Doctor Who: The Zarbi by Bill Strutton Read Free Book Online Page A

spar levelled at Barbara’s throat.
    Vrestin signed to their other two companions and led them farther into the dark recesses of the cave. Challis pushed the spar at Barbara, motioning her roughly to sit.
    From the rear of the cave Barbara could hear the murmur of their strange, almost flute-like voices. It was impossible to pick up what they were saying.
     
    The guard, Challis, who towered over her, also turned his head for a brief cautious moment to listen, but returned immediately to watching her. Her mouth was dry with fear. Barbara racked her brains for a way of appealing to these creatures — winning some sign of friendliness, trust.
    They used human speech. But did they have feelings akin to human beings? Did they know mercy?
    In such a grim place as this, it did not seem possible.
    She shivered.
    ‘Please — you must see that I am harmless!’
    At that Challis raised the spar menacingly. Barbara braved it, but her voice quavered a little.
    ‘We speak in the same way. We may have much in common that you can trust. At least let me...’
    ‘... silence!’ Challis snarled. He glared and thrust the spar until it was an inch from Barbara’s mouth.
    A commotion from the rear of the cave made them both turn their heads. The voices of the three Menoptera were raised in dispute, but Barbara could not catch more than one or two words, oddly distorted as they echoed off the brittle walls.
    ‘... kill her... outright... and have done... the... Zarbi will...’
    Barbara stared up at her captor. He glared back and then turned to listening, straining his ears. She cast around desperately, and her gaze lit on the rocks that glittered on the cave floor.
    Slowly, so as not to excite Challis’ attention, her hand strayed towards a rock. Her fingers gripped it, and then, desperately, as Challis turned back and saw the rock in her hand, she hurled it at his head.
    Without waiting she whirled to her feet and raced for the cave mouth. As she did so she heard Challis give a shriek. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the creature reel back with a winged hand to his eyes. His stalagmite spar gleamed as it dropped and he screamed.
    ‘Stop her!’
     
    She ran, slipping and stumbling, her heart pounding wildly, towards the pale oval of light marking the cave mouth. Behind her she heard the shouts of the Menoptera as they came running from the rear of the cave towards their comrade Challis. Barbara leaped over a rock, came scrambling out of the cave mouth into the twilit pass and ran on till her breath gave out. She paused for a moment and leaned to catch her breath in the shadow of the cliffs.
    She threw a quick look back towards the cave mouth, then stared fearfully around her, wondering where the ship was.
    How would she find it? What direction should she take?
    Barbara realized she had no idea, no memory of having walked through this place.
    She was entirely lost and alone. She stared up at the craggy cliffs. Could she climb up there – find a vantage point from which to see the land around her? The sides were too glassy, too steep.
    As Barbara decided this, a sound checked her. It was something she had first heard in the control room of Tardis , and with its return the memory flooded back too.
    It was fainter now, a humming, a chirruping.
    But it was enough. Her mind flashed back to the chaos that awful sound had caused in the control room. She remembered the metal canisters jumping and scattering across the floor, the control table spinning wildly, how her own arm had jerked in front of her as though controlled by something else – and how the doors of Tardis had opened.
    It was immensely evil – this sound.
    Barbara gave a shriek and clapped her hands to her ears.
    She turned and ran blindly up the pass, no longer wondering where to go, obeying only the panic impulse to run from the great humming, to hide, to find somewhere blessedly silent, safe from it.
    As she ran and stumbled along the rocky pass she turned her head