‘Right,’ he said, rallying his companions, ‘I’m not going to be able to do this alone. I’ll need you both to help me, but be on your guard – we have no real idea what we’ll find down here.’
‘We’ve got your back, Doctor,’ said Caroline. ‘Haven’t we, Danny?’
‘Oh, of course,’ said Danny, somewhat disingenuously. ‘You want us to follow you into almost certain death? Jump at the chance, me.’
‘You don’t have to come,’ said the Doctor, beginning to shimmy down the rope. ‘You can stay up here while Caroline risks her life for you and the colonists.’
Danny considered a retort, but thought better of it. ‘All right, I’m coming. But I don’t understand why some of this lot can’t help us.’
‘The colonists are in hardly any state to be cooperative. They’ve been deliberately manipulated to become aggressive towards each other. Hopefully they can hold off from tearing each other apart for a while, but I doubt they’ll be much use in a life or death situation.’
‘A little harsh, Doctor,’ said Desiato, overhearing.
‘Pragmatic, captain, merely pragmatic. I need people I can trust with me. Your people are more under Walters’ power than I think you realise.’
‘I’m coming with you Doctor, at the very least. The seconds-in-command can look after their respective crews. You need someone who knows this planet helping you.’
‘You may know the surface of the planet, captain, however - ’
‘I’m coming with you, and that’s final. This is my world now, and my people. I am going to protect them.’
‘Very well,’ said the Doctor, sliding down the rope. ‘Follow me down, one at a time,’ he called up, ‘the rope should hold one person.’
‘Should?’ said Danny.
‘Get down there,’ said Caroline, elbowing him in the ribs. ‘And stop being an arse. I don’t know what’s come over you since we started travelling with the Doctor.’
‘It might have something to do with me not knowing what I was letting myself in for,’ said Danny, nodding his head towards the certain doom that was surely lurking below the surface.
‘I just want you to speak to me,’ said Caroline, putting a hand on his shoulder and trying to look into his eyes.
Danny shifted his head, trying to look past her and refusing to make eye contact. ‘I’m okay. Really, I’m okay.’
Caroline smiled sadly. ‘I really wish I believe that.’
The Doctor’s voice came from down below. ‘Oi! You two! Get a move on!’
Danny grabbed the top of the rope and cautiously clambered down. When he reached the bottom, the Doctor shone a torch in his face.
‘I knew you wanted to help really,’ he said, grinning widely.
He shone his torch about the cavern they were now standing in. grey, bulbous shapes stood out from the gloom. The Doctor reached out and poked a wall. It stuck to his finger, stretching out towards him as he pulled his hand back, until it snapped back into the surface.
‘The symbiote completely ensconces this planet’s crust,’ he stated. ‘It must work its way through the ground, enveloping the world. As if the planet itself was a single life form.’
Caroline slid down beside them.
‘All the smaller life forms become suffused with it,’ continued the Doctor, awestruck. ‘They become part of it, like mitochondria in cells, or bacteria in the small intestine.’
‘Delightful,’ said Desiato, landing with a thud. ‘I’ve never been compared to intestinal flora before. Well, only once.’
‘It was meant in the kindest possible way, captain,’ said the Doctor, waving the light about and peering into the gloom. The bulbous knots of rock-like material gave way in a cleft to his right. ‘This is the only way Walters could have gone.’ He walked through the breach. ‘Come on, chop chop! Last one up against a homicidal loon is a rotten egg!’
The others followed him through, quickly enough to keep sight of him but slowly enough to keep watch in the shadows. Bizarre and worrying shapes jutted out from the cave walls, and they had to be constantly on guard not to walk straight into one and have an eye poked out.
Desiato bounded after the Doctor, catching up with him.
‘Yes, captain?’ queried the Doctor quietly.
‘Doctor, what you were saying before, about being under Walters’s powers. What did you mean? I realise he’s been manipulating us with these killings, but the what you said suggested something more.’
‘I’m afraid that Walters has most likely been influencing your very minds and emotions. It’s difficult to know for sure, but it certainly seems to be the case. Tell me, captain, how did your two crews first enter into this alliance?’
‘Well, when we both crashed in the same area, with little food or resources, alone with little hope of contacting the outside Universe, we had to cooperate to survive.’
‘Just like that?’
Desiato wondered what the Doctor was getting at. ‘Well, yes. We had no choice.’
‘Two crews, of wildly different species, enemies in a space war that had claimed the lives of thousands of their comrades, and you just sat down and said, “Oh well then gents, let bygones be bygones, let’s have a cup of tea and start farming”? Much as I’d like to think that your two species could cooperate on such a level, I am rather disinclined to believe it.’
‘Well, that is how it happened. After a couple of weeks in which we’d mostly tried to avoid each other, so as to keep tensions low, we started talking properly.’
‘A couple of weeks eating the planet’s wild plants and animals?’
‘Well, we obviously to had to eat.’
‘From the point you began ingesting the life forms of this world, the symbiotic entity was within you all. It subtly manipulated your subconscious minds – making you more susceptible to cooperation. Exactly as it’s been doing to life on this world for millions of years.’
‘You think so, Doctor? I’m not sure I like the sound of that.’
‘Well, it’s only a theory,’ said the Doctor, smiling reassuringly. ‘I wouldn’t worry about it. The life form was just doing a little friendly prodding to help you get along. Walters’s higher than normal ESP must have allowed him some awareness of the creature. As he grew used to it, he began to control it, imposing his will. And if he could do that, as we have seen only to well he can, then he could have taken it a step further.’
‘And used the symbiote to influence us?’
‘Exactly. Making you more aggressive to one another, rather than less. Destroying all your progress. Whatever the symbiote did to help, that was still your triumph. And now Walters has jeopardised all of it.’
This new information disturbed Desiato greatly. He had spent years in the fleet, defending the colonies of the Earth Empire against marauding aliens, only to end up fighting wars with species whose only crime was to defend their own worlds. Oh, he’d hated them for being enemies of humanity, swallowing propaganda, but deep down he’d felt more and more guilty of his role in the wars. The Tarrokku were one in a series of many such peoples. When their two crews had been marooned on this world, he’d felt almost relieved – this situation was an ideal opportunity to rebuild some of the relations between the Empire and Tarrokk. Of course, he’d eventually come to accept that a rescue was not going to be attempted. Their success in building a two-species society was not going to be reported to the Galaxy at large. However, he had still gained immense satisfaction from the thought that he and his people had made it work; and by now he’d come to think of them all as his people. He’d hatred of them had completely waned, and he found it hard to think that he’d ever felt that way. The news that some other alien force had helped them succeed robbed him of much of his pride in the colony. It did not disturb him as much, however, as the knowledge that it could very well have been for nothing; that it was all to lead to a return to bloodshed.
It all started when the Doctor had arrived. He’d admitted that his ship had provided power to the monster that had killed his people; his coming here had caused the deaths of those Desiato had sworn to protect. And now he was telling him that he hadn’t even been helping them, it was because of some alien, controlling them. And him! An alien monster infiltrating his mind. Making him want to live amongst creatures like the Tarrokku. Living in this primitive world, light years from home with only monsters for company.
What had the Doctor said earlier? He wasn‘t Human. What was he? Some kind of impostor? Another eetie, here to ruin Desiato’s work? To manipulate him? To murder him?
Hatred simmered in the captain’s mind. Give in, something was telling him. The Doctor is the enemy. Kill him and you can return home in his ship. Take your crew with you and the monsters here. Do it now.
The rage filling his mind, Desiato removed the blaster from his jacket. He took aim at the Doctor’s head, squeezed the trigger…
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