by Barry Letts
‘But... but it’s impossible. Creatures of that size would need colossal wings - and a breastbone to match, just to anchor their muscles!’
‘Not at all,’ said Hilda. ‘The Skang body is far less dense than the human. How do you think they... we... are able to grow so fast inside? Think of the pumice in your bath. It looks like a stone; it feels like a stone; and yet it floats.’
‘Of course,’ said the Doctor, remembering how light the Skang corpse at the bottom of the cliff had been.
As the last one joined them, the hovering, circling creatures came together and swooped into the sky like a flock of migrating swallows, with such a gust from their wings that it blew the dust from the second explosion right into the Doctor’s face.
So they weren’t to die quite yet, he thought, wiping his eyes. But what about the others, on board the Hallaton?
‘Got him!’
Even as Sarah heard the cry of triumph from behind her, she saw one of the leaders of the flying pack seem to falter and drop, as ungainly as a shot pheasant, with a broken wing vainly grasping at the air.
As part of the drill for going into action, a machine gun was manned on each side of the upper bridge, as were a brace of them mounted outside the wing doors of the lower, covered bridge.
Sarah clasped her hands over her ears as a shield against the intolerable racket. Surely the sheer weight of bullets being thrown at the creatures would knock them out of the sky!
But no. The single hit was a lucky shot. She could see that it must be impossible to aim, the way they were flying: never on a straight course like an aircraft or a bird, but swerving and jinking in unpredictable zigzags, which still took them towards the ship... Hang on, though! Maybe they’d been frightened off?
‘Cease fire!’
Bert Rogers, the signalman, sounded the klaxon, which transmitted the Commanding Officer’s order to the whole ship.
‘What the devil are they up to?’ said the Brigadier, squinting into the sun as the whole group soared up, way out of range, to hover for a minute or so...
...before closing in on one another to form a tight-knit circle, which fell with gathering speed towards the ship, as the Skang dived like a squadron of kamikazes from World War Two.
‘Fire, fire, fire!’
Again the raucous tones of the klaxon horn, and the mind-battering clatter of the guns. Another Skang, and another, were jolted from the formation as the bullets found their targets. But still they came.
Had they got a secret weapon? Would some sort of death-ray sear the open bridge? Were they all about to be incinerated like the victims of a napalm flame-thrower?
The others on the bridge must have had the same thought, for, as their attackers swooped low overhead, both Pete Andrews and the Brigadier, who were standing in the centre, moved instinctively towards the side, as if it might afford some protection.
But it was Sarah herself who twigged what was going to happen. ‘Get under cover!’ she yelled, as she ran for the ladder that led to the bridge below.
She only just made it. The blue mist that was shooting from the probosces of the flying Skang came swirling down the steps after her, almost as if she were being chased.
Nobody had followed. She slammed the door behind her.
The wing doors, as always, were closed already. Would they keep it out? Or would it seep through the cracks, and make her a victim along with the rest?
Through the glass at the front, she could see that already the ship was entirely swathed in a thick cloud of blue, far denser than the one that had greeted them when they arrived.
Please! Please!
She had no idea who she was pleading with. All she knew was that if she were to be taken over too they’d be finished, the lot of them.
Not the smallest tendril of mist, nor the faintest sniff of violets, came through.
Thank God for Scottish ship-builders.
To say that Alex Whitbread was enjoying himself (though he wasn’t quite sure whether he still existed) as the group took off from the temple, would be to understate the matter to a laughable degree. This was total rapture - a rapture of a different quality from the bliss of assimilation that he’d known in Hampstead, and even more overwhelming.
Until now he had never had the experience. To be one with the intention of the whole terrestrial group - to be, as leader, its very propagator - was to experience the ecstasy the word itself implied. He was standing outside himself, yet at the same time was more himself than ever before.
Once the intention was set, the process ceased to be voluntary. The hallucination to be generated by the enzyme grew organically from the combined background of the whole group.
He’d missed the creation of the island village and the temple, which had been settled as soon as Skang had anchored in the lagoon. If he hadn’t been so obsessed with his own predicament when he arrived himself, he surely would have laughed when he saw the result. He’d always prided himself on his good taste and his appreciation of the finer points of modern art and architecture. What had emerged from the collective unconscious of the almost totally middle-class assembly of teachers was more like a Disneyland version of a classical temple - straight out of Fantasia - crossed with an ancient Greek theatre; a proper mongrel. And as for the village...!
Still, it had done the job. The disciples had thought they were in a paradise. Evidently the Zeitgeist of Western civilisation was irredeemably bourgeois.
As they arrived above the ship, he was seized by an additional glee that owed nothing to his new-found integration with his fellow Skang.
Nanny Hilda had insisted on a phony compassion for their victims when utilising the power of illusion, instead of admitting to herself that the whole Skang process was nothing but a cosmic con. Now he was going to use it very differently.
A short sharp burst of a high-strength dose of the hallucinogenic mist would have an immediate effect. It would last for only a short time, but it would be quite long enough for his purpose.
His treatment on the ship during the journey from Bombay had been beyond belief, culminating with his imprisonment.
