Youth is Wasted on the Young p.14
"What is it? What's in there?" Schwillic asked.
Stanley picked him up and held him over the edge of the bin so he could see.
The tripod paled to a sickly, blue-gray.
"Do you recognize him?" Stanley asked.
"Yes," the tripod said in a shaky voice. "His name was Joshua, from the farm. He was a good man." The tripod wiggled uncomfortably in the boy's hands and Stanley set him down.
"Right," Amy said. She tore her eyes from the pallid grey, grublike form that brushed against the inside of the sac. She breathed heavily through her nose, pushing down her nausea, all she smelled was good clean paper and dirt. She closed her eyes and sent up a silent prayer for all the lost farmers. "I think it's time we got out of here."
"Follow me," Schwillic said. He twirled off rather unsteadily down the corridor. His strength and normal pink color returned with his resolve. Amy felt determination form in her own gut.
She looked down the long line of bins that lined the hallway. Unthinking, she took Stanley's little-boy hand in hers. Gripping tightly.
"Come on."
-----
The air rumbled with a subsonic hum.
Rory stuck his head out of the chopper just in time to see a huge cargo hauler float in over the farm's airport.
Tildaith leaned over and flipped on the communications channel. They heard the temporary air traffic controller in the tower warn off the vessel. "There has been an incident here. The farm is closed until further notice, please returned to your berth at the spaceport."
"That tears it," Dutch said. "It'll be all over the net in an hour, and we'll be crawling with the media."
They watched as the bulky, black cargo hauler turned around in a huge sweeping curve, no doubt taking pictures all the while.
"Whatever we're going to do, we'd better do it now," Dutch said.
-----
"Be quiet," Schwillic warned them. He pointed around the corner to a well lit archway down the hall. This was a smaller corridor than most, the walls were bare, with no bins, and it had a deserted feel, like a maintenance corridor. "The communications equipment is through there, but we have to go through the factory room to get to it."
"Factory room?" Amy asked. The Wirrn didn't seem like the industrial type.
The tripod shrugged. "The Wirrn are making something. I don't know what. But there are a bunch of disused storage rooms beyond. If we can get some of the communications equipment, we can barricade ourselves into one of them and call for help."
"Doesn't sound like much of a plan," Stanley commented.
"It's not my favorite either," Amy admitted.
"It's the best I could do," Schwillic said. "We appear to be underground, the only way out is if you can fly. At least this way we have some chance of holding them off until help arrives. The storage rooms are the deepest part, the walls are stone, not paper. It's better than waiting in the cell until they decide to come for us."
Amy shivered, looking back over her shoulder. "You're right about that."
"I thought we were just going to find a stockpile of equipment, I didn't know there'd be Wirrn around," Stanley said quietly. He looked at Amy. "I can't just call for help, they'll detect it. I don't know what their range is, but it's got to be longer than two rooms."
"So what do you suggest?" Amy asked.
He thought about it, he scrubbed his fingers through his red hair, his eyes darting around, keeping a lookout. "If they have the right kind of equipment, I can cobble together a quick blurt, a fast, broadband SOS to get someone's attention. It'll be too fast for the Wirrn to pinpoint it. I can put it on an irregular cycle, so it might get off a couple more blurts before the Wirrn find it and destroy it. But we're not going to want to be anywhere in the vicinity when it goes off."
"Can you really do that?" Amy asked, looking at his little 12 year old face.
He nodded. "It's fairly simple, and doesn't take any fancy equipment. As long as they have the basics it should work."
Amy inhaled. "Okay..." she drawled. She looked down the corridor again.
"So how do we get past them?" Stanley asked.
"Leave that to me," Schwillic said. "Just be ready to move." He trundled off down the corridor and stopped at the edge of the lit doorway. Stanley and Amy tiptoed after him.
-----
The room was huge, easily a hundred by thirty feet. A wide archway in the opposite wall seemed to be the main entrance. Machines littered the space, their linkages looked as if they'd been severed, then reconnected. Electrical lights were strung haphazardly all around the room making it bright as day, huge spools of wire were stacked along the nearest wall.
Amy, Stanley and Schwillic nipped through the door and slunk behind the spools for cover. Fortunately they were industrial size spools, six feet tall and coiled with cable.
The middle of the room was taken up with a large machine, it looked like something used at airports to process luggage -- hoppers fed into one end, and a conveyor belt carrying 50-pound cloth fertilizer bags came out the other.
Wirrn were busy conveying the bags and packing them in floor-to-ceiling squares against the far end wall. Other Wirrn were chewing wheat stalks and using the pulp to build up walls around the completed sections of fertilizer bags, sealing them into cells.
"Why are they doing that?" Amy whispered. The chugging of the machine covered their conversation.
"Maybe to keep them dry and preserve them until they're needed," Stanley offered quietly. "Look!"
