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the exit doors whirred and closed.
    The ship gave a sudden lurch. She shrieked and put out her hands to grab the control panel. The whole room tilted to one side. She held on desperately as the ship lurched again, and looked wildly up at the inspection window.
    Tardis seemed to be moving!
    The whole control room tilted and jerked with its slow movement, and in answer to it the view of the dark landscape outside through the inspection window, now clearing, tilted crazily this way and that.
    In her terror Vicki flicked desperately at the switches on the control table, pausing only for an agonized moment to press her ears against the intolerable noise that rumbled and chirruped all around her.
    The control column glowed in response to a switch and began moving up and down.
     
    But no other controls answered. The ship lurched again.
    Scraping sounds came from its hull. Yes, it was moving all right! Through the inspection window the crags moved slowly passed, tilting jerkily as the ship scraped and slithered forward.
    Breathing heavily, Doctor Who climbed painfully around rocks and paused, seeking a new path back to where Tardis lay. He had made a circuit of the defile and ahead of him he recognized the circle of crags and the bare, dead surface on to which they had emerged to explore this planet.
    He came hurrying and stumbling down towards it, puffing a little, peering this way and that around him.
    He slithered down on to smoother ground, halted, came forward, and stared about.
    At first he thought he was mistaken.
    But the image of this place, which he had first seen through the inspection screen was etched unmistakably on his mind.
    There was no doubt about it. This was the spot where they had first stepped out of Tardis .
    He was standing almost on the actual site where the ship had been.
    Doctor Who stared around him and passed a trembling hand over his brow.
    ‘The ship!’ he muttered. ‘It’s... gone !’
     

CHAPTER TWO
The Zarbi
    Barbara walked slowly onward as if in a trance. She seemed unconscious of the deafening hum which resounded echoingly all around her. Her eyes were fixed glassily ahead. She stumbled unseeingly, but rose and came on, her arm still outstretched before her as though it were pulling her forward.
    She did not even see the peril ahead of her.
    Right in her path glimmered an acid pool, giving off its slow, vaporous mist.
    She came slowly but directly towards the pool, seemingly drawn by it. Her steps came nearer and nearer, yet still she did not look down, or appear aware of it.
    Then a light shone from a near-by crag and the fore-quarters of one of the huge shiny creatures inhabiting this place reared its shape against the sky. Its luminous eyes glared downward and abruptly it raised a glistening foreclaw.
    Barbara was now at the brink of the pool. It seemed certain that her next pace or so would carry her into its unseen depths. It shone sullen and still, seeming harmless except for the faint acid fumes drifting up from its murky surface.
    She made as if to step forward, then halted abruptly.
    The creature above moved its claw, describing a circle with it.
    At that Barbara obediently turned. Slowly she skirted the pool, her bracelet arm still held before her, and walked on, wide-eyed but unseeing.
    The prickly sting of the great web which held Ian fast was becoming unbearable. At length he could stand it no longer. He lunged forward in a desperate attempt to burst
     

    free, but the web’s merciless strands only gripped him tighter and stung more deeply through his clothes and on his bare face and hands.
    Above the noise of the humming around him he heard a slithering on rocks and Doctor Who scrambled into sight.
    The Doctor picked himself up and came wearily forward, shaking his head.
     
     
    He halted, opened his bare hands in a helpless gesture, and said simply, ‘The Tardis has gone!’
    Ian stopped his tormented struggling.
    ‘What do you mean, gone ?’
    Doctor Who grunted testily