Following the Doctor’s finger, Sarah and Harry looked towards a broad, shallow valley covered in a thick tangle of reeds and dry ferns, where the mist hung in mysterious dense patches. They shrugged and set off again in the direction the Doctor indicated. As they began to descend through the undergrowth, stumbling among the concealed rocks and boulders, a distant voice behind them called, ‘Do mind the traffic...’
His natural curiosity getting the better of him with every step, Harry was soon leading the way down into a deep gorge, its steep sides covered in strange kinds of moss which resembled mouldy bread, and in rubbery, fungus-like growths the colour of burnt toffee. Enormous, rocky outcrops reared above them like fantastic heads carved out of ebony, and all around them were scattered massive glassy boulders. Here and there rattled patches of reed and thickets of giant thorn bristled with vicious reddish daggers. Harry searched eagerly about in the undergrowth and among the treacherous crevasses which ran in all directions, exclaiming with delight and surprise at each unfamiliar sign of organic life he found.
‘I say, old thing, look at these,’ he cried, reaching up towards a cluster of gigantic berries growing in a cleft.
Sarah glanced at the shrivelled black fruits and shuddered.
She was becoming more and more apprehensive: while Harry had forged on ahead, she had been holding back and looking cautiously around her. Once or twice she was sure that she heard leathery flapping sounds high in the mists, and she was rapidly becoming convinced that hidden eyes were fixed on them from all sides.
‘Don’t touch them, Harry,’ she murmured.
‘Sarah... whatever’s the matter?’ he exclaimed.
Sarah stopped. ‘I don’t like it, Harry,’ she said, ‘it’s not like Earth at all.’
‘But it’s quite fantastic,’ cried Harry, squeezing one of the poisonous-looking berries. A treacly green juice burst out over his fingers. ‘These botanic mutations are...’
‘Mutations! ‘ Sarah gasped, her eyes widening. Harry nodded and held out his hand to show the rubbery green globules clinging to his fingers. ‘The result of unnaturally high solar radiation levels, I expect,’ he explained casually.
Sarah looked up into the drifting veils of vapour.
‘Harry... there’s something up there,’ she whispered. Harry put his arm reassuringly around her shoulders.
‘Nonsense,’ he laughed, glancing upwards. ‘I don’t suppose any of our feathered friends survived.’ He gave Sarah a comforting squeeze and wandered away up towards the head of the ravine.
‘Mind you,’ he went on, ‘some of the Reptiles might have managed.’
Sarah followed, reluctant, but anxious to keep up. ‘You mean there might be... well...
things
here?’ she called softly.
Harry shrugged.
‘There can’t have been any animal life on Earth—not of any size—for thousands of years,’ he replied, reaching the brow of the rocky slope. ‘But things will change when Vira and her people arrive—their Animal/Botanic Section was chock-a-block with...’
Harry’s words died abruptly and he seemed to suddenly disappear into the ground. Her heart thumping, Sarah was rooted to the spot. She waited for Harry to pick himself up, but nothing happened. She edged forward very slowly. All at once, a flurry of clattering and flapping noises burst from a nearby outcrop above her. She peered fearfully up at the misty slopes but could see nothing. The gorge echoed a moment, and then went quiet.
Sarah crept cautiously over the slippery rocks, glancing constantly behind her. Just as she began to climb the slope leading to the spot where Harry had been swallowed up, a hail of pebbles suddenly rattled down into the ravine and bounced violently around her. She stared wildly upwards.
A dark shape hung momentarily in a thin patch of mist and then vanished with a leathery clatter. Gasping with terror, Sarah started to scramble recklessly over the uneven ground. Just before she reached the brow she slipped and pitched forward with a scream. She glimpsed a huge black space yawning in front of her like a monstrous mouth, and then everything exploded as she cracked her head on a boulder.
The Doctor had shed his hat and scarf and was now busily tinkering with the fifth globe in the circle of nine: testing and repairing circuits and re-designing whole sections of the intricate, compact mechanism. The work was progressing well and he was whistling jolly tunes softly to himself. He had become so absorbed in the task that he had forgotten all about Sarah Jane Smith and Surgeon-Lieutenant Harry Sullivan RN almost as soon as they had set off. He was quite oblivious to the low, persistent humming sounds which came and went with the wind above the rustling of the reeds, and totally unaware that he was being closely watched.
