Doctor Who and the Cave-Monsters (18 page)

‘Do not say “our time”!’ thundered Morka. ‘This
is
our time.’

‘It is possible,’ said K’to, with all the respect due to the new leader, ‘that the virus may take longer with these new apes.’

‘Or have they developed an antidote?’

‘That is beyond their intelligence,’ said K’to, more to please Morka than because he believed it himself. ‘We need a human specimen in order to observe the effects of the virus. If necessary I might be able to develop a more virulent strain.’

‘Then I shall return to the caves,’ said Morka, ‘and capture one of these humans with weapons.’

‘There is another possibility,’ said K’to. ‘Could we not capture the creature that took the virus from Okdel?’

‘How?’

‘We know they have this special place,’ said K’to, ‘deep in the ground and close to our shelter. The shortest distance between one place and another is a straight line.’

Morka was pleased with this idea. ‘The rock melts easily,’ he said. ‘We made the tunnel to bring in air without difficulty.’ He rose from the chair. ‘We shall start now.’

Jock Tangye had never driven his hire-car to London before in all his years in business. He was just sitting down to a knife-and-fork tea with his wife when there was a banging on his front door. A man stood on his whitewashed doorstep, very well dressed but wild-eyed, and said, ‘Do you run a taxi?’

‘Yes,’ said Jock, ‘but I’m having my tea.’

‘I’ll give you ten pounds to drive me to London immediately,’ said the man. ‘Or twenty if you want.’

Jock didn’t even bother to drink his cup of tea. Normally he drove villagers to go shopping in Peterborough, and charged them fifty pence each. Twenty pounds was his average weekly income.

‘Don’t I know your face?’ he asked his passenger as they set off.

‘Probably,’ said the man, then seemed to doze off in the back seat.

Jock made his way to the A1 and headed south. Ninety minutes later he was hemmed in by fast-moving traffic going over the Brent Cross flyover. ‘You’ll have to tell me which way to go from here,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘I don’t know London.’ There was no answer from the back seat. He looked at the man through his rear mirror. The passenger’s face was deathly white, his mouth hung open. Jock pulled into the side, stopped, turned towards his passenger. ‘Are you all right?’The passenger didn’t move.

Jock scrambled out of his car, stood in the road and tried to wave down some oncoming cars. Headlights flashed at him and hooters were sounded in anger. The cars swept by him. He cried out to them, ‘Stop! Someone help me!’ But none of the cars stopped. He was almost in tears, sweat dripping from his forehead. Then he saw a panda-car approaching with the word
‘POLICE’
in illuminated letters. He stood right in front of it to force it to stop. A young police-officer looked out from the driver’s window.

‘What’s the matter?’ The young policeman sounded angry. People in London didn’t expect to be stopped, or even to have to speak to someone they didn’t know.

‘My passenger,’ said Jock, ‘have a look at him.’

The panda-car pulled into the side, and the young policeman got out. ‘You got someone drunk in there?’ He produced a torch, and leaned into the back of Jock’s car. ‘Now then, wakey-wakey,’ he shouted. Then he went very quiet and turned to Jock. ‘You know who this is?’

‘No idea,’ said Jock.

‘Right Honourable Frederick Masters,’ said the young policeman. ‘And he’s dead.’The policeman crossed back to his panda-car and took up the radio-telephone. Jock watched on, bewildered by all the noise and the traffic. Then, suddenly, he felt very ill.

Sergeant Hawkins put down the ’phone in the conference room, crossed to a map of Britain pinned on the wall. He selected two pin-flags from a box under the map, stuck them in London. There were already three flags stuck in Derbyshire, one near Peterborough. The Brigadier entered, saw Hawkins putting in the new flags.

‘So it’s got to London?’ said the Brigadier.

‘Mr Masters,’ said Hawkins, ‘and a man with a hire-car. There’s also a young policeman very ill in the Royal Free Hospital.’

‘What’s the one in Peterborough?’ said the Brigadier.

‘The guard on the train. He died an hour ago in hospital there.’

‘We’ll have to put the whole country in quarantine,’ said the Brigadier. ‘At least we can stop the rest of the world being affected.’

