Doctor Who_ Ultimate Treasure Part 10

'- of going last,' the Doctor continued, pulling out a coil of climbing rope from his pack. 'We need a solid anchor man, and you are eminently the most qualified.'

Five minutes later they set out, roped together, the Doctor leading, Jaharnus second, Peri third, and Falstaff bringing up the rear. The Doctor used his staff to probe each slab ahead of him. It took a significant weight to trigger a slab, and he had to lean heavily on it to be sure it was safe. Twice he almost fell into concealed pits, one of which had been dry, the other floored with spikes. Fortunately, there were no remains of a previous seeker in the bottom. It was slow going. After an hour they had hardly covered a mile, which was probably as fast as conditions would allow, Peri decided. They stopped for a drink from their canteens and to eat food bars provided by the TARDIS's synthesiser. The sun was high in the sky. Peri took her cape and hood out of her pack and draped it over her head and shoulders for some protection from its rays. The Doctor and Falstaff both had hats, while Jaharnus was bareheaded. Perhaps, with her tough skin, the sun didn't bother her, but Peri noticed she had been walking with her mouth agape, flicking out her red pointed tongue, rather like a dog panting.

The Doctor, who had been looking around him thoughtfully, suddenly asked, 'How many different-coloured slab spots have you seen?'

They looked around them. 'They are of all colours,' said Jaharnus.

'Really? Have you seen a brown or pink, black or white?'

'Surely that is a black over there?' said Falstaff pointing, then mopping his brow with a large handkerchief he had pulled from his sleeve.

'I would say that's violet, said the Doctor. 'You see, it's a little darker than that one over there, which is indigo.'

'Does it matter?' asked Jaharnus.

'Doctor,' said Peri, 'what are you getting at?'

'I should have noticed. There are only seven spot colours: indigo and violet, plus green, blue, red, orange and yellow.' The colours of the rainbow!' said Peri.

'Yes, and that suggests a sequence.'

'Well fillip me with a three-man beetle!' said Falstaff. 'I believe you have the key to the safe path over this interminable plain, Doctor.'

'Perhaps. There's only one way to find out.' He looked about for the next red-spot tile that had an orange adjacent to it in the direction they were travelling. He tested it and stepped forward. It was sound. So was the orange. They followed after him across yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. It meant travelling by a snaking course, but it was much faster than they had been going. Sure enough, there was a red tile adjacent to the violet.

They began to move with more confidence.

The Doctor's party were just visible as dots out on the s.h.i.+mmering plain, when Arnella followed her uncle through the last of the trees and stood on the edge of the great expanse.

Thorrin quickly had his binoculars focused on their rival seekers.

'They are apparently picking their way carefully and watching where they step,' he reported after a minute. He put the binoculars away and cautiously examined the nearest of the hexagonal slabs. From his pack he took a small device like a hand torch and played it across the first row. The fourth slab he tested triggered a sharp beeping. At his direction Willis found a large rock and dropped it on to the slab, which split open, precipitating the rock into a deep chamber below.

Thorrin chuckled. 'I think this is going to be perfectly straightforward, provided you step only where I do.'

Holding the scanner before him, he led the way out on to the tiled plain.

Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo...

The grooves between the slabs going past underfoot, endless cl.u.s.ters of triangles building into endless hexagons. Red orange, yellow, green, blue...

Left, right, left, right. Angles and lines, all the same... Red, orange, yellow, green...

In a vague and remote way Peri wished she had brought sungla.s.ses. The glare off the pale slabs was brilliant and it was getting hard to see the spots of colour on the tiles.

Red, orange, yellow...

The reflected heat washed over her as though it was the open door of an oven, but she plodded on.

Red, orange...

A part of her knew her feet were burning, but there didn't seem to be anything she could do about it.

Red...

Her legs gave way and she fell on to her hands and knees. The line around her waist jerked as Jaharnus carried on marching.

Falstaff nearly trod on her. Her skin was burning where it touched the stone slabs! With a yell of pain she scrambled to her feet again, feeling dangerously light-headed. The others kept on walking, pulling her along with them. The Doctor hadn't even noticed she'd fallen. What was the matter with them all?

Then she realised to her dismay that the entire horizon was lost in the quicksilver ripples of the heat haze. The sun seemed to be hovering directly overhead, blazing down out of a bra.s.sy sky and giving no clue as to their orientation. She couldn't see the sides of the valley or the woods. Their line of march had zigzagged as they followed the safe path. How did they know they hadn't gone off course? Their eyes had all been on the ground watching where they put their feet. She tried to shout to the others to stop but it came out as a croak through her parched throat. How long since she'd taken a drink? Desperately she jerked hard on the line. Jaharnus and the Doctor stopped and Falstaff cannoned into her.

