Doctor Who: The Devil Goblins From Neptune (27 page)

Somewhat agitated.'

'I'll give him something to be agitated about. Take my riding crop and see him off the premises!'

'He was most insistent that he be allowed to see you, sir,'

noted Miller.

'Very well,' said Rose with a long-suffering sigh. 'Show him in.'

Miller returned a moment later with Arlo. He was looking even more dishevelled than normal, and began babbling the moment he saw Rose.

'It's crazy, man, just -'

'Be quiet!' snapped Rose angrily. 'That will be all, Miller.'

'Will sir require anything further?'

'Yes.' Rose noted. 'A pot of tea. For one.'

As Miller closed the door Rose turned to Arlo, who was standing fidgeting beside the fireplace.

'Cool pad you've got here, man.' said Arlo nervously. He seemed terrified.

'You came here to tell me that?'

'No, man... ' Arlo seemed to be having trouble speaking his mind. Rose decided to help him.

He strode across the room, grabbed the hippie by his scrawny neck and slapped him viciously across the face. 'You have something to tell me?' said Rose, releasing his grip.

'They've been killed!' blurted Arlo, slumping down to his knees. 'They're dead. All of them.' On and on he raved until Rose brought him to a halt with a swift kick in the ribs.

'Who has killed whom?' Rose asked.

'The goblins, dad. They ripped us to pieces.'

'You seem unhurt,' said Rose.

Jesus, man, I just got in the van and I drove like it was the end of the world, you dig?'

Rose paused for a moment. This was, he was forced to admit, an unexpected development. 'You cannot expect an alien intelligence to conform to your patterns of reasonable behaviour,' he reasoned.

'But they went ape, man. They slaughtered all my friends.'

'I believe the Venus People were looking for a new life beyond this awful planet. Maybe they've found it.' Rose seemed satisfied with this, moving away from Arlo and towards the French windows.

Arlo stood, anger surging through him. 'They call us freaks, man, but you're evil.'

'I beg your pardon?' Rose turned calmly, a slim revolver drawn just as Arlo threw himself at the viscount. A single shot hurled the young man backward. He found himself clutching his shoulder, eyes screwed up in pain as Rose towered over him.

If you want the animals to perform tricks for you, you must be prepared to feed them.' said Rose. 'Get up!'

Arlo struggled to his feet. He felt sick, his body racked with pain.

'Now, get out.' said Rose, pushing Arlo through the French windows.

'I'll tell them, man. I'll tell them it was all your idea!'

'No you won't.' said Rose, returning to his seat and his newspaper. He rang the bell for Miller. 'Where was his blasted tea?

Arlo ran blindly from the Earl of Norton's stately home towards the woods a hundred yards from the house, still clutching his injured arm. He glanced behind him, expecting to see Rose following him.

Instead, through eyes stinging with tears, Arlo saw what appeared to be one of the carved gargoyles on the building flap gently into the air. He screamed as it swooped down towards him.

The Doctor picked his way through the corpses, his face ashen. A patch of mist stretched from the monoliths of Stonehenge, just visible over the rise, towards the Venus People's camp site. Had the situation been different the Doctor would have pondered aloud mankind's eternal yearning for the stars, progressing from megaliths to gaudy caravans. But whatever the Venus People were searching for, it shouldn't have ended here, like this.

He watched as Shuskin and some UNIT troops turned over the bodies, searching for signs of life. They worked slowly and methodically, their faces masks of concentration and emotional detachment. 'This one's got a pulse.'

exclaimed one soldier, waving for the medic.

The Doctor turned away in disgust. A massacre, then, as he'd feared. Benton's screams were still fresh in his mind. It had taken them some minutes to calm him down, his words coming in sobbing bursts through the background interference. Apparently he'd travelled to Stonehenge in search of the Venus People, but could only remember the subsequent attack in nightmarish flashes. He'd survived the night, but the carnage revealed by the morning sun had scared him out of his wits. Without thinking, he had used his UNIT radio to call for help, and somehow they had picked up the signal at Brize Norton.

Yates stood at the Doctor's side. 'We've found a couple of survivors.' he said. 'The rest have been torn to ribbons and... ' His words trailed away.

