Ten Little Aliens Read online

  ‘They must’ve been hidden here for some reason,’ said Tovel.

  Then there was a hiss and a crackle like fat on a flame, and then the sound of something heavy slamming into the glass.

  Ben whirled round in time to see a huge hunk of flesh smeared against the inside of the cylinder, just for a few seconds, until the relentless swirl of inky fluid swept it back into the maelstrom.

  It looked to be someone’s back.

  Ben gagged, turned away.

  ‘Lindey,’ whispered Roba. ‘That’s got to be Lindey. That’s why her set’s here.’

  The Doctor stared at them gravely. ‘The secrets of the propulsion system?’

  Creben looked properly downcast for the first time Ben could recall. ‘It all comes back to the body, doesn’t it.

  Lindey’s and Denni’s they use for fuel. Frog’s is no good so they start turning her into something else.’

  ‘Meat.’ Joiks started giggling. ‘That’s all we are now. Meat.’

  Ben turned to the Doctor. ‘They’re really using human flesh and blood as fuel?’

  ‘For the rituals,’ Roba added. ‘They’re using it for the rituals.’

  The Doctor looked down at the floor. ‘As a basic material in the energy conversion process, yes, it’s possible.’

  ‘Not just human remains.’ Tovel pointed to the cylinder.

  Pressed up against the glass, along with a mess of dark-brown chunks that looked like dog food, was a bloody medallion of glistening pink flesh. It bore a brand, a rectangle crossed through with a diagonal line.

  ‘Schirr,’ he breathed. ‘There’s Schirr bodies in this thing as well.’

  ‘The Morphieans,’ said Creben. ‘They’re taking back what’s theirs.’

  ‘And dealing most conclusively with their enemies,’ the Doctor agreed. ‘I imagine this centrifuge is where the Schirr bodies on the platform were conjured to.’

  ‘There’s six of them left,’ Ben said with a frown. ‘So why turn Frog into a Schirr too?’

  ‘To maintain some secret balance?’ the Doctor wondered.

  ‘Or because Schirr flesh gives a higher yield? Perhaps we will all become Schirr before too long, the impurities driven from our flesh so that it may be changed...’

  ‘And we’ll all wind up in there,’ said Tovel quietly, transfixed by the cylinder.

  ‘Great,’ said Roba. His dark skin was covered in sweat, and he kept licking his lips every few seconds. ‘So, how do we stop this thing?’

  ‘Stop it?’ Joiks spluttered. ‘You want we should get in that thing and pull out the plug?’

  ‘These pipes and stuff. We could pull them out, we could -’

  ‘Young man,’ the Doctor said sternly, ‘you can see the powers at work there. We dare not disturb that balance without a fuller knowledge of how the processes work.’

  ‘So get learning, old man,’ Roba growled menacingly.

  The Doctor sighed. ‘I confess I was hoping to find a more conventional means of propulsion. If I only had more time to-’

  ‘All this time you been shooting off a mouth as big as one of these tunnels,’ Roba hissed. ‘And now you don’t know nothing?’

  ‘All right, quiet, all of you,’ snapped Tovel. ‘You talk about learning, Roba. We’re learning more all the time. We know where the Schirr went, we know where Lindey and Denni went.’ He grabbed the websets from Creben. ‘And we got these. Denni was still recording when she was killed. Maybe we’ll learn some more from watching that back.’

  ‘So, how about we get back, then?’ chimed Ben. ‘Check up on Polly and the others. This place gives me the creeps.’

  Joiks suddenly lunged for the websets.

  Tovel recoiled instinctively, kept them out of reach. ‘What the hell are you playing at, Joiks?’

  ‘What we gonna learn from watching them die? I say we should dump them.’

  Roba scowled at him. ‘That don’t make no sense, Joiks.’

  ‘Don’t make no sense to rake over the past, neither.’ Joiks laughed nervously. ‘What are you people, sick?’

  ‘Something happened down there, didn’t it, Joiks?’ Creben said. ‘When Denni got taken.’

  Joiks backed away. ‘You’re crazy, Creben.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ Creben shook his head. ‘I think you know something you’re not telling us.’

  Tovel grabbed hold of Joiks’s shoulder. ‘We’re talking to you.’

  ‘It’s nothing!’ Joiks pulled himself free of Tovel’s grip.

