Doctor Who: The Zarbi (14 page)

The Doctor stiffened and shouted back. ‘If the child dies, I shall have no reason left to obey you! I have located your enemy. My calculations are complete...’

‘You lie-ie!’ The echo of the Voice’s anger surged around the Doctor deafeningly. He paused, knowing now that he must yield some information to bargain for Vicki’s safety.

‘I am telling the truth! Your enemy are massing in the vicinity of the planet Pictos...’

A pause. Then...

‘Pictos-os...?’

‘They are one hundred and forty leagues from this planet... and moving closer...’

‘How quickly-y...?’

‘At one-tenth the speed of light. Now if you wish to waste your time with idle stupid vengeance on a child in the face of invasion — you will be annihilated!’

After another pause the Dome reverberated to a question from the Voice, now calmer.

‘Where will the Menoptera land... and...?’

Doctor Who hesitated now, reluctant to reveal any more. He cast an anxious look towards Vicki, now blank of face, standing unaware before the threat of a venom grub which was now being guided towards her by a Zarbi guard.

The Doctor looked up into the Dome.

‘Your interference has so far prevented my finding that out. If we are spared further treatment of this sort, I can return to the task you set me — if it is not too late!’

There was a silence while the Voice digested this.

‘Very well - go!’

Doctor Who stood his ground. ‘Not before the child is released!’

‘Go — immediately!’

‘First, the child —!’

The Zarbi controlling the venom gun turned towards the control panel. It hummed, glowed suddenly. The Zarbi snatched the necklet from Vicki’s throat and the Dome rose into the air, Doctor Who took Vicki’s arm. and steered her towards his control table as she rubbed her eyes and awoke.

‘What... did you tell... that thing...?’ Vicki mumbled.

Doctor Who smiled. ‘Only enough to preserve our skins, my dear.’ He patted her arm, turned to his map, and then muttered, thinking.

‘We must think of something to get away from here.

Vicki — the recorder — we must find somewhere to hide it.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I don’t intend to present them with
all
the information we’ve picked up on it... where they are to be attacked, for instance...’

Doctor Who paused, wondering where to conceal the recorder, when the Zarbi control panel again burst into life. Lights glowed from different points on the web indicator, buzzers of different pitch sounded through speaker lines beneath the map, and the master speaker hummed loudly with a steady flow of instructions. The Zarbi operating the control panel were chirruping excitedly in response. Vicki watched all this.

She said, ‘There’s another panic on — look!’

Doctor Who nodded grimly. ‘They’re putting their army on the alert, no doubt. They didn’t take long, you see, to act on what I did tell them!’

Suddenly the slaves toiling in the Crater of Needles stopped and looked up and around them.

Warning hooters were sounding all along the crater rim.

There was frenzied activity among their Zarbi guards, who were scuttling down from their vantage points in the rocks to assemble information — then hurrying off in directions pointed out by their leaders.

‘What is it?’ Barbara asked. ‘Some kind of alarm?’

Hrostar was listening, watching everything keenly. He glanced at the sky anxiously.

‘Yes. I hope they haven’t found...’ Hrostar didn’t finish the sentence. Several Zarbi guards came scuttling down to the clearing where they worked. Prapillus saw them first.

‘Look out,’ the old Menoptera said. ‘They’re bringing their stings with them.’

‘Stings...?’ Barbara was bewildered.

Hrostar pointed at the evil venom grubs with their long deadly projectile snouts. ‘Venom grubs,’ he said curtly.

‘They can spit death as far as a cannon.’

The ‘stings’ halted at a sign from the Zarbi, covering the slaves. The Zarbi reared and waved at the slaves, pointing towards the crude prison huts.

‘They want us to go to our huts,’ Hrostar said.

The weary slaves downed their tools and responded slowly. The Zarbi harried them angrily, urgently, to move more quickly. As the slaves crowded into their prison huts the sting grubs turned, keeping them covered.

Hrostar paused inside the door of their hut and remained there looking out cautiously. A sting under the control of a Zarbi guard remained pointing at their, door.

