Doctor Who_ Daemons - Barry Letts [33]
'Don't trouble to deny it, Mr. Thorpe,' smiled the Vicar, 'you see, I know. And what about you, Charlie—how's your conscience? Will you get the Post Office books to balance in time? Mr. Creville, has your wife come back from her sister's yet? Will she ever come back, do you suppose? Not while that pretty young Rosie's still about, I'll be bound... '
It was obvious that the Vicar's chosen victims were guilty that the rest of his listeners immediately started to search their own consciences and, with one or two exceptions, began to blush in anticipation and fear of what the next few moments might reveal.
The Master, however, was satisfied with his trivial show of power. 'Please don't be worried, any of you. Your little secrets are quite safe with me. And don't be angry either. You see, I'm on your side.'
His audience eyed him suspiciously.
'If you listen to me and do as I say, you can get exactly what you want, your dearest ambition, your most secret desire. If you listen to me!'
His audience stared at him in hostile silence.
'A spaceship fifteen inches long?' Mike Yates said with a laugh, 'you buy those from the toyshop.'
'Honestly, Mike, I saw it myself,' said Jo, 'up at the barrow. It's what that creature came in apparently.'
'Then what are we all worrying about?' said Mike, 'he must be only a wee little demon the size of that pepper-pot!'
'Now really,' said Miss Hawthorne, 'you seem to forget that I have seen him. He was getting on for thirty feet tall.'
'But that's exactly what gave me the clue,' said the Doctor. 'You see, the Dæmons can diminish themselves as well as any object they choose. When that spaceship landed it was something like two hundred feet long and thirty feet aeross. And the Dæmon himself can be anything from thirty feet tall down to the size of the pepper-pot—or a grain of pepper, for that matter.'
But where's the clue in that?' asked the Sergeant. 'Well, the freeze-up, you see. And the heat wave.
'Mm?' said Jo, 'say again, Doctor. You've lost me.'
'Oh really, Jo. E = MC2.' The Doctor looked in despair at the group of uncomprehending faces.
'You're the Doctor,' said Jo, shrugging.
'If you lose mass, the energy has to go somewhere. So it's lost as heat'
'I think I see,' said Mike, slowly. 'It's like the gas in a 'fridge. When it expands, it takes heat from the inside, so the food and stuff gets cold...'
'... and when the gas is compressed again, it gives heat off, so that radiator thing at the back of the refrigerator gets warm!' Sergeant Benton beamed with pleasure at his own cleverness.
'Well done, Mike. And you, Sergeant,' said the Doctor. 'That's not exactly how it works, but it's a very good comparison.'
Miss Hawthorne was not looking quite so sure of herself as before. 'Well, it all sounds very plausible, I'll admit, but I can't say that you've convinced me. How do you propose dealing with this... this Dæmon?'
'Well,' said the Doctor, sitting down and starting to make some calculations on a scruffy piece of paper that had fallen from one of the books, 'well, if it were magic we were facing, it would be a hopeless task. As it is, I think we can attack him through this very physical effect he's produced—the Brigadier's heat-barrier...'
The door opened and Bert's cheerful round face appeared. He spoke to Jo. 'Mind if I clear away?'
'No, no, go right ahead.'
'Like anything else?'
'No, thank you. That was delicious.'
In he cause to clear the table and do a little spying on behalf of the Master. But to his chagrin, nothing was happening. Nothing at all—except for the Doctor scribbling figures on a scrap of paper. The others were just sitting or standing around, staring into the distance. Oh well, if there was nothing to report, okay, there was nothing to report. At least he could get on with his work...
Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart felt considerably less naked. With a squad of troops and a few vehicles, not to mention his Mobile H.Q., he felt ready to tackle