Doctor Who_ Daemons - Barry Letts [20]
'Shouldn't he be in hospital?'
'Well, no, apparently not,' said Jo. 'Doctor Reeves said we shouldn't move him from here.'
'Then we'll just have to wait,' said Mike. 'Now, tell me all about it.'
Jo started to tremble. 'Oh, Mike,' she said, 'it was terrible...' She had in fact little more to recount than she had already told him on the 'phone, but Mike, sensitive Mike, knew that she must have been bottling up her emotions so fiercely that she was near to bursting. By the time she finished her story, she could hardly speak through her tears,
Mike waited quietly until she had finished and her sobs had subsided a little. 'Well done, Jo,' he said gently. She smiled and accepted the large clean handkerchief he offered her. 'Tell you what,' he said. 'You stay here with the Doctor and I'll go and rustle up a cuppa.'
'Okay,' she agreed and blew her nose loudly.
Mike soon found the kitchen and had the kettle on. While he rooted around amongst the pots and pans, he tried to make sense of Jo's story. He had already learnt from the B.B.C. before he left London that the extraordinary freak weather had been confined exclusively to Devil's End. Indeed, it had been a very mild, quiet night throughout the country and it had certainly been a perfect morning for flying. In fact, the Brig's chopper had never behaved so well... Oh Lor', the Brigadier! He'd forgotten all about the Brigadier. According to Jo, all the telephone lines out of Devil's End were out of order. It took only a couple of minutes for Mike to run to the middle of the green and a further couple to contact UNIT Headquarters on the helicopter radio.
'Yessir,' reported the duty corporal, 'I managed to get in touch with him. Just getting into bed, he was. About half past four. No, sir, I wouldn't say he was overjoyed. I passed on your message. No, he wasn't very pleased to hear that you'd taken his helicopter. Still, it woke him up, sir. Said you were to stay put. He's on his way down to Devil's End, By car, sir...'
The kettle had nearly boiled dry when Mike got back to the kitchen and by the time he'd boiled another, made the tea, let it brew for four minutes exactly, poured it out and carried it upstairs, Jo was, of course curled up in the cushioned basket chair by the Doctor's bed, fast off in the deep sleep of pure exhaustion. Mike smiled, sat down in the window seat and sipped his tea. It would do her no harm at all to have a bit of a rest until Sergeant Benton returned. He put down the cup and leaned back. Just the chance he needed to get his thoughts in order, he said firmly to himself. Those hoofmarks, for instance. Either there was a monster lurking in the woods, or a hoaxer was at work. If it were to turn out to be a monster it simply became a question of whether the anteater's tongue was longer than the jelly baby or, on the other hand, vice versa...
Mike Yates's eyes snapped open. For Pete's sake, he was on duty, wasn't he! This was no time to fall asleep.
Fifteen seconds later, he was snoring softly. All was still in the rosy twilight of the little curtained room...
Moments later, it seemed, he was straggling out of the blank depths of dreamlessness into a waking nightmare. It was hot, hotter than a tropical noontide, and the room was all ashake. The collection of little pot animals on the mantle fell, tinkle by tinkle, into the brick hearth and a picture of Edward the Seventh as infant crashed irreparably to the floor. Jo, abruptly tipped out of her cosy chair, was scrambling to her feet screaming, while the Doctor's bed rolled hither and thither, its occupant still oblivious, his face streaming with sweat. Somewhere nearby a baby howled in fear.
The earthquake stopped. The temperature fell. All was still again; even the baby had stopped crying.
Mike and Jo rose shakily to their feet.
'What... what happened?' Jo gasped. Mike shook a bewildered head.
A sudden movement from the bed, the Doctor sat bolt upright, the flowered eiderdown falling away, and said, at the top of his voice, ' Eureka ! I've got it!'
Bert surveyed his bar in some dismay. Okay,