'Eaten?' queried the Doctor. It's easy to forget that humans can be part of the food chain.'

'Why did the aliens attack these people?' asked Yates.

'Physical hunger, in part.' The Doctor paused, suppressing a shudder at the memory of the soul-catching.

'But that's not the whole story. It's rare in nature for a creature to attack another when it is not hungry. But many of these poor people were killed it the sake of killing. That's still hunger, but of a different kind. The Waro can only control their aggression for so long. occasionally the bloodlust becomes irresistible, do you see?'

'Why the Venus People and all the other hippies?'

'Drifters in society,' said the Doctor. 'If Benton hadn't radioed in the attack might have gone unreported for a number of days.'

"Chen the Waro have done their homework,' said Mike.

'Well, somebody is guiding them.' said the Doctor.

'Benton might have some idea. Have you found him yet?'

Yates shook his head. 'We'll find him soon enough.' His voice wavered slightly, betraying his true uncertainty.

'Of course.' said the Doctor. 'Have you discovered anything else?'

'The boffins are reporting higher-than-normal radiation levels.' stated Yates, pointing across the field to a white tent, surrounded by plastic-suited figures who were taking samples from the soil and overseeing the removal of the bodies from the site.

'You don't need to be a rocket scientist to work out that it's not the radiation that killed these poor people,' remarked the Doctor. Then a thought struck him. 'Before I left,' he said,

'didn't Lethbridge-Stewart want me to investigate unusually high radiation levels in the Solent?'

Yates nodded, remembering the Brigadier's note and the file that he'd sent Benton to collect.

'I glanced at the report just before we departed for the Soviet Union.' continued the Doctor. 'South-east of the Earl of Norton's land. Something did come down in the sea during the pop concert.'

'When Benton and I interviewed the Venus People a few days back.' said Yates, 'we came to the conclusion that they'd seen something land in the water. It wasn't just their overactive imaginations.'

The Doctor nodded. 'Time for a swim, Mike. Do you think you can arrange -'

Without warning a figure lunged at the Doctor from the hedgerow, arms flailing. 'You've got to do something!'

screeched the man.

'Sergeant Benton?' asked the Doctor, holding the man's arms tightly until he sank to his knees. 'John?'

He wore some sort of kaftan or smock, his legs blue with cold. It looked like he'd been sleeping rough for a week, not a single night. His eyes were distant dull-grey circles, the rest of his face covered with dirt and dark bruises.

'Doctor?' said Benton. 'You've got to do something.'

The Doctor crouched down in front of Benton. 'All right, old chap, don't worry. We'll sort everything out.'

'Goblins!' screamed Benton suddenly, his eyes looking through the Doctor, no doubt towards the events of the previous night. 'They came out of the stones, out of the sky.'

He began to sob uncontrollably. 'And the screaming... ' He twisted his head quickly from side to side, as if pinpointing a noise. 'There! Someone's still screaming. They need our help.' He tried to get up.

Yates laid a comforting hand on the man's shoulder.

'Easy, John. There's nothing more you can do.' He turned away bitterly. 'Nobody here needs our help.'

A horn blared into Liz Shaw's slumber and she woke with a start, swerving the car away from the oncoming truck. She swore under her breath, her heart beating rapidly The lorry driver appeared to be gesticulating in her direction, but Liz ignored the man, and concentrated on the road.

Maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all, she thought. Corporal Bell had offered to drive her up to Cambridge, but Liz was determined to do something without UNIT mollycoddling her. And, anyway, her Mini Cooper hadn't been out of the garage in weeks.

Liz had assured Bell that she wasn't feeling tired, despite the long flight back from Siberia, and that she knew the route well. She'd be there in no time, she had said.

Or in the morgue, if you're not careful, she thought as she wound down the window and pushed the slider on the heater towards cold. A few minutes later she turned the car in the direction of St Leonard's, thankful that the roads from here were much less monotonous. The melancholy she felt, passing the landmarks that she knew so well, was even greater than that she'd experienced during her earlier visit. It was a lovely day, but it was frightening how people were moving around without, it seemed, a care in the world. For one mad moment Liz wanted to stop the car, get out and shout, 'The aliens are coming! Stay in your homes!' But that would be rank hypocrisy.' she was as implicated in the wall of official denial as the military and the police. At least she had something practical to do, a role to play in the defeat of the invisible menace. But occasionally she envied the people with mundane jobs, the women pushing children around the shops.

