Home Field Advantage
Mar. 29th, 2010 09:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eve11This is the story as it was when I submitted it. Typos, grammatical mistakes and the occasional mixed-up gender pronoun included.
Home Field Advantage
--------------------
Turlough had never run so fast in his life. He hauled in breath after breath of misty air as he raced across the flood plain. Feathertop reeds that had been submerged the month before now snapped at his shins. But their sting only urged him to run faster, and their floodswept angle even pointed out his course along the brook. Pumping his arms in time with his stride, Turlough chanced a glance behind him but saw no one.
Good. He was far ahead. He turned back to his sprint and came careening to a halt, flailing his arms and pitching forward onto his hands. He landed with a grunt, setting off a cacaphony of clicks and whistles from across the brook.
"Krrrrak-kak-ak-ak! Krrrr-kak!" cried the underbrush.
Turlough stood up, picking bits of feathertop out of his bare knees and glaring at the unseen wildlife as it skittered away.
"That's right, get a good laugh and then bolt," he said, brushing himself off and looking ahead. A few feet in front of him, the brook emptied into a swampy lake, its surface a bright green carpet of spring moss and lilies. Insects flitted like a second mist between purple blooms, and it smelled like honey and compost. Turlough supposed there was enough standing water underneath it all to make wading a right slog. But he was in luck. Hut-sized mounds of earth, each supporting a long, lean scrub tree, rose from the lake every ten to fifteen paces.
A distant cry turned his gaze back to the flood plain again. He squinted through the sun's glare on the mist and saw Glindgreect break through the far brush, far behind but moving like a willow in the wind.
Turlough grinned wickedly and rocked back on his heels. His feet scarcely made a print in the marshy ground.
"I love this planet," he realized aloud, and took an impossible, springing leap for the first mound.
**
The Station Grket Two atmospheric outpost was a giant cone, dug point first into the wetlands at the edge of the marsh. Its top tier seemed precariously balanced against the crest of the brush dunes that sloped sharply to meet the flats. A wispy, branching network of reinforced rootwood supported the outpost's far side, snaking down four stories along the arc of the building's widest point. The rootwood facade also served as a railing for a wedge-shaped veranda cut into the top floor, and it was onto this balcony that the Doctor found himself politely escorted.
"It would please us for you to wait here for the completion of the scan," Technician Strrek said, peeling his hand from the Doctor's sleeve as he ushered him out of the laboratory.
"Yes, I'm terribly sorry--" the Doctor started, looking worriedly back toward the monitors inside.
"As am I," Strrek interrupted, "but that is the second display console you have broken this hour."
"If I could just look at the altitude adjustments--" he tried, but let Strrek steer him weakly from the door. The Grketsch nodded at him, which the Doctor now remembered was a sign of frustration and annoyance.
Strrek clucked deep in his throat and said, "Those keypads are expensive to replace. You cannot pound upon them so."
The Doctor took in a breath of warm, wet air and squinted up at the morning sun. He glumly removed his hat from his coat pocket and unrolled it, resigning himself to his exile. "Yes, you're right, of course. I do feel like the proverbial bull in a china shop." Strrek blinked at him, uncomprehending, but the Doctor only frowned at the brim of his hat, which he had just torn in an attempt to reshape it. "I'm afraid I'm a bit out of practice at navigating low gravity worlds."
Strrek sniffed the air, his pinpoint nostrils flaring above his wide mouth. "It is not the gravity that is low," he muttered, before hurrying back inside.
Alone, the Doctor paced the veranda, but found it difficult to putter and look worried with such a spring in his step. He stopped, gripped the rootwood railing, and closed his eyes, concentrating on adjusting his musculoskeletal and motor systems to a baseline exertion half the power to which he was accustomed. He blinked awake fifteen minutes later to find his hat had blown away across the marsh. But he felt a bit heavier, and Strrek had finally come to fetch him.
"Glindgreect's latest field readings are in," Director Klraact said from the diagnostics console when they entered. She blinked wide-set eyes against the glow of the viewscreen, and wrapped her spindly gray fingers like clinging vines around a thin corner to turn the display toward the Doctor. "What do you make of them?" she asked, but the Doctor could tell from her sagging shoulders and the green mottled flush in her cheeks that Klraact already knew the answer.
The viewscreen confirmed his suspicions. The Doctor frowned. "The chain seeding isn't working. It's getting worse."
