by John Peel
‘No, no — this way.’ He gestured off almost in exactly the opposite direction.
‘It was this way,’ Barbara objected, indicating the way she was going.
Drawing himself fully upright, the Doctor stared haughtily at her. ‘You are mistaken, young woman. I have the directional instincts of a homing pigeon. Now come along, and follow me.’ He started off on the path he had indicated. Barbara was too dispirited to argue, and followed along behind him. She simply hoped that he did have those instincts he boasted of.
Ian and Vicki had been roughly thrown into a corner of a cavelike opening. The walls were smooth, and close about them. The only exit was straight ahead. As their eyes became accustomed to the gloom, they could both make out some shape blocking that one exit. It was impossible to make much out, but it was large, slimy and had numerous tentacles.
‘You all right?’ Ian asked, softly. Vicki nodded, massaging the leg where the creature had grabbed her, trying to restore the circulation. Both could hear the wheezing of the creature, as it breathed. It didn’t sound too healthy, as if this were not its normal environment. Unfortunately, it was quite strong enough to deal with both of them. Ian tried to move forward. A tentacle lashed out, slamming him back into Vicki, and leaving his chest with a burning welt, even through his blazer.
Clutching his arm, Vicki pointed. ‘Look! Down the tunnel—there’s more of them!’ In the darkness, little could be seen. Yet both could hear a slithering noise, and more of that asthmatic wheezing. ‘Dozens of them,’ she finished in a tiny, terrified voice.
There was no way for them to tell, but barely twenty feet above their heads, a raging sandstorm was in progress. The wind howled, hurling sand like miniature bullets at the huddled figures of the Doctor and Barbara. She covered her head pitifully with her thin cardigan. The Doctor had tried to spread his coat over them both, clutching it tight to prevent it from blowing away. There was nowhere to hide, nothing to shelter them but each other.
‘Cover your mouth and nose,’ the Doctor yelled, knowing he would be barely audible over this roaring even a foot away. He gestured for Barbara to take one end of his silk scarf for the purpose. ‘It’s our only chance!’
Together they tried to stay warm and keep breathing. Sand poured in every crack of their defences, trying to fly into mouth, nose, or their clothing. It was easy to see why the landscape was so featureless if there were storms like this each night! Their only chance was to last through the hours of darkness, and pray that the wind would die when the suns rose again...
Light eventually came, and the storm did indeed abate. As light began to penetrate into their makeshift tent, the blasts slowed, and then finally stopped. Hardly daring to believe it, the Doctor and Barbara groaned as they straightened stiffened limbs, then shook their clothing free of the sand that had forced its way into their clothes. Even simply standing upright was sheer agony, as muscles protested, and the sand inside their clothing tore at their skins. Brushing themselves down—and wishing desperately for a bath—they looked around, at first in wonder, and then in mounting horror.
‘Doctor,’ Barbara exclaimed. ‘It’s all changed! The whole landscape’s changed!’ They scanned everywhere, but could see nothing that looked even vaguely like anything that they could recall from the previous night. ‘There’s no sign of the TARDIS.’
‘That sandstorm must have buried it,’ the Doctor remarked, bitterly, attempting to shake the sand from his pockets.
In near panic, Barbara gestured wildly about her. ‘But where in all of this... where is it? It all looks alike!’
The two suns had started their climb already. The Doctor estimated that the night had been no more than three hours, and the days promised to be equally short. That meant the suns would reach their zenith in about an hour or so. ‘I think we had better start walking,’ he suggested softly. ‘It’s going to be very hot again soon—and we have neither shade nor water.’
Strong as she was, this was getting to be too much for Barbara. They had lost Ian and Vicki, and now the TARDIS. They had suffered through a sandstorm, and were now threatened with heatstroke and thirst. What more could the Universe throw at them?
The Doctor gripped her arm, and hissed, ‘Get down!’ He followed his own advice.
Barbara dropped, allowing her exhaustion to drag her down. ‘What is it?’
‘There... straight ahead!’ the Doctor gestured.
She watched as a small dune began to shake, then to move slightly. Sand began to cascade down, and metal gleamed in the sunshine as a Dalek pushed its way back into the daylight...