You're getting old, she told herself.

Soon she was driving through the campus, a mass of green on the edge of the city. Young people, seemingly barely out of school, walked by in blazers and chatted on stationary bikes. One lecturer seemed to have taken his students out towards the river that ran through the grounds of the university college, and was holding forth, his arms flapping in excitement. Liz was sure she recognised him from Sunday night's party, before he'd rushed off to throw up.

Liz's recollection was rudely interrupted by a gleaming Mercedes that bore down on her at great speed, its wheels a blur of smoking rubber.

'What the -' she exclaimed, wrenching the wheel to one side.

She hadn't counted on the ditch that edged the driveway being quite so deep. The car tipped on to its side, forward momentum pushing Liz towards the windscreen, and then rolled over.

With a shattering crash Liz finally succumbed to unconsciousness.

Mike Yates drove with the Doctor in Bessie to the south coast and the site of the Redborough '70 festival. This time the Doctor hadn't bothered to try to contact Viscount Rose. It didn't seem to be worth the effort.

'Radiation may indeed hold the key,' said the Doctor as the car reached the seafront. The area was still covered in the litter of the festival and the Doctor shook his head at the mess that surrounded them. 'They claim to love the planet, but they defile it.' he said sadly, stepping out of the car to pick up a discarded lemonade bottle. 'I'm not unsympathetic to their aims. I believe in peace and freedom as much as the next man. But quite what that has to do with making such a mess is beyond me.'

Mike shrugged. 'More important things to worry about?'

he suggested.

The Doctor hauled a large oxygen tank from the back seat of Bessie. must say,' he said, removing his cloak, was surprised that Captain Shuskin agreed to my coming down here quite so readily. Not the sort of thing the Brigadier would have gone for, I'm sure.'

Yates snorted. expect she had her reasons.'

'Well, whatever they were.' said the Doctor, 'I'm grateful to her. Now, as I say, if I can get similar radiation readings to those we found at Stonehenge then I'll be able to predict where the Waro are likely to strike next.'

'How?' asked Mike, reasonably.

'Ways and means, Captain,' replied the Doctor as, completely without embarrassment, he removed most of his clothing and poured himself into a bright orange wet suit.

'You sure you'll be all right down there?'

'Captain Yates,' said the Doctor as he strapped the oxygen tank in to his backlit have you know that I taught Jacques Cousteau everything he knows.' He paused and adjusted his goggles. '1 low's Benton by the way?'

'Recovering. Tough as old boots is the sergeant.'

'Good,' said the Doctor. 'I'll be back up in twenty minutes at most.'

'I'll be here,' said Yates as the Doctor waded into the English Channel.

The Doctor chuckled as he began to swim through the water.

Jacques Cousteau! Jacques Brel, more like. Humans, so gullible to someone with the storyteller's knack. Mind you, there was that time during his first incarnation when he had fished the coral reefs off the Santa Cruz islands...

He dived deeper, his eyes gradually becoming accustomed to the gloom. He followed the seabed for some time, all the while pausing to check the Geiger counter secured to the belt of his wet suit. He began to make out a great dark object in front of him. From a distance it was like an underwater television picture of a sunken wreck. But, as he got closer, a clearer shape emerged. It was cylindrical.

The propulsion unit.

The Doctor gave a small cry of delight that didn't get much beyond the mouthpiece covering the lower part of his face.

The Geiger counter clicked alarmingly, and the Doctor had to remind himself that, even with his metabolism, prolonged exposure to radiation was best avoided. He checked his watch. Five minutes before Mike would expect him back at the surface. Just enough time for a better look at the alien craft.

As the Doctor came closer to it, something moved to his left He half turned in surprise, and found his face covered by a Waro that had come skittering towards him. The Doctor clawed away the goblin creature as another attacked him from behind. Then another.