Doctor Who_ Daemons - Barry Letts [2]
'Of course, of course,' replied the Doctor absently.
Suddenly he leaped into action, seizing his cloak and making for the door. 'Come on then,' he said urgently.
'Where to?'
'To see that TV programme, of course!'
High on the ridge known to the village of Devil 's End as the Goat's Back is the strange mound that everyone calls the Devil's Hump. It is a bleak place. Even in the brigh sunshine of a spring day a cutting wind slices through the silence. Apart from the thin cry of a lonely curlew, no birds sing there.
But today, the usual emptiness was alive with the bustling of some thirty human beings all intent on setting up a television Outside Broadcast. Thick electric cables leading from the cameras and the immense lights formed a web to trap the unwary foot. Little figures darted to and fro, dwarfed by the immensity of the Wiltshire sky, and trucks the size of removing vans littered the grass like abandoned toys.
The tension in the air, like the spiky heaviness of the atmosphere before a thunderstorm, was nowhere more evident than in the immediate neighbourhood of Alastair Fergus, the well-known Television Personality.
'Professor Horner! Professor Horner!' Fergus looked wildly round. Where had the old fool got to, for Pete's sake? 'Harry, Where's the Professor? He's up and vanished from face of the earth. One minute he was here and...' Harry, the floor manager, moved into action with all the smoothness of the professional calmer of nerves.
'Not to worry, not to worry, Alastair. He's probably in make-up unless he's had second thoughts and scarpered.'
'What?'
'Well, you know the local chat. Death and disaster if he opens the barrow.'
Fergus's voice grew shrill, 'There'll be a disaster if he doesn't get a shift on; he's supposed to be on the air in three-and-a-half minutes.'
'Not quite, old son,' replied the imperturbable Harry, 'we've the cavern bit to go out first.'
Alastair Fergus shuddered dramatically. 'Don't remind me. I'm trying to put that dreadful place out of my mind. But right out of it!'
That very morning he had recorded the opening of the programme right inside the notorious Witches' Cavern of Devil's End. According to local legend—and who would dare suggest the legend was a lie—this curious place, half natural, half hewn from the bedrock of England by prehistoric man, had been a centre of mystery and evil since the beginning of humanity.
Here pagan man performed his rites of human sacrifice, here the druids met to conjure up their secret power, here the covens of the seventeenth century hid from the fires of Matthew Hopkins, witch hunter; here the third Lord Aldbourne used to play at his eighteenth century parody of the more unspeakable rituals of black magic...
Jo Grant hurried into the Duty Office of UNIT H.Q. 'Am I in time?' she gasped.
Sergeant Benton didn't need to ask her what she meant. 'He's just showing us the Witches' Cavern, Miss,' he said.
'Ooh, isn't it creepy. I mean, like spooky!' she said. 'I went there once. In the summer you can actually go in. Through the vestry.'
Mike Yates had followed her in, accompanied by the Doctor. 'The vestry? What on earth are you talking about?' said Mike.
'The church of course. It's built right on top of the cavern. How about that?'
'A perfect symbol, Jo,' the Doctor said shortly. 'Now, be quiet, both of you. I want to listen. Look, there's the archaeological dig...'
Jo pulled a rueful face at the grinning Mike and turned towards the TV screen where Alastair Fergus, all traces of petulance quite hidden, charmingly wooed the affection of the Great British Public.
'... Professor Horner and his gallant little team have cut their way into the Devil's Hump as if it were a giant pie. But now the question is, can Professor Horner pull out his plum?'
Alastair Fergus's appropriately fruity laugh was abruptly interrupted by a loud Yorkshire voice—the voice of the, yet unseen, Professor.
'Get on with it, man!' the voice said.
Fergus got on with it. He talked of the previous attempts to open the Devil's Hump, from the first in 1793,