Concealed in the twisted and furrowed rocks thrusting through a nearby patch of dense reeds, two men were lying full length and observing the Doctor’s activities with hostile eyes. One of them squinted through the sights of a short, rifle-like weapon which was trained on the unsuspecting figure kneeling beside the sphere. Both men were dressed in protective suits made from a heavy plastic material, with helmet anchorages around the collars. The remains of thick gloves fluttered on their scarred, dirty hands and the suits were ripped and filthy. The men’s hair and beards were matted and their faces pale with dulled, bloodshot eyes ringed with fatigue.
After a while, one of them stirred.
‘Keep him covered, Zake,’ he muttered hoarsely. ‘I’ll get the others.’
His companion stretched the cramp out of his arms.
‘Right, Krans,’ he murmured, ‘but be careful. The Scavenger’s been nosing around a bit too close for comfort today.’ Zake peered closely into the sights, his eyes narrowing with hatred. ‘And hurry,’ he added, ‘I can’t wait to get my hands on this one.’ Krans grunted ominously and, keeping his big body crouched low, slid away down into the reeds and was gone.
For a long time Zake lay hidden in the rocks, the ion gun trained carefully on the Doctor’s back. From time to time he spat into the reeds and muttered, ‘We’ve got you at last... we’ve got you now.’ Then suddenly he stiffened. A relentless humming noise was quickly approaching, its sound rising and falling like a siren. Sweat broke out all over Zake’s body and ran into his eyes. His skin prickled with fear as he listened, his eyes still hypnotised by the Doctor’s crouching figure. He licked his dry, cracked lips and waited.
The humming steadied behind him. At first he could not move. All at once he twisted round with a gasp and struggled to aim the weapon with trembling hands at the object hovering in the air above the blackened rocks. The scanner lens bore into his face with its cold electronic stare, and quiet clicking sounds came from inside its domed metal body. Zake leaped up and, diving underneath the hovering robot, stumbled blindly into the reeds and down the hillside. Humming and chattering to itself, the robot glided in pursuit. Desperately Zake ran for his life, hampered by the heavy flapping suit and thick boots.
Again and again he turned and fired the ion gun at point-blank range. The invisible stream of ionised particles was absorbed harmlessly by the robot’s metallic surface.
Relentlessly it pursued him and Zake realised that his plight was hopeless.
He veered sharply into a deep gully, frantically seeking some small niche or hole where he could take refuge and where the robot could not penetrate. As he turned, a whiplike metal tentacle flashed through the air and wound itself tightly round his neck like a noose. He was jerked sharply off his feet with a sickening crunch. His piercing scream was instantly transformed into a hideous, throttled gasp as he fell and lay absolutely still among the reeds. The robot hovered motionless for a few moments, chattering quietly away to itself. Then it uncoiled its tentacle and withdrew it with a snap, gliding smoothly away into the mist.
Zake’s stifled scream had brought the Doctor leaping to his feet. ‘Harry!’ he breathed, dropping the delicate circuits which he had been sonic-soldering into the undergrowth.
Snatching up his hat and scarf he set off at a loping run towards the rocky knoll.
Sarah came to after a few seconds and found herself staring down into a deep, dark hole three or four metres across with sheer rocky sides. In a daze she gripped the crumbling edge a few centimetres in front of her face, dislodging a shower of sharp fragments which clattered in the gloom below.
‘Hey, watch out, old thing,’ called Harry’s anxious voice.
‘I don’t fancy being buried alive, you know.’
Sarah clutched her splitting head, almost sobbing with relief. ‘Harry! ‘ she cried. ‘I can’t see you. Are you badly hurt?’ She heard furious scrambling sounds from the bottom of the hole.
‘Hardly a scratch, old thing,’ Harry replied, ‘I was very lucky... All the same,’ he went on, ‘I don’t see how I can climb out of here. I seem to be trapped.’
Sarah glanced round, vainly searching for something to use as a ladder or rope. Then she suddenly noticed the collapsed remains of a carefully constructed camouflage of reeds and foliage through which Harry had fallen.
‘There’s something funny here, Harry,’ she murmured, struggling to clear her aching head.
‘It may appear highly comical to
you
, Miss Smith,’
Harry muttered testily, ‘but I’m afraid I don’t see...’
‘Harry, this hole was deliberately covered over,’ Sarah interrupted with a frown. Harry snorted with exasperation.
‘Well of course it was,’ he cried, ‘otherwise I wouldn’t have fallen down... Oh, I see what you mean,’ he added after a pause, ‘a deliberate trap, eh?’
