"I told you, the Doctor must still be down there. He needs our help!
So we"re gonna need a plan. . . " Rose looked up at the spindly stalact.i.tes in the cavern roof and then smiled at Faltato. "And someone who"s good with his tongue."
The Doctor clung on to his conduit while the Valnaxi debated below.
"Our final attempt to destroy the Wurms has failed," hissed the disembodied Valnaxi voice. "Sending through the human male and female failed to distract King Ottak. The last of the drones has been destroyed."
"Alert!" croaked a new voice, wavering and grave. "Teleport is activating. The Wurms have found the trigger frequency."
"They have found us," cried the female.
A horrible squelching, squashing noise carried from outside the throne room as the Wurms moved forwards.172.
"Attack!" bellowed the familiar voice of King Ottak. "Kill everyone. Destroy everything. Attack!"
"Everyone set?" Rose hissed, clutching the sonic screwdriver tight in her hand.
"This is taking liberties," Faltato complained.
The alien was perched on a high ledge opposite the entrance to the Wurm cavern. He had played out a record-breaking six of his tongues, wrapping them round stalact.i.tes poking down from the dark ceiling, and Solomon and Adiel were standing right behind him, holding him in position. In turn, Faltato was using all four pincers to hold on to Basel, clutching him like a dad might hold on to his son on a rollercoaster ride. Rose checked Korr was on course. "He"s almost here," she reported, tensing herself to give the signal.
"Submit!" Korr gurgled, wriggling closer and closer to the split in the rock. "Submit and I shall kill you quickly. There is nothing you can do to stop me."
"Yeah?" murmured Rose, pressing herself back against the cave wall as she signalled across to the others now! now! Solomon and Adiel launched Faltato from the ledge. He swung from his tongues, slackening some while tightening up others, guiding himself through the air. Basel stayed snug in the grip of Faltato"s pincers, holding both his legs out in front of him. The moment Korr pushed his armoured head in through the entrance to the cavern, Rose hit the screwdriver. Distracted by the blue light, the Wurm turned and was kicked so hard in the face by Basel"s big clodhoppers, his truncated body did somersaults through the air. He landed with a wet, greasy splat on his back on a rocky slope and lay still. Solomon and Adiel launched Faltato from the ledge. He swung from his tongues, slackening some while tightening up others, guiding himself through the air. Basel stayed snug in the grip of Faltato"s pincers, holding both his legs out in front of him. The moment Korr pushed his armoured head in through the entrance to the cavern, Rose hit the screwdriver. Distracted by the blue light, the Wurm turned and was kicked so hard in the face by Basel"s big clodhoppers, his truncated body did somersaults through the air. He landed with a wet, greasy splat on his back on a rocky slope and lay still.
Faltato released his tongues and flolloped down in the middle of the cavern, his dainty legs splaying everywhere.
"We did it!" Basel shouted, rolling away from him.
"How undignified," Faltato complained.173.
"Now get out of here, all of you!" Rose shouted at them. She was already sprinting towards the pall of golden smoke, which still lingered in mid-air in the centre of the cavern.
"You can"t just run in there," Adiel shouted after her.
"You"ve got no cover, no protection," Basel added. Rose skidded to a halt beside the floating egg-shaped transporter. He was right. What the h.e.l.l could she do? Then, mind racing, she took in the a.s.sortment of canvases and statues piled up inside the transport. And a slow smile spread over her face.
Still clinging on, the Doctor watched helplessly as Ottak led a squad of twenty Wurms straight into the throne room.
"Fight!" the ancient voice crackled round the room. "Or all is lost."
At once, the magma guardian split itself into four smaller blobs and rolled forwards to attack. Three Wurms were turned into golden statues only to be blasted by their fellow troopers a moment later. One of the magma blobs wasn"t quite swift enough on the attack and found itself half-buried in clods of thick mud, then devoured by the teeming insects.
The male and the female were crouching behind the thrones out of sight, looking terrified. And with good reason. Ottak was pushing through his writhing warriors, transfixed by the bodies on the thrones.
"Valnaxi!" the king roared. "Surrender your treasures to me!"
Then one of the Wurms reared up, saw the Doctor hanging there, shot a laser bolt in his direction.
"Oi!" the Doctor complained, ducking aside. "I"m neutral in all this."
The Wurm fired again and burned through the conduit beneath the Doctor"s foot. Thick, white-hot magma spurted from the hole in the pipe, spattering down on the battling throng. Wurms screamed as their soil sizzled, while the guardians seemed to revel in the downpour. Grimly, the Doctor climbed higher up the damaged conduit towards the rocky roof, past various panels in the wall. "Guidance and cruise systems," he noted, interested despite himself. "Not just a throne room, then a flight deck!" He glanced behind him and saw on the wall 174 directly opposite, above the entrance to the throne room, that one gleaming panel was hugging the stone. "Must be the propulsion systems." Another bolt of laser fire buzzed past him and the Doctor looked down at the Wurms crossly. "Don"t you ever learn?"
