Doctor Who: Sontaran Experiment by Ian Marter Page A

to what she thought would be low power, and directed the transmitter probe at the point where one of Vural’s manacles was fused into the slab.
    ‘What is that thing?’ muttered Krans suspiciously, too weak to restrain her.
    ‘It’s perfectly all right,’ Sarah assured him. ‘Now just relax...’ she said, turning to the pale and shivering Vural.
    Sarah pressed the trigger button. Her arms began to shake as bursts of extremely low-frequency sound pulsed out in a tightly focused beam. For a while nothing happened. Sarah gritted her teeth and clutched the throbbing device to prevent it from jumping out of her hands.
    Suddenly, the rock surrounding the end of the Terullian strand seemed to soften like toffee. ‘Pull now,’ Sarah cried.
    Vural strained at the wire as hard as he could. To everyone’s astonishment it sprang free, and Vural’s arm was released.
    At once, Sarah set to work to free Vural’s other wrist.
    ‘You’re... you’re quite a girl...’ Krans muttered, when after a few minutes, Vural pulled his other arm away from the slab.
    ‘Thank you,’ Sarah said curtly, frowning with concentration. ‘Perhaps you will now believe that we are your friends,’ she added.
    A desperate cry from the ridge made her glance up from her task. The Doctor’s foot had caught in a crack and he was lying flat on his back, fighting off the advancing Styr with the gravity bar.
    Just as Vural’s last shackle broke free, Styr wrested the Terullian bar from the Doctor, and raised it high above his head like an axe. With a hoarse scream of hatred and revenge, the Galsec Commander forced himself to his feet and began to stumble up the rocks towards the ridge. Styr turned and watched Vural’s screaming, hysterical figure stagger painfully towards him. Behind him, the Doctor struggled to free his foot from the crevice.
    Styr waited, motionless, until the raging Vural reached him and began a pathetic attack. He allowed Vural to snatch the gravity bar and to strike him with feeble, harmless blows. Then, with a sudden burst of cruel amusement, the Sontaran lurched forward and knocked the helpless crewman off the ridge with a single sweep of his huge arm. Vural’s screams died abruptly as he crashed lifeless into the ravine.
    The Doctor managed to wrench his foot free just as Styr wheeled round on him again, his eyes roaring like blow-torches and the thick, black vapour jetting in hissing spurts from his swelling nostrils.
    ‘And now... you,’ Styr gasped, reaching down and picking the Doctor up by the lapels of his jacket, as if he were a sack.
    ‘You need a rest, Styr,’ the Doctor murmured, his face only centimetres from the Sontaran’s hideous, dribbling jaws and razor-sharp teeth. ‘You don’t look at all well to me.’
    The Sontaran’s flaring eyes bore into the Doctor’s face.
    ‘What is your function here on Earth?’ he gasped, shaking the Doctor like a rag doll.
    ‘Nothing much,’ the Doctor replied in a choking voice.
    ‘I just popped in to help a few friends from the Terra Nova...’
    ‘Terra Nova?’ Styr panted. There was a tearing sound as his talons pierced through the Doctor’s coat. Helplessly, the Doctor hung like a carcass from a butcher’s hook, racking his brains for some way of fighting back.
    Styr shook him again and drew him even closer to his wobbling mask of a face. ‘You will tell me all you know about the project...’ he hissed.
    The Doctor grinned weakly. ‘If I could only consult my diary, I could look it all up and tell you exactly what’s going to happen,’ he gasped.
    With an enraged bellow, Styr swung the Doctor into the air above his head. ‘Your absurd riddles are a pathetic attempt to gain time,’ he roared.
    The Doctor twisted his head round so that he could whisper directly into Styr’s ear. ‘I find time so useful,’ he breathed, thankful for the relief from being throttled by his own collar. ‘And from what I hear,’ he went on, ‘time is something that you