Chapter 4
The Victims
The Doctor and Barbara took what shelter they could behind the sands, praying that they had not yet been seen. As they watched, the Dalek finished emerging from the sand, then its eyestick spun about, facing away from them. Two more Daleks moved through the sands to join the first one. One of them, clearly the leader, had instead of the usual sucker-stick, a small instrument like a compass on its arm.
The first Dalek faced the new one. ‘The enemy time machine is in this area?’
The leader’s eyestick swivelled to see its companion fully. ‘Yes. We can locate it with our instruments. Find and destroy it. The remainder will search for the humans.’
‘Are they to be taken alive?’
‘No. They are to be exterminated.’ The Dalek began to move off. ‘Destroy on sight! Begin the search.’
The two Daleks chorused, ‘I obey!’ and moved off in different directions. One came towards the hidden observers, who buried themselves in the sand, trying to remain unseen. The Dalek glided past, and continued onwards.
With a sigh, the Doctor dared a glimpse about. The immediate area seemed clear of their foes. ‘We’ve got to find the TARDIS before they do,’ he hissed.
‘And we’ve got to warn Ian and Vicki!’ Barbara reminded him. ‘They don’t even know the Daleks are here!’
The Doctor waved his hand. ‘Warn them, yes—but how? It’s been hours since we saw them.’ Then, realizing that he was depressing Barbara even further, he added: ‘However, we’ll achieve nothing sitting here. Let’s get started.’
They stumbled to their feet, then turned—and froze. Barbara stifled a yelp.
Two strange figures were looking intently at them. Both were almost six feet tall, and thin. Their skins were a deep blue, their heads crested. About their shoulders, they wore long cloaks, of a dark, sandy colour. These were made from the skins of the same creatures that had menaced Ian and Vicki, though the Doctor could not know this. The skins explained how the natives had been seen neither by the Daleks nor by the Doctor and Barbara, for they blended into the sands with perfection.
Barbara glanced at the Doctor, and realized that they were both wondering the same thing: had they escaped the Daleks, only to fall into the hands of another foe?
Ian tried to move gently, without waking Vicki, to bring life back to his deadened leg. It was no use. Vicki woke, startled, and then remembered where they were. She pushed herself away from Ian, who gratefully exercised his cramped leg. They were still in the small cave, and their ‘guardian’ remained wheezing at the entrance.
‘Why are they keeping us here?’ Vicki whispered. ‘What are they going to do?’
Suppressing the first thought that crossed his mind, Ian hoped that it was nothing more than the product of reading too many stories from that book of monsters in the TARDIS. ‘I don’t know, Vicki. But you can be sure of one thing... we’re honoured guests.’
Never one to give up, Vicki asked, ‘Can’t we do something? How many of them are there?’
‘Hard to say.’ Ian peered into the gloom, and then was suddenly struck by a realization. ‘That’s odd—listen.’
Doing so, Vicki said, ‘I don’t hear anything.’
‘Exactly,’ Ian answered. ‘No wheezing from our captor. No sounds at all in fact.’
Hardly daring to believe it, Vicki peered over his shoulder. ‘You... you thi
nk they’ve gone away?’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Then—what?’
Grimly, Ian told her: ‘I think that whatever they caught us for is about to start...’
The Daleks had organized their search well. They had followed the wake of the TARDIS through the Vortex, and knew that they had landed close to the enemy time machine. They spread throughout the sands, looking for any clues. One finally halted, and stared at the sand. There were the distinct impressions of four sets of feet.
‘Tracks of the humans,’ it reported in.
‘Follow them,’ came the instructions. A second Dalek came to join the first. ‘Perceptors indicate someone is near.’
They looked off, readying their guns. Whoever it was, it must be either one of their enemies, or else a native—in either case, there was only one course of action.
An Aridian came around the side of the dune, saw the two Daleks, and tried to retreat. He had time for barely a step when the combined fire of the two guns cut him down. He screamed, fell, and died. The two Daleks moved forward. The being had fallen in the folds of his long cloak. One Dalek pushed the cloak aside, until they could both see the distinctive blue-tinted skins.
