Doctor Who: Terror of the Vervoids (11 page)

The Doctor may have maintained to the Time Lords that he did not wreak the havoc, but someone had done a thorough job. The Commodore toed a shattered magnetron. ‘There’s no way we can repair that!’ he said to the Duty Officer accompanying him. ‘We’re completely isolated!’ He kicked the ruined component into the centre of the ravaged circuitry, and stormed off.

‘Sheer vandalism. And utterly useless!’ Lasky had eventually gone to the work but to deal with her incarcerated assistant.

A pyre of disintegrating grey ash was all that remained of the years of experimentation which had gone into the creation of the Vervoids.

Burning the notes had acted as a catharsis for Bruchner.

‘Is that how you see it, Professor?’

‘How else?’

‘Because I’ve put an end to this obscene experiment?

Someone had to.’

‘I should imagine when man first discovered fire, there were those who were equally dismayed and wanted it suppressed. If they’d prevailed, the human race would still be cowering in caves.’

(These irate polemics had a pertinent eavesdropper...

From the interior of an air vent in the cargo hold, the First Vervoid strained to hear...)

‘To use your own phrase, Professor, that is entirely academic now.’

Distressed as she was, Lasky could appreciate the heartfelt passion that possessed the tormented conscience of her colleague. ‘Bruchner, if you were rational, you’d realise how pointless this is. We can’t unlearn knowledge.’

The statement seemed to penetrate Bruchner’s cocoon of certitude. He frowned.

Hopeful that she was getting through, Lasky continued.

‘You’re not illiterate. How often has a great advance produced this reaction? Think of Galileo.’ She was referring to the Italian genius born in the Earth year 1546

who was imprisoned in a futile attempt to suppress his scientific discoveries.

‘Galileo? Is that it? You see the name Lasky inscribed in the history books?’

‘Nonsense!’ Lasky was in danger of losing her composure. ‘This has been a team effort.’

‘With you as leader.’

The taunt puzzled her.

‘Well, you’ve fulfilled that role to the last. You’ve led me to see the fault in my strategy.’ His hand was closing about a spar of wood from a dismantled shelf. ‘You. Me. Doland.

Even the creatures we’ve spawned. The sole representatives of this great advance.’

(At the grille, the Vervoid turned its face into a noseless profile, pressing its flapped ear against the mesh...)

‘And we’re all encapsulated in this ship... In this ship!’

Giving Lasky no chance to deflect the blow, Bruchner clouted her with the spar – then ran from the hut, an objective clearly in mind. But to achieve it would require more than a wooden spar. He needed a phaser... and he knew where to get one...

The replacement sentry outside the isolation room crumpled to the ground. Politely, he had moved aside to allow Bruchner access to the unfortunate Ruth Baxter. The attack, when it came, had been completely unexpected.

Equipped with the sentry’s phaser, Bruchner continued along the corridor... and into danger – a Vervoid arm lunged from the air duct!

In reflex, Bruchner slammed shut the open grille severing the brittle arm.

The danger was not over.

Propelled by its sharp, thorn-like talons, the severed waxy, olive-green limb began scrabbling towards him.

He fled. Any misgivings about his drastic plan were expunged by the gruesome mutation.

‘I don’t care what you heard on some mythical tape!’

Lasky, propped against the work bench, was allowing the Doctor to examine her bruised forehead. She wanted only to talk of Bruchner’s attack, but the Doctor, who had come to the hydroponic centre to question her about the missing tape and the mysterious voices on it, persisted.

‘You’re letting arrogance blinker you, Professor. Maybe it’s not your intention, but you’re running the risk of joining an extensive role of dishonour. Misguided scientists who’ve claimed the pursuit of truth as an excuse for immoral experiments.’

‘There’s no time to debate ethics!’ retorted Lasky, scrambling to her feet. ‘I made that mistake with Bruchner! I tell you the man’s demented. He’s out to destroy this ship. And everyone on it!’

The stolen phaser was levelled at the two officers on the bridge. ‘Get out of here!’ Bruchner commanded.

Instinctively the Commodore reached for the emergency tab – an intense beam blasted from the phaser searing the Commodore’s wrist, disabling him.