Clearly they didn"t, as two of them fired again, nearly taking his head off. Perhaps he could put their single-minded belligerence down to their not having had a positive role model. For beneath them, boiling lava was raining down on King Ottak, scorching skin and soil alike, but he seemed oblivious to anything except crowing over the remains of the Valnaxi Council.
"Beg for your lives!" he commanded, spitting jet after jet of black bile at the bodies. "In the name of the five curves of the Wurm Empire, I kill you!"
"You can never kill us," boomed the disembodied voice. But the king had already opened fire with his laser, blasting bolt after bolt into the great bronzed bodies, scorching them, destroying them. "Die!" he wailed madly, in the downpour of lava. "I shall ingest your blood, excrete it into my finest soil and ingest it again! Diiiiiiie!"
"Stop this!" the Doctor shouted down, over the pandemonium. "Ottak, you don"t need to. . . "
But as if fired up by the lava, two of the guardians were flowing towards him. Blasted full of mud and maggots, one broke into smaller b.a.l.l.s to minimise the damage. But the other hurled itself on to Ottak"s back.
The Wurm king howled with pain as the plating spread over his segmented skin. But like a monster possessed he kept beating his blackened head down upon the remnants of the bodies again and again, swiping sc.r.a.ps of their ancient flesh to the floor and grinding them against his belly. The Doctor looked away as the Wurm"s screams stopped dead. The magma might have consumed his body, but Ottak"s mind had been consumed by his blind hatred long ago. The other Wurms were fighting on, the male and the female their targets now. The Doctor stared down helplessly then suddenly remembered the explosive phial he"d cooked up back in Fynn"s lab. He reached in his pocket, pulled it out.175.
He only had the one shot what to do with it?
Then suddenly a Wurm transporter came racing through the throne room"s entrance like a bat into h.e.l.l. It sent Wurms scattering like skittles, squashing a magma form as it landed square on top of it. Then the hatch sprang open to reveal a very familiar pilot.
"Rose!" the Doctor yelled, and he laughed with delight. "What d"you think you"re doing?"
"Rescuing you," she shouted back, kicking a Wurm cannon aside and hurling the sonic screwdriver up to him. "Someone"s got to save the day!"
"How right you are." He stuck the phial between his teeth, caught the sonic in his left hand, pulled free a conduit snaking up to the roof with his right.
Then he leaned back, spat the phial at the guidance controls and launched himself into s.p.a.ce, gripping the thick cable. The control panel exploded noisily as he swung out over the smoking chaos of battle below, clear across the throne room, before throwing himself at the golden panel. He gasped, clinging on with one hand to a large gleaming lever. "Propulsion units, propulsion units. . . " He started tracing the circuit through a sudden golden smokescreen.
"What are you doing?" hissed the accusing, crackling voice in his ears.
"As a matter of fact. . . " The Doctor grinned wildly, gave two short bursts on the sonic and triggered the controls. "I"m taking off."
Then he dropped down below, landing squarely on top of the hovering transporter which Rose had steered beneath him.
"Out of here!" he shouted, dodging the mud-splat of a Wurm cannon as the throne room started to shake. The bubble lurched off and he clutched hold of the translucent sh.e.l.l to stop himself slipping. Golden shapes were flitting beneath the surface.
"Rose?" the Doctor yelled in alarm. The bubble came to a halt in the middle of the arena he"d first arrived in and as the hatch swung open, he saw that the male and the female were curled up inside, together with Rose.176.
The Doctor jumped down and grabbed her, pulled her away from the golden couple. "You OK?"
She nodded shakily. "Couldn"t stop them dumping the artwork and coming aboard." She lowered her voice. "That one looks like me."
"You reckon?" He slipped a protective arm round her. "Not a patch."
A vibration had started up. Through the cushion of air they stood on, the Doctor could see the lava churning and slopping far below.
"You have activated the drive systems," said the male calmly. "Initiated launch sequence."
"I had to," said the Doctor. "This is your war. Not Earth"s. Whoever wins or loses, this planet"s people will be destroyed."
Rose smiled at him. "So you"re forcing a draw?"
He nodded as the arena shook with the blast of some colossal explosion deep beneath them. "The ship"s gonna take off. And it"ll take a fair-sized chunk of this volcano with it."
"Then we"ve got to get out of here," said Rose. "Where"s the teleport?"
"Non-functioning," the male responded. "The power feeds were damaged in the fighting."
"Our ship has lain here, hidden for thousands of years, insinuating itself into the rock," the female added. "With the drives at less than full power, we could be torn apart."
"I had to make the call," said the Doctor sadly. "Everyone on this planet, or us."
"Us?" said Rose quietly.
"Fraid so," he said, as the vibrations worsened around them and dust and debris began to trickle from the distant ceiling. "Even if we survive the take-off, we"ll be trapped here for the rest of our lives."177.
