Doctor Who and the Cave-Monsters (10 page)

The Doctor and the Brigadier stood looking at the flattened tall grass.

‘Something has lain down here,’ said the Brigadier. He looked across the moor. ‘They don’t have cows here, and the pattern is too big for a dog or a sheep.’

The Doctor had already thought of all that. He was more interested in the track of flattened tall grass leading to a rough moor road. As he neared this road he could clearly see footprints, and pointed them out to the Brigadier.

‘Anything like that footprint you claim to have seen in the cave?’ asked the Brigadier.

‘No,’ said the Doctor. ‘Much smaller. You see, there are two sorts of creatures in those caves.’

The Brigadier gave the Doctor an unbelieving look, but said nothing. They walked along a little further, studying the reptile man’s footprints. ‘He must have been prepared for a jolly long walk,’ said the Brigadier eyeing the road as it went off in a dead straight line across the moor.

‘Except that he didn’t walk very far,’ said the Doctor. ‘You see, the footprints end here.’

The Brigadier looked. ‘By jove, so they do! Do you think these things can fly?’

‘Possibly,’ said the Doctor. He had noticed something else strange – the fresh prints of car-tyre treads. ‘Could I borrow a Jeep?’ he asked.

‘I thought you’d got Bessie,’ said the Brigadier.

‘She’s at the research centre,’ said the Doctor. ‘You’ve got two Jeeps standing over there. I only want one of them.’

The Brigadier looked resigned. ‘Permission to use Jeep – granted.’

‘Thank you,’ said the Doctor, and hurried away to the waiting Jeeps.

‘Hey,’ called the Brigadier. ‘What do we do about these footprints?’

‘Take plaster-casts,’ the Doctor called back. ‘Send them to Scotland Yard and see if they belong to any known criminal. See you later.’

The Doctor jumped into one of the Jeeps, turned on the engine and drove at high speed across the open moor. Within a minute the Brigadier and his soldiers were tiny figures receding into the distance. Once well out of sight of them, the Doctor swung round in the direction of Dr Quinn’s cottage.

Dr Quinn’s car was parked at the back of the cottage. The Doctor parked the Jeep beside it, got out, produced a handkerchief and loudly blew his nose. Then he dropped the handkerchief, as close as he could to one of the wheels of Dr Quinn’s motor-car. As the Doctor knelt down to pick up his handkerchief he took a good look at the tread pattern of the car tyres. Then he straightened up, pocketed his handkerchief, and went round to the front door. On the second knock, Dr Quinn opened the door. He tried to look pleased to see the Doctor, but obviously wasn’t.

‘Hello, Doctor,’ he said, ‘this is an unexpected pleasure.’

‘I just happened to be passing,’ said the Doctor. ‘What a charming little cottage you have here! Mind if I see inside?’

Dr Quinn automatically stepped back to let the Doctor enter. ‘Yes, if old houses interest you – by all means.’

‘They do,’ said the Doctor, enthusiastically, ‘they do. How old is this one – two hundred years?’

By now the Doctor had wandered into the main living-room, Dr Quinn following him. ‘The estate agent thought it was older,’ said Dr Quinn.

‘So you’ve bought it?’ said the Doctor. ‘You’re not renting it?’

‘It was the only way to get a place,’ said Dr Quinn. ‘It cost rather a lot, but it was worth it. I got tired of living in those quarters they let us have at the research centre.’

‘Wise man,’ said the Doctor. He was looking about the place with great curiosity. ‘You’ve had quite a bit done, haven’t you?’

‘A few things,’ said Dr Quinn. Then he glanced at his watch and said, ‘Look, I’m awfully sorry, but I shall have to get on with some work.’

The Doctor ignored this. ‘Did you have the central-heating put in?’ he asked.

Dr Quinn nodded. ‘Yes. It gets very cold here in winter, so I’m told.’

The Doctor licked his index finger, held it up, and thought for a moment. ‘I’d say it’s at least thirty-three degrees in this room. Most people would find that uncomfortably hot.’

‘The thermostat has jammed,’ said Dr Quinn. ‘Now I must get on with my work…’

‘If you’ve got trouble with your central-heating thermostat,’ said the Doctor, striding back into the hall, ‘lead me to it. You can be getting on with your work while I fix your central-heating, I like tinkering with things. Where is it?’

By now Dr Quinn was perspiring and not only through the heat. ‘Where is
what
?’ he asked a little irritably.

‘The thermostat,’ said the Doctor. ‘The place is as hot as the reptile-house in the zoo. It’s very unhealthy.’ The Doctor looked around the hall, and saw a door under the stairs. ‘Is that where it is?’ He made to open the door, tried the handle and found it locked.