The atmospheric dissipation had spread, far beyond the initial cracks in the ancient electro-chemical forcefield. The forcefield itself was teetering on the brink of collapse. If it failed, the Doctor knew the colonists could only rely on gravity. But Grket's gravity alone could support only a fraction of its air.
Klraact swiveled to face a different screen, her fingers ghosting across the delicate controls. Then she sat back, splayed her hands across his cheeks and let out a low hrroom-ing sound. "In three years, the damage will be irreversible. Gods, three years."
Two thousand years after the colony's inception, Grket was going to suffocate.
**
Glindgreect was like no scientist Turlough had ever met. For starters, he didn't believe in cold, hard facts.
"You are swift, Strluck," he said, mangling the syllables in Turlough's name as they walked side-by-side back to the outpost, "but I could have caught you."
"I was half a mile ahead of you!" Turlough protested, but the Grketsch just chittered a string of consonants that sounded far too much like the laughing underbrush for Turlough's liking.
"That just means we must lengthen the race," he said, still chuckling.
"Glindgreect," Turlough answered, wondering how horribly he'd mangled those syllables, "My home world has twice Grket's gravity. I'm stronger and faster here. It felt like I was flying in that race, and I was hardly winded."
Secondly, Glindgreect was almost as quick to sulk as Turlough. "Now you are merely boasting," he growled, nodding his head.
Turlough was never one to let friendship get in the way of an advantage. He bounced his steps, feeling lighter than air, and said, "I could beat you in any race on Grket. It's a simple fact."
"I will make a wager on that!" Glindgreect offered. Thirdly, he was a terrible gambler.
"Another one?" Turlough asked, looking up in exasperation at the late afternoon sun. They had given up on finding anything useful for the other to wager. Now it was just a matter of honor.
"Any race. I choose." Glindgreect said, stalking past him in long strides.
"I don't know why everyone insists you're so smart!" Turlough shouted after him, and sped up. He overtook the Grketsch easily in the flats leading to the outpost. Perhaps holding the entryway door for him went a bit too far, as Glindgreect brushed by without a word and took the only liftchair straight up to the laboratory. Turlough had to wait for it to return. This didn't count as a race, he assured himself.
Director Klraact and Glindgreect were in a heated argument when Turlough arrived. They spoke so fast that all the Trion could hear was a string of garbled consonants. Glindgreect seemed to be losing ground. He clucked and nodded in protest, and when Klraact pointed him to the field readings, he went silent.
The Doctor looked up from the corner, where he was studying a thin vellum sheet of data. It was torn on several edges. "Turlough, where have you been?" he asked, moving carefully among the equipment toward the laboratory entryway where Turlough lurked. The Time Lord set his hand on a console for balance, and quickly removed it when a technician glared at him from across the room.
"You're late, and the Director's been worried," he continued. "Did something happen with the readings?"
"No. We had a race," Turlough answered, and this was clearly nothing like what the Doctor had expected to hear.
"A . . . what?" he stammered.
"A foot race across the marshes," he clarified, and the Doctor's expression darkened.
"You had a foot race? Turlough, I do hope you understand the grav"--he stopped mid-sentence, and adjusted his specatcles in frustration before continuing--"the severity, of the situation here. The chain seeding is failing. Grket is counting on this outpost. The whole colony is counting on Glindgreect's calculations. You cannot monopolize his time with childish contests!"
Well, Turlough supposed, he'd most likely learned what Glindgreect and Klraact were arguing about.
Across the room, the conversation heated up again and Glindgreect finally harroom-ed, filling the room with sound, and shouted, "Will no one let me think?" before storming out toward quarters.
Turlough lifted his chin, but the Doctor was already occupied with a viewscreen at the console.
"I won the race," he said to no one.
**
The next day, Turlough beat Glindgreect at a race over the brush dunes, at a slog across Trkick creek, and at a strange climbing game called Plol that took longer to explain than to play. They sat together in the outpost mess hall at mid-afternoon, neither one willing to admit to the other that he was tired. The Doctor came in, looking for something approaching tea, but bustled out again with a quick "there's work to be done!" after breaking a mug. Klraact came in too, wringing her hands and scowling at Turlough, but Glindgreect clucked a warning in the back of his throat and she retreated.
"She acts as if the sky will fall tomorrow," Glindgreect said.
He sounded unconcerned, but Turlough straightened and thought: it won't happen tomorrow, but it will happen in three years. And the sky won't fall, it will simply float away. Suddenly, for the first time since landing on Grket, his limbs felt like lead.
