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apartment. The Doctor stood at the console, occasionally adjusting a control, though Mike had no idea how he knew where they were going. The
scanner was blank.
Perhaps, he thought, it was like flying a plane by radar  but he couldn t see anything that looked like a radar display, either.
Suddenly the Doctor leant over the console and flicked a series of switches. The pulse of the engines changed, became louder.
 Coming in to land? asked Mike.
The Doctor nodded, then frowned.  Funny, I could have sworn 

He didn t finish the sentence, because the sound of the engines stopped with a sudden thud and the floor of the TARDIS pitched to one side. Mike
felt himself falling towards the console, but, even as he automatically began to roll in order to control the fall, the floor righted itself.
He ended up landing on his backside, hard. The floor jolted again underneath him, then was
He scrambled to his feet as quickly as he could. Jo was already standing.  Doctor, what s happening?
 Nothing to worry about, said the Doctor.  We just missed the ground by a few feet. He frowned at the console, and added in an undertone,  Funny,
she doesn t usually do that.
Mike glanced at Jo.  Are you all right?
She nodded. Then an expression of alarm crossed her face.
25
 Doctor! Look!
Mike whirled round, saw that the scanner had come to life. It showed an extreme close-up of a hideous thing a bit like a monkey, but with long,
carnivore s fangs. Its huge eyes were staring directly at the camera. Its body was partly out of focus, but it seemed to have wings. Some kind of
bat? Mike looked at the Doctor.
 Don t worry. It s just an example of the local fauna. I expect we frightened it, appearing suddenly like that.
 It doesn t look frightened, observed Jo. The creature appeared to be trying to bite its way through the lens of the camera that fed the scanner. Mike
could hear its claws scrabbling at the material, its snorting breath. He wondered how secure they were.
 Are there any more of them out there? he asked.
The Doctor pressed a control and the view changed, to show several more of the creatures hunched around a carcass like vultures, their wide
mouths dripping blood. He heard Jo s intake of breath, felt her hand grab his amt  It s OK, Jo, he said.  We re safe in here.
But Jo only gripped his arm tighter.  It s a man! she said.
And then Mike realized she was right.
The carcass looked human.
He swallowed.  Doctor  
 I can see, yes. But there s nothing we can do for the poor chap now. I suggest we  
He was interrupted by a scream. A man s scream.  Help me!
Please help me!
Mike looked at the Doctor again, then reached for his gun. But his gun wasn t there. He was dressed for dinner. This hadn t been supposed to
happen.
The scream was repeated, incoherent now, pure terror.
 There must be another victim, said the Doctor.  Stay here, Jo.
Captain .Yates, look after her. I m going to see what I can do.
 Doctor! No! Jo .shouted. Mike too opened his mouth to object
 surely there was nothing the Doctor could do; unarmed, against these creatures  but the doors of the. TARDIS were already opening, and the
Doctor was running through then, his hands rummaging in his jacket pockets as if searching for something.
Mike didn t hesitate. The Doctor was going to need help. He ran after him, and just made it outside before the doors closed. His momentum carried
him forward beyond the narrow strip of solid ground where the TARDIS had landed into what seemed like a clump of large leaves, rather like those
on a rubber plant. He toppled through the leaves: He reached out to grip them, but they 26
broke away in his hands. He fell. He kept on falling.
Below was a drop of several hundred feet.
Mike seemed to fall in an impossible slow motion. He could see the Doctor below him, also falling. He could see projecting branches, long loops of
coloured vines, huge, distant tree trunks.
But there was nothing near enough to hang on to.. No hope of stopping his fall. It seemed an impossible, an utterly stupid way to die.
There has to be something I can do, he thought. He looked down at the Doctor, falling perhaps a hundred feet below him, and saw that he had
somehow managed to turn over in the air and was facing upward, holding something that-looked like a fluorescent orange football against his
chest. Mike tried to signal to him but all the Doctor s attention was on the  football . He appeared, bizarrely, to be talking to it.
Suddenly the thing seemed to explode. A blaze of brilliant colour rippled out across the Doctor s:. stretched arms, then snaked its way beneath
them, leaving a bright webbing across his chest.
Another rippled down across his legs. The Doctor kicked his legs, rolled in the air, and the fabric  the bulk of which was now above his back  [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]