‘Machine approaching!’ Drahvin Three called.
Maaga went to a port and looked out, to see the accursed thing moving in. This one was carrying a metal sphere in its arms. It looked to be a bomb. What was the point, she wondered. The bombs never seriously harmed her ship and the robots never used their weapons against it. The reason for this totally evaded her, but their every attack was a plentiful waste of time. To keep it up repeatedly was nothing short of an exercise in pointlessness. She did not even feel inclined to order her soldiers to their stations. That was equally as futile. Anyway, it was possible that they would soon need all the armament they could get. A skirmish with the Rills was inevitable. She would conserve all the power possible.
The Chumbley approached the side of the ship and set the bomb against it. That done, it moved away, but only a short distance this time. As soon as it stopped the bomb went off, shaking the ship hardly at all. Maaga was puzzled. Why such a trivial explosion? Could it be that the Rills were running out of supplies? If so, such a state of affairs could only be to her benefit.
The explosion, however, had also penetrated the clouds of Steven’s drifting mind. He opened his eyes and with one last supreme effort levered himself up to the viewport. As soon as it detected his movement the Chumbley swung its head from side to side. Steven could not make out why it was doing so. He could not know that the machine was trying to tell him to stand aside. Nor did he any longer have the wit to do so, until it sent a brief stab of laser at the bottom of the port. The smoke and flame sent him crashing to the deck, almost certainly never to rise again.
Once he had done so, the Chumbley notched its weapon up to three-quarter power and loosed off a bolt at the side of the door, this time cutting straight through. Air screamed in, but the machine did not pause. It moved the ray steadily round until the door fell completely away. Steven could not believe it. He gulped savagely at the sweet air, so savagely indeed that he hurt his lungs in the process. He got to his feet, swayed and fell through the door to the ground. He looked up and flinched as he saw the Chumbley standing over him. He was even more shaken when he heard it say, ‘Please be calm. You are safe now and your friends are on their way.’
‘Is that you talking?’ he asked in bafflement.
‘The machine you see before you is relaying my voice. We are the Rill.’
Steven put his hands on the Chumbley and raised himself to his feet. ‘I take it I’m a prisoner, then.’
‘You are not. The Doctor explained your predicament to us and we have freed you, as you see.’
Steven looked back at the warped door lying on the ground and the scorched and blackened space from which it had come. ‘You did quite a job.’.
‘We try to help.’
He was recovering from his ordeal now. ‘I think I owe you a vote of thanks.’
‘You are quite welcome. Are your friends not there yet?’
Steven looked up and saw Vicki and the Doctor hurrying toward him, their escort swirling about them as though indulging in some peculiar waltz. ‘They’re just arriving.’
Vicki rushed up to him and embraced him. ‘Oh, Steven, are you all right?’
‘I am now,’ he said, patting the Chumbley’s head. ‘Thanks to this little fellow who, I might say, packs quite a punch.’
The Doctor hauled up alongside them, as out of breath as was usual of late. He glanced at Steven to make sure the lad was all right, then turned his gaze on the Drahvin ship. ‘Our friend Maaga isn’t going to be too pleased about this,’ he observed.
He was right. Maaga’s face was black with frustration and fury as she stood before her three soldiers. ‘Guns ready,’ she snapped bleakly.
The three brought up their guns and set their switches in readiness.
‘Door.’
Drahvin One turned and depressed the lever. The door hummed open.
‘After them and kill!’
They hurried out through the door and the airlock into the open air, to halt abruptly as they saw the three Chumblies pointing their guns at them. They made to lift theirs and aim, but the leading Chumbley, visor flashing, spoke. ‘Do not attempt to fire upon us or we shall do the same, rather more quickly than you. Do not mistake our intention. It is to kill if you attempt to interfere.’
The Drahvins lowered their weapons and stood quite still at a muttered order from Maaga. She stared at her enemies in total hatred, unable to believe that she had been thwarted by such an ill-assorted trio of humans, particularly that ridiculous-looking Doctor, like something which had slothfully emerged from between the dried pages of time and would be well-advised to return there. Had it not been for the machines she would have had him and put an end to his machinations in short order. But her chance would come. Of that she was sure.