The other Zarbi were climbing back to join the squads marshalling on the crater rim.

Old Prapillus hobbled forward to join Hrostar’s anxious watch. He stared outward and ventured a question.

‘Hrostar — it is the invasion, do you think?’

Hrostar stared upward uneasily. ‘The spearhead, yes, I think so...’

‘Then tell us what we must do!’ The old Menoptera said excitedly.

Hrostar paused. ‘Nothing!’ he said. ‘Not yet...’

A discontented mutter arose among the expectant slaves. Hlynia, Prapillus’ beautiful daughter, turned indignantly on Hrostar.

‘Do
nothing
? We have waited generations for this moment!’

Hrostar did not answer. He pondered and paced restlessly.

He muttered, ‘The spearhead was intended to create a bridgehead for the main force. It was to be a complete surprise. He stared outward. ‘If this is an alert — how did the Zarbi know?’

Suddenly a thought struck him. He turned suspiciously on Barbara, pointed at her. ‘Your earth friends! This man of science you tell me of — could he be helping them?’

Barbara, taken aback, hesitated uncertainly. ‘Well... no!’

she protested. ‘I’m... I’m sure he wouldn’t...!’

‘If they have captured him, as they did you, they could
make
him help!’

‘The Doctor would not give in easily,’ Barbara said stoutly.

Hrostar shook his head, unconvinced. ‘They are powerful! They have uncanny means of persuasion.’ He turned to Prapillus. ‘Prapillus — do you know the Sayo Plateau?’

Prapillus nodded. ‘Of course. It borders on this crater.’

Hrostar stared. ‘Here? Then they
do
know!’

‘Know what?’ Barbara asked.

Hrostar fretted and paced to and fro like a caged animal.

‘Our spearhead planned to land on Sayo Plateau!’ he said. He pointed out towards the sting which covered their hut unwaveringly.’ And with these Zarbi weapons — they will be massacred!’

‘But your force will be armed!’ Barbara argued.

Hrostar hesitated. ‘Not sufficiently to deal with the hosts of the Zarbi. We aimed to land in secret and to destroy the building which
controls
them! Everything depended on surprise, secrecy. And now... the Zarbi know!’

Prapillus and his daughter Hlynia had been conferring with the slaves crowded in the back of the hut. Now they came forward.

Prapillus said gravely, ‘Then your spearhead must be warned.’

Hrostar shrugged helplessly. ‘How? The Zarbi smashed our signalling equipment!’

Barbara had an idea. ‘Then we must get to the plateau...

intercept them... warn them...!’

Prapillus nodded. ‘Exactly.’

Hrostar pointed outside. ‘But there is a sting-gun pointed straight at this door. Powerful enough to kill everyone in this hut, the moment we make a move!’

‘I’m aware of that,’ Prapillus said impatiently.

Hlynia was staring outside towards the crater rim. She turned back. ‘But they have taken most of the Zarbi from this outpost.’

‘Which leaves this crater undermanned, with only a few guards!’ Barbara said. ‘Hrostar — we’ve got to distract the Zarbi who are left... draw them away... and escape!’

Hrostar was pondering the venom grub pointing immovably at their hut door. ‘If only we could destroy that sting!’ he exclaimed.

Prapillus nodded. ‘I may do that’, he said simply.

The others stared. ‘You... how?’ Hrostar said.

The old man tapped his head wisely and smiled. He moved towards the back of the hut and began to move their stored food supply — crude jars of preserved nectar, roots, piles of dried nuts — from the shelves.

‘I know the Zarbi,’ Prapillus grunted. ‘I have studied their habits all my life.
They
are not our natural enemies. It is the thing which controls them which we must destroy.

Without it, the Zarbi are useless... powerless. Come, help me...’

And Prapillus began to break a hole in the side of the hut.

As he worked he called Hrostar to his side.

‘Place some of my people near the front of the hut. Tell them to act naturally, take no notice of what we are doing.

We do not want the Zarbi to suspect anything.’