‘It is an Aridian,’ the first Dalek grated. ‘Unimportant. We are continuing our search.’
They moved off, leaving behind them another casual victim of the violence that they carried with them.
At a safe distance, Rynian indicated to the two aliens that it was all right to stop. The Aridians seemed unaffected by the heat even though they were dressed in the thick skins. The Doctor and Barbara were less relaxed. Both sank to the sand with obvious and audible relief. ‘The invaders will not find us here for some while,’ Rynian noted, in his sing-song voice. ‘We may converse freely.’
‘Thank you, my dear sir, for your assistance,’ the Doctor said, formally. ‘This planet is very hard to come to grips with.’
The second Aridian, Malsan, materialized from the dunes. ‘This desert was once a vast ocean,’ he informed them, sadly. ‘We, the Aridians, lived in a magnificent city beneath the seas. Above our dome of glass, exotic fishes swam. Now—’ he gestured about himself ‘—all our world is as you see. Our twin suns burned brighter in the heavens, moving closer to our world.’
‘The seas dried up,’ Rynian continued for him. ‘All the beautiful creatures that lived within their waters perished.’
‘All that now live are our people—and the mire beasts,’ Malsan added. ‘They lived in the slime at the bottom of the oceans. When the waters were gone, they invaded our cities to escape the rays of the burning suns.’
Rynian took up the tale. ‘We tried to destroy them, but they multiplied too quickly. We were driven back as the mire beasts took over larger and larger sections of our city.’
The Doctor had forgotten everything else, lost in his fascination of discovery. ‘These creatures,’ he prompted. ‘What do they live on?’
The aliens exchanged glances. Malsan, trying to sound casual, finally admitted: ‘They are flesh eaters.’
‘Most interesting,’ the Doctor exclaimed. ‘Now, tell me—’
‘Doctor!’ Barbara had had enough scientific knowledge for one day. ‘We don’t have the time for this! Perhaps these people can help us.’
‘Mmm? Oh, quite, quite.’ He smiled at the two Aridians. ‘First things first. Science later.’
‘Two friends of ours went out into the desert,’ Barbara explained. ‘We haven’t seen them since. Would you help us find them?’
Rynian inclined his head to one side, thoughtfully. ‘When did they set out?’
‘Before dark.’ Barbara didn’t like the glance the aliens exchanged. ‘What’s wrong? Why do you look like that?’
‘The mire beasts hunt at night,’ Malsan answered, simply.
‘You think your friends are in this area?’ Rynian asked.
The Doctor nodded. ‘More than likely. I don’t imagine that they would have willingly travelled far.’
Malsan made a peculiar gesture with his hands, evidently of regret. ‘Then if the mire beasts have taken them, they would have gone through the Taltarian air-lock into the tunnels.’
Suddenly realizing what his companion was getting at, Rynian exclaimed: ‘The Taltarian! Then it is already too late.’
‘Too late?’ Barbara echoed.
Rynian made another gesture. ‘Yes. The only way we have discovered of destroying the mire beasts is to entomb them in the sections of the city that they have occupied. To do this, we detonate explosives on the roof of the city, and bury everything beneath.’
Nodding his approval, the Doctor commended: ‘An excellent scheme—but what has this to do with our friends?’
The two aliens looked at one another again. Finally, it was Malsan who gave them the bad news. ‘The Taltarian air-lock is the next to be destroyed. The explosives are in position, and will be detonated at high suns.’
Barbara stared at them in horror. ‘But if Ian’s inside... We have to stop it!’
Pointing to the sky, Rynian said, ‘Already the suns near their peak. We could never reach the air-lock in time.’
Malsan made another of his gestures. ‘We shall try. Come.’
The four of them set off across the sands, heading for the doomed air-lock section. Unknown to them, that area was already the scene of feverish activity. A small squad of Aridians was deployed about the entrance to the air-locks. One of them had a palm-sized device, on the surface of which a small light flashed dully in the daylight. From time to time, he glanced up at the suns. The other Aridians, gesturing in their sign language, moved away from the mined area. They had to be well clear by high suns. The mire beasts that they had tracked down were all below in the tunnels, having caught something. One of their fellow citizens was missing; if he were the victim, there was nothing that they could do about it now. He would have to perish, that the race could survive. The best time to trigger the explosives was when the mire beasts were in a feeding frenzy...