‘Doctor, please bring your party away,’ one of the Chumblies said.
The Doctor jerked away from contemplation of the expression on Maaga’s face. He did not think he had ever seen such loathing in his life, though it was all of a piece with her attitude toward life. ‘Certainly.’ He turned to Steven. ‘Can you walk, young man?’
Steven nodded. ‘I’ll be all right.’
‘Come along then.’
Without sparing another glance for the Drahvins, they set off behind the Chumbley, another one bringing up the rear. Steven was still short of breath, but inhaled deeply of the sweet and precious air. It was not something that he had ever bothered to appreciate before. After all, it had always been there and taken for granted. Now that he had been without it for a time things would never be that way again. Whenever and wherever he was in time and space his appreciation of it would be alive and well and living in his lungs.
The remaining Chumbley addressed Maaga. ‘You will take your soldiers back into the ship and you will stay there.’
Maaga gave it a savage look.
‘Until now we have spared you,’ it continued, ‘even though you have attacked us repeatedly. Now our patience is at an end and we have determined to deal severely with any further attempts on your part. Heed our warning and heed it well. It is you who will pay the consequences of any breach of this ruling. We shall protect both ourselves and our friends.’
‘Friends!’ Maaga sneered.
The Chumbley ignored her. ‘Go back inside and do not attempt to leave.’
‘But the air is disgusting in there,’ Maaga protested. ‘Your bomb has made it almost unbreathable.’
‘It will have cleared by now. The ammonia bomb was only a warning. Go inside.’
‘Come,’ Maaga said and the three Drahvins followed her inside. Once in the cabin Maaga looked out through the port. The Chumbley was still there and making no movement. Only the light glowed in its visor. She thought disgustedly that the infernal thing looked as though it might eventually take root. Though not before she did it a serious mischief, she mentally added.
‘Is it still there, Maaga?’ Drahvin Two asked. ‘It is.’
‘Then we cannot escape to destroy the Rills and the others.’
‘We cannot escape yet,’ Maaga corrected her. ‘But we will. No Drahvin is defeated until dead. Is that correct?’
‘Yes, Maaga,’ all three intoned.
‘Remember it,’ she said, then turned to Drahvin Three. ‘Does the forward hatch still operate?’ ‘Yes, Maaga,’ Three replied.
‘Silently?’
‘Yes.’
An idea began to crystallise in her mind. It was not much, but in such a situation as theirs any action was better than none. ‘Soon now it will be dimlight. Then it will be night, the last one this planet will know. We must capture the Rill vessel before dawn. When I tell you to, you will leave through the hatch. You will then circle round behind the machine. Understood?’
‘Yes, Maaga,’ Three answered obediently, no shadow of misgiving entering her iron mind.
‘And you will destroy it. Then we shall be free to put paid to the others.’
Steven did not like the all-pervading smell of ammonia in the main Rill chamber. It pricked at his nostrils and brought tears to his eyes. But Vicki had forewarned him; he knew it was the life-source of the Rills.
Not that he was inclined to be critical. He owed his life to the Rills and their powerful little machines. Now it just seemed plain foolish to him that they had run from the Chumblies and even disabled one. How blind can man be, he wondered. Where does his lack of understanding end, or is he doomed to stumble endlessly on into eternity? But at least there was the ability to learn and adapt. Already he was beginning to accept even the huge liquid eye steadily and languidly observing them through the viewport, though the leisure of its blinking still fascinated him. The Rill seemed to have all the time in the world, no need of haste, possessed only of tranquillity.
Vicki was watching the Doctor examining the end of the cable. He was lost in thought. ‘There can’t be much time left, Doctor,’ she warned.
‘I’m aware of that,’ he said absently. ‘But it’s no good doing a transfer as powerful as I intend if all I achieve is to blow the cable. Anyway, we have about ten or twelve hours before wipe-out.’
‘Not so, Doctor,’ came from the Chumbley beside him. ‘Only some six hours remain.’
The Doctor cocked his head. ‘Surely not.’
‘Only one of the three suns is constant. That is the leading one. The others are rogue suns, their orbits erratic. This is the period when they depart from the main one and pursue their own courses and normally would return within three dawns. However, things will not be normal. Six hours remain to us.’
