The tremor increased. With it came a deep rumbling noise from somewhere far beneath them, before both died slowly away.
"Makes sense," grunted Roba. "They"ve thrown everything else at us."
Haunt looked daggers at the ma.s.s of tiny white dots on her scanner, and cursed. "If we could only pinpoint our location."
Roba pointed to a set of doors in the rock. "Me and Frog came through there. Our tunnel led straight to it."
"Many of the pa.s.sages must intersect," Shel remarked as they moved on. "If you knew where you were going I imagine you could navigate the tunnels quite swiftly."
Haunt nodded. "The droids could have the whole place mapped out by now."
They walked on in uneasy silence until they reached the bullring.
"You two wait here as arranged," Haunt said, "let the others know what"s going on."
"Marshal; Shel acknowledged curtly.
"I won"t be long." She activated her wrist-comm. "All right, Tovel. Tell me how I get to you."
III.
"The ground gets steeper here," Denni warned Joiks. The rock sloped down and away into shadows. "Darker too."
"Want me to go first?" Joiks mocked her.
"No."
"Good. Don"t want you scoping my a.s.s. Flake."
"Flake?" Denni said softly.
"Just thinking about what you said earlier." He chuckled.
"Worried?"
He heard Denni scramble easily down the slope. The shadows got thicker, the darkness pressed in on him as he followed. He couldn"t keep his mind focused. What good would it do him to try it on with Denni now? If he"d reported her straight away, then fair enough, but...
Who cared?
He slipped his hand round her waist. "Don"t think about it,"
he whispered.
"Shouldn"t that be my line?"
Denni was holding herself very still, acting casual. She didn"t pull away. She still needed his support.
He heard his voice, loud in the quiet tunnel. "It"s just bodies." In the blackness he sounded like a different person.
"The sets don"t pick up bodies. Know how they work?"
Denni took a step forward, and he took it with her. "They"re powered by visual stimulus."
"So focus on the dark. Think of nothing." His breathing was getting shakier. "I done it loads of times. Sets don"t pick up a thing when you"ve nothing visual to focus on."
Denni took a deep breath and released it in a single, stone-cold second. "Joiks," her voice slithered into his ears. "Let go of me."
"It"s a rush," Joiks urged her. "I"ll help you, you help me me out, huh? We"re safe here in the dark. Nothing can creep up on us here." out, huh? We"re safe here in the dark. Nothing can creep up on us here."
"You reckon," said Denni. He felt her tense up.
IV.
"Don"t go so fast; Ben pleaded with the funny-looking frog-bird as she pushed them along the echoing tunnels that made up this place. "Can"t you see, the Doctor can"t keep up the pace!"
"Nonsense, nonsense," the Doctor muttered, but he clearly had too little puff left to get really indignant.
"All right," Frog said in her weird grating voice. "We rest for a minute, no more."
Ben nodded. "Thanks."
It wasn"t the nicest spot for a rest. Ben shivered, and only partly from the cold. This whole place was straight out of your worst nightmares. Dark, shadowy room followed dark, shadowy room, and G.o.d knew what could be lurking there.
Luckily for the moment it seemed to be just fleshy insects hopping about the walls, and swarming all over the slimy, glowing ceilings.
"Fascinating," the Doctor observed, fingering some hanging strands of the slimy weed. "I wonder... has this been grown here by the architects of this place so that you can light your way... or so that something else can see you approaching?"
He looked expectantly at Frog. She belched.
"Tell me," the Doctor tried again more faintly, "Miss, er...
Frog...?"
"Mel Narda. Sergeant." The boggle-eyes turned on Ben. "But yeah, call me Frog, honey," her voice buzzed and crackled.
"Everyone else does."
Asking why seemed as unnecessary as it was probably unwise. So Ben kept quiet while the Doctor got on with the big questions.
"We"ve been travelling for some time," the Doctor said, ignoring her. "We"ve become a little out of touch. What can you tell us of the, ah, rebel Schirr rebel Schirr, hmm?"
"DeCaster and..." the name eluded Ben.
"The Ten-strong?" Frog finished for him automatically, then smiled, apparently amused. "You never heard of the Empire"s most wanted?"
"Indeed I"m afraid not. Remind me, from which planet do these ten terrorists hail?"
"Idaho," Frog informed them, eyes trained on her watch.
"Outer Empire."
"A planet called Idaho?" Ben spluttered.
The Doctor ignored him, looked at Frog sharply. "The Earth annexed the Schirr planet?"
