Doctor Who_ Attack of the Cybermen - Eric Saward [17]
Apart from a truncheon and handcuffs, he also found several clips of ammunition, a switchblade knife, a knuckle duster, two hand grenades and a small canister of tear gas.
Relieved the policeman hadn’t attempted to use any of these, Peri watched as each article, except the handcuffs, was thrown onto a pile of soil alongside the pit. Finishing his search, the Doctor snapped a cuff onto the policeman’s wrist, lead him to a work bench at the end of the room and fastened the other cuff to its leg.
‘Key, please,’ he demanded.
Reluctantly the constable produced it from its hiding place inside the top of his sock.
Slipping the key into his pocket, the Doctor unclipped the policeman’s radio. ‘Now...’ he said, adding it to the pile of other confiscated items, ‘what’s all this gun-waving business about?’
The policeman remained implacable, staring almost trance-like at nothing in particular.
‘Didn’t think you’d be very talkative. More frightened of someone else than you are of me, eh?’
There was still no reply.
‘I assume he isn’t a genuine policeman?’ Peri asked.
The Doctor nodded. ‘Neither was the one in the pit.’
‘Then I think we should fetch some real ones,’ she insisted, edging towards the door, ‘and right now!’
Oh, no! thought the Doctor. Things were far too delicate to involve them. ‘In a while, Peri. At least not before I’ve made a few inquiries of my own.’
Peri had met this sort of prevarication before. Usually she would accept his dashing off, but this was twentieth-century Earth. Here he didn’t need to become involved.
Here he could allow the proper authorities to sort things out. ‘But it isn’t necessary to make inquiries,’ she said, firmly. ‘We have our own very efficient police –’
‘Who, I suppose –’ his tone was more sarcastic than intended – ‘have enormous experience in tracking down and dealing with stranded alien life-forms?’
She couldn’t reply, her argument having seized up like a moving engine suddenly drained of oil.
‘Involving the police will not help,’ he continued. ‘At least not at the moment.’
‘Maybe you have a point. But there’s no need to do everything your self. Especially after your recent regeneration.’
‘Look, Peri, I won’t deny that I am a little confused, but I am in control of my faculties most of the time.’ He crossed to the inspection pit and looked into it. ‘What’s more, I have a horrible feeling that we are now dealing with more than a stranded Alien.’
‘Oh...’ She suddenly felt uneasy. ‘What makes you think that?’
Pointing at the policeman, the Doctor said: ‘Because of him and his colleague in the sewer. I’ve met them before. I think it was the last time I was on Earth.’
‘Who were they with?’
‘That’s the trouble, I can’t remember.’ The Doctor pressed his temples with the tips of his fingers as though trying to wring the information from his mind. ‘My memory’s still scrambled from the effects of my regeneration.’
‘Are you sure you shouldn’t involve the police?’ Peri eyed the impostor cuffed to the table and added in low voice, ‘If the Alien is using armed men like him, he can’t be that friendly.’
The Doctor nodded. ‘Look, I’ll make a deal with you,’
he said. ‘Give me an hour to make my own inquiries, and then you can go to the police.’
She knew where his ‘inquiries’ would take him, and was afraid. ‘Does that mean you’re going down there into the sewers?’ she said, pointing into the pit.
Boyishly, the Doctor grinned. ‘It’s the only place I’ll find the alien.’
Peri edged towards the pit and gazed into the black void. In her imagination she was convinced she could hear the distant screams of a million souls in torment. And the Innocents, in search of the truth, descended into the fiery pit of Hell, but all they found was their own eternal damnation. She couldn’t recall where she had first heard those words, and wished her memory had been less efficient at recalling them. What was more, the smell of the sewers had grown