Youth is Wasted on the Young p.12
"Oh, this is very not good."
"What is it, Doctor?" Rory stared at the wasp-like creatures on the scanner screen. "What are they?"
"Wirrn." The Doctor dashed out of the chopper and sprinted over to the ATV. He jumped inside and snatched up the remote tracer board. He input some instructions and read the screens. With a growl he slapped the sliders to zero and tried again. Nothing.
He whipped out the sonic screwdriver and held it up, scanning. Nothing. He shoved it back in his pocket.
Rory leaned in the door, getting worried, the Colonel and Dutch leaned in beside him. "Doctor, what is it?"
"Rory! Does Amy still have her cell phone?" he demanded.
Rory's eyes lit up with hope. "Yeah, I think so." Rory dug out his phone and eagerly pressed her number. No signal. He almost howled in frustration.
The Doctor wiggled his fingers. "Gimme."
Rory handed it over. "It's the wrong planet, there's no satellites here for it," he complained.
"Oh, we'll just see about that." The Doctor's thumbs flew over the keys typing in a series of commands. "Come on, old girl," he muttered. "Hah! Bars!"
He held the phone to his ear.
"Come on, come on... Amy!"
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Amy jumped when her cell phone vibrated in her pocket. Sick with hope, she fumbled it out, hand shaking, slick with blood.
"Hello?"
"Amy!" The Doctor's exuberant shout was like angel trumpets in her ear. Her heart leaped with hope.
"Doctor! It bit me!" She stared down in shock at the hole in her arm, still seeping blood.
"What?! Are you all right? No, no. No time now. Just listen, they could detect this call at any minute. They're called Wirrn. They don't need air or water, they do need sunlight. They're vulnerable to electric shock but resistant to stazer fire. Do not under any circumstances let a grub touch you. Their slime will turn you into one of them. Think of it as really aggressive stem cells. Where are you?"
"I'm in a cell, the floor's dirt, but the walls are some sort of paper-concrete."
"Is there anyone with you?"
"Yes. Stanley and Captain..." the signal cut out. Amy stared at the phone. "Doctor! No, no, no..." she stabbed at the buttons with her thumb, the phone had power, but no signal.
"Amy?" Stanley asked shakily, he looked up from his fetal position on the floor. His face was paper white, his eyes the glassy flat shine of shock.
The door bulged, a Wirrn stepped in, antenna twitching. Instinctively, without thinking, Amy threw the phone at it. It bounced off the carapace. He looked at her for a moment then looked down at the phone. It stepped on the cellphone, crushing it into the dirt with one stilt-like leg. It turned and left.
Amy stared at the shattered phone in the dirt, laid her head on her arms, and cried.
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"Amy? Amy!" The Doctor programed the phone again. And buzzed it with the sonic screwdriver.
"What's wrong?" Rory asked, anxiously. Almost not wanting to know.
The Doctor growled, pulled back his hand as if to throw the phone, then stopped himself. He squeezed it tightly, then handed it back to Rory.
"They cut us off."
"Is Amy...?"
"She's all right. She's in a cell with Stanley and Schwillic."
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Amy felt a soft touch on her arm. She looked up to find Captain Schwillic standing beside her, one leg gently touching her arm in concern.
"Right!" she said, staring at the small pink alien. "That's enough of that." She scrubbed the teartracks off her face. "Are you all right?" she asked the tripod.
"I awoke when those things entered the room," he said softly, skin vibrating. "I stayed still, I did not want to attract their attention," he said, dipping down slightly in shame.
"I don't blame you, I wouldn't have either," Amy said, taking the tip of his leg in her hand and squeezing gently. "Why didn't they take your tracer?" she suddenly asked.
"I don't have one. We run a regular straight shot from the spaceport to the farm, and our ship has a transponder, so we're not required to have tracers."
"So there's no way for the Doctor to find us," she stared mournfully at her broken phone in the dirt.
"Maybe there is," Stanley said, hoarsely. He uncurled painfully from his huddle and sat up, still cradling his arm. "I've got another tracer."
"What? How?" Amy demanded. "Why didn't those things take it?"
"It's not activated."
"You think those things can sense them?"
"It's possible. With those antenna they may be able to detect the tracers electromagnetic signature."
"So why do you have two tracers?" Amy asked.
"I'm a tracker tech. I know what all kinds of things can go wrong with a tracer. And I'm out in the wilds a lot looking for lost colonists. It only makes sense to have a backup."
