Doctor Who - Missing Adventures - 03 - Venusian Lullaby

Author:Paul Leonard
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction, General, Fiction
ISBN: 9780426204244
Publisher: London Bridge
Published: 1994-11-14T08:00:00+00:00

Rustle-rustle. Click. The ticking of small feet on the stone floor of the lab.

‘ Chff-rrr?’

Kontojij’s belly almost fell to the floor in relief.

‘Miraghoni!’ he called.

The sound of hurrying little feet, a single clicking sound. The little flyer appeared in the doorway, his rotors slowly whirling.

‘Rrr-rrr-rrr!’

Kontojij hobbled across the floor, reached up to pat the ghifghoni and received a nip on the fingers for his pains.

‘So you decided to stay behind, then?’

‘ Chff – rrr!’

Kontojij allowed a couple of his mouths to widen in a gape. Miraghoni must have missed out on breakfast altogether, and thus missed eating the memory paste – that was why he was still here. The flyer was hungry.

‘I’ll see what I can find for you,’ he said.

It occurred to Kontojij as he went for the box that he hadn’t had his own breakfast. He wondered whether he ought to eat something now; but he didn’t feel hungry. He picked a rasher of pekatisi out of the box for Miraghoni, wondered why the flyer hadn’t helped himself. A lifetime’s habit of laziness, he supposed.

He hobbled back to Miraghoni, who had hopped up on to the writing-desk in the sleeping-room.

Kontojij noticed the bulge in the flyer’s belly-pouch where the message-pod was lodged. He wondered whether he should take it out and save himself from having to write another copy of his report to leave for his visitors tonight. Then he wondered whether there was any point in struggling down the slope with it anyway, with his leg so bad: surely it would be too late by then for the warning to be of any use.

He decided to think about it later, tore the pekatisi rasher into strips and fed it to Miraghoni.

‘ Chff-chff. Rrr,’ demanded the little flyer when all the pieces were gone.

‘Greedy!’ scolded Kontojij, but his hearts weren’t in it. The world might end tonight. What did it matter how much Miraghoni ate now, if it kept him happy?

There was the sound of splashing water from the lab.

Kontojij’s eye-stalks flattened. He jumped up through the doorway and looked around. The nijij were stirring and thrashing in their tank, bumping against the glass.

Kontojij’s earlier sense of unease returned. He shuffled closer to the tank, saw that one of the star-shaped animals had somehow got loose from its shackles. It was blundering around in the cloudy water, setting the anteyon receivers swaying.

Kontojij reached into the water with his north hand, trying to catch the slippery creature; and was rewarded by a crooked wrist as one of the legs wrapped around him with the convulsive strength of panic. He dragged the nijij out of the water, but he was too late. Its exposed brain burst open, sending jets of purple blood across his arm, the sides of the tank and into the water.

Cursing, Kontojij lifted the twitching body out of the tank, started across the lab to the doorway with a vague idea of throwing the body outside.

Then he stopped dead. A pale blue glow was coming from the predicting-crystal.

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