Doctor Who and the Loch Ness Monster Page 3

  Sister Lamont came quickly forward. 'I really think you should let him rest. He is under sedation, you know. Perhaps if you come back later?'

  Sarah's voice was polite, but quite determined. 'I think I'll stay if you don't mind. I'd like to be here when he wakes.' She sat back in her chair, watching Harry's face.

  The Doctor's electronic tracing equipment had been set up in one corner of the room, and a UNIT signals technician was manning it. Now the big table was occupied by packets of white powder, buckets and bowls of water, and a pile of chunks of twisted metal—part of the wreckage from a destroyed rig. More wreckage was piled in a corner. Working with quiet concentration, the Doctor was chipping delicately at a chunk of hardened white plaster. He was so absorbed that he didn't look up when the Brigadier brought Huckle into the room.

  The Brigadier coughed, and when this had no response he said heartily, 'Well, as you can see, Mr Huckle, the Doctor's hard at work.'

  Huckle didn't seem over-impressed. 'Do you mind telling us exactly what you're doing, Doctor?'

  The Doctor continued his chipping. 'A little experiment in orthodontology.'

  'Orthodontology?' It was clear from Huckle's tone that he was none the wiser.

  'Teeth, Mr Huckle,' said the Doctor sharply. 'The scientific study of teeth!' He chipped away the last few flakes of plaster, and held up the finished result. 'This is the plaster cast of a tooth, don't you agree?'

  And indeed it was—a tooth of enormous size. It reminded Huckle of the reconstructions of dinosaur teeth he'd seen in museums. 'Are you trying to tell me my rigs were chewed up—by a set of molars?'

  The Doctor's voice was thoughtful. it would be more correct to say dentures. Made of some material that can cut through concrete and steel like paper.'

  This was too much for the Brigadier. 'Come on now, Doctor. First you suggest we're dealing with some kind of sea monster, then you say it's got false teeth.'

  The Doctor stood up, brushing flakes of plaster from his clothes. 'We're certainly dealing with a kind of monster,' he agreed. 'Something of frightening size and power. But this is no ordinary sea serpent. It's a creature whose natural power and strength has been boosted by artificial means. We're dealing with a cyborg, something part animal, and part machine!'

  (In the Zygon control-room, Broton switched off his monitor screen with a hiss of rage. 'This one they call the Doctor is a threat to us. Already he has discovered too much. He must be killed!')

  Sarah's long vigil at Harry's bedside was rewarded at last. Harry opened his eyes, smiled at her and said, 'Sarah...' His voice was weak, but perfectly clear. 'Could I have something to drink, please?'

  Sarah poured a glass of water and held it to his lips. He swallowed thirstily and said, 'Sarah, listen... got to tell you...' His voice tailed away, his strength suddenly gone.

  'Harry, what is it? What are you trying to say...' Sarah looked up as Sister Lamont came quickly into the room. 'Sister, he's coming round.'

  Sister Lamont leaned over the bed, smoothing Harry's pillow and making him more comfortable. As his eyes opened again, Sarah said, 'What did you find out, Harry? The man who was killed, did he tell you anything?'

  Harry frowned, obviously making a mighty effort. 'He said the rig was shaking... falling. Then... he saw...' The effort was too much, and he slumped back on his pillow.

  Sarah jumped up. 'Will you stay with him, Sister? I've got to ring the Doctor. And please, be sure to remember anything he says. It could be very important.'

  As Sarah ran from the room, Sister Lamont bent over the bed, the soothing Highland lilt in her voice. 'It's all right, Dr Sullivan, you're quite safe. You're going to be well looked after.'

  Harry looked up at the figure leaning over him. Suddenly it seemed to blur and change. His eyes widened and he screamed, 'No... No! ' An alien hand clamped across his mouth, cutting off his voice.

  On the telephone in the corridor, Sarah poured out her news. The Doctor's voice was cheerful and reassuring.

  'He's coming round and seems quite rational? That's splendid! Keep an eye on him, I'll be over as soon as I can. Oh, and, Sarah, get the sick-bay people to keep his recovery dark. Let everyone think he's still out cold, eh? Might be safer.'

  'Safer? You mean Harry's still in danger from...'

  A hand came down on Sarah's shoulder. But it wasn't a human hand. It was orange-green in colour, claw-like and alien. It was the hand of a Zygon.