‘Move! Now! Or I’ll kill you both!’ That Bruchner was capable of executing this uncompromising threat was crystal clear. Non-compliance would have been tantamount to committing suicide. Grudgingly the Commodore and Duty Officer retreated to the lobby.

On their departure, Bruchner energized a locking device, causing two heavy panels to slide together forming an impregnable barrier that sealed off the control section from the rest of the ship.

In the lobby, beyond the barrier, the Duty Officer’s immediate concern was his superior’s injury.

‘Leave that till later. Get the laser lance up here!’

The officer hesitated.

‘
Now!
’ barked the Commodore. ‘And bring stun guns with you!’

At the double, his subordinate left, passing Lasky and the Doctor who were entering the small antechamber.

‘Bruchner?’ she asked, indicating the sealed panels and the inflamed wound.

‘Yes. Why? What’s his motive?’ rasped the Commodore.

‘I rather think his intention is the vital question,’ the Doctor corrected.

‘All right. What’s his –’ Pain creased the handsome face.

‘Just tell me, Doctor!’

‘He’s determined to destroy this ship.’

‘And the rest of us with it,’ added Lasky.

‘Does the lunatic know anything about flying a space craft?’ Another grimace of pain accompanied the Commodore’s words.

‘Bruchner’s been trained as an astronaut,’ informed Lasky. ‘One of the team had to be. Obligatory requirement.’

‘Very thorough.’ The bitter sarcasm had a finality that did not bode well.

‘Can the power to the bridge be cut off ?’ Straw-clutching was a trait of the Doctor’s.

Not a hope. It’s designed to be hi-jack proof. From the outside!’

Suddenly, an almost imperceptible tremor shuddered through the lobby.

Bruchner’s training had, indeed, been thorough. At the command console on the bridge, he adeptly fed in course changes, igniting the directional boosters. On the navigational window, the image of the Black Hole of Tartarus began to shift from its offset position... until the co-ordinate grid had the rapacious whirlpool fixed plumb centre.

Another minor adjustment, and the intergalactic liner’s prow was locked into the epicentre of the beckoning Black Hole...

Already the cosmos’s most sinister gravitational forces were sucking the craft into ever increasing speed. Thrust against the lobby wall, Lasky fought for balance. ‘What’s happening?’

‘Isn’t that obvious? We’re running into turbulence!’

Because of his injury, the Commodore was having even greater difficulty in maintaining his balance.

‘I’d say rather more than turbulence,’ stated the Doctor, solicitously steadying the Commodore.

‘Don’t talk in riddles, man!’ Typically, Lasky gave the Doctor’s ambiguity short shrift.

The Doctor hesitated, reluctant to forecast imminent death for all aboard. ‘Your colleague is aiming the
Hyperion
III
straight into the eye of the Black Hole of Tartarus!’

18

Where was Mel during the build-up of this potential calamity?

When the Doctor set off from the gym, Mel had headed unerringly for Janet’s cabin in the crew’s quarters to seek the missing audio tape.

Avoiding detection, she approached a door marked
STEWARDESS
, and knocked. Getting no reply, she thought her luck was in. She could not have been more wrong. Terrifyingly so.

Nipping inside, she paused, looking about to take stock.

‘Can I tempt you to a coffee?’ Janet asked Atza, proffering a tray.

‘No, thank you.’ Atza’s translator blinked.

‘How about you, sir?’

Ortezo, waving an expansive negative, knocked the tray, splattering the stewardess’s skirt with coffee. Her flicker of annoyance was quickly superseded by a professional politeness at the Mogarian’s gesture of apology.‘Not to worry. It’s easily changed,’ she said, inspecting the brown stains on her white and pink uniform.

Mel, too, was inspecting a white and pink uniform. Freshly laundered, it hung in Janet’s wardrobe.

As she dipped into the pockets for the incriminating audio tape, there was a click... the door handle began slowly to revolve...

In disarray, Mel sought shelter in the bathroom. Closing the divider, she scrambled into the shower and pulled the curtain to, imagining she was hiding from Janet.

But the hand twisting the door knob was not Janet’s.

It was green, with thorns for fingernails...

Framed on the threshold, the prowling Vervoid seethed with anger. The creature had been certain the cabin housed a human. In frustration, it dragged the mattress from the bed. When this yielded no victim, clothes were brutally torn from their wardrobe hangers in a homicidal hunt.