"Could you return to Grekka Prime?" he asked. "If the forcefield fails?"
His Grketsch companion flushed gray, but there was no dread in his answer. "Our home world has nearly three times the gravity of Grket. If we returned, our ancient brethren would scarcely recognize us. And our lungs would collapse in under a day."
"Doesn't that scare you?"
Glindgreect harroom-ed softly. "For as long as I have been alive, the forcefield has been failing. They wish me to solve it and my first attempt has failed. But there is still time to think."
"Not today, surely. You must be exhausted," Turlough said through a wide yawn.
Glindgreect stared at him quizzically for a moment. Then he stood abruptly. "I have it!" he cried.
"The solution for the forcefield?" Turlough asked, leaping up with his friend.
Glindgreect's wide mouth broke into an even wider, all-to-familiar grin. Turlough was suddenly nervous.
"We shall race to collect Nglentha berries."
**
"These?" Turlough asked.
It was gray early morning. They were in a secluded grove at the far side of the swampy lake. The mounds were closer together here, nearly stepping distance, and the tall scrub trees seemed to have flowered after a sort; they each sported wet leaves covered with what looked like sticky blue berries. Their lowest branches hung fifteen feet above the mounds.
Glindgreect clucked a yes and pointed. "The piles go here, and here. The first one of us to collect thirty wins the race," he said, and set upon the nearest tree. Half a second later, Turlough followed, leaping easily up into the branches and clamboring among the sticky leaves. He had five berries when he looked toward the Grketsch.
His competitor stood at the foot of the next tree over, with a pile of at least ten berries already at his feet. Turlough stopped, clinging astonishedly to a branch. Before his eyes, Glindgreect took a modest, two-foot leap, opened his mouth and flung out a six-foot-long tongue, flicking a berry easily into his hand and dropping it onto the pile. Turlough blinked, and Glindgreect had ahold of yet another one.
"That's not fair!" he cried, nearly falling from the tree. There was no mistaking Glindgreect's full-throated laugh.
"It's no wonder you could hardly speak. All those awful vowels!"
Turlough was about to complain again when he saw the water ripple and heave, unbroken, behind the Grketsch.
"Glindgreect," he said, pointing. "What is that?"
Glindgreect turned around. "Oh," he said, backing away. "Oh, I'd forgotten how fiercely they guard nests in the early spring--"
"Nests?" Turlough said, trying to find somewhere to wipe his hands. The water heaved again, a huge dip and push. "I thought you said these were berries!"
"Berries . . ." Glindgreect stopped at the word. "Did I? I think I meant, eggs?"
"What. Is. THAT!?" Turlough cried again, as with a great splash, a twenty-foot flatworm burst up from the lake's surface, raining moss and lilies, flapping its side cilia and hissing through a circular mouth of sharp teeth.
"That's a Nglentha!" Glindgreect sounded almost proud.
"Glindgreect, get to the trees!" cried Turlough.
"They lay their eggs in the trees! Don't climb them, they--" Glindgreect ducked and ran for a far mound as the Nglentha thrashed, wrapped its huge flat tail around the bottom of Turlough's tree and pulled. The whole stalk bent toward its gaping mouth.
It was very lucky that on Grket, Turlough could fly. He leaped screaming away from the tree and barreled into his friend, who stood dumstruck at the undulating Nglentha.
"Strluck!" He clutched Turlough's shoulders, smiling like a lunatic. "Don't you see? The forcefield--we've been climbing trees all this time!"
The scrub tree snapped in half with a loud 'crack', and Turlough wondered what the Doctor's lecture would sound like if he let Grket's premiere scientist be eaten by a Nglentha. He wrapped an arm around his friend and sprang away with all his strength.
"All this time!" Glindgreect repeated as the rocketed toward solid ground.
**
"We must untether the forcefield," Glindgreect said as soon as they staggered their way into the laboratory, slime-covered and soaked. Turlough sank into a chair and broke it, but he was ignored.
"Are you mad?" Klraact said, but Glindgreect was already typing furiously at a console. The Doctor came up behind him, studying his charts.
"We have been crawling uselessly across the high atmosphere. We must untether the field and let it sweep along the path of a standing relay," Glindgreect continued. "We will put bouncers here, here and here, on the ground, to bolster the controls like a slingshot. Rising atmospherics will even let it self-regulate."
"My word," said the Doctor. "That's--"
A chair crashed to the floor. It was Krlaact's. "Brilliant," she finished. "Do--do you think it might work?"
