‘We await your assessment, Styr,’ the image rapped.
‘Proceed at once.’
Reluctantly Styr tore his gaze from the monitor. Then his massive bulk began to swell with self-importance as he spoke into the portable receiver.
‘The prediction is correct, Controller,’ he announced.
‘The Earth Planet has not been repopulated. In accordance with the Strategic Council’s instructions, I have lured a group of Humans from Galsec Colony to the Planet for investigation...’ Styr’s eyes strayed furtively across to Sarah’s contorted body glowing on the monitor panel...
‘and as predicted, they are puny beings with negligible resistance to physical or mental stress, and total dependence upon organic substances for survival...’
‘Excellent, excellent,’ the Sontaran Controller interrupted impatiently. ‘We shall proceed with the project immediately.’
The ghastly folds of Styr’s face quivered with indignation. ‘But my assessment is not yet complete,’ he protested.
The Sontaran Controller glared angrily from the communicator display. ‘Our information is sufficient; further delay is not necessary,’ he announced. ‘The Squadrons are primed and are preparing their formations for attack.’
Again Styr glanced covertly at Sarah’s image: she was clawing desperately at some invisible horror in her gaping mouth. His vast body shook with a thrill of pleasure.
‘I must have more time, Controller,’ he blustered, his flapping jaws moist with blackish oily droplets.
‘You will return to your Unit at once, Styr,’ the Controller commanded, bursting with anger.
‘An inconsistency has been detected,’ Styr blurted, with a cunning pause. ‘Certain data have just appeared which do not agree with our prediction.’
The Controller stared impassively. ‘Explain,’ he ordered sharply.
‘I have initiated a series of tests to determine the origin of certain unforeseen elements—beings whose presence on this planet is not yet explained,’ Styr gasped, a devious gleam burning in his eyes. ‘I must fulfill my responsibility to the Strategic Council.’
The Controller considered for a moment, a trace of suspicion in his glowering face. ‘Then proceed, Styr, but quickly,’ he snapped at last. ‘Further delay could be catastrophic—and you know what the consequences would be to yourself...’
With that grim warning the communicator went dead.
The Controller’s relentless stare remained on the display for a few seconds, his eyes two lingering points of intense brightness. Then it faded. Styr remained motionless for some time, his scimitar-like teeth bared, and drops of oily saliva trickling from the corners of his grinning mouth onto his huge chest. Then, with eager, brutal jabs, he re-activated his instruments.
‘You will be more useful than I realised,’ he panted, his eyes beginning to hiss as he peered closely at the image of Sarah’s crumpled body on the monitor. He gave the controls a vicious twist with both of his grasping clammy pincers, and his hunched bulky frame tensed in expectation...
5
Sarah felt the white-hot sand begin to move beneath her.
The grains prickled against her skin like millions of needles as they jostled and clustered. Weakened though she was, she tried to brush them away, but the more she struggled, the thicker they swarmed over her body. The whole desert was alive around her. She dragged herself to her feet, clawing blindly at the masses of stinging grains which covered her in a steadily growing layer. Her shrivelled eyes seemed to be prised out of their sockets and the burning particles began to force themselves up into her brain. She tried to cry out and was choked by a stream of sand which welled up from her blazing stomach.
With a stunning flash of light like an explosion, she found she could see again. The floor of the crevasse was crawling with enormous ants advancing in a seething mass from all sides. The air was filled with the rustle of their antennae as they fought to get at her, a helpless victim trapped at the centre of the nest. Even as she watched, transfixed, the creatures began to grow larger. Her whole body bristled with the ravenous insects and, quickly stripped of all its flesh, it soon became a fantastic buzzing skeleton which splintered and finally collapsed under the monstrous throng.
Harry stood poised on a narrow ledge above a cutting between two enormous outcrops of rock, pressing himself back as far as he could into a shallow niche behind him.
With both hands he gripped a heavy stone, the shape and size of a rugger ball, and strained his ears to judge the approach of the slow, ponderous footsteps which were coming along the gully towards him.
Suddenly the footsteps stopped. Harry stood on the tips of his toes, raising the stone as high as he could above his head. He held his breath, waiting for the slightest movement. Something flashed into view round the edge of the niche and Harry pitched forward, hurling the stone downwards with all his strength. He crashed face-down on top of the boulder and froze as a deafening bellow ripped through the air behind him. He lay quite still, the breath knocked out of him, waiting to be trampled or torn to pieces by the enraged Alien.