‘That is just a store-room,’ said Dr Quinn. ‘The thermostat is in there, but I’d much rather you left it alone. It’s still under guarantee, you see. I must call in the people who installed it.’

The Doctor stopped and turned to smile at Dr Quinn. ‘Wise fellow. If I tamper with it you will break the conditions of the guarantee.’

‘Exactly,’ said Dr Quinn, clearly much relieved.

‘I shall leave you in peace then,’ said the Doctor, going towards the front door. ‘By the way, are you related to Sir Charles Quinn?’

‘He’s my father,’ said Dr Quinn.

‘He did a great deal of the early work on smashing the atom,’ said the Doctor. ‘No wonder you went into nuclear physics.’

‘There was no option,’ said Dr Quinn. ‘One didn’t argue with my father.’

The Doctor paused on the doorstep. ‘Oh? Did you want to do something else?’

‘As a boy I was interested in geology. My father thought that rather childish. Learning about the history of our planet doesn’t
do
anything, like making wheels go round.’

The Doctor felt rather sorry for Dr Quinn. ‘I imagine being the son of a famous scientist isn’t easy,’ he said.

Dr Quinn tried to cheer himself up with a smile. ‘Oh, I don’t know. I may be famous myself one day. In science you never know what’s going to happen next.’

‘That’s true,’ said the Doctor. ‘You never know. Well, thank you for letting me see inside your charming house. I shall have to get along.’

The Doctor went back to the Jeep and drove away slowly. He knew that Dr Quinn was hiding something, but he didn’t know why. As soon as he got back to the research centre he found Liz, and told her of his suspicions about Dr Quinn, and started to search the man’s office. Liz was nervous. ‘What if he comes back and catches us in here?’ she said.

‘He won’t be coming back,’ said the Doctor, opening the drawers of Dr Quinn’s desk, ‘at least not for the time being. I believe he’s got a visitor in that little house of his, someone who needs to be kept very warm.’The Doctor took from a drawer the cast of a fossil. ‘Look, a
trilobite
.’

Liz looked. ‘The first animals that came up from the sea. Why is he interested in fossils?’

‘It’s his first love,’ said the Doctor, turning his attention now to a cupboard. ‘He didn’t really want to be a physicist…’ His voice trailed off as he found a sheaf of papers in the cupboard and started to read them. ‘These are notes he’s made about the beginning of life on this planet.’

Liz looked into the cupboard, took out a plastic ball with markings on it. ‘Surely these marks mean something?’ she said.

The Doctor looked at the ball for a moment. ‘It’s a crude globe of the Earth when all the land masses were joined together. You see,’ he said, pointing, ‘there is the western outline of the Americas. That’s how the Earth was before the Great Continental Drift, two hundred million years ago.’

They both looked at the globe in wonder, and didn’t notice Miss Dawson as she entered the office. In a loud voice she asked, ‘Have you Dr Quinn’s permission to be in here?’

The Doctor and Liz spun round, caught red-handed. The Doctor put on his most charming smile. ‘As a matter of fact, no,’ he said. ‘But I must find out what is going on here before anyone else is killed.’

‘If you’re talking about the pot-holer,’ said Miss Dawson, with rising anger, ‘I don’t see that gives you any excuse to pry into another person’s personal possessions.’

‘Not only the pot-holer, Miss Dawson,’ said the Doctor, ‘but now a local farmer. The question is, who will be next?’

The Doctor paused to see Miss Dawson’s reaction. He realised by her look that she was a very worried woman. So he pressed home his attack a little more. ‘I believe that you and Dr Quinn are very good friends. Is that correct?’

She nodded.

‘Then you ought to know,’ he said, ‘that Dr Quinn is in grave trouble, and possibly in great danger.’

Miss Dawson thought for a few moments. Then she said, ‘I warned him. I tried to tell him.’

‘Tell him what?’ said the Doctor.

Again Miss Dawson thought before speaking. ‘I promised not to tell anyone. You see, Dr Quinn is on the verge of a great discovery, perhaps the most important scientific discovery any man has ever made.’

‘I am a man of science,’ said the Doctor. ‘You must trust me and tell me everything you know.’

‘All right,’ she said. ‘If you really think Dr Quinn is in danger, I’ll tell you…’

The Brigadier rushed into the office. ‘Where the devil have you been, Doctor? We’re due for a meeting with Dr Lawrence in a minute!’ Then he stopped dead as he realised he had walked into a conversation between the Doctor and Miss Dawson. ‘Oh, sorry. Something going on?’