The ’phone rang, and Hawkins answered it. ‘Research Centre, Wenley Moor,’ he said, ‘Sergeant Hawkins speaking.’ He listened, then frowned. ‘Right, thanks.’ He put down the ’phone. ‘It looks like we’re too late, sir. Orly Airport, Paris – two of them gone down with it, from a flight from London.’

‘That’s impossible,’ said the Brigadier. ‘What’s the connection?’

‘Both nurses,’ said Sergeant Hawkins, ‘from the Royal Free Hospital, London, going away for the weekend.’

Without a word the Brigadier turned on his heel and left the conference room. Sergeant Hawkins unrolled a map of the world. He carefully attached sticky tape to the two top corners, then stuck the map on the wall. Then he selected two pin-flags and stuck them in Paris.

In the laboratory the Doctor was supervising the installation of an electron microscope. The Brigadier entered.

‘Doctor,’ said the Brigadier, ‘this thing is spreading like wildfire. There’s two dead in London, now two in Paris.’

‘Can’t all international flights be stopped?’ asked Liz.

‘I rather think it’s too late,’ said the Brigadier. ‘Have you made any progress, Doctor?’

‘It’s a bit like a journey in the dark,’ said the Doctor. ‘I won’t know that I’ve arrived until I’m there.’

The Brigadier sat down on one of the few available chairs. He touched his forehead, then looked at the glistening sweat on his fingers. ‘Perhaps we’d better all have some more antibiotics,’ he said.

Liz gave a quick look at the Doctor, and the Doctor nodded. ‘Get young Meredith to serve up antibiotics all round,’ he said. ‘And tell him to be quick about it.’

Morka, K’to, and three other reptile men stood and looked at a section of the metal wall of their shelter.

‘We should start here,’ said K’to.

‘How can you be sure?’ asked Morka.

‘I have listened to the wall with one of our sound-detecting devices,’ said K’to. ‘One can hear the humans’ voices at this point. Here, we are closest to their scientific place beneath the ground.’

‘Then we commence,’ said Morka.

Morka looked hard at the metal wall. Then his third eye began to pulsate, glowing red. K’to’s third eye followed, and then the third eyes of the other reptile men. The metal in front of them glowed red hot and then white hot, and soon it fell away in molten flakes. Behind was the solid rock of the caves. That, too, began to melt before the heat-force of the reptile men.

Liz, Dr Meredith, and the Brigadier watched on intently as the Doctor poured liquids into a phial. By now every chemical in the laboratory was standing in a jungle of bottles and phials on the working-top by the electron microscope. The Doctor put the phial into an agitator, and pressed a button. The phial whirled round, mixing the liquid chemicals. Then he stopped the agitator, and drew off some drops of the liquid on to a glass and put the glass under the electron microscope.

‘How are you feeling?’ Liz asked the Brigadier.

‘Not too bad,’ he said, although she could see he was perspiring freely.

‘If the virus strain knows what it’s about,’ said Dr Meredith, ‘it’ll soon find a way to overcome the antibiotics.’

‘What’ll happen then?’ asked the Brigadier.

‘That will be fatal,’ said Dr Meredith, as though quoting from a medical textbook.

‘Thank you very much,’ said the Brigadier. ‘That’s most comforting.’ He spoke up to the Doctor. ‘It seems I’m going to be dead soon, Doctor. Any chance you can hurry things along?’

‘Give him some more antibiotics,’ said the Doctor, not looking up from the microscope.

‘We haven’t got any more,’ said Dr Meredith. ‘We’ve run out.’

‘Charming,’ said the Brigadier. ‘That makes my day.’

The Doctor held himself very still. ‘I think this is it,’ he said quietly.

Dr Meredith crossed to the microscope. ‘May I see?’

‘Later,’ said the Doctor. ‘It’s only a few blobs squirming about. But
my
blobs are definitely killing off
their
blobs!’ He turned to the Brigadier. ‘Where’s our guinea pig?’

‘In a bed, in a ward, in a coma,’ said the Brigadier. ‘I brought in the ambulance driver who took Major Barker to hospital.’

‘Excellent.’ The Doctor plunged a syringe into the phial he had just mixed. ‘Now let’s get this into him and see what happens.’

The Doctor held the syringe point upwards and marched out of the laboratory.