Falstaff and Jaharnus stood swaying slightly and even the Doctor seemed unsteady. They were blinking and frowning, looking about them as though waking from a dream. Peri suddenly remembered that her feet were scorching even through the thick soles of her boots, and began hopping from one to the other. She must have been sweating profusely, yet the air was so dry and hot it evaporated right off her skin.

The Doctor took a long draught from his canteen, splashed a little over his face, then looked at them bleakly. 'It's a trap,' he said, his voice cracking as he spoke. 'A subtle one. Partly the Gelsandorans' doing perhaps, together with line hypnosis.'

'What?' asked Peri.

'A repet.i.tion of regular patterns going past the eye. It can induce a sort of trancelike state.'

'We must find some shade, at least until the sun starts down,'

Jaharnus said, her long tongue flicking out between words. 'We daren't walk any further like this.'

'Shade!' exclaimed Falstaff, swaying dangerously. 'Out here?

Surely you jest, mistress. A pox on Rovan! Old Jack is done for!'

'The sleeping rolls,' said the Doctor. 'It's better than nothing.'

They had to sit on their packs to insulate themselves from the ground. Putting the bedrolls over their heads to form a crude awning relieved some of the sting of the sun, but most of the heat was reflected up from the ground around them and they began to stifle in the dead, motionless air under the covers. Peri knew they had to last at least another couple of hours before they could expect any drop in temperature, but she was beginning to wonder what condition they would be in by then. They sat and suffered. Their water, which had seemed like an ample supply when they set out, judging from the temperate woodland where they had landed, ran out. How could they have antic.i.p.ated finding desert conditions within a few miles of them? Peri thought dizzily. It wasn't natural. No, of course it wasn't.

Jaharnus tried to laugh, but her voice sounded terribly hoa.r.s.e.

'We are like my ancestors caught in the cracked mud at the bottom of a dried-up lake. We find their fossils from time to time.'

Peri was aware of the Doctor muttering, 'There must be an answer, there must be...'

Peri felt herself slipping away. Dimly she realised Dynes's drone was still hovering a little way off, its gleaming lenses focused upon them. Surely it wasn't going to sit there and watch them die! The last thing she remembered was the Doctor on his hands and knees crawling out from under the bedroll awning, and trying to haul himself upright with his staff.

In the Stop Press Stop Press, Dynes hunched forward over the monitor, staring intently at the figures huddled beneath their makes.h.i.+ft sunshades. This was good stuff. What was the Doctor doing?

One last futile effort? Chasing after a mirage, perhaps?

'DAVE 2, move in for a close-up,' he directed.

He just hoped he was going to die artistically.

Arnella began to feel dizzy, even with her power-cooled sun helmet and protective neck flap. Thorrin had called a halt, so she took another mouthful of water. She'd never known such heat.

Thorrin stared at the compa.s.s in his hand, then he flipped up the tinted visor of his own helmet and peered about him Arnella followed his gaze, as did Brockwell and her uncle.

It was as though they were in the middle of a gla.s.sy bowl, paved with the interminable hexagon slabs any roofed with blazing sky. They turned about, but there was no sign of any horizon.

'What's the matter?' her uncle asked Thorrin. Mutely he held out the compa.s.s. Arnella saw it was spinning wildly and felt little twinge of fear.

'I'm afraid we're lost,' Thorrin said.

'Perhaps we can use the orientation of the paving grid as a guide?' Brockwell suggested quietly. 'I noticed we were going perpendicular to their faces.

Thorrin chuckled. 'Of course we can. Keeping your head,Will.

That's good,' he commended absently, glancing at the slabs before him and setting off once more.

'Wait, Professor. Were we not facing that way?' said the Marquis, pointing sixty degrees to the left of Thorrin's proposed line of march.

'No, it's to the right, isn't it?' Brockwell said.

They looked at each other, then at Arnella, who shrugged hopelessly.

'We must have turned ourselves around scanning the horizon,'

Thorrin said. 'We'd better stop here until the sun is lower and we can orientate ourselves again. We cannot go much further in this heat anyway.'

