Doctor Who: Target - Novelisations [049] - The Power of Kroll by Terrance Dicks

Author:Terrance Dicks
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science-Fiction - Doctor Who
ISBN: 9780426201014
Publisher: Target Books
Published: 1979-12-31T23:00:00+00:00

7

The End of Harg

Fenner snatched a laser rifle from the wall rack and began blazing away. But it was too late. The giant tentacle had disappeared – taking Harg with it.

Thawn came running into the pump room. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Quickly,’ screamed Fenner. ‘Shut down the main flow valve.’

The two men wrestled with the controls, spinning wheels and pulling levers, until at last the throbbing of the intake pump died away.

Thawn stared in horror at the shattered pipe. ‘What’s happened in here?’

Fenner leaned against the control bank gasping for breath. ‘Harg has just been snatched out of here by that monster. One of its tentacles was right inside the main pipeline. He was in here running a check – then we heard him scream…’ Fenner broke off, shuddering at the memory of what he had seen.

Dugeen was examining the ripped and shattered pipeline. ‘Look at it! Eighty gauge collodion, ripped like wet cardboard.’

Fenner caught Thawn’s arm. ‘We’ve got to evacuate, Controller. Abandon the Refinery.’

Thawn thrust him away. ‘Not while I’m Controller. Under no circumstances –’

‘But just look at the damage, sir,’ pleaded Dugeen. ‘All done by just one tentacle – the equivalent of one of my fingers. Imagine what’s going to happen if the creature decides to attack us in earnest!’

‘Listen, Dugeen, I’ve put too much into this project to abandon it now. There’s only one thing to do – find that creature and kill it!’

‘And what about the broken pipeline?’ asked Fenner.

‘Switch to a secondary line and pump at half capacity until you’ve fixed it. Well, get on with it!’

Fenner and Dugeen went over to the controls, and a few minutes later the pumping machinery resumed its incessant throbbing.

Thawn stood at the window, staring out over the swamplands.

The Doctor, Romana and Rohm Dutt were being roped to a wooden framework, a kind of rack, laying in the middle of the temple floor. Behind them, Skart and Ranquin in full ceremonial regalia, were conducting a ceremony at the altar.

The Doctor watched them with interest. ‘I don’t remember that bit last night. Early Samoan influences, wouldn’t you say? Interesting how traces of the old Earth cultures survive in their colonies, isn’t it?’

‘I’m more interested in my own survival at the moment,’ muttered Romana. She had been lashed bodily to the wooden framework by lengths of creeper. Now her feet, stretched out in front of her were being tied to a kind of separate footboard that slid along the bottom. The footboard was lashed to more strands of glistening wet creeper, which was fastened at their other end to metal rings in the temple wall.

Next to her, the Doctor was being treated in the same way. So was Rohm Dutt, tied to the frame next to him.

The Doctor looked round the temple and in particular at a round glass window directly above them. ‘This Temple’s rather a hotch-potch of styles really. Still, I prefer it to perpendicular gothic.’

Rohm Dutt grunted as a burly warrior pulled his lashings tighter. ‘Varlik, what is the seventh ritual?’

‘It is the slowest death of all,’ said Varlik sombrely.

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