  ‘Denni was saying stuff about Haunt. Didn’t think she was fit to lead us on a live ammo shoot when she gets so worked up by the Schirr and all that. She wanted me to log a complaint or something, I dunno.’

  ‘And did you agree?’ demanded the Doctor.

  ‘I told her she was crazy.’ Joiks paused. When he spoke again, his voice had lost its cockiness. ‘But then, you know...

  she wants something from me, I’m maybe thinking, how ‘bout I get something in return?’

  Tovel snorted. ‘You’re filth, Joiks.’

  ‘Look, I didn’t do nothing! It was dark, when the sets don’t pick much stuff up. I put an arm round her waist, sounded her out a little... But she was grabbed right from out of my arms, and that’s the truth!’ Joiks’s voice grew whinier, less confident. ‘I tried to hold on to her -’

  ‘Yeah, well, it sounds a sweet little story, Joiks,’ said Tovel.

  ‘But maybe we’ll view the sets anyway. Just in case they picked up something, right?’

  ‘Reckon Denni was lucky she got offed when she did,’

  muttered Roba.

  Joiks turned and stamped off the way they’d come without another word. He teetered on the edge of the indigo abyss for a moment, as if surprised to find it there. Then, with a last glare back at Tovel and the others, he set off across the divide. The rolling blue swell of light swept over and around him. Still it hissed and rustled like the sea.

  ‘We’d better get after him,’ sighed Tovel as he secured the two websets to his belt. But Roba was already slouching off, leaving the others behind.

  ‘If you’re going to lead us,’ said Creben, indicating the two bowed figures as they strode through the blue, ‘you’d better

  lead us.’

  ‘Yes, after you, Tovel,’ agreed the Doctor absently. He pottered off along the force bridge after Creben and Tovel.

  Ben followed on behind, trying not to look too hard through the eddying light and down into the depths of the ravine. If whatever was holding them up chose to let go...

  They were halfway over when Ben heard the noise of heavy wings flapping, like distant bellows drawing in air and hissing it back out.

  He swore. ‘Do any of you hear...?’

  Tovel and his merry men ignored him and grabbed for their weapons. They’d heard it all right.

  Moments later a flight of the fat stone cherubim breezed through the gaping mouth of the tunnel, some six or seven of them.

  ‘They found us,’ Joiks screamed.

  The apparitions fanned out into the room. Their chubby arms were wide open. The sharp hooks of their fingers flexed and wriggled.

  ‘For all our ignorance,’ said the Doctor, glaring haughtily at the creatures as they spun through the blinding blue air, ‘I fear we may still have learned too much.’

  Joiks opened fire. The others quickly followed suit.

  The cherubim bobbed down unharmed through the opening volley of laser blasts. As Ben fired his crummy pistol, he saw the statues’ serene smiles growing broader at the sight of the humans huddled beneath them.

  ‘Just meat,’ Joiks muttered, as his gun spat bolt after useless bolt.

  Chapter Twelve

  Murder is Easy

  I

  Tovel was right, Polly realised. Shade’s injuries were healing with incredible speed. The splits and gouges in his face, all puckered by endless lines of tiny plastic sutures, had now practically smoothed themselves out, and he seemed to be sleeping peacefully. It still looked
like someone had cut a map of the London Underground into his face, but all things considered, his wounds should’ve been a good deal worse.

  She thought about what he’d said about being a jinx, tried to tell herself it was self-pitying, stupid talk. But what if it was true?

  Polly took out the palmscreen from her spacesuit, and studied it. ‘Oh no!’ she hissed. The screen was blank. She must’ve knocked the OK button when she hid the stupid thing away. That must mean all Shade’s incriminating files were deleted.

  Well, good, she told herself. It showed that Shade had some good luck after all, so he couldn’t be a jinx. They would all be fine.

  Frog’s scream nearly punctured Polly’s eardrums.

  She spun round, and her hand flew to her mouth in shock.

  Frog was propped up on one elbow, her combat suit unzipped. She was digging a knife into her shiny pink stomach. There seemed to be blood everywhere.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Polly squeaked.

  ‘When you got poison inside you,’ panted Frog, her pale staring eyes bulging out of her red face, ‘you gotta cut it out.’

  ‘But you can’t just... cut out...’ Polly wondered if she would faint. ‘Cut out all that flesh.’

