Doctor Who: The Suns of Caresh by Paul Saint

Author:Paul Saint
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science-Fiction:Doctor Who
ISBN: 9780563538585
Publisher: Diamond Comic Distributors
Published: 2002-07-31T10:00:00+00:00

They were through the door and into the control room just as the creature exploded. A rain of fleshy gobbets smacked against the walls and ceiling of the corridor. The ground began to rumble.

‘It’s overfed,’ the Doctor said in alarm. ‘It must have been trapped here for years. Come on, we haven’t much time!’

He scrambled up the sloping floor. He was past the petrified console and almost at the main door when he realised Zeke Child was no longer following him.

Zeke was hanging back at the lower door, peering through it into the corridor.

‘Come on!’ the Doctor bellowed.

‘I want to see the corpse of the thing that killed my friends.’

‘There isn’t time!’

‘What’s the hurry, Doctor? It can’t harm us now.’

‘Listen to me, Ezekiel. We’re inside a pocket universe which is about to undergo catastrophic collapse. If we don’t leave now we’re going to be caught inside it.’

The ground stopped rumbling. There was a sound like the snapping of a colossal stalactite, which echoed and re-echoed far into the distance. And from the distance there came the unmistakable sound of walls tumbling and ceilings collapsing.

The sound grew steadily nearer.

At last Zeke recognised the danger he was in. He hurried up the slippery floor, nearly lost his footing in the sunken feature he had dubbed the paddling pool, recovered and made for the main door.

The Doctor was already at the opening. He grabbed the rope that hung from the oak tree and pulled himself out into the sunlight. He found a secure position on the threshold and readied himself for Zeke’s emergence.

The control-room ceiling was falling. Zeke took the door at a run. He launched himself into space, heedless of where or how he landed.

From his ledge the Doctor watched as the blue-green rush of temporal energy erupted from the doorway and caught the youth squarely in mid-air. He hung there for an impossibly long time. Even in the sunlight the energy was almost unbearably bright. Then the torrent died down and Zeke Child fell. He landed face down in the muddy water at the bottom of the lake.

The branch of the oak tree had been struck a glancing blow by the torrent. It was visibly shorter than before, and its leaves had reverted to flowering buds.

Hurriedly the Doctor descended the bank and waded out to Zeke’s prone body. He lifted him out of the water, slung him over one shoulder and, with considerable difficulty, climbed back up the bank.

Zeke had been rendered unconscious, either by the fall or by the rush of energy. He had not broken any bones and he had not taken any water into his lungs. In appearance he was still nineteen; unlike the branch of the oak tree his age was unchanged.

But he had not come out of it unscathed. The temporal energy forced out of the collapsing TARDIS had profoundly affected him. So long as he was unconscious the effects would lie dormant, but sooner or later he would have to wake up.

When that happened, his nightmare would finally begin.

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