[image]
RosestaredattheDoctorasthethoughtofbeingstuckhereforever began to sink in to her sh.e.l.lshocked mind. "The rest of our lives,"
she echoed.
"That will not be long," rasped a battle-scarred Wurm behind them. She heard a whirr of gears as its gun attachment extended then the buzz of the sonic screwdriver. The Wurm screeched as its gun started to jerk about, as probes extended from its shoulder and a loud squeal of feedback blasted from the speakers in its comms helmet.
"What are you doing?" asked the male.
"Turning his battle implants up to the max," said the Doctor coldly.
"Should put him out for a while."
But Rose was staring the other way as a faint trail of golden light appeared like stardust.
"Doctor, the teleport!"
she shouted, halfdelighted, half-terrified she was dreaming. "The Wurms used their communicators to open it, boosted the frequencies or something."
"And now it"s opening for us!" The Doctor adjusted the sonic"s settings. "Let"s make it wide open."
The Wurm gave an excited yelp and started to twist itself into knots, its probes smoking, its sensors going fruit loops as the Doctor boosted the implants further and the golden spiral of smoke grew brighter. 179 "Through you go, quick!" shouted the Doctor, bundling Rose towards it. "Before he short-circuits."
"Not without you!" She grabbed his hand and dragged him after her. They vanished into the golden void And emerged again in the silent, deserted cavern.
The Doctor looked almost comically startled and Rose stared round in disbelief. "We made it," she breathed. "We actually made it!"
"Yes," said her golden double, "we did."
She was standing just behind them with the golden Solomon.
"Rats from a sinking ship?" the Doctor enquired. "Or from one ready to take off and never come back?" He squared up to them. "I blew up your navigation systems. I couldn"t allow the Valnaxi to fly straight back here and butcher all humanity into their image."
"We know what you did," said the golden Solomon. "That is why we two choose to remain on Earth."
"After so many empty centuries clutching at schemes and dreams,"
breathed Rose"s golden double, "we must taste life again in any form."
A vast tremor tore through the cavern. "If we hang around here you won"t be tasting it for long," the Doctor shouted.
"Let"s get out of here," Rose agreed.
"Wait!" The Doctor had seen Korr, lying on the slope, and raced to check on him. "He"s injured, but still alive." He pointed to an upturned green sh.e.l.l. "Get that stretcher."
Another tremor nearly knocked them off their feet. Rose staggered over to the stretcher. "Give me a hand, then!"
"Leave it to die," hissed the Solomon-thing.
"Point one," said the Doctor sternly, "the only viable shelter round here is the Wurm ship and Korr can get us inside. Point two show this kind of att.i.tude to intelligent life and I"ll never let you stay here on Earth."
"We do not need you to grant us permission."
The coldness in the Doctor"s smile made Rose shiver. "Yes. You do."
The whole cavern shook again. Stalact.i.tes started to drop down from the ceiling like deadly darts.
The Valnaxi quickly took the stretcher from her and carried it easily to Korr"s side. They hesitated 180 for a few moments. Then they loaded the injured Wurm aboard and raised the stretcher.
"Good." The Doctor grinned. "Well, don"t just stand about. Haven"t you noticed this whole place is falling down around our ears? Run! Run! " "
"What"s happening?" Basel yelled as Solomon, Adiel and Faltato followed him out of the lava tubes and into the dusty daylight. The ground was shaking so hard, he could imagine the hot white sky was about to fall in on them. "Is the volcano erupting?"
"Feels more like a s.p.a.ceship"s getting ready to take off out from the volcano dredging up who knows what as it goes." Faltato went clipclopping off on his dainty legs. "You do what you like, but I"m heading for the Wurm ship. It"s got a forcefield."
Solomon frowned. "A what?"
"It"ll keep us safe if we get inside," Adiel panted. "You want to be out here when the top blows off that volcano? Come on. I don"t trust Faltato not to shut us out if he gets there first."
The monster snickered. "Perhaps you"re not such a stupid biped after all."
Together they raced up to the huge, slimy ship, sat upon its mountain of stinking mud. And then Basel stopped and stared. "Solomon. . . look."
Vivid green shoots were protruding everywhere from the soil, strong and fat and fleshy.
"It"s the corn-vera crop," Solomon breathed. "Growing like wildfire."
"But this muck only came down last night," said Basel. "It must be, like, super super-fertile!"
"Come on," Adiel urged them, struggling up the trembling mud pile while Faltato raced ahead. "Hang around out here and it won"t be corn-vera we"re pushing up, it"ll be daisies!"
Rose raced on through the shaking tunnels, clutching the Doctor"s hand. It was like the rock itself was grinding and screaming around them, and the air was crimson and thick with choking, blinding dust. 181 "The launch sequence is almost completed," the male said grimly, staggering into the wall and almost dropping his end of Korr"s stretcher.