" Repatriated Repatriated," she qualified with a chuckle that sounded like a rusty alarm clock going off. "Fifteen years ago. Standard procedure."
"Yes, of course it is, of course it is," the Doctor muttered.
"And I suppose the Schirr didn"t wish to be so aggressively...
repatriated, hmm?" hmm?"
Frog shrugged. "What we want and what we get, honey, we none of us got a say in."
"But DeCaster and his mates want want a say, right?" Ben chipped in. "Even so, ten blokes against an empire...?" a say, right?" Ben chipped in. "Even so, ten blokes against an empire...?"
Frog shook her head. "Schirr got links with the Spooks."
The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "What links might these be?"
Frog shrugged. "Old, old links. Before the Spooks crept back to their cloud. Old, old magic. And ten"s all you need to make the big rituals work."
"Rituals, not warfare?" the Doctor asked, eyes gleaming now with interest.
"People die just the same." She raised her gun, suddenly cold and threatening. "Frog don"t talk too much to prisoners, honey. Break time"s over. Get moving."
They did; through a mighty set of doors set into the rock, along a winding, narrow tunnel, on to a large cave riddled with pa.s.sages.
Then they felt the first tremor.
"Seismic activity on a planetoid as small as this?" the Doctor wondered aloud. His expression suggested he didn"t find this likely.
The second tremor sent them staggering into the wall.
"Getting worse!" Ben shouted.
"Soon have you tucked up tight," Frog told him. "Here"s the dropzone." And she herded the two of them roughly into a circular chamber, lit with a wide blue spotlight shining down from high above. While the beam was bright and concentrated, it cast the rest of the chamber into pitch blackness. Two flexible metal ladders snaked down the ray of light.
"I imagine those lead through the asteroid"s mantle and back up to the docked ship," the Doctor told Ben.
"But we can"t just go and leave Polly and the TARDIS behind!" Ben hissed back, panic rising. The ground trembled beneath him once again as if in sympathy.
"Get climbing," Frog told them.
The Doctor looked outraged. "Climb up there? At my age?
Preposterous, madam!"
"Yeah," Ben added, you can"t expect an old geezer to -"
But Frog wasn"t mucking about. She leapt nimbly into the light and caught hold of the ladder. The strength of the light obliterated most of her form, turned her into a pin-man as she scaled a few rungs. She swung out on the ladder, winked at Ben, caught hold of the quilted neckline of the Doctor"s s.p.a.cesuit with one hand, and hauled him off the ground.
The Doctor squawked with indignation as he dangled precariously from Frog"s grip. Ben stared in disbelief.
Incredibly, the woman was scaling the ladder and carrying the Doctor with her.
"Ere, wait a minute!" yelled Ben.
"Climb the other ladder or I drop him," Frog called teasingly.
A fresh tremor nearly knocked Ben to his knees, but he recovered and ran into the light without a second thought. A moment later he was clambering up after them. "Hang on, Doctor," he yelled, squinting into the blue radiance at the hazy figures above. He could hear grunts of exertion from Frog, the furious fussings of the old boy as he demanded to be released: "Madam, unhand me at once!"
Then Ben cried out as something small and sharp smacked into his forehead. It was followed a few seconds later by some smaller stinging missiles and a shower of dust.
"Wait!" he shouted, blinking grit from his eyes, disorientated by the blinding light. "Frog, them tremors... they must be bringing down a rockfall or something!"
V.
Polly sighed. Roaming the tunnels had been scary, but at least she might"ve found Ben and the Doctor. Now she was going nowhere: prisoner of s.p.a.ce soldiers, stuck inside a big rock.
Tovel, the bigger and dishier of the two men, mumbled directions into his sleeve to their marshal. The one called Shade pointed his gun at her. There was something wrong with his face. It was peppered with dark markings, like black seeds were trying to sprout from under his skin. The region around his eyes seemed the worst affected, though the eyes themselves glinted a brilliant green.
"You want to know what"s wrong with my face," Shade remarked. His voice was hoa.r.s.e.
"No!" Polly felt herself blushing. "I"m just trying to keep my eyes off your gun, that"s all."
Shade shrugged and smiled. "It"s OK. I don"t mind: His voice kept the same gravelly tone, and she realised he must always sound that way. Under different circ.u.mstances it might be quite s.e.xy. I was clearing some kids out of a war zone. There was this mine..." He shrugged. "I had to shield the children. My face caught a load of the shrapnel."