  4 A Trap for the Doctor

  Sarah swung round. Facing her was a squat, powerful figure about the size of a small man. Orange-green in colour, it had small, claw-like hands and feet. There was no neck: the big high-domed head seemed to grow directly from the bulbous torso. The face was terrifyingly alien, with huge, malevolent green eyes and a small, puckered mouth. A row of protuberances ran down its back. The really horrible thing about the creature was that it seemed to be a parody of the human form. It looked like a grotesque, evil baby.

  Sarah opened her mouth to scream, but even as she drew breath the creature reached out and grabbed her with its claw. A force like a massive electric shock slammed Sarah against the wall, and she slid unconscious to the floor.

  At UNIT H.Q. the Doctor spoke into the phone, 'Sarah? Sarah, can you hear me?' There was no answer. He slammed down the receiver and turned to Benton. 'Something's happened to Sarah. We'd better get over there at once.'

  Thanks to some spectacular driving by the Doctor, they arrived in an amazingly short time. They rushed into the sick bay to find Harry's bed empty, no sign of Sarah, and Sister Lamont fluttering about in a state of great agitation. 'I assure you, gentlemen, I was only gone a few minutes. Dr Sullivan began to talk, you see, and Miss Smith went off to call you. I waited and waited, and when she didn't come back, I was worried and went to look for her. I couldn't find her anywhere—and when I got back, Dr Sullivan had gone too.'

  'Maybe he woke up delirious, and wandered off somewhere,' said Benton. 'I'll get some men over and search the area.'

  The Doctor nodded thoughtfully. 'It's possible—but what happened to Sarah? Sister Lamont, will you show me this telephone she used?'

  While Benton used his walkie-talkie to contact UN Fr, Sister Lamont led the Doctor along the spot-less white corridor to a telephone fixed to the wall. 'When I came along the telephone was just swinging on its cord. I thought it odd at the time.'

  'Nobody else was on duty?'

  'No. We're just a small establishment here.'

  The Doctor stood quite still, apparently lost in thought. He nodded towards a door further down the corridor. 'Where does that lead?'

  'It's a decompression unit. We sometimes need it for the company divers. But it's always kept locked.' Sister Lamont seemed struck by a sudden thought. 'You know, I've just remembered, I haven't looked in the dispensary.' She hurried off in the other direction.

  Left to himself, the Doctor wandered across to the decompression unit. Almost idly he tried the door. It swung open as soon as he touched it, and he went inside.

  He found himself in a kind of antechamber. Set into one wall was a huge metal door, a big locking-wheel in its centre. Higher in the door was a small observation window, covered by a Venetian blind. He crossed to the window and peered through the chinks. The decompression chamber was small, bare, featureless. Sarah lay unconscious in the middle of the floor.

  Swiftly the Doctor spun the locking wheel, hauled open the door and climbed into the chamber. Kneeling by Sarah, he lifted her head and shoulders. Sarah's eyes snapped open, and she parted her lips to scream in blind panic. The Doctor shook her gently. 'It's all right, Sarah. It's me.'

  Sarah shook her head confusedly. 'Doctor? I was talking to you on the telephone--then I saw this... thing.' She struggled to sit up. 'What about Harry? Is he all right?'

  'I'm afraid he's disappeared.'

  'Oh, no...' Suddenly she broke off. 'Doctor—look!' The heavy metal door of the decompression chamber was swinging closed. The Doctor sprang across the room, just too lat
e to stop it. On the other side of the door, two claw-like alien hands were turning the wheel. The hands touched controls on a nearby panel; there was a low hum as the needles on the dials jumped to life. A gauge that registered the pressure of air in the chamber began dropping steadily...

  Sarah and the Doctor listened to the low hum.

  'What's that noise?' Sarah asked nervously. 'Some kind of air conditioning?'

  The Doctor was examining the observation window. As he feared, it was made of reinforced glass, impossible to break. 'I'm afraid not, Sarah. In fact, just the reverse.'

  Sarah swung round, suddenly becoming fully aware of her surroundings. 'Where are we? What is this place?'

  'It's a decompression chamber.' The Doctor went on examining the door. He patted his pockets for his sonic screwdriver. If there was time he could use the laser-attachment to cut their way out, or at least make an air hole for them.