Hrostar did as he was asked, silently marshalling others in the hut nearer to the door. Prapillus motioned to those nearest him to help with the hole. Soon they had torn a cavity big enough to crawl through.

The old man cocked an ear towards the distant sounds of chirruping. He bent double and prepared to crawl through the hole, then paused. He turned to Hrostar, Hlynia and Barbara, and his eyes twinkled.

‘Do not be surprised at anything you hear,’ he said.

‘Watch the sting grub — and wait your chance.’

‘But, Father...!’

‘Do not worry for me, Hlynia, child. I may be a little short of breath, but not of brains.’

The old Menoptera touched his daughter’s hand and disappeared through the hole in the wall. Hrostar stared through it and watched him go. Then he straightened.

‘He’s disappeared out of sight,’ he said. But he continued to watch.

The Zarbi manning the sting grub suddenly turned its huge sleek head. It had heard a crackle, like something falling among the stalagmites away to the right — and it fixed its shining stare on a shape flitting among them.

Swiftly the Zarbi raised a pointing foreclaw and the murderous sting of the venom grub swivelled to follow it.

The shape disappeared.

Prapillus dodged nimbly and crouched low among the stalagmite needles. He waited, then cupped his hands to his mouth.

A high-pitched chirruping sounded, uncannily like the language of the Zarbi.

The Zarbi guard manning the sting grub started at the sound. It left the sting motionless and scuttled a few paces forward towards the stalagmites. The chirruping sounded again, ahead of the Zarbi, and it answered on a questioning note, expecting to see a comrade detach itself from among the rocks.

Inside the hut Hrostar was now staring out of the doorway. He turned back to the others.

‘It’s left the sting – now’s our chance!’

He moved swiftly to the shelf-like bunks and took down a handful of spars.

‘What can we do?’ Barbara asked.

‘Help me destroy it!’ Hrostar handed around the slender. but heavy lumps of stalagmite.

‘Destroy it? Couldn’t
we
control it – use it ourselves?’

Hrostar shook his head. ‘Only the Zarbi can control and fire those beasts.’ He strode to the door, looked out. He motioned to his companions and muttered, ‘Get ready – I’ll give the command...!’

Again, crouched in his hiding-place among the stalagmite needles, Prapillus cupped his hands and

chirruped. He watched the Zarbi guard approach, head questing this way and that, and chuckled. The old man was enjoying his role hugely. He turned on his hands and knees and crawled farther away. He heard the Zarbi challenge him now with an angry chirrup. He grinned –

and again paused to call back, mockingly.

Watching from within the hut doorway, Hrostar suddenly exclaimed, ‘Now!’

He darted forward and out. Barbara followed, then Hlynia. As they came out into the clearing before the hut, the Zarbi turned and saw them. It broke into an angry, jabbering chirrup, raising its foreclaw swiftly – and the sting gun turned and began to bear on the three friends as they rushed out of the hut.

Before it could fire, a shadow rose out of the ground behind the Zarbi. It was Prapillus. With the agility of a monkey the old man leaped on the creature’s back and bore it staggering to the ground. As it did so, Barbara and Hlynia rushed the venom creature, their spars raised like clubs. At the same time Hrostar leaped to aid the old Menoptera. Before the Zarbi could recover, it was felled with a mighty blow from a spar, then another, and another, leaving it stunned and almost motionless on its back, its limbs waving faintly, feebly.

The venom-gun, powerless without the controlling influence of its Zarbi master, crumpled under the spars of Barbara and Hlynia and lay twitching on its side. Hrostar and Prapillus joined them.

‘Good work!’ Hrostar panted.

Barbara turned to the old Menoptera, Prapillus.

‘His was the good work. None of us could have done it.’

Prapillus tapped his head and chuckled. They looked about them for a sign of any other Zarbi.

‘Come!’ Hlynia said. ‘I can lead you to the plateau? She hurried ahead. With a last look about them at the jerking, helpless Zarbi and the crushed sting creature, Barbara and Hrostar moved to follow her.

Ian and Vrestin stood hemmed in by the spears levelled at their throats by the silent beings who had rushed to surround them as they recovered from their fall.