"Well, fellow prisoners and all that. How long have you been here?"
"Months," said Salatcen briefly. He carried the tray over to a workbench and slammed it down.
The Doctor and Peri came over to investigate. The bowls were filled with thick green slime, rather like decaying porridge.
Peri sniffed it dubiously. "What is this stuff?"
"Nutrition."
"Does it taste as bad as it looks?"
"Worse!"
Peri shuddered and pushed the bowl aside.
"Now then," said the Doctor encouragingly.
"You probably know the best way out of here, eh?"
Salateen shook his head.
"Does that mean you don"t know? Or you do and you won"t tell us? We"ve got to escape."
"It"s impossible."
The Doctor sighed, looking at Peri. "Do you detect a certain coolness in our friend here?"
"Ice cold," agreed Peri. "I don"t think he likes us."
" Like Like you?" howled Salatcen. "Now that Sharaz Jek has you for company, he"ll kill me." you?" howled Salatcen. "Now that Sharaz Jek has you for company, he"ll kill me."
The Doctor raised his eyebrows. "Kill you - surely you"re aah!"
Suddenly the Doctor rolled sideways onto his bench, arching his back in agony.
Peri ran to him. "Doctor, what"s wrong?"
"Cramp," gasped the Doctor. "Same as you had just now.
Ouch!"
Peri ma.s.saged the Doctor"s knotted shoulder muscles.
"There, is that better?"
Slowly the Doctor managed to straighten up.
Salateen was staring curiously at him. "Do you mean to say you"ve both both had cramp? You haven"t touched a spectrox nest, have you?" had cramp? You haven"t touched a spectrox nest, have you?"
The Doctor and Peri looked at each other, both remembering Peri"s fall when they had first entered the caves.
"A spectrox nest?" said the Doctor slowly. "If by that you mean a kind of large, fuzzy, sticky ball..."
"You have!" Salateen threw back his head and laughed.
"What"s so funny?" asked Peri indignantly.
"You"re dying," said Salatcen simply. He laughed again.
The Doctor got up. "What a marvellous sense of humour!" He grabbed Salateen by the shoulders and shook him till his teeth rattled. "Try not to get hysterical. What do you mean, we"re dying?"
Pulling away, Salateen made all effort to control himself. "And Sharaz Jek thought he had company for life!"
The thought almost set him off again, but a grim look from the Doctor encouraged him to calm down.
"Well?" demanded the Doctor.
In a shaking voice Salatcen said, "First there"s a rash...
Cramp is the second stage, then spasms, and finally a slow paralysis of the thoracic spinal nerve, then TDP."
"What"s TDP?" asked Peri uneasily.
"Thermal Death Point. It"s called spectrox toxaemia. I"ve seen dozens die from it."
"But I thought spectrox preserved life?"
"When it"s processed and refined, and administered in minute doses, then it does. In its raw state, especially in any quant.i.ty, it"s a deadly poison."
"What"s the cure?" asked the Doctor hopefully.
"Oh, there"s no cure," Salateen chuckled. "Wait till Jek finds out!"
Peri looked incredulously at the Doctor. "He"s kidding, isn"t he?" She looked at Salateen"s face, and then at the Doctor. "No, I guess not."
Salateen became serious at last. A little ashamedly he said, "I"m sorry. I don"t suppose you can see the funny side of it."
Restraining himself with some effort, the Doctor said, "Look, what exactly is a spectrox nest?"
"Spectrox is prepared from deposits left by the bat colonies, Doctor. The raw substance contains a chemical similar to mustard nitrogen, deadly to humans. That"s why they use androids to collect the stuff and take it to the refinery for processing."
"We haven"t seen any bats."
"They spend a chrysalid stage in the nest," explained Salateen. "Three-year life cycle."
The Doctor was thinking hard. "There has to be some kind of antidote to this spectrox toxaemia. I mean, it sounds like a snake venom effect. There must be a serum or an ant.i.toxin."
"As a matter of fact there is," said Salateen calmly. It was discovered by Professor Jackij, some years ago."
"Well, don"t keep us in suspense."
"The snag is, Doctor, you need the milk from a queen bat. Trouble is, they go down into the deeps to hibernate, so you can"t reach them."
"Why not?" asked Peri.
"Well, for a start there"s no oxygen down there, or almost none."
"What else?" demanded the Doctor urgently. "You said,
"for a start"."
"There"s some kind of creature... Probably lives in the magma and comes to the surface to hunt. It"s a carnivore."
"What"s this creature like?" asked Peri.
Salateen shrugged. "n.o.body"s ever run into one and lived to talk about it. All they ever find are its table leavings..."
Sharaz Jek was in his signal room, a small sub-cave packed with communications equipment, watching a light flash on a console. He touched a control. "Yes?"
Stotz"s voice came from a speaker. "Jek? Stotz. I want a meet."
"Why? You lost the cargo."
"Your androids fouled up, Jek, not us."
I don"t pay for undelivered goods."
Now listen, Jek," snarled Stotz. "If you don"t pay for this consignment, we don"t come back again ever ever.
Understand?"
"I can"t keep this channel open. I"ll meet you at shaft twenty-six in one hour."
Even after Salateen"s shattering news, the Doctor was still looking for a way out. "This delightful process you describe, Major Salateen how long does it take?"
"You"re in the second stage now. You"ll be dead in another two days."
The Doctor considered the implications of this terrifying news. "Then we can"t afford to waste any more time here. We must get away."
"Go through that door, Doctor," said Salateen impressively, "and you"ll be dead in two seconds, not two days. There"s an android permanently on guard out there.
Sharaz Jek"s androids are programmed to kill humans on sight."
"We were brought here by two of Sharaz Jek"s androids,"
objected Peri.
"Oh, they can follow orders. But unless Jek commands otherwise, all humans without a belt-plate rank as targets.
He even wears one himself."
The Doctor rubbed his chin. "How do these belt-plates work?"
"No idea."
"They probably emit low frequency magma waves," said the Doctor thoughtfully. "Or even a neutrino pattern keyed to the android spectrum length."
Sharaz Jek appeared through another door at the far end of the workshop. "Congratulations, Doctor. You understand something of android engineering?"
"Something," said the Doctor modestly.
"In that case you will appreciate what a masterpiece is my facsimile of Salatcen here."
"Nearly perfect," agreed the Doctor.
"Entirely perfect," snarled Sharaz Jek.
Sharaz Jek"s android masterpiece marched into General Ch.e.l.lak"s office and saluted.
Ch.e.l.lak looked up. "Yes, Major Salateen?"
"The engineers report increasing activity in the magma level, sir."
The magma was the ever-boiling, seething semi-liquid core of the planet what the Doctor had referred to as primeval mud.
"But surely the perihelion is weeks away?"
"The engineers say mud bursts can occur either side of the perihelion, General. It"s a matter of internal pressures as well as gravity."
"Do they actually think a burst is on the way?"
"They can"t say yet, sir. It"s just an early warning."
General Ch.e.l.lak looked perplexed. It was bad enough having to cope with Sharaz Jek and his android rebels.
Now he had to fight this unstable little world as well.