  Sarah tried to remember what she knew about decompression chambers. Sometimes divers had to come up too quickly because of some emergency. If that happened, the abrupt change in pressure could be dangerous, and they had to spend time in a decompression chamber, to enable their bodies to adjust. Presumably a decompression chamber was basically a sealed space where you could vary the air pressure...

  Sarah felt suddenly dizzy. She tried breathing deeply, but it didn't help. She tugged the Doctor's sleeve. 'Doctor—I can't breathe. There doesn't seem to be any air in here.'

  The Doctor went on working frantically. The specially hardened glass of the window was incredibly tough, and even the sonic screwdriver seemed to make very little impression. 'Sarah, sit perfectly still. Try to save your breath.'

  Sarah sat slumped against the wall, breathing shallowly. 'They're pumping the air out, aren't they? We're going to die!' She felt oddly detached, as if this was all happening to someone else.

  The Doctor looked at her worriedly, trying to remember human reaction to oxygen deprivation. Unconscious in two minutes, dead in under ten, wasn't that it? He realised he simply could not get through the door in time to save Sarah's life. Or his own for that matter. His resistance was far greater than Sarah's, but lack of oxygen would kill them both in the end. Unless... unless...

  He crossed over to Sarah and sat down beside her. 'Sarah, look at me—and listen. Concentrate—look into my eyes.' Muzzily, Sarah obeyed. The Doctor's face swung before her, seeming to get nearer and farther, larger and smaller. She was conscious only of his burning eyes, and his urgent hypnotic voice. 'Listen to me, Sarah. You do not need to breathe. You feel nothing, nothing, nothing...' The final word seemed to echo inside Sarah's head as blackness swallowed her up.

  Outside in the corridor, the Zygon that had worn the shape of Sister Lamont spoke into a small communications device. There was a note of gloating triumph in its voice. 'The trap has been sprung. The Doctor and the human female will soon be dead.'

  The message was received by Broton in his control-room. 'Excellent,' he said, in tones of equal satisfaction, and looked down scornfully at the wounded human slumped by his feet.

  Harry Sullivan recovered consciousness slowly, and felt that he had wakened into a nightmare. Vague memories floated into his head. The man he'd found by the roadside... being in bed, the Doctor and Sarah looking down at him, then that nurse—and now this. He was in a kind of fantastic control-room where nightmarish creatures moved about mysterious tasks. The whole place seemed alive in some weird fashion all of its own. The fibrous walls were broken up with strange protuberances, odd-shaped nodules and roots, and there were glowing veins in walls and ceilings, and tangles of fibrous roots and vines running everywhere. Somehow the place looked as if it had been grown rather than made.

  The after-effects of Harry's wound had left him feeling curiously light-headed. Perhaps it was all a nightmare he concluded. Maybe he was still tucked up in bed, with Sarah and the Doctor waiting for him to wake up.

  Still, nightmare or not, he decided there was no reason why he shouldn't find out where he was. He struggled to his feet and tapped the nearest creature on the shoulder. 'I say, what in the name of blazes are you?'

  The Zygon spun round, hissing malevolently. 'I am Broton, Warlord of the Zygons. It is a name you will learn to fear, human.'

  Harry was struck by the note of colossal arrogance in the voice. Whatever these weird things were, they certainly thought a lot of themselves.

  'Who are you? Where do you come from?'

  Broton glared angrily at him, tempted to blast down this insolent human. Then it struck him that it might be amusing to overawe this primitive creature with the might of Zygon technology, to see his fear when he knew the fate that awaited his planet. Broton spoke slowly in his hissing, gurgling voice. 'Centuries ago, by your time-scale, our craft was damaged. We landed here and concealed ourselves. Over the long years we regenerated, regained our former strength. But when the sub-space communicator was at last repaired, we received terrible news. Our world was destroyed in a stellar explosion. The survivors roam the galaxy in their space ships, exiles like ourselves. We can never return home.'

  For a moment Harry was touched by the sadness in the creature's voice. But any trace of sympathy vanished with Broton's next words. 'Since our planet is no more, we must make this planet our own. All resistance will be crushed. We shall change the destiny of Earth!' The voice rose to a high, triumphant shriek.

  Broton looked expectantly at Harry, waiting to see him collapse in terror. To his disappointment the human seemed totally unimpressed.

