CHAPTER 18

The Twin Towers

Amy’s burning worry now was that she wouldn’t reach the Doctor in time. She had made the connection to the electrified Tube rail. She was still in possession of the second connector, which would allow the Doctor to feed the Underground’s supply into his voltage-boosting device. But what if she and PC Sanderson couldn’t find him fast enough once they reached the stadium?

Amy knew there could be only minutes left before the football match ended and the Vispic larvae would begin to feast. Only minutes left to destroy the displacement anchor and save London.

But finding the Doctor proved less of a problem than Amy had feared. Only moments after PC Sanderson brought his patrol bike to a skidding halt outside the main stadium entrance and Amy had quickly dismounted, she heard a familiar yell.

‘Ahoy there, Amelia Pond! Glad you could make it!’

Amy looked up. She wasn’t sure whether to feel relieved or horrified by what she saw. It was good to have found the Doctor so quickly, but what was he doing up there?

A thin silver wire stretched all the way from the flagpole on top of one of the stadium’s twin white towers to the flagpole on the other. Halfway along it, dangling by one hand, was the Doctor. The Vispic displacement anchor was clasped in his other hand.

There was an alarming distance from the wire to the stadium roof below. Amy seriously hoped he knew what he was doing.

‘I’ve got the extension lead!’ she yelled back. She held the connector high so that the Doctor could see it. ‘It’s all plugged in, courtesy of London Transport!’

‘Splendid work, Pond! Who’s your friend?’

PC Sanderson had now also dismounted. He was standing beside Amy, gawping at the Doctor’s daredevil high-wire act. He turned to look at her, puzzled.

‘Amelia Pond?’ That wasn’t the name she had given him.

‘Er …’ Amy looked awkward. ‘Yeah. It’s … um … another Special Branch code name.’ She hastily turned her attention back to the Doctor. ‘This, Agent Lineker,’ she yelled, ‘is PC Sanderson. He got me back here in one piece!’

‘Good man, Sanderson!’ The Doctor now appeared to be attaching the displacement anchor to the midpoint of the wire with his free hand. A moment later, he let go of the slim filament. It stayed in place.

‘Right! That’s it! All set! We just need to connect up the juice!’

Amy and Sanderson watched anxiously as the Doctor began to make his way, hand over hand, along the wire and back towards the right-hand tower. He was almost halfway to the flagpole when he suddenly stopped.

‘What’s the matter, Doctor?’ yelled Amy.

‘Do me a favour, both of you!’ he hollered back. ‘Keep looking at that tower dome.’

Amy and Sanderson did as he asked: both fixed their eyes on the dome.

It took Amy a few seconds to see it. One area of the white dome was flickering unnaturally.

‘Thought so!’ yelled the Doctor. Swinging precariously by one arm again, he quickly pulled out his sonic screwdriver. He aimed it at the right-hand tower dome. A thin, metre-long bolt of green light suddenly shot from its tip.

As the energy pulse struck it, the flickering shape that Amy had made out solidified into a hideous, multi-limbed body. The adult Vispic that was clinging to the dome became fully visible – almost highlighted, in fact, as its entire alien body turned bright orange.

‘I’ve calculated a frequency that messes up their skin-pigment control,’ the Doctor shouted down. ‘Fixes it temporarily in one tone. At least I can see what I’m dealing with!’

He twisted his arm to turn his dangling body by a hundred and eighty degrees.

‘And unless I’m much mistaken …’

He took aim and fired off another sonic pulse in the direction of the other tower dome. A moment later, the hulking body of a second adult Vispic became clearly visible, crouching atop the dome. This time, its skin colour had been locked in a shocking pink all over.

The creatures lurking on the twin towers were the size of the smaller adult Vispics Amy and the Doctor had met earlier. These two had come after the Doctor just as the larger adult had come after Amy. It looked likely that the Vispics had figured out that Amy and the Doctor were planning something and were out to stop them.

The Doctor’s situation didn’t look good. He was now hanging from the wire between the two flagpoles, with a hungry Vispic lying in wait for him at each end. He was left with nowhere to go.

Amy saw the dangling Doctor look from one Vispic to the other, then down at her.

‘Wish me luck, Pond!’ he yelled. ‘Because as much as I’d love to hang around –’

Amy let out a shriek of horror as the Doctor released his grip on the wire and fell.

‘DOCTOR!’

The Doctor’s body plummeted to the stadium roof, dropping out of Amy’s field of vision. She stared at the point where he had vanished, waiting and hoping for a sign that he was okay.

Several seconds passed. Nothing.

Then suddenly Amy saw the Doctor’s wild-haired head poke out from over the edge of the roof. He was grinning playfully. ‘Did you miss me?’

Amy, craning her neck, gave him an exasperated look. She saw his smile vanish at the sound of two heavy crashes. The Vispics had jumped down from their tower perches to join him on the stadium roof.

‘No need to panic!’ the Doctor yelled down. ‘They’ll be displaced as soon as we connect the power!’ His right hand appeared over the edge of the roof. It was clutching a coil of electrical cable – the old-fashioned black-and-white fabric-covered kind.

‘I’m going to throw this down, Pond! Just clamp the connector to the end and switch it on!’

‘Is that going to take a thousand volts, Doctor?’ From where Amy was standing, the cable didn’t look particularly heavy-duty.

‘I’ve tweaked the core!’ yelled back the Doctor. ‘It’s super-conductive now. It’ll be fine. Ready?’

Before Amy could reply, there was an anxious shout from PC Sanderson.

‘Agent Beckham!’

Amy turned to see what the problem was.

The third adult Vispic – the largest one – was clattering towards them along Olympic Way. It looked more bizarre than ever. Its camouflage seemed to be only partly working. Bits of its body were clearly visible, while other parts still matched themselves to their background, giving the overall impression of a grotesque, moth-eaten monster.

Amy guessed that the double shocks she had given the Vispic back at the Tube station had taken their toll on the creature’s camouflage. Or maybe it was just mad enough not to care whether they could see it or not. Either way, it was still perfectly capable of making a meal out of her and Sanderson.

They needed to make that connection, fast.

Amy turned back to look up at the Doctor on the rooftop. ‘Ready, Doctor! Lob it down!’

The Doctor let the cable drop. It uncoiled down the stadium wall as it fell. Amy put her arms out to catch its free end.

But it didn’t reach her. Not even close.

Even as it dangled at full length down the face of the wall, its end hung a good seven or eight metres from the ground.

The cable was too short.