Before Aridius had begun to dry up, the mire beasts had hidden in the ooze and mud on the bottom of the seas, waiting for passing prey. Their tentacles had snatched tasty fish, and the beasts had then waited for their next meal. Expending little energy, the creatures needed comparatively little food. Aside from the annual mating periods, they never met with others of their own kind.
When the seas evaporated slowly, the mire beasts had been the only non-sentient life that could adapt. Their lungs, though they worked best in water, could function in the thinner, virtually dry air. Their methods of hunting were unchanged, and they preferred to lie in wait for passing food on the hoof. They had, however, become a community, since there is strength in numbers. Food was far scarcer nowadays, for the tall, intelligent prey that they shared the planet with was far harder to catch. When one mire beast caught anything, it would signal for the community to come and feast, and during the pause it would keep the food live—and fresh. When the other beasts arrived, then feasting could begin.
Ian’s surmise that the waiting was over was unfortunately perfectly correct. Through the abandoned Aridian tunnels where they hid from the rays of the suns, the mire beasts moved. They were not quick, and their breathing sounded like rusty hinges. Towards the spot where one of their number had found food, they came. When they arrived, the hunter was ready.
Vicki screamed as a tentacle lashed in, wrapping itself about her. She tried to struggle but the rope-like limb held her tightly in its grip. Before Ian could move, he was likewise a prisoner. Both were roughly dragged from their hole, and raised into the air. In a scene that could have been drawn only in some nightmare, dozens of the mire beasts were gathered about, each waiting for the food to be torn apart and passed about for them all to share. Slavering orifices awaited the small titbits that each would get. Ian felt the pressure increasing, as the mire beast began to squeeze the life out of him.
Above them, the twin suns reached their zenith. In the sands, the Aridian took a bre
ath, then pressed the lighted button, burying his head into his cloak.
Barely a mile off, two more Aridians paused, and gestured. With sinking hearts, the Doctor and Barbara saw first the position of the suns, and then a huge spray of sand, debris and flame rise into the air. All turned their backs quickly, as the sound, rushing air and heat slapped over them.
Within the air-lock, the effects were even more devastating. The explosives had been perfectly positioned to bring down the roof on the gathered predators. Slabs of razor-sharp glass were blasted deep into the bodies of the creatures. Rock and masonry collapsed upon them. The force of the explosion tore others apart.
Ironically, Ian and Vicki were the only survivors of the blast. Barely out of the small cave where they had been imprisoned during the night, the death of their would-be devourer had sent them spinning back inside. The narrow confines kept any of the shards of glass or masonry from falling on them, and the thick, rubbery mass of the mire beast at the entrance absorbed the effects of the explosion. Aside from bruises all over from hitting the wall, Vicki was terrified but unharmed. As soon as she could, she crawled to Ian, who lay unmoving. Dust and sand made it hard to breathe or see, so she felt instead. His pulse was firm, and she could tell that he was breathing relatively normally. A slight stickiness on the side of his head told her that he had either banged his head, or something from the blast had hit him.
She had no idea what had happened, beyond the fact that they had been literally snatched from the jaws of death. As the noise of the explosion faded away, all she could hear were dying keening noises from a few of the mire beasts. The dust began to settle, and she could see glimpses of daylight through the shattered roof. Between her and safety, however, there was a mountain of rubble and corpses. There was simply no way that she could drag Ian outside again. After a moment’s hesitation, she checked his pulse a second time. Still firm. She managed to ease him into a position where he was stretched out.
‘I’ll get help,’ she told him, more to reassure herself than anything, since he was out cold. ‘I’ll find the Doctor and get help.’ Reluctantly, but resolutely, she stood up. Carefully, she began picking her way through the rubble, back the way that the creature had brought them. Now and again, her feet slipped on patches of viscous liquid, or bits of the tentacles. Suppressing the urge to shudder or scream, she worked her way outwards towards the daylight and safety.