Doctor Who: Terror of the Vervoids (14 page)

‘Doctor, I heard them declare they intended to wipe us out,’ averred Mel.

Lasky was still seeking a rationale. ‘Something must have gone wrong. Radically wrong. A malfunction involving the DNA –’

‘Why is it none of you can see what’s so glaringly obvious?’ interrupted the Doctor.

‘Maybe we lack your divine insight!’ came the Commodore’s sarcastic retort.

‘I’ve no divine insight. Only logic.’

‘Logic?’

‘Mel, when you overheard the Vervoids, how did they describe us?’

‘Um... wait a sec... animalkind.’

‘Not human. Not Mogarian. Animalkind.’

The Doctor’s dissertation had already lost the Commodore. ‘I hope this is relevant.’

‘It is,’ Lasky conceded. ‘He’s making sense. The Vervoids are plants.’

‘At some stage and in some form, all animal kind consumes plant life. Without it we’d perish.’ The Doctor’s argument was irrefutable.

‘I must have been blinded by professional vanity.

Bruchner saw it. I should have too.’ Arrogance came naturally to Lasky but humility would describe her emotions now.

‘If you’re right, Doctor... co-existence with Vervoids is an impossibility...’ Trust Mel not to equivocate.

The Commodore, too, recognised the impasse. ‘So it’s down to self-preservation. Kill or be killed.’

‘A conflict in which there can be no justice.’ Deep ridges furrowed the Doctor’s brow as he uttered this sad conclusion.

‘Equally, there’s no choice!’ The Commodore was resolute. ‘And that goes for you as well, Doctor. We need your undivided commitment!’

And there you have it! The direct request!’ The Doctor’s declaration accompanied the conclusive flourish with which he flicked off the Matrix screen. ‘I did not meddle. I was presented with an appeal. Not simply from an individual – but from the man in whom authority was vested!’

‘I accept the argument. Nor, Valeyard, can you refute it.’

The Inquisitor’s decision should have deflated the Valeyard’s ego. It did not! ‘Perhaps before we reach a verdict, Eminence, we should await the outcome of the adventure.’ Moderation oozed from every pore. ‘Shall we continue?’

‘Do you wish to continue?’ the Inquisitor asked.

The Doctor was troubled by the enigmatic stance of his prosecutor. He had scored the vital point in his own defence, yet the Valeyard was obviously not displeased.

Only one explanation suggested itself.

‘Yes, my Lady. Providing we can trust the Matrix. I won’t know that until I see it...’ Apprehensively he switched on.

Professor Lasky held an empty bottle upside down.

‘There’s not enough left to make a spoonful of herbicide!’

The Doctor had suggested that the Vervoids could be destroyed by the effects of a strong herbicide. But the Vervoids not only had the ability to move and speak like humans, they also had the ability to think. They had anticipated this eventuality and emptied every carboy of its contents.

Lasky knew they would have been capable of such a deduction. ‘The Vervoids got here first!’

Any more ideas, Doctor?’ Mel’s hopes were firmly vested in the Time Lord.

‘Why can’t I rid myself of the feeling we’re approaching this the wrong way round?’ Posing the hypothetical question, the Doctor led Mel and Lasky from the work but past the discarded shucks which were beginning to fade and turn brown. The notice –
HIGH INTENSITY LIGHT

FORBIDDEN. LOW SPECTRUM LIGHT ONLY
– still prominently displayed, now served no purpose.

Or did it...? The Doctor arrested his progress. ‘Do Vervoid chloroplasts function normally?’

Thrown by the abrupt change of tack, Lasky parried the remark. ‘A cytogeneticist now! You’re a man of varied talents.’

‘Don’t prevaricate, Professor!’ The Doctor was excited.

‘Yes. Vervoid chloroplasts trap sunlight as is normal with all plants.’

‘Doctor!’ cried Mel. ‘There’s something out there!’

Congregating in the hold, lidless eyes probing the gloom, thorny talons flexing, a pack of Vervoids was converging on the trio...

‘Is there another exit?’ the Doctor asked Lasky.

‘Not this side of the hold.’

Leaves rustling, the Vervoids had effectively hemmed them in.

Grabbing the two women, the Doctor retreated to the mesh fence. Lasky shrugged him off. ‘No. I’m going to talk to them.’

The Doctor stopped. ‘They won’t listen, Professor!’

Lasky was adamant. ‘Perhaps they will. To me.’

‘It’s too much of a risk!’ He recognised that instinct not sentimentality was motivating the creatures.

