Doctor Who_ The Gallifrey Chronicles Part 30

'So we can have a little chat first?'

'Affirmative.'

'Do you have a name?'

'I am K9.'

The Doctor grinned. 'Of course you are. And, obviously, you know who I am.'

'You are the Doctor-master.'

Something of a surprise. 'Your master?'

'You are the Doctor. The K9 unit was given to you by my creator, Professor Marius, on relative date one-one-one-five-zero-zero-zero. Professor Marius was unable to take the K9 unit with him back to Earth due to transportation costs and Y5K compliance issues.'

'We had adventures together?'

The Doctor was rather cheered by the thought.

'Affirmative.' Its tail wagged.

'Then you ended up on Gallifrey?'

178.

'Affirmative. Subsequently, I was authorised for independent missions in situations cla.s.sed as too dangerous for Time Lord intervention. My mission was to protect Gallifrey.'

'Gallifrey's gone, old chum.'

The dog's head drooped. 'This was my supposition, but there was insufficient data to come to a definitive conclusion.'

You can say that again, the Doctor thought.

'I have failed in my mission. TARDIS architecture was reconfigured by your companion, trapping me.'

'Remind me to buy Fitz a drink the next time I see him.'

'As you wish, master. Is our conversation over?'

'Yes,' said the Doctor, patting K9's head.

The robot dog wagged his tail, then looked up at him. 'Now I must now carry out my instructions.' The nose laser extended again. 'Logically, this is the last opportunity I will have to issue the following reminder: buy Fitz a drink the next time you see him.'

'Wait!'

K9 paused.

'I need the answer to a question,' the Doctor told him. 'I think you might be able to help. When I was on the Edifice, all those a hundred and whatever years ago, I deleted my memories. But I gained something in return. Do you know what?'

'Negative.' The head lifted. 'However, I am capable of detailed cerebral scans and have experience with Time Lord brain patterns.'

The sucker-like probe extended from K9's head. After a moment, the Doctor angled himself so that it was pointing at his forehead. A minute later, just as the Doctor's knees were beginning to hurt, the probe retracted and K9 slid back a couple of yards. His ears were grinding away. There were lights on a panel on his back, which were now flas.h.i.+ng furiously. The gun had retracted, too.

'Well?' the Doctor asked, when that performance was over.

'Initial a.n.a.lysis complete. There is sufficient data to make a report.'

'Er. . . Do you still want to kill me?'

'Negative.'

'You liked what you saw in there?'

'Affirmative.' K9 paused for a moment. 'The Doctor-master never loses,' he added, before explaining what he'd found.

Rachel flushed the loo, glancing at the ceiling to see if it made any difference to the Vore outside. She couldn't tell. The storm was worse. The swarm was due back over London any minute but the weather might divert it. . . no one 179 knew. It was dark in the middle of the day, and had been brighter under the full moons last night.

She made her way back to the library, but she could hear Marnal walking about upstairs. He didn't seem all that worried that the monsters would get into the house. For their part, they seemed more interested in the empty garage than the house or its occupants, and that suited Rachel fine.

There was a flicker, a tiny thumping noise and the power came back on. It had been about four hours since it had gone off, and the house was cold.

Marnal emerged from the library 'About time,' he complained.

'You could have rustled up another fusion reactor,' she noted, before a surge of panic. 'If you're down here. . . they're inside!'

The first Vore was plodding down the stairs, unsure of its footing, unable to stretch its wings. There were others behind it, almost pus.h.i.+ng it over to get down themselves. Rachel turned to run out of the front door. The realisation that this wasn't the best idea she'd had and seeing that, anyway, she and Marnal had blocked the door off with a wardrobe came at the same moment.

The first Vore was at the base of the stairs. There were five of them in all, so far as she could see. Their heads twitched spastically, disconcerting her, making it hard to work out what they were looking at, let alone thinking.

The way their mouths mashed made it look as though they were permanently hungry.

She'd only seen them through the window before now. The most powerful impression when she was face to face with them was the smell, which reminded her of disinfectant.

The lead Vore pushed her out of the way, as though it was opening a door.

It hopped over to stand in front of Marnal. Rachel twisted to get a better look.