  Frog flashed her a manic grin. ‘Wanna watch me try?’

  ‘Put down the knife, Frog,’ Polly pleaded. ‘You’ll kill yourself.’

  ‘Ha!’ Frog’s mad smile relaxed a little. ‘Now why didn’t I think of that.’ She gritted her teeth and slid the knife along.

  But another bloodcurdling scream escaped her.

  ‘Frog, you’re mad, you’re sick,’ Polly told her. ‘Stop that now, or I’ll -’

  ‘You’ll burst into tears, sweetie?’ Frog’s face crumpled in mock-sympathy. ‘Look, just turn around and gaze into Shadow’s dreamy green eyes or something, OK?’

  Polly’s resolve hardened. ‘Give me the knife.’

  ‘Or you’ll do what? Kill me? Go right ahead, honey.’

  ‘Frog!’ Shade’s husky voice behind her made Polly jump.

  She supposed it wasn’t a surprise he’d woken up. If the first scream hadn’t got to him, the second one would’ve done the trick.

  He advanced on her, a little shakily.

  ‘Great, I got an audience,’ Frog said. She kept her red-rimmed eyes open. Slid the knifepoint easily into the sticky skin on her stomach.

  She slipped the blade along.

  The eyes shut, the mouth opened.

  Joiks screamed.

  Ben saw that two of the stone angels had gripped the soldier by the arms. They fluttered just above him, dwarfing him as he ran in panic through the searing blue light that swirled and buffeted all about. Then they lifted him off the invisible ground.

  ‘Concentrate your fire on those ones!’ shouted Tovel.

  Creben and Roba did as they were told. Bolt after white-hot bolt shot through the sizzling air. But the huge, squat bodies of the other cherubim spinning in the whirling sky got in the way. None of them seemed to feel the fire in any case. Joiks was carried further and further up into the blue haze.

  One of the giants swooped and landed close to Ben. He fired the pistol into its placid sculpted eyes, its pitying smile.

  It trotted towards him, like a puppy wanting to play. ‘Doctor!’

  Ben yelled helplessly, still firing.

  The Doctor stormed over, a look of helpless outrage on his face.

  ‘Tovel, help us!’ he cried as the statue bore down on them both.

  But Tovel had problems of his own. Two of the hideous, outsized angels were sweeping about him. One kicked out with a huge stone foot, and his rifle went flying through the air. The other kicked him in the ribs. Tovel yelled out as he fell backwards. Creben and Roba fired at his attackers, but the angels didn’t seem to notice.

  Ben’s pistol was out of ammo. The statue’s smile became broader.

  ‘Drop, Ben!’ the Doctor shouted as the creature rushed for them. Ben threw himself down, rolled on to his back. But the squat cherub just sailed lazily over them, beat its great stone wings and took to the air again. Stone, for God’s sake. How could these things be flying like they were light as a feather?

  Tovel helped him back up. The angels persecuting him had flown off too. Roba hauled the Doctor back to his feet. Creben stood a few feet away, panting, staring up into the haze.

  The stone angels circled slowly. Only the two that clutched on to Joiks’s arms stayed still, hovering like malevolent ghosts, high above the humans. One of them ripped Joiks’s backpack away, and let it tumble to the ground. Ben ran for it, scooped it up. He discarded his pistol in favour of the rifle, and tied what was left of the harness and its gear round his waist. But by the time he was aiming back up at the huge stone creatures, he saw he was too late to make any difference to the light. They had tugged Joiks, teased him, like two cats playing with a mouse, over towards the glass cylinder.

  Joiks screamed again, the noise echoing horribly all around. ‘They’re tearing me apart!’

  Ben could see the pain on Joiks’s face. The angels were massive, their arms shaped like a plump baby’s only fifty times bigger. Their huge hands were digging in to the skin, blood was soaking the dark grey of his combat suit.

  ‘Wait!’ shouted the Doctor.

  Ben blinked. Everything stopped, even Joiks’s screams.

  Though the frantic sobs that succeeded them weren’t a lot better.

  The cherubim that held Joiks looked down at him, as if suddenly confused.

