Doctor Who_ Loving The Alien Part 22

He scrambled up through the hatch and down the tattered fuselage.

'Nearly there,' said the Doctor.

He turned to O'Brien.

'Davey,' he said. 'I'm going to need to get this out of here somehow.'

O'Brien looked troubled.

'I can't begin to stress how important it is.'

'In for a penny, in for a pound, I suppose. I deserve to get shot and if I survive this lot, that's probably what they'll do to me. What did you have in mind?'

'Wait until the soldiers are fully engaged down below and take advantage of the confusion of battle. Major Collins trusts you. You will have to get it away. We will follow as quickly as we can.'

'Now hold on, Doc... you heard what I said to Collins. I'm a soldier.

We're attacked, I stay and fight.'

'You'll make brigadier one day with thinking like that,' said the Doctor dryly. 'Captain, the fabric of the dimensions is splitting, and this is the only piece of equipment on the planet that is capable of 110 repairing it. Without this machine we're lost.'

They were interrupted by Major Collins's noisy entry through the hatch.

'What's happening, sir?' O'Brien asked.

'Seems there's about a dozen o' them, said Collins. 'They just came out of the woods. Straight-ahead charge smoke bombs, grenades, tracer, and I'd say they've got some kind of special night-vision goggles. They're well armed and well trained and fast. Special Forces, obviously. Up against them we're about twenty in total, and carrying only light arms. They were just out looking for him.

The Doctor smiled apologetically.

'They've cut the road off... we're trying to get reinforcements, but they're jamming our radio. A couple of men got out through the fence and into the woods. They should be able to raise the alarm.'

'If they ever get out of the forest,' mused the Doctor, rubbing his ankle. It was swelling badly now, and he feared to put any weight on it.

Another reason he needed Davey O'Brien.

'But even then,' Collins continued, 'there are maybe another fifteen, twenty troops in the compound and that's it.'

'Against a dozen Russians?' O'Brien chortled. 'No sweat!'

'You haven't seen the way this lot fight, said Collins. 'I've never seen anything like it. They've got most of our men pinned down in the outbuildings. Caught them by surprise, moved like lightning.'

His final words were drowned by a sickening bang that echoed around the big metal building. It shook. Several panes in the gla.s.s roof broke and fell in. There was a hot blast of air, and the shrieking, shuddering, grating of torn metal. The mighty hangar doors lay twisted, all but torn from their hinges. The enemy swarmed in.

McBride's eyes were starting to get used to the blackness. Either that, or they were starting to play tricks on him. Vague shapes emerged, then vanished again in uncertainty. He'd spent enough time snooping around in the pitch black to know the eye plays tricks, but the ear? He was sure he could hear the faintest of noises.

He was beginning to think he wasn't alone in the darkness. He groped along the wall for a light switch. It was big, the room. Huge.

And it stank.

His hand closed on a hefty switch and he threw it.

Nothing. The darkness continued unabated. Obviously not the light switch. He fumbled on.

Then he stopped. Just for a second a dull flicker of light, a spark, had faintly and briefly penetrated the darkness, somewhere up at ceiling 111 level. There was another. A momentary low, electrical buzzing. He could detect a whiff of ozone in the air.

More than that, the still of the room seemed to have been stirred. He was certain now he could hear something. Slight movement. The rustle of fur.

The room really did reek.

McBride's blood chilled. He was locked in with one of the animals.

He froze he didn't know what to do.

Keep still... don't make any sound.

h.e.l.l, animals could see in the dark. They could smell him. He was already lunch.

He definitely heard something now. The hollow clatter of cheap Metal, somewhere up around the ceiling, a brief, harsh electrical buzz, and a momentary faint red glow above him.

And something else. There was more in here than just him and some faulty wiring. A huge bulk was shifting, sc.r.a.ping along the floor, yawning.

That settled it. Whatever was in here was ma.s.sive. He had to find a way out.

The hums and pops overhead were more frequent now. There were more sparks too. And more definite sounds of animal movement.

Whatever was in here, there was more than one of them...

He stopped. His legs were up against something soft. Warm.

Breathing. It turned over and stretched itself - a huge arm buffeting the side of McBride's head, knocking him to his knees.

It was an ape. A big one.

It stood up. There was a sort of crack from the ceiling, and a shower of sparks that briefly lit the beast's face. A gorilla.

McBride could smell the ozone again, even against the rank, stale animal miasma that surrounded him. It reminded him of the Underground trains. Electricity.

The animal tossed its head and drew itself up to its full height.

Another cascade of sparks.

McBride scuttled away from the beast, away from the walls and into the black maw of the huge enclosure. He wasn't sure where the door was any more even if he knew how to open the cage from the inside.

