Chapter 4

Ian traced back and forth across a ridge, looking for any sign at all of where the girls had gone. He'd found the small pocket they had apparently climbed into but what little he could find in footprints had quickly faded out and his own worry and frustration were quickly mounting. He was just about to leave the ridge to try looking for a tree to climb, hoping he might be able to see or signal to them from a greater height when he stopped in his tracks.

Susan, that had to be her! He was sure he'd heard her scream, but it had been so faint and muffled he couldn't place a direction. He spun in a circle, looking for any trace of movement, any sign of life at all. Where had it been? It almost sounded like it had come from underground - but he hadn't found any openings of any kind, no caves or cracks or doorways. He pulled at his hair. This was not turning out to be a good day.

. . .

Something was coming at them, something low, rounded and flexible and definitely in possession of not two, but an entire cluster of antennae. It reminded Barbara of a brown silverfish, except it was closer to length of a crocodile.

Barbara pushed Susan ahead of her and briefly tugged at a chunk of the walls, trying to pry loose one of the fat fibers as a weapon, but nothing would move. The scuttling dark-brown creature behind them stopped in its tracks at the sound of Susan's screaming, waving its antennae in circles. Now it began coming after them again.

They tried to run faster, limping as best they could, but it only seemed to encourage their silent pursuer to greater speed as well. Gasping, they were forced to slow only to find the creature behind them slowed as well.

"I think…it's…only…following us," Barbara breathed, digging a palm into her side to try to stop a side-ache.

"Why?" Susan gasped back.

"Maybe we…look strange," Barbara said, trying to make light of it. They started forward again, and their insect-like shadow trailed after them, waving its antennae. They stopped and it stopped, they walked and it ambled after them.

Susan shivered, holding her arms around her. "I can't stand that…thing following us this way," she whispered to Barbara. "Why doesn't it leave? Ah!" She suddenly stopped and pointed ahead; another one was squeezing its was out of a rough fissure in the wall. It waved its fan of antennae and advanced.

The two women huddled together, then, as they both kept coming, Barbara pulled off one of her shoes and threw it at the second one, hard. It was a good hit, right above its antennae where the chocolate-coloured plating met up with its head. It stopped and gave a querying chittering sound, nosing over the shoe as if looking for something, then biting at it.

They stared. "It's eating my shoe!" Barbara said in disbelief even as she was pulling off her other one. This one she kept in her hand, to use as a hammer if needed. Neither of them said what they were both thinking - that the shoe might only be the appetizer.

It dropped the shoe and came at them again.

Susan screamed as the creature half-reared up, then again as Barbara kicked it right over onto its back. It quickly curled, then turned to flip itself upright again.

"Run!" said Barbara, half-pushing Susan past it. They ran, though a glance back only confirmed what they both expected, that they were once more being followed, now by two of them. Susan suddenly turned, apparently thinking to try another route, but then stopped again and gave another shriek as the very walls seemed to come alive. Suddenly there were people, brown-coloured people all streaked with shades of cream and red-browns to perfectly blend with the walls. Susan fainted.

Barbara caught her as she fell but the unexpected dead-weight right after running proved too much for her over-strained legs and they buckled beneath her, spilling them both to the ground.

Natives were around them, tugging, pulling them up with thin brown-gold hands. They were both bodily lifted and carried along, the strange people murmuring to one another. Barbara struggled, still trying to wrap her mind around the fact these people not only existed but that the two of them had apparently fallen right into an ambush - though in truth, she couldn't tell if they were being taken prisoner or rescued, or both. After all, they were not being hurt.

They held her firmly with their thin, sinewy arms, but gently, and after a moment she stopped fighting simply because she didn't want to risk being separated from Susan. Who knew what would become of her, alone?

"Who are you?" she tried. "If we've trespassed, we're very sorry…we were lost…"

One of the people felt up and down her arms as the carried her along, squeezing them gently as if she were a piece of fruit. She tried to squelch an alarm that welled up in her, memories of fairytales like Hansel and Gretel where victims were squeezed to see if they were edible. "Why are you doing that?" she managed to ask.

