Doctor Who: The Rescue by Ian Marter Read Free Book Online

alert, despite her hammering headache. ‘Tell me about this... this Koquillion,’ she said.
    Vicki glanced at the shutter. ‘It... He just keeps us here.’
    ‘Us?’
    ‘Bennett and me. There’s a rescue craft on its way here.
    But Koquillion does not know about that!’ Vicki added hastily. ‘But he will find out eventually, I know he will. He always does.’
    Barbara pushed herself into a semi-sitting position and put out a comforting hand. ‘Why does Koquillion keep you here?’
    Vicki tried to pull herself together. ‘They killed all our personnel, except for Bennett and me... When we crashlanded here we made contact with them... One night they invited us to a sort of council meeting... I had a fever or something and I stayed here in the wreckage... I remember waking up suddenly and thinking it was a thunderstorm but it was... it was an explosion...’ Vicki shuddered at the traumatic memory and fell silent for a while overcome with grief. ‘But Bennett survived... The only one... He dragged himself back to the wreck... It was days before I recovered and then I found him... Bennett cannot walk. I look after him. We just wait and wait. We have been waiting so long and still no rescue... And I thought you...’ Vicki was overwhelmed by silent heartrending sobs.
    Barbara sat herself up and put her arms around the girl’s heaving shoulders. ‘Vicki, I don’t understand. If Koquillion’s people killed the rest of your crew, why don’t they kill you and Bennett? It doesn’t make sense.’
    Vicki shrugged and shook her head in despair. ‘We don’t know. We just don’t know.’
     
    Barbara bit her lip while she tried to understand what Vicki had been telling her. ‘You say you crashlanded here.
    Where were you making for?’ she inquired gently.
    Vicki stood up, the tears now running freely down her pale cheeks. ‘My father was taking me to... My father was...’
    She crept slowly away from the bunk and leaned her head against the metal panelling of a huge duct which ran the length of the compartment.
    Quietly, Barbara swung her legs over and sat up on the edge of the bunk, her concern for Vicki making her forget her injuries and the pain in her head.
    Vicki struggled to recover herself. ‘Your craft... Is your craft still here?’ she asked eventually, turning with a trace of hope in her eyes.
    Barbara nodded. ‘Yes, yes, I think so,’ she said uncertainly.
    Vicki took a few faltering steps towards her and then stopped dead as if she had walked into an invisible barrier.
    ‘I remember now, KoquiIlion told me. Perhaps you heard him? They killed the others, Barbara. They killed them.
    Your friends up there have been buried alive.’
    Barbara uttered a little gasp, as if a veil had suddenly been lifted from her eyes.
    ‘Koquillion...’ she breathed, reliving her nightmare encounter outside the tunnel and feeling her injuries again.
    Abruptly she realised that if what Vicki said was true, then she too was stranded, a helpless castaway on an alien and inhospitable world.
    The Doctor groped around his feet and finally located the torch. ‘I don’t care for Wagner very much,’ he joked, fiddling in the darkness to fix the loosened connection.
    ‘Especially when arias are sung like that !’ At last he got the thing working again and shone the beam over Ian’s shoulder.
    Ian remained silent, watching the play of the torch on the sinister tunnel ahead and nervously licking his lips as he waited for the unearthly din to recur, or worse, for whatever had caused it to burst out of the shadows and attack them.
    ‘I just cannot understand it you know,’ the Doctor chattered, noticing that the tunnel appeared to broaden out a few metres ahead of them. ‘Violence was totally alien to the inhabitants of this planet in the past.’
    Ian uttered a grim chuckle. ‘People’s ideas change, Doctor. I mean, every new leader...’
    The Doctor shook his head, waving the torch to and fro at the same time. ‘No, no,