Doctor Who_ Daemons - Barry Letts [36]
Mike walked down to the window and looked out at the church, seeking inspiration. 'Here's a character in a hurry. Still he certainly knows how to handle that motor-bike,' he thought. Mike Yates realised with a sudden start exactly what the character on the bike was up to, riding up onto the grass, coming to a skid stop and running straight towards the UNIT helicopter.
'Hey!' yelled Mike, as he rushed out and ran across the grass to cut him off. The man, a thin wiry individual with a ferrety face, ignored him. Mike put on a spurt and managed to reach the chopper just as man started to clamber aboard. Mike Yates pulled him out. Wilkins swung round and landed a surprisingly heavy blow. Mike, though a little shaken, fought back. One, two, three, straight at the chin. The fellow ought to have been out for the count. He seemed quite impervious to the heaviest blows Mike could muster up. It was like fighting an automaton, a robot. Wilkins drew back his right hand and swung it like a club. It was a blow quite outside the normal run of boxing and should have been of little or no use. The effect on Mike Yates was devastating. Connecting with the side of his head, the blow sent him flying sideways as if he weighed nothing. He crashed to the ground and for a few vital seconds lay there, senseless. He recovered to hear the roar of the helicopter engine. Staggering to his feet, he stumbled towards it through the gale of wind raised by the flying rotors. Too late. As the reached it, it took off. Mike grabbed for the port landing skid as it rose past his face—and found himself off the ground, suspended ten, fifteen feet in the air. His grip, weakened by the recent blow, faltered and he fell to the ground. The weeks of careful parachute training every UNIT agent had to undergo had taught him how to fall correctly or he would have inevitably have broken a bone. Rolling to his feet, all in a movement, he stared frantically around the green—and espied the motor-cycle, abandoned by Wilkins. In less than half a minute from the time of the helicopter taking off, Captain Yates was on the bike and away on a seemingly impossible chase.
The beginning of the trip in Bessie was a little icy. Jo still felt hurt at the way the Doctor had spoken to her. 'I should put on your safety-belt, Jo,' he said, as they rattled away over the cobblestones outside 'Tire Cloven Hoof'.
Jo ignored him. It wasn't as if he'd be going fast and it wasn't far. Only five miles, the Brigadier had said. Unfortunately, the Brigadier had established himself and his Mobile H.Q., on the road approaching Devil's End from the south-east, over the downs. This meant that although he was only five miles away from the village on the map—the shortest line between the two points—poor Bessie had over ten miles of twisting and turning, upping and downing, even before she got to the comparatively straight road across the downs.
Suddenly Jo realised that the Doctor was singing a jolly little song. She grinned to herself. She could never be cross with him for long. 'You sound happy,' she said. 'You must be very sure this idea of yours will work.'
The Doctor looked surprised. 'I was singing because... oh, because the sky is blue, I suppose.'
'But the Dæmon... and the end of the world and all?' 'Oh, yes, of course, the end of the world. But that's not now. That would be tomorrow—or this evening—or in five minutes' time. And right now, the sky is blue. Just look at it!'
Jo looked... and looked again. It certainly was blue! A deep, almost cobalt blue overhead fading to a pale greeny duck-egg blue near the horizon. She stared round, drinking in the blueness, becoming the blueness—and suddenly found that she was singing too!
'See what I mean,' smiled the Doctor.
Slowly it penetrated her consciousness that when she had