"So, if you have a working tracer, the Doctor can still find us," Amy said.
"Only if we can get somewhere where I can activate it without those things finding us. I don't care to have any more of my anatomy bitten off."
"Speaking of that, let me see your arm," she held out her hand, her own arm still looked raw, but she'd put pressure on it, and it had mostly stopped bleeding.
He held out his little boy fist, slowly, and she sighed in relief to see it wasn't as bad as she thought. The creature had apparently only meant to "disarm" them, not maim them. Stanley had a good chunk out of his forearm, but it wasn't as deep as it could have been. "Wiggle your fingers," she ordered.
He did, grimacing, and it started a new trickle of blood, but at least his fingers moved. "Thank heaven for that." She turned to the tripod, "Schwillic?" she asked, she thought she recognized it as the larger of the two who'd come with them. He bobbed a nod. "Good, can you go see if there's anything to salvage from my phone." She nodded at the crushed cellphone. Schwilic trundled over to start picking over the pieces.
"Stanley," she turned back to him, "give me your sock."
"Huh?" he asked.
Amy sighed in exasperation. "Take off your shoe and give me one of your socks."
Fumbling, still shocky, he did.
She took the sock and used her pen knife to cut off the top of the tube sock. She cut the top section into two rings. Folded one up into a bandage and pressed it to his wound, then slipped the other elasticized ring up over his wrist and onto his arm, using it to hold the bandage in place. "It's not as clean as I'd like, but it'll do."
She placed his hand on top of the tube sock and told him to press. "Hold that down until it stops bleeding."
"Where'd you learn to do that?" he asked, surprised, looking at the neat bandage.
"My boyfriend's a nurse."
She cut a bandage for her own arm then handed the rest of the sock back to him. "Put that in your pocket, we can use it for spare bandages later."
She looked down at the pen knife in her hand, then up at the paper walls.
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"What are you doing?" Rory asked. They'd conferred with Dutch and Tildaith about plans for the morning. Rory had made himself useful by bringing everyone dinner, but now found himself at loose ends again as everyone shut down for the night. He knew he'd never be able to sleep.
The Doctor was sitting on the floor of the ATV with the tracker board in his lap. He had the back off of it and was tracing the various chips and wires and conduits with his long, expressive fingers, muttering to himself almost subsonically.
"Amy's tracer was apparently destroyed. I'm trying to reconfigure this to pick up her life signs without it."
"How long will that take?"
"I don't know, Rory. It's not so simple picking up one particular life sign in a countryside teeming with wildlife. And this machine isn't exactly designed for it. It is going to take some major redesigning." He started stripping out one section of chips, checking them and slipping them into a pocket.
Rory watched him putter for a while. Black night pressed against the ATV windows. A soft night breeze sighed past the door. Dutch breathed quietly on the bench on the other side of the cabin. Rory found himself tapping his fingers against his knees.
"Give me something to do!"
His sudden outburst startled the Doctor, who fumbled the chip he was holding and dropped it into the complex workings of the board. He spent several seconds fishing it out, while Rory bit his lip and tried to keep still.
The Doctor slipped the chip into his pocket and looked at Rory.
"Sorry, sorry," Rory said. "But if I don't do something I'll go mad just sitting here, not knowing what's happening to Amy."
"All right," the Doctor said calmly. He soniced down a wire then held the screwdriver out to Rory. "Here, hold this."
Rory rolled his eyes but took the screwdriver. It was giving off a deep, rhythmic oscillation. He could feel it humming in his hand.
When the Doctor just kept puttering, he prompted, "Tell me about the last time you met these Wirrn." He knew the Doctor loved nothing better than to putter and tell tall tales at the same time.
The Doctor looked at him. Then turned his eyes back to the board. He stripped wires, moved conduits, and started talking, quietly, since Dutch was asleep.
"I first met them on a space station, many years ago..."
Rory listened to the drone of the Doctor's voice and the steady hum of the sonic screwdriver in his hand.
He blinked.
Yawned.
Blinked again. And slowly toppled to the side. Asleep.
The sonic screwdriver rolled out of his hand.
The Doctor picked it up and switched it off. "Sorry, Rory," he apologized. He straightened out the younger man and spread one of the emergency blankets over him. "You can be angry at me in the morning."
The Doctor went back to his puttering.
The night breeze sighed outside.
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