  * * *

  Frog’s scream died away, and she looked down at the bloody blade embedded in her skin as if puzzled by it. Dark blood pumped from the gash she’d carved into herself. Now her hand trembled on the knife hilt. Polly sensed she was about to thrust down on it, push it right the way in, to finish this for good. ‘Shade, do something!’ hissed Polly.

  He stepped forward, uncertainly.

  The knife twisted a fraction in Frog’s hand.

  Joiks was still dangling helplessly from the huge stone hands of the angels.

  ‘We can’t help him,’ Roba shouted. ‘Come on!’

  Ben saw him and Creben edging for the jutting lip of rock that led on to the tunnel. He glanced at Tovel to see if he would follow suit. But he just stared helplessly up at Joiks.

  ‘Listen to me,’ the Doctor called up to the huge angels, his voice booming, unafraid. The creatures floated back towards him, still holding Joiks between them, while their fellows circled with disinterest. ‘We mean you no harm. We ask that you release our companion.’

  The gruesome cherubim looked blankly at each other. Then they bobbed a little closer to ground level.

  ‘Thank you,’ the Doctor said. ‘All we wish to do is talk with you in peace.’

  ‘You know her better than me, Shade.’ Polly willed herself not to pass out at the sight of so much blood. ‘Talk to her!’

  But Shade only stood and stared in silence, his mouth flapping open and shut.

  ‘It don’t hurt so bad,’ Frog whispered. She began to shake.

  Her grip clearly tightened still harder on the knife.

  Then a booted foot swung up under Frog’s chin.

  Haunt.

  Frog’s body slammed back into the force mattress.

  Haunt sat up beside her. Saw the knife sticking out of Frog’s stomach like a lever. Plucked it out of the wound and threw it aside.

  ‘Shade, fetch something to clean this up,’ she snapped impatiently. ‘Move.’

  Shade turned and practically fled for the much-depleted medical kit.

  Polly just gaped. She could see new strength in Haunt’s eyes. An almost wild look.

  Haunt must’ve noticed her staring. ‘Frog will be all right; she said. ‘I give the orders. No one dies round here without my say-so.’

  Joiks shrieked one final time as the two stone angels tore his arms from his sockets.

  ‘No!’ Tovel yelled.

  Ben saw the rest of the creatures swoop down on Joiks’s body. The
y tore the corpse to pieces in mid-air, all seven of them in a silent frenzy. Joiks’s blood sprayed over their beatific stone faces, soaked the sharp fingers.

  The Doctor stared on, appalled. ‘You are intelligent creatures,’ he cried. ‘Why this senseless killing!’

  ‘Move out!’ Tovel yelled.

  Ben turned his back on the scene. He took the Doctor by his elbow and steered him away, back across the shifting blue landscape towards the way out, urging him on as fast as he could.

  The Doctor was still mumbling to himself, shaking his head, shell-shocked. All prepossession gone. He looked about him nervously, not with the usual air of the brilliant academic, but as a bewildered, frightened old man. Ben practically had to drag the old boy along to where Tovel was waiting grimly on the jagged slate promontory. Behind him, in the shadows, stood Roba and Creben.

  Creben’s face was white as dust. ‘We have to get back to control.’

  ‘Please, a moment, please,’ the Doctor muttered hoarsely, trying to catch his breath.

  ‘It’s all right, Doctor,’ Ben told him, with a hesitant backwards glance over his shoulder. ‘It’s all right, they’re not coming after us.’

  ‘But if they choose to do so, my boy,’ the Doctor whispered,

  ‘as inevitably they shall... How will we fight them?’ He gripped Ben’s wrist, stared chillingly into his eyes. ‘How can we resist such evil?’

  II

  ‘So,’ said Haunt stiffly. ‘You lost Joiks.’

  Tovel, standing rigidly to attention before her, nodded once

  - though to Polly, from the story he’d told, it hardly sounded like he was responsible. ‘For a few moments I thought the Doctor was getting through to them, that they were going to let Joiks go...’

  ‘They were like ruddy great kids,’ Ben chipped in, slumped between Creben and Roba against the barricade. ‘Just playing about.’

  ‘Not kids,’ said Roba, scratching his neck furiously.

  ‘Animals.’

  The Doctor tapped his chin. Polly saw he was looking a little more his old self now, and shuddered to think what they all must’ve been through in the blue cave. ‘The wielders of any kind of power are animals, seeking to dominate animals less fierce.’