Doctor Who: The Green Death by Malcolm Hulke Page A

Doctor and Jo to escape; he still worked for Panorama and should be back there.
    For the evening meal Nancy had prepared a vast cauldron of stew, which the Doctor, Jo, and the Brigadier were invited to share. While the table was being set, the Doctor went along to Professor Jones’s laboratory with the egg they had found in the mine.
    ‘Extraordinary,’ said the young professor. ‘You really think that thing’s going to hatch out?’
    ‘Those maggots must come from eggs,’ said the Doctor, as he carefully let the egg roll from its plastic bag onto a laboratory tray. ‘Perhaps we’ll be lucky. By the way, I shouldn’t touch it.’
    The meal was a great success, the Doctor amusing the Wholewealers with stories of his travels. It was during his account of life on Metebelis Three that he was wanted on the phone. With the Doctor gone from the table, conversation started between people sitting next to each other. The Brigadier politely turned to the young man beside him who had shoulder-length hair, a flowing beard, and wore a kaftan and chunky wooden beads. ‘Ever fancied life in the army?’ the Brigadier asked brightly, as a joke.
    ‘It was quite pleasant,’ said the young man, sipping the home-made elderberry wine Nancy had produced for the occasion.
    ‘ You were in the Army?’ the Brigadier looked astounded. ‘What did you do?’
    ‘I was a colonel.’
    ‘Good grief!’
    Across the table Professor Jones turned to Jo. ‘Still angry with me?’
    She smiled. ‘That was a long time ago.’
    ‘I know,’ he said. ‘All of yesterday. Enjoy the meal?’
    ‘Super. What was the meat in the stew?’
    ‘It wasn’t meat,’ said the professor. ‘Fungus. My new hybrid to help solve worldwide malnutrition. It tastes fine, and looks good. But it’s still relatively low in protein.’
    ‘So you’ve got a long way to go?’ said Jo.
    ‘You could put it like that,’ said the professor. ‘Right down the Amazon River. There are tribes there that subsist for months at a time on a certain giant toadstool peculiar to the region. It serves them as meat. I want to investigate that.’
    The Doctor returned from the telephone. He was grim faced. ‘I’m afraid I’ve got bad news. That was the hospital. Bert Williams, the man who went into the mine with Jo, has just died.’
    ‘Oh, no! And here we’ve been laughing and enjoying ourselves.’ The tears welled up in Jo’s eyes. Professor Jones saw this, and took her hand in his. She found the warmth of his hand comforting.
    ‘Has there been a post mortem?’ asked the Brigadier.
    ‘Every cell in the man’s body had been attacked,’ said the Doctor. ‘It was some sort of virus. They haven’t been able to isolate it.’
    ‘So we’re still fighting in the dark,’ said Professor Jones.
    ‘Not quite,’ said the Doctor. ‘We do have an egg, remember.’
    In Professor Jones’s laboratory, a square of bright moonlight from the window fell onto the egg resting in the white porcelain tray. All at once the egg moved, as its living occupant wriggled. Like any egg-born creature, the maggot inside had started as an embryonic speck floating in the fluid that was to be its pre-birth food. In a matter of days the embryo had absorbed the fluid, growing in the process. Now all the fluid was gone, and if the maggot was not to die it had to escape. Instinctively it arched its back, heaving against the walls of the egg. And then, suddenly, the egg cracked open. The maggot lay exhausted from its efforts. Then it sniffed sharply. It was experiencing a new source of energy—oxygen in the air around it. It wriggled its little body, and realised it was quite strong. It also realised it was very hungry, and that it now had to find its own food.
    It raised its head over the edge of the tray, and sniffed again. It could smell that somewhere in this room was food, somewhere low down. It heaved itself over the edge of the tray, and wriggled to the edge of the table. Below was an enormous