Doctor Who - Bernice Summerfield - 05 - Down by Lawrence Miles

Author:Lawrence Miles
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Bernice Surprise (Fictitious Character), High Tech, General, Science Fiction, Summerfield, Fiction
ISBN: 042620512X
Publisher: Virgin
Published: 1997-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

...in Smarley’s green and pleasant land.

„Is it a battle hymn?‟ the Youngest of the Eldest asked. „The

melody seems... almost militaristic.‟

„Almost, but not quite,‟ mused another of the thirteen. „I

have heard a similar form of composition before. From the

lips of the First Traveller.‟

“That settles it,‟ grumbled the Angriest of the Eldest. „Get

them. Get them all. Before they do to us what the First

Traveller did to us.‟

The Eldest of the Eldest attempted to raise an eyebrow, but

her facial muscles were far too weak. Her retainers obligingly

looked surprised and contemptuous on her behalf. „Oh? And

what, precisely, did the First Traveller do to us?‟

„You know very well,‟ barked the Angriest. „He made us like

this.’

„I can‟t make out all the words,‟ complained the Youngest.

„Could we get the Gug to concentrate?‟

„No. We agreed. We would wait until nightfall before acting.

The night has now fallen. The sun has reached its darkest

point. It‟s time.‟

Doktor Fetisch kept nodding. Nodding, he reminded himself,

was good. All great scientists nodded. Oh, ja. Veritable

nodding machines they were, pottering around their

laboratories, their heads wobbling up and down as they

checked their apparatus. Ach! And to think that he, Doktor

Wilhelm Hermann Eisenck Fetisch, was thrown out of the

Academy von Stroppenheim for Advanced Neogenetic

Research, just because they thought he was mad. Mad! Him!

Hahahaaahaaah!

He swept the palmtop across the rock face one more time.

It was as the preliminary results had indicated. There was

some kind of gravitational anomaly here. As for the genetic

potential of this underworld... perhaps he should get

Kommander Katastrophen to have his men capture one of the

giant bats. It would make an excellent sample for dissection.

Technically, it wasn‟t strictly necessary to dissect something

in order to scan its DNA, but Doktor Wilhelm Hermann

Eisenck Fetisch never did things by halves.

He waved the handscan at one of the gigantic mushrooms

that sprouted from the cracks in the rock. The plateau where

the handipac tents had been set up was devoid of vegetable

life, but here on the pathway, out of sight of the

encampment, the fungi were in full bloom. The handscan

burbled to itself, before spewing out an analysis of the fungal

DNA stream.

The mushroom didn‟t seem to have one.

No DNA? Ridiculous. Fetisch nodded. Why, a life form with

no DNA was like... well, it was like finding an object with no

electrons. The machine had to be malfunctioning. Ja. He

nodded again, and looked up from the blank readings,

searching for some good, solid surface to bash the device

against.

Against all expectations, he found himself staring into a

pair of eyes. In alarm, Fetisch nodded at them.

The eyes were round and dark, set into a pale, flat face

which the doktor had to stare at for several seconds before he

could get it all into his head. The face had a nose, and a

mouth, and ears, and all of them were in roughly the right

positions, so he was momentarily fooled into thinking the

features were human. But the nose wasn‟t nearly developed

enough. It was a mere hump, with wide, flaring nostrils. The

face was surrounded by a wild mane of dark hair, the

sideburns as thick and shaggy as the fur on top of the head.

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