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.‘I don’t want to die of thirst yet: not until I have to.’Krans brushed him aside with a shrug of his powerful shoulder.‘He’s coming round, Erak,’ he growled.The Doctor’s eyes had flickered open and then closed again.Krans lumbered over to the fire and drew out a crackling branch which he brought over and thrust towards the Doctor’s face.‘What have you done with the rest of our crewmates?’ he snarled.The Doctor flinched away from the blazing brand with a gasp.He opened his eyes and looked down at his pinioned arms with a mildly puzzled expression.Then he stared straight at Krans and smiled.‘Do you think I could have a glass of water?’ he croaked.Krans pushed the burning branch closer.The Doctor pressed himself back against the cliff.‘What’s happened to Roth and Warra and Henk.?’snapped Erak.The Doctor craned round to look at him.‘Oh dear,’ he sighed, ‘I was so hoping for news of some dear friends of my own.but I fear I cannot help you at all.’‘So there are more of you,’ said a clear, authoritative voice from beyond the makeshift porch.A tall, slim, fair-haired man of about forty was gazing contemptuously at the Doctor’s bound, huddled figure.‘Two very dear companions,’ said the Doctor, struggling to sit more upright.‘Perhaps you have seen them?’‘Where did you find him?’ demanded the newcomer, ignoring the Doctor.‘First saw him lurking around that damned circle,’ Erak replied, giving the Doctor a sharp nudge so that he fell sideways, unable to save himself.‘I was not lurking,’ he corrected gently, ‘I was simply attempting to repair that old Transmat Installation when I.’Erak jerked the Doctor upright again.‘That old what?’ cried the tall newcomer, approaching with an incredulous stare.‘There’s no Transmat here,’ Erak snapped.‘The Earth’s been junked.’The Doctor shook his head emphatically.‘Temporarily abandoned perhaps,’ he smiled, ‘but far from “junked” as you call it.’‘It’s finished.useless.’ Krans shouted in a sudden burst of fury.‘It’s nowhere near the Patrol Zones.So no one comes here, ever.Check, Vural?’ Krans flung his last remark up at the tall, fair-haired man.He nodded slowly in agreement.‘How did you get here?’ Vural demanded, staring down at the Doctor.‘I was about to ask you the same question,’ the Doctor replied calmly, his eyes watering with the smoke from the glowing branch.Krans suddenly shoved it right up against the Doctor’s face, quivering with pent-up violence.‘Don’t play smart with us,’ he hissed.Then he turned to Vural.‘We’re getting nowhere like this,’ he muttered.‘So why don’t we finish him off?’Vural motioned Krans to lay off.He fixed the Doctor with piercing eyes and said in a quiet but menacing tone,‘You know well enough how we got here.We were in orbit, measuring Solar Radiation levels.You sent out a bogus Mayday Call and enticed us down here.When we left the Scout to look around, the ship was vapourised.Nine of us are stranded.’The Doctor glanced around, his face creased with pain from the livid burn on his cheek.‘Where are the others?’ he asked, through clenched teeth.There was a short pause.Then Vural spoke.‘Your Scavenger got them.’The Doctor stared up at the tall figure in front of him.‘My what?’ he murmured, his eyes widening.When at last Sarah reached the pit she was almost hysterical with fear.The invisible humming pulsated softly somewhere in the ravine behind her.She sank down with aching lungs at the edge of the hole and called down into the darkness, ‘Harry.the Doctor’s completely disappeared.I just can’t find him anywhere.’ There was no reply and no movement from below.Sarah peered anxiously through the smashed and scattered reeds.‘Harry, what are we going to do?’ she cried.She was aware of the humming coming slowly nearer and nearer behind her.Then she caught sight of the mass of fallen rock lying in the bottom of the pit.‘Harry.What’s happened.Where are you?’ she screamed.Sarah spun round.A strange greenish light was approaching along the foot of the ravine.She seized a dead branch—like a length of bamboo—from the shattered camouflage.Wielding it in front of her like a club, she backed away from the eerie, humming glow towards a group of enormous boulders, her wellingtons slithering perilously close to the edge of the gaping hole beside her.Just as she felt her back against the nearest boulder, a rapid panting and flapping burst out among the rocks behind her.She tried to turn round but she found herself hypnotised by the quivering glow gliding smoothly towards her.The panting came nearer.Sarah felt warm breath on the back of her neck.She gave a start, and lost her footing on the crumbling edge.Her cry of horror was stifled by a large, gloved hand, as she was lifted bodily and carried away among the boulders.She tried to twist round, but her captor held her like a vice.A few seconds later, a dome-shaped object, the size of a very large bell, glided up out of the mist and hovered humming over the yawning pit.Its metallic surface bristled with antennae and probes, and was studded with small covered apertures.The air surrounding the machine formed an iridescent haze.Sarah stopped struggling and stared in fascination as a thin tentacle emerged from one of the apertures and snaked down into the hole where it seemed to grope for something.There was a pause while the robot clicked softly to itself, and then the tentacle was retracted.A mechanism like a periscope containing a large lens began to sweep the area around the pit.Sarah’s head was forced down between the boulders, out of sight, but she could hear the machine emit a series of shrill bleeping sounds and then glide away, out of the ravine.When the humming had faded into the distance, Sarah was abruptly released.A tall, gaunt figure in a ragged spacesuit flapped past her and moved cautiously into the open to check that the robot had gone.With fearful backward glances, it loped back to where Sarah was crouching among the rounded, glassy rocks.The rubbery slapping of the ripped material sent a shiver through her body.‘So it was you following me—making that noise,’ she said, with a mixture of relief and suspicion.Sarah found herself face to face with a terrified, trembling individual with cropped black hair, a thin beard and dark, almost Oriental features.His face was emaciated.and covered in barely-healed scars.‘Who are you?’ he whispered.‘Where are you from?’‘Just what I was going to ask you,’ Sarah blurted, relaxing a little.‘My name is Sarah.I come from Earth—but it’s rather a long story, I’m afraid.’The man stared at her for several minutes, mouthing the unfamiliar name
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