"Shall we put them above?" another native was asking the squeezer.

"No, no. They are supple, though their words make no sense. Treat them."

"Still supple," echoed the others, nodding. There was a strange sadness to it, Barbara thought. The small group carried them to a side passage and pushed their way through a series of fibrous strands until they came into a wider room. Several pale posts were interspersed around it, floor to ceiling.

"What is this place?" she asked, trying once again for some kind of direct response. "We are only visitors to your world…"

As before, they simply swayed their heads, not answering. In the middle was a wide fiber construction that reminded Barbara of a bird's nest. Into this they were both carefully maneuvered. Something like a net was put over the top and the people left.

Baffled, Barbara carefully lifted herself up and pushed at the netting. It stayed firmly in place. Beside her Susan began to moan. "Barbara?" she said.

"Susan? Are you all right?"

The younger woman put a hand to her head and then rubbed at her face. "I think so. What were those things? They looked almost like people! And where are we?"

"They were people, Susan. The people of this planet, I expect. And I don't know where we are but it looks like we're being kept here."

"What?" Susan sat up at that. She pushed at the netting overhead. "Are we prisoners, then?"

Barbara pushed and tugged at the edges. "I don't know."

"Barbara!" Susan said, pointing.

But Barbara had already seen the same thing on her own side. Each of the pale cream posts emitted a haze or cloud of some kind. There was a low hissing sound; the two women looked at one another helplessly as the room began to fill with clouds of a gaseous mist.

. . .

Panting, Ian reached one of the smooth tree-like plants scattered around the landscape and after a moment set about hitching his way up it. The wind had been picking up and he found he had to hang on firmly as they swayed with it more than an earth-tree might. Above him, the transparent nets of foliage rippled and lifted in the wind, expanding out to pull what moisture there was from the air.

He paused to look around as best he could but couldn't see the TARDIS or any of his lost companions. He hitched his way higher. Above him one of the poky-looking growths was in reach, greatly resembling a large horse-chestnut, or maybe a headless hedgehog, somewhat grey against the beige. It was so completely attached he wondered if it might be a part of the tree, like the fungal growths on trees back home.

Just a little further and he might be able to reach one of the branches. He hoped if he could it would give him the vantage point he needed to orient himself in this homogenous landscape and maybe to even be able to signal to the others if he saw them; he wasn't sure how, maybe waving his shirt would do. He'd figure that out later.

Ian stretched, but the nearest branch only brushed at his fingertips; he couldn't quite reach. Inching his way upward, he tried again and barely managed to grab onto the branch. It was springy and he wasn't sure putting all of his weight on it would be wise.

"I might just slip right off it, like off a piece of floppy celery," he muttered to himself. Settling for using it as a brace, he inched up, got a good grip and rotated himself for a better view of the surrounding countryside. There was no sign of anyone.

Disappointed, he began to turn himself back around when a gust of wind made his tree sway alarmingly. He scrabbled for a stronger hold on the branch, missed and instead hit one of the poky growths on its stem, its spines stabbing into the heel of his palm before the entire thing broke away in his hand and he fell.

. . .

Barbara and Susan huddled together, trying to cover their mouths with the colourful cloth of their skirts as the gaseous clouds swirled around them, thickening to a haze in the room. The hissing gradually died down and after a while the mist settled. Barbara met Susan's wide eyes over the top of her own cloth then cautiously lifted it from her mouth and tried an experimental breath. There was no stinging, no burning and as near as she could tell, no hallucinogenic effect in the strange mist. She took another breath and waited a moment.

"It doesn't seem to do anything," she said, still rather surprised. "Go ahead."

Susan slowly lowered her own skirt hem from her face. "What's it for then?" she wondered as she took a cautious breath herself.

"Maybe we're immune to it, whatever it is," Barbara pondered. "For all we know it might have been a poison to those brown people."

"It's sweet," Susan said, wiping it away from her face with her skirt. "And sticky too."

"Yes… but who knows what's making it sweet. Better we try to keep it out of our mouths if we can."

Susan nodded.

The hissing began again, and the mist rose up around them.