The adjacent rampage disabused Mel of the belief that Janet had returned to her cabin. Cringing behind the shower curtain, she wondered how long it would he before the savage intruder located her. Once it had, she harboured no illusions of what her fate would be. She had heard the Vervoid’s avowed intent to eliminate animalkind.

That same voice Mel had heard was still issuing death sentences. ‘Bruchner must be stopped!’

The single lamp in the bulkhead threw shadows over the pathetic heap of human corpses: shadows which grew and shrunk as the Vervoids gathered in their lair to hear the pronouncement of their leader.

‘We are unique. The only members of the Vervoid species. If Bruchner succeeds in eradicating us, Vervoids will cease to exist.’ It flexed its glistening verdant torso as it scanned the assembled throng through lidless eyes.

‘Forget your previous orders. Bruchner’s death is now our priority. He cannot be permitted to prevent us from reaching the planet Earth.’

Grotesque, noseless heads nodded, as rubbery lips hissed in agreement.

The lone foraging Vervoid had exhausted his plundering of Janet’s cabin and was now in the bathroom.

A violent judder sent it reeling against the washbasin.

Bottles crashed from the shelf, splintering into shards of glass.

Riven by fear, the Vervoid began to snort wispy fumes of gas from its distorted mouth.

‘All Vervoids to the bridge area!’ The sibilant instruction echoed from the air duct. ‘All Vervoids to the bridge area!’

Huffing with fear, trailing fumes in its wake, the Vervoid obeyed the summons and quit the stewardess’s quarters.

Relief flooded over Mel and she stumbled from the bathroom, coughing and gasping from the effects of the suffocating gas.

But respite was to be short-lived. The
Hyperion III
bucked, sending her sprawling.

Books slithered from the tables. Beakers jingled and danced along the counter.

Janet, Rudge, Doland and the two Mogarians clutched at pillars for support as chairs skittered across the lounge.

Unlike the blenched faces of everyone else on the ship, Bruchner’s was aglow with messianic elation. Dominating the navigational window, the blood-red inwardly spiralling tentacles of the Black Hole progressed through deepening purple to a sulphurous ebony...

19

Fluctuating turbulence, rippling the outer shallows of the Black Hole, pounded the intergalactic liner with escalating ferocity.

Chaos dominated the lounge. Atza and Ortezo were buffeted by dislodged chairs as they clung to the reception desk. In mutual fright, Janet and Doland hung on to each other and to a pillar.

Affecting an indomitable stoicism, Rudge, staggering drunkenly, made his way to the exit. He had to get to the bridge.

The blistering ray from the laser lance was only held steady by the combined efforts of the Doctor and the Duty Officer. Progress was pitfully slow. The safety barrier to the bridge was not meant to be breached with ease.

‘How long before the ship arrives at the point of no return, Commodore?’ Lasky, wedged in a corner, wanted the truth, however unpalatable.

His brooding eyes shaded by drawn brows, the Commodore paused before replying. ‘That’s a question no-one’s survived to answer!’

Nor did Bruchner intend they should create a precedent.

He regretted this, for he had no wish to harm the crew, the passengers, or those with whom he had worked for years.

But he knew, with every vestige of his considerable intelligence, that if the Vervoids were allowed to reach Earth, then that would be the end of humankind.

They would proliferate wherever there was fertile soil available to nourish them. Man could make a strategic withdrawal to the deserts... yet Bruchner realised the Vervoids were not beyond devising a means of propagating themselves even in the barren wastes.

Transfixed, clutching the console for support, the scientist was mesmerised by the spectacle of the voracious vortex. This rent in the fabric of the Universe would ingest into bone-crushing oblivion the abominations that had been so irresponsibly hatched.

Balefully, these ‘abominations’ glared at their adversary from every airduct ventilating the bridge. His fixation with Tartarus had kept Bruchner’s attention glued to the navigational window. Had he been aware of the proximity of the Vervoids, he would not have worried: the grilles were welded fast; safety experts had seen to that.

But the frustrated creatures were not finished. The genetic engineering so assiduously manipulated by their originators had endowed them with the ability to improvise. Rubbery lips pressed against the meshed grilles and vermilion cheeks ballooned as wispy fumes of gas streamed into the bridge. Almost languidly, the gas shrouded the scientist.