Brockwell was carrying a self-a.s.sembly tent in his pack. It was a surprisingly small package that he placed on the ground, then pulled a cord in the side. Pneumatic ribs, inflated by a tiny high-compression gas cylinder, writhed and popped open. In half a minute the dome-shaped structure was fully erected and they climbed inside gratefully. The foil-lined, double-thickness floor helped insulate them from the scorching ground. They threw open the side panels to encourage any through draft, but even so it was only the cooling helmets that made it bearable, though hardly pleasant.

'This is another test,' Thorrin stated, his jaw set resolutely.

'Fair enough, I should have antic.i.p.ated something like it in the circ.u.mstances. But we shall survive, and won't let it slow us down for long. We should still be able to reach the far side by nightfall.'

The Marquis nodded in agreement, but seemed suddenly too exhausted to speak. Arnella looked at him in concern. He had driven himself through so many years of despair that she sometimes worried what effect it had had on his health. The trouble was he would never admit to any weakness.

'I wonder how the Doctor's party is doing,' Brockwell said.

Arnella found herself frowning. She had noticed the interest Brockwell had shown in the other party, especially that girl with the curiously dated hairstyle and odd accent. Well, it was not unreasonable that he should show some concern, she decided. The girl was more likely his type.

Thorrin used his binoculars and peered out through the open sides of the tent. Methodically he quartered the horizon, then lowered them again. 'It may be the atmospheric disturbance, of course, but I can't see them anywhere.'

Peri was floating somewhere cool and wet. Somehow the heat had gone. Even the terrible glare was muted. She opened her eyes.

The Doctor was beside her, his arm gently holding her upright.

Falstaff and Jaharnus were opposite them. They were all chest deep in greenish water, holding on to ropes at the bottom of a six-sided shaft. It took her addled mind a moment to realise why it seemed so familiar, then she gave a rasping laugh.

'Pretty smart,' she croaked. 'Hardly needed to dry off, did I?'

Looking up, she saw that the ropes were tied to the middle of each of the remaining staffs, which had been laid across the angled corners at the lip of the shaft. Over these had been draped their bedrolls, shading all but the centre of the well beneath. Insulated from the surface, the water and the stone around them had remained surprisingly cool.

"T'was the only shade around, though I do not relish the climb out, said Falstaff 'I may need some small a.s.sistance to ascend.'

'We'll solve that problem when we must,' said Jaharnus. 'I for one have no desire to move anywhere for the moment. I couldn't have lasted much longer up there.'

'We must remember to refill our canteens before we leave,' said the Doctor. 'They have integral purifiers so the water shouldn't do us any harm.'

Peri felt as though she was thinking clearly for the first time in hours. She squinted up the shaft at the glare from the sky, noting the camera drone peering down at them over the edge.

Better luck next time, she thought, then frowned. 'How can it be so hot out there? The sun is right overhead, but the woods around the white pyramid seemed pretty temperate. For that matter, who built all these traps and the plain? It must have taken years.'

'Well, by Shalvis's own admission, the Gelsandorans have had thousands of years to construct and refine the quest,' the Doctor pointed out. 'I think they are more materially advanced than they appear superficially. The engineering that maintains them is probably hidden well out of sight.' He grimaced, betraying a momentary flash of anger. 'a.s.suming of course that all this isn't simply an illusion.'

The others looked at him in surprise and disbelief.

'Blocking the nerve impulses to a finger to prevent a gun being fired I can just about believe,' Jaharnus said, 'but creating an illusion as perfect as this? Never.'

'I only said it was a possibility.'

It was afternoon when Qwaid, Gribbs, and Drorgon finally emerged from the wood. Qwaid could not make out the other two groups, but it seemed likely they were ahead of them. With the worst of the midday heat abating, the paved plain looked open and inviting, but Qwaid's natural distrust of anything that looked like a sucker bet made him hesitate before stepping straight out after them.

'Dro, get some rocks. Let's check this out.'

On the fifth try, a hexagonal slab fell inward. There were spikes at the bottom of the pit beneath, together with a few unidentifiable bones.

Drorgon scratched his ma.s.sive head, squinted into the hazy distance then at the thousands of slabs that lay between them it.

'Throwing rocks ahead of us is going to take forever,' he pointed out practically.

Qwaid said nothing. That much had been immediately apparent. There had to be a trick to getting across, of course, but how long would it take to figure out?

Gribbs was muttering something.

'Spit it out, Qwaid said automatically.

'Well, I was just thinking... If these slabs are all pressure triggered, but hinged at the sides...'

'Yes?'