Vicki and Steven were appalled, but the Doctor remained calm. It was not in his nature to succumb to panic. For the time being his concern was to make a transfer of powr from the TARDIS to the Rill vessel. That he intended to do. He could only trust in Fate that the cable would withstand the force of it.
‘It will take much time to make the transfer,’ the Rill said.
‘Then we’ll have to be quick, won’t we?’
‘We are concerned for your safety.’
‘Yes, yes, very noble, but we also are concerned for yours.’ He held out the cable to the Chumbley. ‘Haul that along, will you? We’re wasting time in this idle gossip.’
The Chumbley paused, then took it.
‘D’you want me with you, Doctor?’ Steven asked. ‘No. You stay here and let us know immediately if anything goes wrong. I’ll take Vicki.’
‘OK.’
The Doctor bustled outside, Vicki and the Chumbley with him. Steven watched them go, then squeezed his nose in an attempt to stop the irritation from the ammoniac gas. It achieved very little. He wiped away the recently-formed tears and looked about him. There’s no place like home, he thought as he viewed the functionalism of everything and tried in vain to detect the source of the light illuminating the area. He still could not fully accept the benign nature of the Rills. Not normally given to mistrust, he was rapidly learning to use it as a defence mechanism since the Doctor had invaded his life. ‘So the Doctor trusts you?’ he idly asked the air in general, not yet having fully adjusted to talking to machines.
‘Should he not?’
‘I don’t know, do I? I’m sure you produced the right ethical reasons for him, so naturally he would.’ ‘But not you?’
‘I reserve my opinion.’
‘Despite the fact that our machines rescued you from the Drahvins.’
‘For all I know, you might be just the same as they are–using us for your own salvation.’
‘That is not the case.’
‘That’s very easy to say,’ Steven persisted. ‘But just suppose that something went wrong and the Doctor couldn’t manage to charge your ship up in time. After all, there’s plenty of room for error. The question then arises: would you hold us here or would you let us vanish in our own ship, the TARDIS?’
‘It only becomes a question if your mind is full of doubt.’
‘Mine is, and I admit it,’ Steven said. ‘I can’t see you letting us go, just like that.’
‘Then I am sorry. We are strange beings to you. You have probably never met anything like us. But do not permit appearances to cloud your judgement. We mean you well. I understand your difficulty, of course. You come from Earth, a planet we do not know, but clearly it is one which still knows conflict.’
Steven had to ruefully accept the observation, as he recalled that at any given moment on Earth there was at least one war going on somewhere. There was hatred, murder and horror aplenty, little enough to be proud of but sufficient to compel human beings to proceed through life with caution, even mistrust. He wished he could accept the altruism of the Rills as readily as the Doctor obviously had, but his conditioning was too strong and, anyway, it had stood him in good stead thus far in his life. There was no good reason to discard it, particularly since the Doctor had this gift for landing them in one scrape after another.
What he did not know was that the Rill was as much lost in thought as he was, wondering why the human form, or something like it, was so prevalent in the universe: two legs, two arms leading to hands with the vital opposing thumbs and a brain. The origins were too far back in time to be traced, yet there seemed little of genuine advantage in it. There was much more to be said for that of the Rills, sufficient tentacles and enough hands, though it had to be admitted that the head enclosing the brain was somewhat cumbersome, the skull far thicker than was necessary. Yet it had afforded protection in the darker days when there had been predatory species on their planet and without it there would probably be no Rills surviving. The skull could be thinned, of course, but the process was tiresome and there was no real need for it. The females of his species favoured it more than their counterparts, but there was little point. Anyone who happened to be passing could and did fertilise an egg. The presence of a particular male was not essential, though more often than not the females tried to make it seem so. ,
To a certain extent he envied mankind that easily-carried skull, yet there was always a drawback. They moved and lived too quickly and thus rendered their lives too short, though he was not too sure about the Doctor person. Something about him cried out a vast experience of life, though how he had acquired it was a mystery to be pondered upon when time was of less importance, when they were safely home and moving in their normal way, some fifty;times more slowly than the humans. Thought, too, could be adjusted to whatever speed was required, though twice the speed of their movements made the Rills most comfortable.