He pointed to where a Wirrn was programming the large fertilizer machine. It was the only Wirrn in the room that was wearing clothes. It had the tattered remains of a coverall stretched across its carapace, stiff insect hairs poked through the material as if they'd grown there. The words "AAA Fertilizer, Inc." were embroidered across the back.
Stanley leaned out from behind the spools to get a better look at what the Wirrn was doing. Amy snatched him back by the back of his shirt. "Wha...?" She clapped her hand over his mouth when he started to protest and pointed. He went still.
The big Wirrn, the one that had bitten their tracers out, was stalking through the fertilizer factory. In the confines of their cell they hadn't realized just how big he was. He stood head and shoulders over any other Wirrn in the room, and had an extra bulkiness the others lacked, like a mature bull among yearlings.
Stanley sank back against Amy.
The big Wirrn stopped by the fertilizer tech and the smaller Wirrn picked up a pouch that looked like it was made from the same cloth as the fertilizer bags.
He seemed to be demonstrating something.
He threw the small plump bag to the floor where it hit and exploded with a familiar "Whumph!" Smoke boiled up out of the bag. Amy gasped. She clapped her hand over her mouth and nose and looked at Stanley. He held his hand over his own mouth.
They quickly scuttled away behind the wire spools, keeping low -- but hurrying away from the gas which now wreathed the Wirrn. The Wirrn, unconcerned, were chatting away with their staticy antenna sounds.
Schwillic led them to a door in the near end wall. Amy and Stanley took advantage of the cloud cover and slipped around the doorway into the next room. This room was deserted -- nothing more than a spare storeroom, empty, waiting for fertilizer bags no doubt. They scurried through to the next room, gasping for air when they could no longer hold their breaths.
The air here was clear, smelling of stone and electronics. The room was scattered with communications equipment and tools on several long tables.
"This is more like it!" Stanley whispered, rushing forward eagerly to see what he could salvage.
Amy and Schwillic kept a look out by the door.
"Huh! This is weird," Stanley whispered a few minutes later.
Amy was pulled around by that familiar tone, she'd heard the Doctor say much the same thing on many occasions.
"What?" she asked, aware that there were Wirrn just a few doors away.
Stanley gestured to a round, silvery ball in the center of the workbench. One half of it was open, showing the components inside.
"They're building a communications satellite," Stanley said, waving at it, mystified.
Amy frowned. "How could they do that?"
Schwillic, who'd been helping her keep watch, suddenly leaned sideways as if he'd seen something.
He trundled quickly to the other end of the room, and disappeared sideways into the wall.
Amy jumped, startled, and ran over to the last place she'd seen him.
The end of the room was actually "L" shaped. The color of the walls blended so perfectly she hadn't been able to tell from the doorway. Stanley followed her.
They turned the corner to find a girl working at a table in the smaller section. Electronic components were strewn all around, tools and a smoking soldering iron stood near to hand. A door opened to the corridor behind her. Her back was to them.
Schwillic ran toward her eagerly. "Emerlee!"
The girl turned from the machine she was working on. Schwillic jump back with a squeak.
She had dusky, olive skin, and long, curly, chestnut hair. She would've been a beauty as a grown-up woman. But the left side of her face was covered in green pustules, and her skull had been distorted to support a huge, insectoid eye.
Schwillic whimpered. Stanley stared in shock.
Stanley grabbed Amy's arm and pulled her backward toward the door.
Amy shook him off. "Are you still in there?" she asked calmly, more calmly than she felt. She'd seen many things on her travels with the Doctor and knew that monsters weren't always what they appeared.
The girl regarded her calmly, as if considering the question. "Yes," she said slowly.
"Can you tell me what's going on here?" Amy carefully waved at the rest of the workroom, not wanting to disturb the girl's trancelike tranquility.
"We're building a communicator."
"To communicate what?" Amy asked gently.
"To gather the swarm." The girl's voice changed, becoming deeper, more resonant, a Wirrn voice. "To come breed." The girl lunged at Amy, stretching out a grublike pseudopod of a hand.
Amy leaped back, away from the slime-covered hand. She turned and ran out of the room after the sprinting Stanley and Schwillic.
-----
They fled out into the corridor, and ran directly into a Wirrn. A normal sized Wirrn, Amy noticed gratefully as she bounced back off its hard body, insect hairs prickling her arms and branchy legs scraping against her as she rebounded off of it.
Stanley screamed. The giant insect stared down at him with its huge compound eyes. Its proboscis started to smoke.
Amy stared in horror as wreathing grey tendrils of gas leaked out from between the knobby sections. Before they could react, it blew a wave of smoke at Stanley. The boy stumbled and fell, unconscious.
Amy whipped off a shoe and slammed the insect in the face, knocking its proboscis sideways, stunning it. The Wirrn stumbled. Amy picked up Stanley and tossed him over her shoulder, for once grateful for her size. She scooped up Schwillic with the other hand, turned, and ran for her life.
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