Doctor Who: Sontaran Experiment Read Online Free PDF

frantically redoubled his efforts, oblivious of the cuts and grazes on his hands and the stinging in his eyes and lungs.
    But within seconds he realised that he was as far away from escape as ever. The shaft was steadily narrowing around him as he climbed. As it tapered more and more, he finally found himself completely stuck just within reach of safety. There seemed to be no way he could squeeze through the last couple of metres. Harry beat the sides of the tunnel in frustration, peering up at the tantalizingly close patch of sky from which the fresh air wafted down onto his burning face.
    ‘If only I hadn’t done all that rowing at medical school,’
    he muttered, giving a last, futile shrug of his muscular shoulders in the narrow aperture. For a few minutes he gratefully drank in the cool air from above. Then gingerly he began working his way downwards again. He would have to try one of the other branching shafts after all...
    The Doctor and Sarah Jane stood at the edge of the pit staring down at the tangle of boulders and branches in the half-light. The Doctor chewed thoughtfully on a reed.
    ‘He couldn’t just have climbed out,’ Sarah said after a while.
    The Doctor grunted. ‘The machine you saw, Sarah,’ he murmured, ‘could that have lifted Harry out?’
    Sarah shook her head. ‘He’d already disappeared when the machine came,’ she explained.
    Suddenly the Doctor bent down and picked up a small piece of metallic material, half-hidden in a patch of scrubby fern at the edge of the hole. He studied it intently.
    ‘Your machine appears to be moulting, Sarah,’ he muttered. ‘What’s more, it’s made out of Terullian.’
    ‘Is that significant?’ asked Sarah.
    ‘Very,’ replied the Doctor frowning, and biting so hard on the reed that it snapped off and fell into the pit. ‘It’s an exceptionally rare kind of metal—half mineral and half organic—and it isn’t found in this Galaxy at all... in fact, it is quite... quite...’
    ‘Alien,’ rasped a voice behind them, making them both jump. Sarah clutched the Doctor’s arm in terror.
    ‘Just the word I wanted,’ cried the Doctor, recovering himself at once, and turning round with a grin. The crazed face of Roth was staring at them from among the nearby boulders. The Doctor advanced towards him with outstretched hand. ‘A most efficient decoy, if I may say so,’
    he cried. ‘We are most grateful to you.’
     
    Roth cowered back into his hiding place, pointing to the metal fragment in the Doctor’s other hand ‘Scavenger,’ he breathed, staring wildly at it.
    ‘Scavenger...’ the Doctor repeated, recalling something Vural had said to him during his interrogation at the cave.
    ‘Alien... Alien...’ Roth jabbered, nodding and pointing.
    ‘He’s afraid of everything,’ Sarah murmured, ‘even his old crewmates.’
    The Doctor stared down at the metal fragment. ‘I don’t blame him for being wary of friend Vural,’ he said quietly.
    Sarah shivered, and gazed anxiously around them.
    ‘Doctor, what do think this... this Alien can be?’ she murmured. For a moment the Doctor said nothing. Then he stuffed the piece of Terullian into one of his many pockets, and stood quite still, as if in a trance.
    All at once he roused himself and gestured irritably towards the pit. ‘It’s just typical of Harry,’ he cried, without answering Sarah’s question. ‘How could anyone fall down a gaping subsidence like that...’ The Doctor paused and clutched his hat more firmly about his disordered curls. ‘Of course,’ he cried. ‘Subsidence... an old sewer perhaps... or even the Piccadilly Line.’
    ‘You mean there might be a way out at the bottom?’
    Sarah asked hopefully, trying to follow the Doctor’s train of thought.
    ‘There usually is,’ the Doctor replied, quickly testing the knot which secured the two halves of his scarf together, and then making several turns with one of the free ends around a stunted pillar of rock beside the