‘I wasn’t going to exploit them like Doland. They’ll know that.’

‘Doctor! Professor! Come on!’ Indefatigable as ever, Mel had managed to find an air vent. ‘Come on!’

Torn between Lasky’s heroic foolhardiness and his own salvation, the Time Lord made a last despairing appeal.

‘They’ll spare no one!’

‘I have to try.’ Resolutely she walked forward.

For Sarah Lasky the gathering crisis threatening to engulf them was not simply a matter of survival: she could contemplate death without lapsing into palsied fear. No, her distress sprang from more profound origins: her extrovert hauteur was an armour protecting the exposed nerve ends of a sensitive nature.

She had modelled her style on her father: a celebrated scientist accorded recognition and esteem. It was a posture that cost her dearly. Throughout her adult life, she never formed a close relationship and everybody who came into contact with her assumed she was utterly self-contained.

The only person who could have corrected that mistaken assumption died when Sarah was twelve years old

– her mother. Hubert Lasky had ruled by the oppressive weight of intellectual dominance, but it was her frail and delicate mother to whom Sarah was devoted.

Mother and daughter shared a secret. One which would have aroused scathing contempt from the father had he ever learnt of it. Yet, with hindsight, it was unfortunate that he did not; for the secret set Sarah on the path leading to the Vervoid nightmare. The innocent confidence the two shared was that the mother talked, in gentle coaxing tones, to her house plants. She was convinced that indoor azaleas, fuchsias, and petunias responded to the warmth of affection.

While still devastated by the bleakness following the loss of her mother, the acutely shy Sarah read of a discovery in the late twentieth century by a French biochemist, Ladzunski, that a vital hormone essential to the functioning of the human brain also acts as a signal molecule in plants.

Intolerable paternal pressure ensured Sarah became a scientist, apparently treading in her father’s hallowed footsteps. In truth, she continued to walk with the only person with whom she had enjoyed happiness and understanding. The sad irony was that such blameless fidelity should have spawned the creatures now confronting her.

‘You must know who I am.’

‘Yes, Professor Lasky, we do.’ The Second Vervoid acted as intermediary.

‘Then you must also be aware I mean you no harm.’

Vulnerability was not an adjective that would have seemed apt in a biography of Sarah Lasky, but dwarfed and surrounded by the predatory Vervoids, there could be no more poignant a description. Whether she was driven by bravado or belief, her bold, blue eyes exhibited no fear.

‘All animalkind is our enemy, Professor.’ The Second Vervoid’s rebuttal was unconditional. ‘Even you.’

Gently, the nearest Vervoid lifted Sarah Lasky’s blonde hair... then flicked a thorn into the nape of her neck... The delicacy with which the thorn was embedded may have hinted at a trace of regret... but the result of the venom was just as deadly.

Vervoid philosophy recognised no exceptions...

24

Mel saw them first.

‘Don’t – don’t come in here..

But the Doctor had already seen the sorry collection of bodies. Crawling through the ducts in their escape from the cargo hold, they had entered the bulkhead and stumbled upon the improvised cage.

A sob escaped Mel’s throat. ‘How could they?’ Her words were muffled as the Doctor swung her into his shoulder. ‘How could they! It’s obscene!’

‘Not to a Vervoid, Mel.’ He spoke soothingly, understanding the distress of his young companion. Yet he, with the superior intellect and empathy of a Time Lord, was able to encompass more than the narrow angle of a human viewpoint.

‘You can’t justify it! They’re ghouls! Nothing but ghouls!’

‘It’s a matter of perspective, Mel,’ he coaxed. ‘In Pease Pottage you had a very large garden.’

She gazed at him uncomprehendingly.

‘What did you do with the weeds and plants you uprooted?’

‘Put them on a compost heap...’ her voice took on a dying fall as comprehension began to dawn.

‘They’re obeying instinct. Like migrating birds.’ While speaking, he stared at the lamp which was the bulkhead’s sole illumination. ‘Or the salmon swimming relentlessly upstream to breed even though they may perish. A compulsive following of the life cycle.’

He held his palm dose to the lamp.

An idea was forming in the Doctor’s mind...

The death of Lasky appeared to have added impetus to the warfare.

Vervoids roamed the ship.

Corridors became no-go areas.

Passengers collected in groups, locking themselves in cabins in the vain hope they would be spared. Nowhere was safe.

Swiping wildly with a metal scoop, the operator in the waste disposal unit was keeping a Vervoid at bay. He scored a direct hit that toppled his gangling foe into a wastebin.