Glindgreect smiled at Turlough.
"It will work. As long as there are no Nglentha to chase us away."
**
Home Field Advantage
--------------------
Turlough had never run so fast in his life. He hauled in breath after breath of misty air as he raced across the flood plain. Feathertop reeds that had been submerged the month before now snapped at his shins. But their sting only urged him to run faster, and their floodswept angle even pointed out his course along the brook. Pumping his arms in time with his stride, Turlough chanced a glance behind him but saw no one.
Good. He was far ahead. He turned back to his sprint and came careening to a halt, flailing his arms and pitching forward onto his hands. He landed with a grunt, setting off a cacaphony of clicks and whistles from across the brook.
"Krrrrak-kak-ak-ak! Krrrr-kak!" cried the underbrush.
Turlough stood up, picking bits of feathertop out of his bare knees and glaring at the unseen wildlife as it skittered away.
"That's right, get a good laugh and then bolt," he said, brushing himself off and looking ahead. A few feet in front of him, the brook emptied into a swampy lake, its surface a bright green carpet of spring moss and lilies. Insects flitted like a second mist between purple blooms, and it smelled like honey and compost. Turlough supposed there was enough standing water underneath it all to make wading a right slog. But he was in luck. Hut-sized mounds of earth, each supporting a long, lean scrub tree, rose from the lake every ten to fifteen paces.
A distant cry turned his gaze back to the flood plain again. He squinted through the sun's glare on the mist and saw Glindgreect break through the far brush, far behind but moving like a willow in the wind.
Turlough grinned wickedly and rocked back on his heels. His feet scarcely made a print in the marshy ground.
"I love this planet," he realized aloud, and took an impossible, springing leap for the first mound.
**
The Station Grket Two atmospheric outpost was a giant cone, dug point first into the wetlands at the edge of the marsh. Its top tier seemed precariously balanced against the crest of the brush dunes that sloped sharply to meet the flats. A wispy, branching network of reinforced rootwood supported the outpost's far side, snaking down four stories along the arc of the building's widest point. The rootwood facade also served as a railing for a wedge-shaped veranda cut into the top floor, and it was onto this balcony that the Doctor found himself politely escorted.
"It would please us for you to wait here for the completion of the scan," Technician Strrek said, peeling his hand from the Doctor's sleeve as he ushered him out of the laboratory.
"Yes, I'm terribly sorry--" the Doctor started, looking worriedly back toward the monitors inside.
"As am I," Strrek interrupted, "but that is the second display console you have broken this hour."
"If I could just look at the altitude adjustments--" he tried, but let Strrek steer him weakly from the door. The Grketsch nodded at him, which the Doctor now remembered was a sign of frustration and annoyance.
Strrek clucked deep in his throat and said, "Those keypads are expensive to replace. You cannot pound upon them so."
The Doctor took in a breath of warm, wet air and squinted up at the morning sun. He glumly removed his hat from his coat pocket and unrolled it, resigning himself to his exile. "Yes, you're right, of course. I do feel like the proverbial bull in a china shop." Strrek blinked at him, uncomprehending, but the Doctor only frowned at the brim of his hat, which he had just torn in an attempt to reshape it. "I'm afraid I'm a bit out of practice at navigating low gravity worlds."
Strrek sniffed the air, his pinpoint nostrils flaring above his wide mouth. "It is not the gravity that is low," he muttered, before hurrying back inside.
Alone, the Doctor paced the veranda, but found it difficult to putter and look worried with such a spring in his step. He stopped, gripped the rootwood railing, and closed his eyes, concentrating on adjusting his musculoskeletal and motor systems to a baseline exertion half the power to which he was accustomed. He blinked awake fifteen minutes later to find his hat had blown away across the marsh. But he felt a bit heavier, and Strrek had finally come to fetch him.
"Glindgreect's latest field readings are in," Director Klraact said from the diagnostics console when they entered. She blinked wide-set eyes against the glow of the viewscreen, and wrapped her spindly gray fingers like clinging vines around a thin corner to turn the display toward the Doctor. "What do you make of them?" she asked, but the Doctor could tell from her sagging shoulders and the green mottled flush in her cheeks that Klraact already knew the answer.
The viewscreen confirmed his suspicions. The Doctor frowned. "The chain seeding isn't working. It's getting worse."
The atmospheric dissipation had spread, far beyond the initial cracks in the ancient electro-chemical forcefield. The forcefield itself was teetering on the brink of collapse. If it failed, the Doctor knew the colonists could only rely on gravity. But Grket's gravity alone could support only a fraction of its air.