‘Doesn’t he ever get tired?’ asked Dr Meredith.

‘No,’ said the Brigadier. ‘He just gets impossible to work with sometimes, that’s all.’

Morka stood now in a tunnel of perfectly smooth rock, just wide enough for his shoulders. He faced the rock before him, concentrating on to it the power of his third eye. The rock glowed white with heat and melted. The concentration took all his energy, but he continued until he knew it was impossible to go on any longer. He stopped concentrating, and walked back through the narrow tunnel to where the other reptile men were waiting. Immediately another reptile man stepped forward to take Morka’s place, while Morka regained his strength of concentration.

‘Many of the humans must be dead by now,’ said K’to, to please Morka. He could see how tired Morka was. Morka took longer spells at melting the rock than any of the others.

‘We should have activated the other shelters,’ said Morka. ‘It is wrong that we alone should have to fight this vermin.’ He stood thinking, watching the back of the reptile man now taking a turn at melting the rock. ‘What if they do find an antidote? Can your science save us then?’

‘There is something else,’ said K’to, ‘something I have set my assistants to work on. But let us first capture this creature that pretends it understands science. Then we shall see.’

The Doctor, Liz, and the Brigadier stood round the sick-bay bed while Dr Meredith felt the ambulance driver’s pulse. ‘It’s normal,’ he said, excitement in his voice, ‘it’s definitely normal.’

‘Let me see,’ said the Doctor, and pushed Dr Meredith out of the way to hold the sick man’s wrist.

The Brigadier whispered to Liz, ‘Such charming manners he has.’ Liz told the Brigadier to shut up.

‘Yes,’ said the Doctor, ‘I think you’re right.’

‘Thank you,’ said Dr Meredith, the excitement replaced with a touch of ice in his voice. ‘I may not understand lizards and reptiles, but I can tell when a pulse is normal.’

The Doctor stepped back. ‘My dear fellow, I’m terribly sorry. How very rude of me.’

The Brigadier spoke up. ‘When you two have finished exchanging pleasantries, would you mind saying what we do now? You’ve saved one man. There are people dropping dead all over the world by now!’

‘It’s obvious,’ said the Doctor, ‘we’ve got to ’phone the formula to London so that they can get the antidote into mass production right away. You get London on the ’phone, Brigadier. I’ll get the formula.’ He moved to the door, then stopped and turned to Dr Meredith. ‘Oh, and you…’

Yes?’ said Dr Meredith.

The Doctor indicated the man in the bed. ‘Give the poor fellow a cup of tea or something.’Then the Doctor was gone.

‘I’ll start that call to London,’ said the Brigadier, and followed the Doctor out.

Liz went closer to the man in the bed. ‘You’re sure he’s getting better?’

‘Every test proves normal,’ said Dr Meredith. ‘But he’s exhausted. His body’s been fighting this thing, and it’s knocked him out. That’s just normal sleep. Now I think we should leave him alone.’

Liz left the sick-bay and went down the corridor to the conference room. The maps on the walls were now peppered with pin-flags. There were many flags in the Midlands, but the greatest concentration was in the London area. In the map of the world flags had been pinned into Paris, Frankfurt, and now Sergeant Hawkins was just pinning one into Belgrade. The Brigadier was on the outside ’phone.

‘Yes sir,’ said the Brigadier, ‘we’ve got the answer to it. I’m going to read the formula to you now, and then it must be produced in quantity immediately and shipped all over Europe.’ He looked up at Liz and snapped his fingers. ‘The formula, please.’

She said, ‘I thought the Doctor was getting it. He had it written down in the laboratory.’

The Brigadier cupped the ’phone. ‘Well, please will you get it from him immediately! I’ve got the Ministry on the ’phone now.’

Liz hurried out and ran all the way to the laboratory. As she approached the laboratory she noticed the strange smell of burning in the air. She opened the door and stood there too terrified to speak. Two reptile men were dragging the unconscious Doctor towards a hole that had been bored in the wall. Without noticing Liz they disappeared down what appeared to be a smooth-walled passageway. The hole closed in, as though it had never been there. Then Liz started to scream.

The Brigadier was the first to get there. ‘What the devil’s going on?’