It had emanated from the Doctor and the Brigadier, of course, but the entire crew, from the Captain to the cook, had happily joined in.
If only he’d had the powers then that he had now! But the excision that the group had inflicted on him had put an end to them. To be cut off, not only from the others in the group but from one’s own fundamental being, leaving only the dry husk of human persona, was to find oneself in an impotent hell. He’d just had to accept every humiliation they’d heaped on him.
But now it was his turn.
It was a pity that the enzyme would only produce euphoria as well as hallucination. If only he could have directly manipulated their minds. It would have done them all good to experience even a modicum of the mental torture that he’d gone through after his excision. Still, the illusion that he had planned for them, in spite of its only affecting the five senses, would be quite enough. The human mind would always believe what was before its eyes, and be only too eager to provide a rationalisation that would make sense of it.
He was going to take great pleasure in employing a Skang hallucination to destroy the Hallaton; and, with a bit of luck, everybody on board as well.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The arena was empty; now was their best chance to get out.
It was easy to have the thought, but harder to put it into practice.
The doorway was utterly blocked by a pile of boulders. They hadn’t a hope of getting out that way. Moving the loose stone in the window gap had revealed a number of other rocks of somewhat smaller sizes, and though they each proved to move slightly under pressure, they were locked together in an inextricable jigsaw that defied all their efforts to solve it.
They found a niche in which to put the end of the chairleg at the bottom of the mound, but it only shifted a few inches.
‘If we get hold of the very end of the lever, and put all ou
r weight on it, maybe it’ll do the trick,’ said the Doctor.
But even when they both hung onto it with their feet off the ground, it was still stuck. Hilda sank back into the remaining chair, out of breath. It was taking a lot out of her.
‘We need a longer lever,’ said the Doctor. ‘We’re just not strong enough to move the lot in one go. Or heavy enough, for that matter.’
Hilda gave him a startled glance. ‘I can but try,’ she said.
What did she mean?
‘If I were in my Skang form, I could surf the gravity waves.’
She gave a little laugh, and the pedantry of her former occupation briefly emerged. ‘A metaphor, of course, and not a very accurate one!’ she said. ‘All the same, I can feel the gravity of the sun and the moon becoming stronger and stronger. I could make myself as heavy as a London bus.’
Again the Doctor felt a clash of motives; a dissonance created by his seeking the help of his enemy And yet, what other choice did he have? ‘If there’s anything you can do, then please do it,’ he said urgently ‘If they manage to stop the Brigadier, it could be our only hope.’
She shook her head. ‘It takes a great deal of energy to turn by yourself. The human personality is incredibly hard to crack. The group chanting amplifies the psionic energy - like the body of a violin resonating with the vibrations of the strings, or the voice of a singer breaking a wineglass.’
But Alex Whitbread did it in London, thought the Doctor.
And then he’d had a top-up from those poor kids on Hampstead Heath.
‘It has been necessary at times, of course, to produce the serum we needed. But I doubt if I have enough energy left after these last few days,’ Hilda went on. She shrugged. ‘As I said, I can but try. But don’t expect it to be quick.’
She pulled herself to her feet and threw her head back, closing her eyes. When she started chanting, the Doctor realised why the sound of the group had been so unpleasant.
The strange articulations - you could hardly call them words
- grated on the ear, and the musical intervals bore no relation to any scale he knew. This multiplied twenty times or more could tear the mind to pieces. And that of course was its purpose.
Pete Andrews sniffed the air. Bacon frying in the open. It had always been his favourite smell.
The Dartmouth summer camps, when the strict discipline of term time was relaxed - and even the Master-at-Arms became ninety per cent human - and you could put all your hard-won sailing expertise at the service of winning the regatta! Those were without a doubt the happiest times of his life. Until now. Until now?
He turned to share this surprising insight with the Brigadier, who was barely discernible on the other side of the bridge, through the thick mist. But the Brigadier spoke first.
‘You know, Andrews,’ he said, walking over with a broad smile on his face, ‘if you’d asked me, I’d have said that the summer hols in India, up in the hills alone with my mother, were the jolliest times of my life. But do you know, I really think that our stay here beats them into a cocked hat.’
All over the ship, the crew had broken into a happy chattering. Their commanding officer heard it with a grin of satisfaction. The old saw, An efficient ship is a happy ship, was just as true the other way round.
He had a dim memory that they were at action stations.
Some sort of exercise?
He glanced up into the mist. Even struggling to shine through, the sun was unquestionably way over the yardarm.
Time to stop all this nonsense and have a snort. They were only showing the flag, for God’s sake. A sort of pleasure cruise, really.
His order to stand down was greeted by a loud cheer.
‘Good man,’ said Lethbridge-Stewart.
A voice came over the intercom. ‘I’ve already armed the third rocket, sir. Shall I abort?’ It was Chris on the foredeck.
‘Yes, abort, abort, abort! No! Hang on a minute...’ Andrews turned to the Brigadier. ‘Fancy a firework display?’
The Brigadier grinned and gave a thumbs-up.