Klraact swiveled to face a different screen, her fingers ghosting across the delicate controls. Then she sat back, splayed her hands across his cheeks and let out a low hrroom-ing sound. "In three years, the damage will be irreversible. Gods, three years."
Two thousand years after the colony's inception, Grket was going to suffocate.
**
Glindgreect was like no scientist Turlough had ever met. For starters, he didn't believe in cold, hard facts.
"You are swift, Strluck," he said, mangling the syllables in Turlough's name as they walked side-by-side back to the outpost, "but I could have caught you."
"I was half a mile ahead of you!" Turlough protested, but the Grketsch just chittered a string of consonants that sounded far too much like the laughing underbrush for Turlough's liking.
"That just means we must lengthen the race," he said, still chuckling.
"Glindgreect," Turlough answered, wondering how horribly he'd mangled those syllables, "My home world has twice Grket's gravity. I'm stronger and faster here. It felt like I was flying in that race, and I was hardly winded."
Secondly, Glindgreect was almost as quick to sulk as Turlough. "Now you are merely boasting," he growled, nodding his head.
Turlough was never one to let friendship get in the way of an advantage. He bounced his steps, feeling lighter than air, and said, "I could beat you in any race on Grket. It's a simple fact."
"I will make a wager on that!" Glindgreect offered. Thirdly, he was a terrible gambler.
"Another one?" Turlough asked, looking up in exasperation at the late afternoon sun. They had given up on finding anything useful for the other to wager. Now it was just a matter of honor.
"Any race. I choose." Glindgreect said, stalking past him in long strides.
"I don't know why everyone insists you're so smart!" Turlough shouted after him, and sped up. He overtook the Grketsch easily in the flats leading to the outpost. Perhaps holding the entryway door for him went a bit too far, as Glindgreect brushed by without a word and took the only liftchair straight up to the laboratory. Turlough had to wait for it to return. This didn't count as a race, he assured himself.
Director Klraact and Glindgreect were in a heated argument when Turlough arrived. They spoke so fast that all the Trion could hear was a string of garbled consonants. Glindgreect seemed to be losing ground. He clucked and nodded in protest, and when Klraact pointed him to the field readings, he went silent.
The Doctor looked up from the corner, where he was studying a thin vellum sheet of data. It was torn on several edges. "Turlough, where have you been?" he asked, moving carefully among the equipment toward the laboratory entryway where Turlough lurked. The Time Lord set his hand on a console for balance, and quickly removed it when a technician glared at him from across the room.
"You're late, and the Director's been worried," he continued. "Did something happen with the readings?"
"No. We had a race," Turlough answered, and this was clearly nothing like what the Doctor had expected to hear.
"A . . . what?" he stammered.
"A foot race across the marshes," he clarified, and the Doctor's expression darkened.
"You had a foot race? Turlough, I do hope you understand the grav"--he stopped mid-sentence, and adjusted his specatcles in frustration before continuing--"the severity, of the situation here. The chain seeding is failing. Grket is counting on this outpost. The whole colony is counting on Glindgreect's calculations. You cannot monopolize his time with childish contests!"
Well, Turlough supposed, he'd most likely learned what Glindgreect and Klraact were arguing about.
Across the room, the conversation heated up again and Glindgreect finally harroom-ed, filling the room with sound, and shouted, "Will no one let me think?" before storming out toward quarters.
Turlough lifted his chin, but the Doctor was already occupied with a viewscreen at the console.
"I won the race," he said to no one.
**
The next day, Turlough beat Glindgreect at a race over the brush dunes, at a slog across Trkick creek, and at a strange climbing game called Plol that took longer to explain than to play. They sat together in the outpost mess hall at mid-afternoon, neither one willing to admit to the other that he was tired. The Doctor came in, looking for something approaching tea, but bustled out again with a quick "there's work to be done!" after breaking a mug. Klraact came in too, wringing her hands and scowling at Turlough, but Glindgreect clucked a warning in the back of his throat and she retreated.
"She acts as if the sky will fall tomorrow," Glindgreect said.
He sounded unconcerned, but Turlough straightened and thought: it won't happen tomorrow, but it will happen in three years. And the sky won't fall, it will simply float away. Suddenly, for the first time since landing on Grket, his limbs felt like lead.
"Could you return to Grekka Prime?" he asked. "If the forcefield fails?"
