Doctor Who_ Atom Bomb Blues - Andrew Cartmel [60]
‘Good idea.’ Ace wandered over to the hole in the floor and stared down through the transparent dimple at the ground below. She could make out the dark slope of the hill, thick with the darker shapes of pine trees, and the bright flicker of the campfire with the shadows of the three Apaches sitting beside it.
She also saw something else. ‘Doctor. . . ’
‘What?’ The Doctor came over to join her. ‘Did you see something?’
‘That.’ Ace pointed at the tentacle jutting from the ship, waving gracefully high above the pine-clad slopes. It moved with the sinuous strength of a giant snake, an eerie rainbow of colours pulsating through it. ‘It’s like seeing the Northern Lights inside a jelly.’
‘Highly poetic, Ace. In fact, it’s the same kind of tentacle as those that brought us aboard.’
‘You, me and the cowardly Major.’
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‘You shouldn’t be so hard on poor Rex.’
‘Rex? Is that his name? He is a bulldog.’
‘The poor man is in a situation which is utterly beyond anything in his experience.’
‘He’s a wimp.’
‘Really, Ace. You should feel sorry for him.’
‘I did, but he’s so suspicious and hostile. He doesn’t want to trust us. He doesn’t like us.’
‘That’s his job. Not to like us or trust us.’
Ace watched the tentacle, as thick in section as an industrial chimney, snaking below them, a glowing shape streaming above the dark pine slopes, retracting its opalescent length back into the ship to the stern of them. ‘Maybe, but he doesn’t have to always behave like we’re spies and he’s the great detective whose going to find us out.’
‘But in a sense we are spies. And he is if not a great then at least a very good detective.’
The tentacle was shrinking rapidly as it retracted. While Ace and the Doctor watched, the last few metres of its length disappeared silently back into the hull somewhere behind them.
‘But, hang on a minute,’ said Ace. ‘If those tentacles bring people on board, and that one just arrived. . . ’ She turned and looked at the Doctor. ‘Are we expecting company?’
‘We’re certainly not,’ he said. ‘Or at least I’m not. How about you?’
‘No way. So then who just came up inside that tentacle?’
Ace received the answer almost immediately, as Major Butcher came scoot-ing into the control room. ‘Ah, welcome Major,’ said the Doctor. ‘I’m glad you could join us at last.’
‘Anything to get away from that drunken fool,’ snapped Butcher.
Despite her dislike of the Major, Ace felt relieved that he was back to his perpetually angry self. The helpless creature they’d left in the arrivals chamber had alarmed her more than she cared to admit.
‘What drunken fool?’
‘Major Butcher’s talking about me, baby,’ said Cosmic Ray Morita as he came loping down the corridor that led into the glowing chamber. ‘Hey, man, this is really quite some place. A really cool pad, daddy-o.’ Ray looked a little dishevelled, his lurid shirt stained here and there and his beret askew. He was clutching a sloshing and foamy bottle of mescal.
‘So you woke up, Ray,’ said the Doctor. ‘What a pleasant surprise. I suppose you decided you couldn’t just simply stay in that nice comfortable cave and sleep.’
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‘How could I, with this thing hovering overhead, daddy-o? I had to take a look. I saw those things come down to pick you up. I was watching from the cave, baby. I’d been sleeping off the mescal. But the lights woke me up. Those groovy lights, man. I looked out of the cave and I saw you do this.’ He lifted his beret off his head. ‘And that thing came down and picked you up. So after I worked up my nerve, man, I came out and tried it.’ He lifted his beret again and grinned. ‘And it worked, man! And here I am.’
‘But where are?’ said Butcher. ‘That’s the question.’
‘We’ve already told you the answer Major,’ said the Doctor.
‘Some twaddle about little green men from outer space.’
Ray chuckled drunkenly. ‘But obviously it’s some kind of a ship, man.’
‘A ship?’ Butcher laughed. ‘That’s the same kind of nonsense they were