  'I seem to have heard that one before,' said Harry. 'How do you propose to set about it?'

  Broton gave a hiss of rage. He pressed one of the control nodules and a screen slid back to reveal a long observation window. Harry peered through it, and saw with a shock that the window looked out into murky, swirling water. Broton pressed another nodule, and a low electronic burbling filled the room. 'Look, human,' he ordered.

  Obediently, Harry looked. For a moment or two he saw nothing. Then he gasped in astonishment. A huge shape had loomed up, and was drifting slowly by the window. Harry stared in amazement at the fierce head on the immensely long neck, the huge body with its two low humps, the two pairs of flippers front and rear, and the flat, powerful tail. 'We must be under Loch Ness,' gasped Harry. 'And that thing—that's the monster!'

  'To us, human, it is the Skarasen. A native of our planet—and in your terminology, our ultimate weapon!'

  Broton touched a control. The noise died down and the monster swam away. The cover slid hack over the window. Harry shook his head wonderingly. 'How did you manage to bring a thing that size with you?'

  'As an embryo. It was grown and reared here on your planet. The Skarasen is our life source. We Zygons need its lactic fluid to survive.'

  So the monster was also a kind of milk-cow, thought Harry. He blurted out his next thought before he could stop himself. 'Then if that thing is killed, you die too?'

  'None of your human weapons can affect the Skarasen. Our technology is supreme.'

  'Ours isn't so bad either,' Harry said defiantly. 'I doubt if your little pet would survive a nuclear missile.'

  'The merest pin-prick,' Broton was scornful. 'We have converted the Skarasen into a cyborg of devastating power. Nothing can stand against the Zygons. Nothing! '

  Suddenly Broton tired of his sport. The human was failing to show the proper reactions. He should have been pleading for mercy by now. 'Take him away and prepare him,' he ordered. Another Zygon stepped up behind Harry and seized his arms in a powerful grip.

  Harry realised he had forgotten to ask the most important question of all. 'What about me?' he yelled. 'Why have you brought me here?'

  As he was dragged struggling from the control-room, Harry heard Broton's mocking reply. 'We have brought you here, human, because we need your body.'

  5 The Sleeping Village

  The Brigadier was feeling aggrieved. Not for the first time, he brooded over the tendency of his assistants to disappear j
ust when needed. Harry was missing. Sarah was missing. The Doctor and Benton had gone off to look for them, and now they were missing. For want of anything better to do, the Brigadier started harrying his H.Q. staff.

  'Is the cordon set up on the moor?'

  'Yes, sir,' said Corporal Palmer patiently.

  'Remember now,' snapped the Brigadier, 'I want a twenty-four hour watch kept on every inch of this coast-line.'

  Corporal Palmer sighed. He'd already set up liaison with Trinity House, the Coastguard and the Royal Navy. However, he refrained from pointing this out to the Brigadier, contenting himself with a brisk, efficient, 'Sir!' as he got on with his work.

  The Brigadier studied a map of the coast-line. 'If the Doctor's right, and some kind of sea monster is attacking the rigs, we've got to be ready for anything.'

  'Sir!' said Palmer again, thinking they'd all be ready a lot sooner if the Brigadier would clear off and let them get on with it.

  A new and alarming thought struck the Brigadier. 'The thing might decide to come inland somewhere else, and bypass our cordon. You'd better warn the local police to be on the alert.'

  'Sir! ' said Palmer. He'd seen to all that half an hour ago.

  The Brigadier regarded him with some irritation. The super-efficient Palmer was invaluable, but it was possible to be too efficient. 'Can't you say anything else but "Sir! "?' he demanded irritably.

  'Sorry, sir! ' The RT operator passed Palmer a message slip and he seized thankfully on the diversion. 'Message from Sergeant Fletcher's squad, sir. They've arrived at McNab Point and set up a listening watch with some of that new equipment of the Doctor's. So far they say there's...'

  Palmer's voice slowed, his eyes glazed, and he slid gently to the floor.

  The Brigadier stared at him in utter disbelief. Sleeping on duty was a serious offence in itself, but actually dropping off under the eye of a superior officer... 'Corporal Palmer!' he barked, 'Get a grip of yourself, man.' Palmer made no reply. He seemed to be fast asleep. The Brigadier turned to his orderly clerk.