‘Hey, Chris! Set them both at five seconds, elevation at maximum, and fire the buggers!’
‘What me, sir?’
‘Yes you, sir. Fire ‘em locally. About time we had a bit of fun!’
The Hallaton, still creeping ahead at minimum revs, had come to the edge of the small blue cloud that enveloped it, and in less than a minute, the bridge was clear, and it was possible to see again.
A few moments later, the ship was treated to an all-too-brief Guy Fawkes display, as the two missiles soared into the sky and exploded in midair with a satisfying display of smoke, followed by a couple of equally satisfying bangs.
This resulted in an even louder cheer than before. The Brigadier laughed out loud and Pete Andrews almost clapped his hands with delight.
He looked ahead. They could see the island quite clearly now. Funny. He could have sworn that when they’d been doing the missile drill... of course, that’s what they’d been doing! A mock firing, just to keep in practice...
Then why had they actually fired them? If it was only a drill...
What the hell did it matter? After all, they could always get some more when they reached Chatham. The Irish Navy wouldn’t go without.
He took another puzzled look at the island. Surely they’d been only a cable’s length from the cliffs - two hundred yards. His memory must be slipping. The ship was at least four times that distance if not more; getting on for half a mile.
‘Well, bless my soul,’ said the Brigadier, gazing through his binoculars at the shore. ‘How the devil did we miss that?’
What was he on about? Pete lifted his own glasses. How indeed!
Even at that distance - amazing how clear the tropical air was - he could see the little town, with its welcoming shoreline: the row of bars and restaurants; the beach with its thatched umbrellas and sun-loungers; and the tourists in their brightly coloured summer plumage.
Things were getting better and better!
‘I think we all deserve a run ashore, eh, Cox’n?’ he said.
‘Count me in, sir!’
‘Right! Full ahead, both engines. Steady as she goes!’
The sooner he was sitting under one of those palms, with a tall glass of gin-and-tonic tinkling in his hand, the better.
At first there was just surprise, and a babble of voices. But when the second missile landed, and part of the volcano wall collapsed not so very far away from them, the disciples at the front of the queue panicked, and tried to run for it, with catastrophic results.
Two young men from Cambodia, friends who’d joined up together, were thrown off the path by the sudden crush of bodies coming downhill. One landed on his head and was killed outright, and the other fell over two hundred feet, breaking an arm and three ribs.
A small girl of sixteen from Alabama, known to her friends as Little Nell, was near the bottom of the path. She didn’t have time to turn as the tidal wave of bodies came down. She was crushed underfoot and died, her neck broken.
The panic, out of all proportion to the real danger, spread rapidly, in spite of the efforts of the guards in charge, and by the time all those fleeing reached the clearing at the bottom of the path to join the ones who were waiting, chaos had taken over.
To Jeremy and the others right at the back, the explosions had been remote enough to make the reaction of the others more of a surprise than anything.
But Jeremy had a strong sense of self-preservation, developed at Holbrook, partly from working out strategies to keep out of the way of the known bullies, and partly from learning how to avoid the more unpleasant demands of school life, such as the compulsory cross-country run.
So when he saw - and heard - the wave of terror coming towards him, he quietly moved away from the growing turmoil into the shelter of a group of shrubs nearby, and stood watching, poised to take off if it came anywhere near him.
In the event, the whole crowd streamed past towards the comfort
ing familiarity of the village. He was left alone, apart from the dead, the injured, and some of the guards who’d kept their heads.
He came out of hiding. ‘Excuse me...’ he said to the nearest guard.
The guard, a tall Dubliner, who had been staring open-mouthed into the sky, turned to him. ‘What?’
‘Does this mean that we’re not going to get our rewards?’
The guard stared at him. ‘How the feck would I know?’ he said, and turned away to survey the disaster left behind.
‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’ he said. At least five were lying on the ground, unmoving; one woman was sitting with her head in her hands, which were red with blood; another was wandering aimlessly towards them, her hands outstretched as if she were blind. A guard came up to her, and she collapsed into his arms, sobbing uncontrollably.
‘You’d better come and give me a hand,’ went on the Irishman, going over to the recumbent figure of a man who was gently moaning and had a trickle of blood coming from the corner of his mouth.
Well, really! Treating him like a servant! The guards were presumably paid for the job. Let them get on with it. What did he know about first aid, anyway?
It was then that he had his bright idea. This was his chance. The whole point of coming all the way from England, first to Bombay and then on the long voyage to the island, was so that they could get their rewards, whatever they were.
And when they’d got things sorted out...
He walked across the clearing to the bottom of the path, and sat down on a convenient stone. When they queued up again, he was going to be right at the front.
Sarah’s mind was working overtime as she peered out at the blueness that filled the windows at the front of the bridge.
Even if they came out of the mist, the assault was surely over. The others would be in no fit state. Or could she fire the missiles herself? No, no, no, that was a ludicrous idea. In any case, even if she could, would she want to, knowing the Doctor was still up there? For that matter, the Doctor wasn’t always right. Maybe the world wasn’t really in such clanger.