His Grketsch companion flushed gray, but there was no dread in his answer. "Our home world has nearly three times the gravity of Grket. If we returned, our ancient brethren would scarcely recognize us. And our lungs would collapse in under a day."
"Doesn't that scare you?"
Glindgreect harroom-ed softly. "For as long as I have been alive, the forcefield has been failing. They wish me to solve it and my first attempt has failed. But there is still time to think."
"Not today, surely. You must be exhausted," Turlough said through a wide yawn.
Glindgreect stared at him quizzically for a moment. Then he stood abruptly. "I have it!" he cried.
"The solution for the forcefield?" Turlough asked, leaping up with his friend.
Glindgreect's wide mouth broke into an even wider, all-to-familiar grin. Turlough was suddenly nervous.
"We shall race to collect Nglentha berries."
**
"These?" Turlough asked.
It was gray early morning. They were in a secluded grove at the far side of the swampy lake. The mounds were closer together here, nearly stepping distance, and the tall scrub trees seemed to have flowered after a sort; they each sported wet leaves covered with what looked like sticky blue berries. Their lowest branches hung fifteen feet above the mounds.
Glindgreect clucked a yes and pointed. "The piles go here, and here. The first one of us to collect thirty wins the race," he said, and set upon the nearest tree. Half a second later, Turlough followed, leaping easily up into the branches and clamboring among the sticky leaves. He had five berries when he looked toward the Grketsch.
His competitor stood at the foot of the next tree over, with a pile of at least ten berries already at his feet. Turlough stopped, clinging astonishedly to a branch. Before his eyes, Glindgreect took a modest, two-foot leap, opened his mouth and flung out a six-foot-long tongue, flicking a berry easily into his hand and dropping it onto the pile. Turlough blinked, and Glindgreect had ahold of yet another one.
"That's not fair!" he cried, nearly falling from the tree. There was no mistaking Glindgreect's full-throated laugh.
"It's no wonder you could hardly speak. All those awful vowels!"
Turlough was about to complain again when he saw the water ripple and heave, unbroken, behind the Grketsch.
"Glindgreect," he said, pointing. "What is that?"
Glindgreect turned around. "Oh," he said, backing away. "Oh, I'd forgotten how fiercely they guard nests in the early spring--"
"Nests?" Turlough said, trying to find somewhere to wipe his hands. The water heaved again, a huge dip and push. "I thought you said these were berries!"
"Berries . . ." Glindgreect stopped at the word. "Did I? I think I meant, eggs?"
"What. Is. THAT!?" Turlough cried again, as with a great splash, a twenty-foot flatworm burst up from the lake's surface, raining moss and lilies, flapping its side cilia and hissing through a circular mouth of sharp teeth.
"That's a Nglentha!" Glindgreect sounded almost proud.
"Glindgreect, get to the trees!" cried Turlough.
"They lay their eggs in the trees! Don't climb them, they--" Glindgreect ducked and ran for a far mound as the Nglentha thrashed, wrapped its huge flat tail around the bottom of Turlough's tree and pulled. The whole stalk bent toward its gaping mouth.
It was very lucky that on Grket, Turlough could fly. He leaped screaming away from the tree and barreled into his friend, who stood dumstruck at the undulating Nglentha.
"Strluck!" He clutched Turlough's shoulders, smiling like a lunatic. "Don't you see? The forcefield--we've been climbing trees all this time!"
The scrub tree snapped in half with a loud 'crack', and Turlough wondered what the Doctor's lecture would sound like if he let Grket's premiere scientist be eaten by a Nglentha. He wrapped an arm around his friend and sprang away with all his strength.
"All this time!" Glindgreect repeated as the rocketed toward solid ground.
**
"We must untether the forcefield," Glindgreect said as soon as they staggered their way into the laboratory, slime-covered and soaked. Turlough sank into a chair and broke it, but he was ignored.
"Are you mad?" Klraact said, but Glindgreect was already typing furiously at a console. The Doctor came up behind him, studying his charts.
"We have been crawling uselessly across the high atmosphere. We must untether the field and let it sweep along the path of a standing relay," Glindgreect continued. "We will put bouncers here, here and here, on the ground, to bolster the controls like a slingshot. Rising atmospherics will even let it self-regulate."
"My word," said the Doctor. "That's--"
A chair crashed to the floor. It was Krlaact's. "Brilliant," she finished. "Do--do you think it might work?"
Glindgreect smiled at Turlough.
"It will work. As long as there are no Nglentha to chase us away."
**
