said loudly, addressing Pallister. ‘That’s what you want, isn’t it? To blow yourself into pieces, to give your children a lovely little start in life, eh? Well let me help.’
There was a moment’s silence.
‘How?’
Martha saw the tentacles flick lazily in the air, like lizard’s tongues, as if they were tasting the Doctor’s statements for truth.
‘My spaceship – the TARDIS.’
‘What is that?’ asked Pallister, his voice flat and dead.
‘It’s how I got here – how I came to this planet. A blue box. You’ve seen it: you pulled Martha out of it, remember, under the water? The otters picked up the image of it from you.’
‘This…?’ said Pallister. And, before their eyes, the tip of the tendril reshaped itself into a rough, featureless approximation of the TARDIS.
‘That’s it!’ cried the Doctor eagerly. ‘You know where it is – if you get it out of the swamp, I can use it to take your little slimey babies to a dozen planets.’ He shrugged. ‘Why just a dozen? Make it a hundred – no, a thousand! I can spread your children across the galaxy better than you could ever do yourself. None of that wasting ninety-nine per cent of them just for the sake of the one per cent that land near a good school.’
It’s a trick, thought Martha instantly. There was no way the Doctor would offer to help the creature infect other planets, other worlds. Not even to save her. He’d trap it in the TARDIS or eject it into the sun. Something like that. She’d seen what he’d done with the Family, back in 1913.
‘Why?’ came the rasping gurgle from Pallister’s mouth.
‘Why? Because I’m like that – always stopping for hitchhikers, aren’t I, Martha? And because it’s the only way to make you leave this planet – and leave these people.’
Pallister just stared at them – or the creature behind it did. Martha had no idea whether it understood the concept of a double-cross. If it was filtering everything through what was left of Pallister’s brain, it must have known the Doctor might be trying to trick it.
But maybe it was like the Doctor had said earlier: instinct versus intelligence. Perhaps the creature’s instinct to reproduce was just so strong, its own intelligence so pitiful, that it wouldn’t be able to see beyond its own blind drive to make more swamp creatures, to fill the universe with copies of itself. Was this some bizarre, twisted version of motherhood (or fatherhood, she supposed)? Is this how any parent would be when faced with the survival of its kids? People went to such lengths to have babies back on Earth, didn’t they? Not that most people would condemn a whole world for one. But still… It was a powerful drive.
‘Yes,’ said Pallister suddenly.
Without warning, the green tendril that still held the shape of the TARDIS flowed out into a grasping funnel and clamped itself around the Doctor’s head. Ty screamed and staggered back.
‘Yes,’ repeated Pallister soullessly as the rope of alien flesh spread out and began to engulf him. ‘You will help me. You will be me. I will take the TARDIS. I will be everywhere. Now… show me how!’
‘No!’ yelled Martha, racing after the Doctor as the creature began to pull him back across the mud, his dragging heels carving soft gouges into it. She pounded her fists against the creature’s hide, but it was as hard and unyielding as it had been in the otters’ nest. Through the translucent flesh, threaded with dark veins, she could see the Doctor’s features – his mouth open in horror, his eyes wide. It was spreading slowly down over his shoulders, like gelatinous oil, smothering him. His legs were kicking frantically, mud spattering everywhere, and she knew it was only seconds before he passed out through lack of oxygen. Even now the thing would be trying to insinuate itself into his mouth, his nose, his ears. She caught sight of his eyes for just a moment.
‘Stand back!’ someone ordered.
Martha turned. It was Ty, and she was holding a tiny gun.
‘What–’
The words stuck in Martha’s throat as she watched Ty expertly snap two glass and metal cartridges into the top of it – the same cartridges she’d seen the Doctor filling with liquid back in the bio lab. Why had Ty got it?
‘I said stand back!’ Ty shouted again, raising the gun and gripping it with both hands.
‘What are you doing?’ Martha yelled, refusing to move.
‘Plan A,’ Ty said grimly – and fired.
There was a soft pht of compressed air, and Martha spun to see a feathered dart bounce harmlessly off the creature’s flesh and fall to the ground. She glanced up to see Ty looking straight at her.
‘Just checking,’ she said, and lowered the aim of the gun a little. For some reason, her brown eyes were filling with tears. ‘I’m sorry, Martha. I’m so sorry.’
For a second, Martha heard an echo of the Doctor’s own voice in Ty’s – the times he’d apologised to others, for things done to them that he had no control over; things that he felt, maybe, he could have stopped.
In that second, Martha realised what Ty was doing – if the poisoned dart couldn’t penetrate the creature’s flesh, there was only one way to get it into its system.
Through the Doctor.
Martha leaped forwards. ‘No way! You can’t!’ she cried.
But it was too late. She could almost see the dart leave the tranquilliser gun. Almost see it as it trailed through the air.
In silence, it buried itself in the Doctor’s leg.
Martha sank to her knees as the creature continued to envelop the Doctor. The tide of alien flesh rolled lower, down over his thighs and over the dart. His body twitched as if he were still fighting against the creature’s grip.
If the poison were strong enough to kill the creature, Martha knew, then the Doctor was as good as dead. She’d seen what had happened to Pallister when the Doctor had shot him before. And for this one to have any real effect on the creature it had to be ten – no, a hundred! – times as strong.
Martha watched as the swamp creature cocooned the Doctor, like a fly caught in green amber. His struggles suddenly ceased, his body flopping limply in the creature’s grasp. Silently, the alien monstrosity continued to drag him across the mud to the corner of the building, towards the water.
And then, suddenly, it stopped, and a weird change came over it. Like condensation on a cold glass of beer, the surface of the creature’s skin began to frost over.
Martha stared, puzzled, unable to understand what she was looking at. The cloudiness began to spread from the area of the Doctor’s head, like a wave, radiating outwards. It spread down as far as the Doctor’s feet, still protruding, almost comically, from the alien flesh. And then, with a horrid ripping sound, the creature’s tendril burst, showering her with warm, slimy goo, and the Doctor fell heavily to the ground, gasping and choking.
Ty was at his side instantly, Orlo and Candy just a second behind, pulling the stuff from his face and out of his mouth. Martha just knelt there, stunned, as he coughed the alien muck up.
Behind him, the massive bulk of the swamp creature’s tendril had flopped to the ground, thrashing and writhing. It smacked against the side of the building, spattering it with dark slime. Martha watched as the wave of frostiness continuing to spread out over its surface, back towards the creature’s body, hidden in the water; more and more of the alien’s body fluids pumped out across the soil, like an out-of-control garden hose.
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