‘Not a bad try, Harry,’ boomed a familiar voice. Harry rolled over on to his back and gasped with re-lief as he saw the Doctor looking down at him with a grin. ‘But I shouldn’t try to convert it if I were you,’ the Doctor added, heaving the murderous missile off the squashed remains of his hat and shoving the crown back into shape.
Harry shook his head ruefully. ‘Sorry about that, Doctor... I th... thought you were the... the Humpty Dumpty thing,’ he stammered breathlessly.
‘Humpty Dumpty?’ the Doctor echoed, cramming the hat so firmly back on his head that the crown was pushed up into a dome and his ears were bent over by the brim.
For a moment Harry just lay there, struck dumb by an uncanny resemblance, and all he could manage was a series of frantic nods.
‘The Sont... Sontaran...’ he cried at last.
The Doctor’s eyes widened. He leaned down and helped Harry to his feet. ‘Sontaran?’ he murmured. ‘Here?’
Harry nodded again, desperately trying to remember what the dying prisoner had said. ‘Thing like... like some kind of Golem...’ he frowned.
The Doctor took Harry’s arm and began to walk quickly along the gully. ‘The Sontarans are all identical clone-creatures,’ he explained, ‘composed of complex hypercatalysed polymers in conjunction with molecular...’
‘Complex
whats
?’ Harry gasped. The Doctor threw him a reproachful glance. ‘Sorry, Doctor,’ he muttered. ‘Afraid my chemistry didn’t get that far...’
The Doctor resumed his explanation, waving his arms in the air and speaking so rapidly that Harry soon gave up trying to understand him. As he strode along, the Doctor held forth for several minutes, so absorbed in his subject that he was quite oblivious of Harry’s attempts to interrupt.
‘... and so their brains are rather like seaweed and their lungs are made from a kind of spongy steel-wool,’ he at last concluded, suddenly stopping to look up at the sky.
‘But where do they
come
from?’ asked Harry.
‘No one quite knows,’ the Doctor replied, taking from one of his pockets the piece of Terullian he had picked up at the edge of the pit, and gently rubbing it with his thumb. ‘They have not been reported in this galaxy since the Middle Ages.’ Suddenly, the small metallic fragment began to vibrate with a sound like that made by a glass tumbler when its rim is stroked with a moistened finger.
‘I wonder what mischief they can be up to now, Harry,’
the Doctor murmured, glancing round at the barren landscape.
Harry had been mesmerised by the eerie, ringing sound coming from the Doctor’s hand. Suddenly he pulled himself together. ‘One of them has got Sarah trapped in some kind of...’
The Doctor swung round on him sharply. ‘Sarah Jane...
?’ he cried. ‘Why didn’t you say so before?’ Harry shrugged in confusion. The Doctor thrust the Terullian fragment into his pocket and gathered up his scarf-ends. ‘Where is she?’ he demanded.
Just as Harry opened his mouth to reply, an unearthly, piercing shriek rang out and echoed through the ravines.
‘Sarah!’ the Doctor gasped. Instantly he started off up the side of the ravine, slipping and sliding as he disappeared over the top of the ridge.
‘Doctor, she’s trapped: you can’t reach her,’ Harry called, but the Doctor had gone. Wearily, Harry set off in pursuit.
The Doctor stared in dismay through the impenetrable barrier stretched between the rocky buttresses. ‘My poor Sarah Jane,’ he murmured. ‘Whatever have they done to you...’
Sarah’s body lay motionless in the centre of the alcove, her limbs contorted and rigid, her face streaked with tears and dust, and her eyes wide open but unseeing, without a flicker of life. The Doctor soon located the two small discs of Terullian mounted one on each side of the narrow entrance to Sarah’s prison. He began to pace furiously up and down.
‘A fluctuating geon field!’ he cried, pounding the invisible barrier with his fist as he passed. ‘I had no idea that Sontaran technology had progressed so far.’
Flushed with anger, he stopped and peered in at the inert figure of his young friend. ‘A great pity that their morals have not kept pace with their science,’ he muttered.