There were more electrical exchanges above his head they seemed to be happening all the time now, all around the room. And there was more movement a slow, hesitant stirring all around him. Giant shadows were shuffling slowly all around him, as if in a monstrous, slow, silent dance.

They seemed barely aware of him. He edged around the sounds, constantly moving to avoid the invisible giants. More than once he b.u.mped into a wall of coa.r.s.e fur and muscle.

112.

More than once he gashed his legs against something hard and sharp.

There seemed to be a lot of machinery lying about.

The ragged hum of electricity was constant now, and a constant fine rain of sparks fell from above. He could just about make out a regular pattern in the flashes of light.

There was some sort of electrical grid covering the whole ceiling.

He sensed movement, a disturbance of the air, heard a deep, wet snuffling sound, and ducked as something heavy, cold and metallic swung through the air, clipping the side of his head. He reeled, and fell once again.

The animals were moving the machinery about. Not playing with it, not throwing it around or pulling it apart. Moving it with quiet precision.

A ma.s.sive, dark silhouette moved across the gentle downpour of sparks. It towered over him, then swooped downward. McBride rolled.

He was aware of something sharp slicing the air a pole, with some sort of blade, like a scythe and clanging off the concrete floor only inches away from him.

These apes had weapons...

He dashed a falling spark from his hair. The staccato light from the overhead firework display was becoming sufficient to see by just. He squinted to make sense of the ma.s.s of indistinct, flickering shapes that surrounded him.

There were apes of all types here - chimps, orang-utans - but...

He felt dizzy. His stomach lurched and buckled. These apes had been horribly altered. The machinery was attached to their bodies.

Rubber tubes erupted from fissures in their skin. Boxy metal limbs and probosces had been grafted to their torsos. He could make out a gorilla with half its face erupting with tubes and wires, one huge, artificial eye and an ill-fitting metal cranium.

It brought a sickening kaleidoscope of memories spinning back to McBride. The Blitz, the last time he'd set eyes on the Doc. An electronics factory where people were turned into Cybermen.

So he and Mullen had been right. In spite of all the denials, they had been working on this stuff. He looked around him in pity and disgust.

Compared to the monstrous efficiency of the silver giants, this looked wretchedly crude. They seemed to be getting power from the ceiling grid. Each primate had a bulky back-plate, and each back-plate had a pole extending upward from it, around which cables snaked upward to a long, thin metal plate the blade of the scythe. Whenever an ape stood upright the plate would make contact with the grid.

It was just like the G.o.dd.a.m.n dodgems at the fair.

He let out a brief, high, hysterical laugh and was suddenly sick.

113.

Rita had never been so frightened in her life. She was clinging to her seat, sweating, cold as the taxi swerved through the night.

The cab driver talked continuously, but she heard none of it. This was worse than any d.a.m.ned roller-coaster she'd ever been on.

At last she felt them slowing down.

'Now don't get me wrong, I'm not a racialist or nothing...' The driver was still talking, oblivious to her terror. 'But it's not what we want. There's too many of us over here as it is. And we're... different.

Anyone can see that. We're more advanced.'

'What?' Rita tried to concentrate.

'And I'm sorry, but we don't want to end up with a Western saloon bar on every street corner and the whole country smelling of hamburgers.'

'I'm sorry...' Rita was utterly confused.

'You lot,' the cabby said. 'Since the war, coming over 'ere. And it's no good trying to slip in the back door neither I hear you're all trying to get into India now. Well, they won't wear it neither, I can tell you.'

He came to a halt.

'Anyway, we're here,' he said.

Instinctively she reached into a pocket, and her fingers closed on some crumpled paper. Two fivers...

'Oh, here!' she said with relief.

'I told you, Calamity Jane, it's free. You're in England now.' He spoke as if he was talking to a backward child. 'You lot just don't get it, do you? Yankee see, Yankee do. Go on...'

Rita clambered out of the taxi, which pulled smoothly away. She hoped it was just the drugs...

There was a light on in McBride's office. Good. She went up to the door and banged on it. She heard footsteps coming down the stairs.

'McBride, it's me!'

The door opened.

'What you want?'

She was looking at a fat Chinese guy in a vest and pyjama bottoms.

'Uh... Cody McBride.'

'No. Wrong address.'

He started to close the door.

'Wait a minute,' said Rita. 'This is his office, G.o.dd.a.m.n it!'

'Not office! This restaurant!'

He gestured with an angry arm to Rita's right, then slammed the door.

Rita could see it now. The unlit shop-front had changed. It was a Chinese restaurant.

The End of the World. It had obviously been there for years.

114.