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Authors: Doctor Who
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equipment to see into the next valley. The shots were blurry and fogged, as if the cameras were straining themselves hard to see this far.
But there it was.
Martha found herself stepping back, involuntarily, at what came up on the screen. Behind her, Solin gasped in horror and disgust. Even though Martha had heard the Doctor talk about it, and describe it, she still got a shock when she saw the creature on the screen.
It was the size of a vast spacecraft and it was hovering low over the valley. It was a pale, putrid, grey-green colour. And its mouth was huge enough to swallow a town centre in one go. It had no other features. And the mouth had no teeth. It was just a great absence of features, and that made it all the more terrifying.
Martha and Solin watched it feed.
The ground beneath the Craw was churning and quaking, as if a tremendous gravitational force was at work. The very matter of the place – animal, vegetable, mineral – was being sucked into one long, spiralling strand that looked, from this distance, rather like a tornado.
And it was being fed straight into the hungry mouth of the Craw.
The screen itself was vibrating with a very dense grumbling sound.
Martha felt her throat constrict as the noise intensified. She realised they were hearing the scream of the world itself as it was attacked by the Craw. There was a whole lot of other, vastly unsavoury noises emanating from the Craw itself.
51
‘It’s just sucking everything up. . . ’ Solin cried. He touched the delicate dials again. The picture shivered with pixelated mess and then steadied. It came into even greater focus. Now they could see a ring of wicked, jewel-like eyes around the crown of the being’s head.
Martha had seen a picture of the Craw from space, as it hovered above one of the land masses of Tiermann’s World. A huge, pallid tapeworm. Now she really understood the danger they were in. To a creature like this, they were nothing. They weren’t people. They weren’t individuals. They were just matter. Same as the plant life and rocks out there. They were here to be pulped and fed indiscriminately into that obscene, palpating mouth.
The noises were getting ever louder. Solin shut off the sound, but still it rang horribly in their ears.
‘We need to get moving,’ Martha said, very quietly.
52
There was no way of knowing the time of day, down here on Level Minus Thirty-Nine. There was no natural light, of course, this far down. Nor were there any clocks. The place existed in a permanent half-lit limbo.
Luckily the Doctor had an excellent sense of time. He knew he had been down here for just over six hours. Six fruitless hours had elapsed since those Servo-furnishings had roughly manhandled him into the elevator and then out again, at the very bottom of the Dreamhome.
The morning saw him bruised and rueful, and seething with frustration.
Foolish Doctor, he seethed. What a complete div. Once more he had let his insatiable curiosity get the better of him, and with disastrous results. He had effectively given in and allowed himself to be brought here and imprisoned. He had been keen to see what went on down here, close to the Dreamhome’s power source. The make-up of this fantastic building fascinated him, and its secrets had led him into this disastrous situation. Here he was, trapped now. And the hours until the advent of the Voracious Craw were slipping away. . .
He hoped Martha was all right. She had looked so shocked and horrified as he had allowed himself to be dragged off by those robots.
53
Perhaps he should have resisted. Disabled them. Grabbed Martha and left the ungrateful Tiermanns to it. That would have been the best and most logical thing to do. Ah well, that wasn’t the Doctor’s way.
Now he had to make the best of it.
The thing was, there wasn’t much down here on Level Minus Thirty-Nine. Just a few mostly empty rooms, dusty and disused. A few hunks of rusting machinery and leftover bits of robots.
But there it was.
Martha found herself stepping back, involuntarily, at what came up on the screen. Behind her, Solin gasped in horror and disgust. Even though Martha had heard the Doctor talk about it, and describe it, she still got a shock when she saw the creature on the screen.
It was the size of a vast spacecraft and it was hovering low over the valley. It was a pale, putrid, grey-green colour. And its mouth was huge enough to swallow a town centre in one go. It had no other features. And the mouth had no teeth. It was just a great absence of features, and that made it all the more terrifying.
Martha and Solin watched it feed.
The ground beneath the Craw was churning and quaking, as if a tremendous gravitational force was at work. The very matter of the place – animal, vegetable, mineral – was being sucked into one long, spiralling strand that looked, from this distance, rather like a tornado.
And it was being fed straight into the hungry mouth of the Craw.
The screen itself was vibrating with a very dense grumbling sound.
Martha felt her throat constrict as the noise intensified. She realised they were hearing the scream of the world itself as it was attacked by the Craw. There was a whole lot of other, vastly unsavoury noises emanating from the Craw itself.
51
‘It’s just sucking everything up. . . ’ Solin cried. He touched the delicate dials again. The picture shivered with pixelated mess and then steadied. It came into even greater focus. Now they could see a ring of wicked, jewel-like eyes around the crown of the being’s head.
Martha had seen a picture of the Craw from space, as it hovered above one of the land masses of Tiermann’s World. A huge, pallid tapeworm. Now she really understood the danger they were in. To a creature like this, they were nothing. They weren’t people. They weren’t individuals. They were just matter. Same as the plant life and rocks out there. They were here to be pulped and fed indiscriminately into that obscene, palpating mouth.
The noises were getting ever louder. Solin shut off the sound, but still it rang horribly in their ears.
‘We need to get moving,’ Martha said, very quietly.
52
There was no way of knowing the time of day, down here on Level Minus Thirty-Nine. There was no natural light, of course, this far down. Nor were there any clocks. The place existed in a permanent half-lit limbo.
Luckily the Doctor had an excellent sense of time. He knew he had been down here for just over six hours. Six fruitless hours had elapsed since those Servo-furnishings had roughly manhandled him into the elevator and then out again, at the very bottom of the Dreamhome.
The morning saw him bruised and rueful, and seething with frustration.
Foolish Doctor, he seethed. What a complete div. Once more he had let his insatiable curiosity get the better of him, and with disastrous results. He had effectively given in and allowed himself to be brought here and imprisoned. He had been keen to see what went on down here, close to the Dreamhome’s power source. The make-up of this fantastic building fascinated him, and its secrets had led him into this disastrous situation. Here he was, trapped now. And the hours until the advent of the Voracious Craw were slipping away. . .
He hoped Martha was all right. She had looked so shocked and horrified as he had allowed himself to be dragged off by those robots.
53
Perhaps he should have resisted. Disabled them. Grabbed Martha and left the ungrateful Tiermanns to it. That would have been the best and most logical thing to do. Ah well, that wasn’t the Doctor’s way.
Now he had to make the best of it.
The thing was, there wasn’t much down here on Level Minus Thirty-Nine. Just a few mostly empty rooms, dusty and disused. A few hunks of rusting machinery and leftover bits of robots.
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