He drew the battered ear-trumpet from his pocket and held it against one of the buttresses. As he listened, his brow furrowed with concentration, he began to solve a dazzling series of equations in his head. Eventually, he stuffed the ear-trumpet away and using the coloured divisions of his scarf, measured the distance between the two Terullian discs, taking great care not to touch them.
His face hardened with resolution, the Doctor stared at the two discs flanking the opening. ‘There’s no other way,’
he murmured. ‘I’ll just have to increase the feedback and hope that the field gives way before I do...’ Taking a few deep breaths, the Doctor stretched out both arms and approached the barrier, bringing his hands closer and closer to the discs.
He fixed his eyes upon Sarah and tried to clear everything from his mind in preparation for the ordeal ahead. As his palms came nearer and nearer to the discs, his body began to tremble with the energy surging through them.
At last they touched. The Doctor roared with pain as stunning bolts of shock drove through his arms. His body was whipped back and forth like a sheet flapping in a gale.
He fought to keep his mind clear, knowing that he must be able to judge the exact instant to break through the barrier before he was disintegrated. As he pressed his head against the wobbling, invisible wall, he felt the geon field weaken slightly, but the pulsing hammer-blows, racking his whole body, threatened to overwhelm him before the moment to penetrate the barrier was reached.
His hands were glued to the red-hot terminals and he felt as if his brain were being shaken rapidly to a jelly. At any moment he could be torn apart like a piece of rag. The Doctor strained desperately against the reduced geon field.
Gradually it yielded until it had almost disappeared, but he could not free his hands from the searing metal discs. He seemed to be hopelessly trapped...
The Scavenger hovered patiently in front of the Sontaran spacecraft in the hollow landing area. Vural, Krans and Erak sank to their knees, exhausted by the terrible ordeal of being dragged across the rough terrain, tethered to the merciless machine. Since their capture, Vural had been strangely silent. Krans and Erak kept their eyes fixed on the open hatch in the side of the huge dimpled sphere, dreading to think what fate was in store for them.
‘You’ll see...’ growled Krans, nodding towards the gleaming spacecraft, ‘... that crazy joker will turn up again with more of his tricks. We shoulda finished him when we had the chance.’
‘If you two hadn’t been so keen to chase after Roth, we wouldn’t be in this mess,’ Erak retorted.
The dispute died on their lips as the huge figure of Styr suddenly filled the open hatch.
‘The Scout Unit would have found you in the end,’ Styr hissed, his nostrils flaring as he stumped down the ramp towards them. ‘Meanwhile, it has been most valuable to observe your curious behaviour patterns...’ he gasped as he loomed over the three kneeling crewmen. Vural began to tremble violently as he cowered between Krans and Erak.
‘Not me... not... not me...’ he gibbered, raising his numbed white hands in supplication.
‘All of you,’ Styr hissed, reaching down and tearing the miniature scanning device from round the Galsec Crew Leader’s neck.
‘But I helped you,’ Vural whimpered. ‘I did everything you wanted.’
‘You failed to produce the unknown stranger from the circle,’ Styr rasped. ‘You lost him.’
Vural tried to shuffle forward on his knees, as if to attack the towering figure of the Sontaran with his helplessly pinioned arms. Styr thrust him back with a contemptuous kick.
‘You promised... you promised to spare me...’ Vural went on.
Styr’s squat features squeezed into a ghastly, ironic smile. ‘A simple test of human gullibility,’ he gasped. ‘Why should you be spared—a traitor to your own miserable species?’
Krans and Erak stared incredulously at one another as their leader’s treachery was revealed. Krans clenched his big fists. ‘Lousy swine,’ he spat. ‘So you tried to fix yourself a deal with this thing.’
Vural flinched away from Krans who was straining to get at him, despite the Scavenger’s tentacle wound tightly round his neck. ‘There was no other way, Krans,’
murmured Vural, his eyes fixed on Styr as if hypnotised. ‘It gave us more time...’
‘That first night—after the ship exploded—he was missing for hours,’ muttered Erak with narrowed eyes.
‘It was for
us
,’ Vural shrieked, sweat pouring down his face.
Styr, who had been observing the scene with scornful amusement, silenced the three crewmen with a raucous hiss. He listened intently to the rapid series of bleeps—like morse code—which had suddenly issued from the communicator at his side. When the transmission ceased, he hurriedly began tapping a coded programme into the control unit built into his belt. Chattering quietly, the Scavenger rose up and tightened its grip on the three captives.