Doctor How and the Deadly Anemones by Mark Speed

enjoy it, she was sure.
    She stopped every twenty or thirty yards to tune in for a couple of seconds. The overnight work on the Tube continued on a different tunnel system entirely. Behind that she could make out a fainter but closer hub of activity. This was what interested her. She crept forward until she reached an area of recent human activity. Even above the stench of their waste she could smell them – their sweat, their deodorants, their synthetic materials and their fear.
    Behind the human activity she could smell the polyps. Specifically, she could smell that single polyp trapped in the system up ahead. Her mandibles twitched with anticipation at the kill, and the taste of fresh prey.
    She crept forward and then stopped at the end of the tunnel, just before it connected to a larger one, spread her legs out and stood for a couple more minutes. Against her expectations, the police, aided by sewer workers, had decided to work through the night. There were about a dozen of them, and they were being loud. She knew this loudness: it was the noise of fear. The volume of the activity was there to ward off predators. Of course, the humans didn’t know that’s what they were doing because it was pure instinct on their part, driven by a primeval fear they could never conquer. She twitched with slight annoyance at them. If only they’d go away for a minute – just one minute – she and Tim could take care of this mess for them. Now she understood better why the Doctor could become so frustrated with human activity when it impinged on his own. They never understood that they just got in the way of things when they didn’t understand them.
    Still, she had plenty of time and little better to do. She checked in again with Tim. They, too, were similarly frustrated, having reached a position some twenty yards to the south of the human activity. Tim and Trinity had a little mental bitching session about the apparently constant need for humans to be seen to be doing something, even if it was completely the wrong thing. Tim hadn’t picked up any scent of polyps to the south. The chances were that this one was the straggler of the group. In times of scarce resources all animals across the universe did this – predator and prey alike – they spread out and foraged individually. The two stronger polyps had headed north.
    Tim and Trinity mulled it over. Tim could creep slowly forward as the human activity kept the polyp stuck in that position. The alien was probably not in a position to move a great distance anyway, given that it was digesting the largest meal it had had in its short life. Even if the humans remained for a couple of days, Tim might well be able to send out a thin sliver of themselves to deal with it.
    There was no sense in a highly mobile hunter like Trinity standing guard when a couple of polyps were on the loose. With that decision made, she informed the Doctor and headed north on her own, relishing the prospect of a two-to-one hunt. She tracked back a hundred yards and found the scent of the other two polyps.

 
    The polyp slid and lolloped its way down a smooth section of sewer on its single foot, fell out of the end of the tunnel and splashed down into a pool four feet below. It hadn’t intended to splash down into the pool; it was a brainless polyp. But it would be true to say that falling into the pool was not a good outcome.
    Its simple neural circuits flashed briefly and made another connection. This was the third time it had taken such a tumble in the recent past. Now it knew that a certain kind of vibration in the air caused by falling water indicated a precipice up ahead. Or, rather than knowing, it associated the proximate sound as a possible warning of an impending fall. It would proceed more cautiously next time it heard the noise because being out of contact with a surface was not something that felt good to it.
    It instinctively spread out its tentacles on the surface and stretched its body