With frenzied speed, the operator slammed the bin against the pulveriser... and the waxy, green creature was sucked into its chomping jaws.

But the victor’s moment of triumph was fleeting. The assailant had not been alone. Another Vervoid, armed with a phaser captured from a guard, fired...

In the lounge, recliners and tables were being stacked to barricade the door against a mounted attack.

Despite the efforts of Janet and the guards to keep it secure, the blockade was shifting inexorably.

‘It’s useless, Commodore,’ Janet wailed into the communicator. ‘They’re everywhere. We -’

‘- can’t hope to defeat them!’

‘Yes we can!’ Striding onto the bridge, the Doctor heard Janet’s plaintive cry over the intercom. ‘With your help, Commodore.’

‘Name it!’

‘Like the Vervoids, we’re being driven by instinct. Kill or be killed.’

‘We’ve been over that!’

‘What if instead of bringing our lives to an abrupt end, we did the opposite? Accelerated the Vervoid life cycle?’

‘How the blazes can we do that?’

‘Vionesium.’

‘Vionesium?’ repeated Mel, making her presence felt.

‘A rare metal found on the airless planet of Mogar,’

explained the Doctor,

‘And worth a prince’s ransom.’

‘Or a hijack...’ suggested the Doctor significantly.

‘You mean there’s a consignment on board?’

‘That’s right,’ the Commodore affirmed to Mel. ‘In the vault.’

‘But how will this vionesium accelerate the Vervoid life cycle?’ Mel was no biologist.

‘It’s a substance similar to magnesium. Exposed to oxygenated air, it releases incredibly intense sunlight and carbon dioxide. Spring, summer, autumn all condensed into moments.’

The Doctor’s enthusiasm was not wholeheartedly shared by the Commodore. ‘Seasons which I may be a long time enjoying again if I go on robbing my own vault!’

‘Seasons you can forget if you don’t!’ The ‘compost heap’ of bodies had left Mel with absolutely no illusions.

‘We’ve seen what these creatures do to humans.’

‘I don’t think you’ve an alternative, Commodore.’ The Doctor opted for persuasion rather than pressure.

‘Sending for outside help’s not on. The ship’s completely cut off.’ Mel’s pale face looked strained as she urged the Commodore to accept. ‘The Doctor’s the only hope you’ve got...’

The Commodore capitulated. ‘All right, Doctor. What’s the drill?’

‘First you must get the Vervoids to return to their lair.’

‘Me? How?’

‘Put the ship in darkness...’

The barricade in the lounge bar was in danger of being breached when the lights flickered.

‘Attention!’ The stern directive rasping from the loudspeaker caused a lull in the assault.

‘Attention all passengers and crew. A major fault had developed in the generators.’ The lights dimmed perceptibly.

‘To effect necessary repairs, the heating will be shut down.’ Listening to the loudspeaker in the gym, a Vervoid hastily unclamped the grille to retreat into the air vent.

‘Auxiliary lighting only will be in operation.’

Deck after deck plunged into darkness. Even the soft glow of exhaust heat emissions was quenched as the majestic
Hyperion III
lost all power.

The great liner hovered motionlessly in space like a ghost ship: an inert hulk vaguely silhouetted against remote galaxies, giving no hint of the titanic conflict reaching a climax within its beleaguered shell.

The outcome of this conflict would have repercussions for millions of beings who were unaware that their fate depended on the sagacity of a slightly eccentric Time Lord.

Cramped, a tension cleat chafing his hip, the Doctor pressed into a recess behind a stanchion. Discomfort was not his principal worry. The Vervoids trailing into their bulkhead lair were. It was imperative that the Duty Officer and Mel remained undetected until they got into position.

‘Are we all here?’ asked the Second Vervoid.

‘One of us has been destroyed, but there is still another to come.’

‘This power fault could be a trick.’ Suspicion was a singular trait of the Second Vervoid’s personality.

‘What can they gain?’ reasoned the First Vervoid.

‘Animalkind need the life support system. They must repair the generators to survive.’

Sceptically, the Second Vervoid peered into the sepulchral outer reaches of the bulkhead.

Lying prone in a gulley housing a swollen pipe, the Duty Officer was well-concealed. But Mel, hiding in an inlet, eased nervously into the shadows.

Mel glanced at the golden capsule of vionesium she clutched. Each of them had a similar golden capsule: three in all. A shiver of fear trembled through her slender frame: if the Doctor’s plan failed, her life would surely be forfeit.