The Doctor said quietly, ‘Miss Dawson, you were going to tell me something.’

Miss Dawson looked from the Doctor to the Brigadier, then back to the Doctor. ‘I’m sorry, Doctor. My first loyalty is to my friend. If you’ll excuse me.’ She hurried out of the office.

The Brigadier looked perplexed. ‘What on earth was that all about?’

‘Nothing,’ said the Doctor. ‘Just a cosy chat about the weather. Now, shall we go to this meeting?’

As Miss Dawson went up in the research centre lift she could feel the blood pounding in her temples. She had almost been disloyal to Dr Quinn. If she had said what she knew, he might be in very serious trouble. Once at the surface, she almost ran to her little car in the car park, then drove as fast as possible down to Dr Quinn’s cottage. She pounded on the front door and kept on pounding until she heard Dr Quinn calling from the other side.

‘For goodness’ sake, who is it?’

‘It’s me,’ she screamed, ‘Phyllis. You must let me in!’

She heard the rattle of the door chain and then the mortice-lock being turned. Normally, Dr Quinn never locked his front door, as did anyone in this wild countryside. She almost fell into the hallway.

‘My dear girl,’ said Dr Quinn. ‘What’s all the bother?’ He held her in his arms in a gentle embrace. She was aware of her own heart-beats and the fact that she was gasping for breath. ‘It’s as if the Devil himself were on your tail,’ he laughed.

Miss Dawson caught her breath and straightened up. Then she noticed the heat. ‘Why is it so warm here?’ she asked.

‘Is that all you’ve come to say to me?’ he said. ‘Now come into the living-room and take your coat off.’

They went into the living-room, and Dr Quinn helped her with the jacket of her suit. ‘Sit yourself down, lass,’ he said soothingly, ‘have a nice, quiet sherry and tell me what’s on your mind.’

She sat, but only on the edge of a chair. Dr Quinn poured a couple of sherries. ‘The Doctor knows what you’re doing,’ she said.

Dr Quinn didn’t seem at all put out. He continued to pour the two glasses of sherry and then brought them over to where Miss Dawson was sitting perched on the chair. ‘Really?’ he said. ‘Is that what he told you?’

‘He was searching your office.’ Miss Dawson sipped at the sherry but somehow didn’t want to drink it. ‘He talked to me. He wants to help you.’

‘Does he indeed?’ said Dr Quinn, seemingly amused. ‘He wants to steal the credit for my discoveries.’

‘You haven’t discovered anything yet,’ she said. ‘Can’t you turn down the central-heating?’ She could scarcely breathe.

‘I’m feeling a bit of a chill coming on,’ he said, ‘so I want to keep warm. I’d say that I’ve discovered rather more than most people. An entirely separate species of intelligent life.’

‘But you can’t make them tell you anything!’

Dr Quinn looked into the sherry in his glass. ‘Can’t I? Phyllis, I’ve got one of them here.’

Alarmed, Miss Dawson looked round. ‘Where?’

‘Oh, not roaming around the house,’ he said with that smile of his. ‘It’s the one they’re hunting. I’ve got it locked up safe and sound in the store-room.’

‘But it’s killed somebody,’ she said. ‘It might kill you!’ She realised how terribly fond she was of Dr Quinn, even if she had started to doubt whether he was at all fond of her.

‘It’s wounded and it’s weak,’ he said. ‘I have the key to the situation,’ and he produced a big old-fashioned key and laughed. ‘If it wants out, if it even wants food, it’s got to tell me what I want to know. It needs heat to stay alive, and it needs to be fed.’

‘Do you really believe you can make a deal with a monster?’ she asked.

‘It’s a matter of common sense,’ he said. ‘The other reptiles don’t know where it is, and it doesn’t know how to get back to their shelter in the caves. So, unless it’s willing to co-operate I’m going to starve it and turn off the central-heating.’

‘You might start doing that now,’ she said. She sniffed. ‘I can smell burning. Are you sure the central-heating is safe?’

‘I’ve had it full on before…’ Dr Quinn stopped, and also sniffed. ‘Just a moment.’ He got up and opened the door to the hall. A cloud of smoke poured in from the hall. Dr Quinn stood there as though he could not believe what he was seeing.

‘What is it?’ said Miss Dawson.

‘It’s breaking out,’ he said, and seemed unable to move from where he was standing.

Miss Dawson rushed over to the door. The hall was full of smoke. Through the smoke she could see the door to the store cupboard glowing red with heat. Suddenly the door completely disintegrated into a mound of brilliantly red ashes and the reptile man stepped through into the hall. The third eye in its forehead was glowing as brilliantly as the embers at its feet.