The Vore was standing there. She wanted to impose human thoughts and emotions on it, but knew she probably wouldn't be able to recognise what was going through its mind. The creatures' heads were actually rather small, and were mostly taken up with the eyes and the jaw. There was barely room for a brain.

She screamed, but the Vore didn't even flinch.

Rachel had never seen Marnal so still, not since he'd changed bodies at any rate. She wasn't moving either, not a single muscle. She was trying hard not to breathe. All this thinking might be too much. . . What if they could read thoughts?

One of the Vore behind her pulled her to her feet, claws digging into her arms. The one in front of Marnal grabbed him. Then they lifted them both, taking them in a direction that wasn't up or down, front or back, left or right.

They were somewhere else, a tunnel. It was dark, the air was thin but hot.

Rachel felt like she weighed two stone. The Vore lowered her on to a floor 180 that was thick with fine sand.

'We're on the second moon, aren't we?' she asked Marnal.

He nodded.

'Did. . . did they kill us?'

He looked puzzled. 'No.'

'How did we get here?'

'They can move through the fifth dimension.'

'I'm not even sure what that means.'

'They can manipulate hypers.p.a.ce corridors. They travel down them like a spider down a thread of silk.'

The Vore pushed them both onwards.

'They want us to go this way,' Marnal said.

The two of them walked slowly, herded by the monsters. The ground was rumbling. It sounded as though they were in a subway beneath a busy road.

Five minutes of walking, and they entered a chamber. It was roughly spherical, the size of a small house. The ground was more uneven. Vore hung from the ceiling, like bats, or walked easily across the pitted walls.

Marnal was looking around. They'd come in through the only door.

'Is this. . . What is this?' Rachel asked.

An execution chamber? A larder?

She turned to Marnal, who was looking up at the ceiling. Suddenly, a Vore grabbed his head in two of its claws. Rachel screamed, thinking the creature was about to wrench Marnal's skull off. Instead, it twisted his head down and round, until his attention was on the centre of the room.

There was a swirling visual display, a hologram. Rachel could make no sense of it. It flickered so fast it was making her dizzy.

'Imagine it seen through an insect's eye,' Marnal said. She tried but couldn't.

'It's the TARDIS,' Marnal said. 'They want the TARDIS.' He sounded almost relieved.

'We don't have it ' Rachel began.

Marnal was ignoring her. 'I can get you this,' he told the nearest Vore, speaking slowly.

'What are you doing?' she demanded.

Marnal stepped over to her, and leant in close. 'If we summon the Doctor here, we can take the TARDIS. Escape in it.'

'Why do they want it?'

'They have an instinct to spread, to feed. Think how far they could go with a TARDIS.'

'Is that why they came to Earth in the first place? They were chasing the TARDIS?'

'Not exactly, but close enough.'

181.

'With a TARDIS, they could go everywhere, in every time period.'

Marnal nodded.

'So we shouldn't even risk them getting their claws on it!' Rachel shouted.

Marnal stepped back and looked around, but the Vore weren't reacting.

'They can't operate the TARDIS. I can. We can get a long way from here.'

He stepped up to the nearest Vore. 'In return, you spare my life. Our lives.'

The Vore stood, impa.s.sive.

'I agree to the deal,' Marnal said, carefully.

'Incoming transmission, master,' K9 reported.

He'd been helping the Doctor fix up the console. The Doctor was over at one of the walls, accessing some of the supply cables.

'From the Ruling Mind?' the Doctor asked.

The TARDIS, finally, was in the Northern Constellations, so someone on Klist would have spotted them by now.

'Negative. It originated in the solar system. It is being received on the ninth psychic wavelength.'

The Doctor frowned, and not only because he didn't realise the TARDIS could pick up psychic wavelengths.

'A telepath?'

'A Time Lord, master.'

Marnal appeared in the control room, right beside the console.

The Doctor tensed, then relaxed. It was some sort of hologram, you could tell by the light falling on him, which hadn't come from anywhere in the control room.

'Doctor,' Marnal began, 'this is an emergency. You have to help.'

'Changed your tune, haven't you?' the Doctor asked, not sure he should be trusting a word of what he was hearing.

The message continued without Marnal reacting. The Doctor couldn't decide whether this was because he couldn't hear, or because he was too arro-gant to take any notice.

'You must come to the following coordinates.' Marnal read out a string of numbers. 'Hurry there isn't much time. Humans are dying.'