For a moment Sarah said nothing. For all her fear, her journalistic instinct was beginning to scent a good story.
‘Man-traps... on an uninhabited planet?’ she murmured at last.
‘What did you say?’ came Harry’s muffled voice from the darkness.
Sarah pulled herself together. ‘I’m going to fetch the Doctor,’ she said firmly.
‘Yes... well... I’ll just stay here then,’ Harry called plaintively after her.
Sarah took a deep breath, stuck out her chin resolutely, and slipped away into the echoing ravine.
The Doctor looked down at Zake’s crumpled body. He was greatly relieved to find that it was not Harry or Sarah.
‘Broken neck, poor fellow,’ he murmured, gently closing the lids over the wild, dead eyes. He remained for a moment staring thoughtfully at the dead man’s spacesuit, then he sprang up and made towards the top of the outcrop, filled with apprehension for the safety of his two missing companions. But just as he emerged from the narrow gully, something seized him from behind and tightened round his throat so that he could scarcely breathe. At the same instant a huge figure, clad in a spacesuit identical to that of the dead man, dropped from a ledge in front of him, barring the way.
The Doctor was forced to his knees, choking and gasping, his eyes bulging out of his head. His hair was grabbed and his head wrenched viciously back. The scarf bit into his neck.
‘You killed our mate... You killed Zake,’ growled the powerful figure standing over him.
‘And now we’ve got
you
,’ rasped a second voice behind him.
The Doctor fought to loosen the suffocating noose. ‘I do assure you... I have no intention... of hurting anyone...’ he gasped. ‘Please... please, release me...’
‘Just try convincing the others,’ sneered the towering figure, and again the Doctor’s head was jerked sharply back.
‘We’ve all waited a long time for this,’ the voice behind him threatened in an ominous undertone.
Unable to speak, the Doctor tried to twist round to face the hidden captor but his head was thrust violently forward again. The giant figure loomed larger and larger as the Doctor stared, until it seemed to fill the sky. Then he lost consciousness.
2
Sarah eventually found her way back to the ghostly circle of glinting spheres, after a breathless and spine-chilling scramble through the alien landscape. All around her the mist gathered itself into massive, haunting shapes, and the enormous red eye of the sun followed her with its inescapable malevolent gaze. At every turn she was pursued by the leathery flapping sounds which seemed to stop whenever she paused to listen and peer about, but instantly continued as soon as she pressed desperately onward.
The circle was deserted. The Doctor was nowhere to be seen. Sarah searched frantically in all directions, calling until she was hoarse. Then she stumbled upon the pieces of circuitry the Doctor had dropped, and nearby she found the sonic screwdriver hidden among the reeds. She stared at the scattered mechanism, filled with foreboding.
‘Oh, Doctor...’ she murmured, ‘what’s happened?’
A faint humming sound began to approach in the distance. Clutching the sonic screwdriver tightly, Sarah crouched down behind one of the globes and strained to see through the drifting mist. She thought she could just make out a greenish glow in the air among some jagged rocks half a kilometre away. It was coming slowly towards the circle. Sarah sprang up and began to run, tripping and stumbling, towards the ravine where Harry lay trapped.
Feeling utterly alone and helpless, she tore through the snapping reeds and over the treacherous rocks, with the flapping and the humming noises gaining on her at every stride.
Harry groped cautiously round his dark prison. He shuddered as his hands touched razor-sharp edges and spikes of rock.
‘Lucky I wasn’t sliced to mincemeat,’ he murmured ruefully. Gradually, his eyes accustomed themselves to the gloom and he saw that he had fallen into a deep fault in the rock. Fortunately, the criss-cross camouflage of reeds had broken his fall and he had escaped with a few cuts and bruises. Far above him the mist curled round the crooked edges of the opening. He quickly realised that he had no hope of climbing the sheer twisting sides back to the surface. He would just have to wait until Sarah returned with the Doctor, and hope that the Doctor could devise some clever method to rescue him.
The air down in the fissure was curiously warm and it smelt like a mixture of sulphur and hot oil. Harry quickly discovered that warm air was issuing from narrow shaft-like openings scattered around the sides of the hole. He considered trying to wriggle into one of them to see if it might lead him back up to the surface, but the warm fumes made him think of volcanoes and the unknown depths of the Earth. He was afraid even to put his arm into one of the openings.