Doctor Who_ Foreign Devils - Andrew Cartmel [42]
He threw the switch on the second battery and the glass hoop began to glow with a pure streaming white brightness that briefly filled the room. But then the hoop began to dim and silently sputtered out. Carnacki frowned. 'Damn. It's still malfunctioning. It's as if it's getting interference from something.' 'Such as?' said the Doctor.
Carnacki was calming down now, becoming caught up in the abstractions of the technical problem. 'I don't know. Some powerful object nearby.'
'And what might that be, I wonder,' said the Doctor. He glanced at a large leather case lying on the sideboard opposite the table. Zoe recognised it as the case containing the Spirit Lance of Cornwall, the subject of Carnacki's lecture.
'Of course!' cried Carnacki, rushing to the sideboard. 'It's the lance interfering with my device. You're a genius, Doctor.' He hefted the case containing the lance and lugged it out of the door. While he was gone the Doctor winked at Zoe and swiftly altered one of the electrical connections on Carnacki's device. Then he stood away from it, just before Carnacki returned. Carnacki no longer had the lance. 'I put it down the far end of the corridor. That should do the trick.' He returned to his apparatus on the table, made some final adjustments, and threw the switches. This time the hoop lit up with a steady milky glow. The enormous brightness they'd observed a moment earlier returned slowly. Flickering strands of brightness like silent miniature lightning bolts danced inside the perimeter of the glass hoop. Zoe watched in fascination. 'What's happening, Doctor?'
The Doctor smiled. 'Ask Carnacki. He created this fascinating device.'
'It's quite simple,' said Carnacki. 'The glass ring is tuned to an etheric vibration so as to pick up any local disturbance on the supernatural plane. In the presence of some sort of entity from another dimension, the ring gathers a brilliant pure light at its centre. As you can see is happening here.'
'And what's the point of it?' said Zoe, cutting short the technical explanation.
'Once the light reaches a certain critical strength it flows off in the direction of the etheric disturbance, indicating the origin, or the cause of it.'
As he spoke, the miniature bolts of lightning dancing inside the hoop surged together, coalescing into a disc of pure white. The disc expanded to fill the hoop and suddenly poured forth from it, like the beam from a searchlight.
The hoop wrenched around violently on its twin armatures and Carnacki hastened to shift the apparatus. 'It's seeking its true direction! The glass hoop mustn't break.' The Doctor swiftly assisted Carnacki. 'Thank you,' muttered the man. 'I must design some kind of universal gimbal to hold it, something that will swivel in any direction.' The glass hoop was now pointing squarely at one of the dining room windows, pouring its light out into the snow swathed grounds and the endless night. 'Look Doctor,' said Zoe.
The light blazed out into the garden and illuminated in sharp re
lief the gaunt outlines of the spirit gate. 'Of course,' said the Doctor. He turned towards the door, moving quickly but not as quickly as Carnacki, who was already running out of the room and towards the staircase.
Zoe hurried after the Doctor. 'I don't know what all the fuss is about,' she said. 'I told you to look at the spirit gate days ago.' 'It would seem the time was not yet ripe,' said the Doctor. 'But now events are gathering speed.'
'I wish they'd slow down a bit,' said Zoe as they reached the bottom of the stairs and the main entrance hall where Carnacki was throwing on his canvas overcoat. He drew something out of his pocket and Zoe saw the dull glint of a pistol and winced. She hated it when they started taking out guns.
'I suggest that we prepare ourselves for anything, Doctor. This spirit gate could be the portal through which monstrosities from another plane gain access to ours. Who knows what beastly shape this killer really has.'