Doctor Who_ Island of Death - Barry Letts [100]
The Brigadier found it equally incredible. The two most senior naval officers on the ship brawling like a couple of fourth-formers, for God’s sake!
He almost lost his balance as he rushed to stop them before they could do anything they’d regret. But as he was trying to pull them apart, he felt a tug at his arm, and a voice screaming in his ear, ‘No, sir! Look!’
It was the signalman, and like Sarah before, he was pointing towards the shore.
Despite himself, the Brigadier glanced round. The ship, still turning, was less than twenty yards from the black cliffs, and still slanting towards it.
Sarah and the Cox’n, just back on their feet, froze, along with everybody else. Nobody could move. They could all see it now; and there was nothing to be done.
They waited for a time out of time, an endless moment.
Except for the rumble of the engines and the wind in their ears, silence...
The Hallaton, still travelling at disaster speed with her helm hard astarboard, reached the top of her turning circle, and started to swing away from the cliff.
It was so near, you could have counted the eggs in the boobies’ nests.
Alex Whitbread, still in Skang form, looked out over his brothers and sisters (though the individual Skang were themselves sexless) as they took their seats, and revelled in his moment of triumph. The ongoing bliss of unity, controlled by his intention and his alone, was compounded with the deep satisfaction of his human persona at achieving his ambition.
They had overcome all the obstacles. He could feel throughout his body the rising force that told him that the optimum time was fast approaching for the descent of their parent swarm - the collective individual that was the Great Skang, at once the object of their devotion and the very core of their being. Once Alex’s position had been ratified (he laughed to himself as the dry human term sprang to mind), nothing could stop him from becoming the de facto ruler of the world.
Everybody knew the form of the ceremony; it was so much part of their evolutionary heritage that it was as instinctive as the urge of a bird to make a nest. Their survival depended on it.
The first thing to happen would be the Prime Assimilation.
This would be the sign, the trigger, that would bring down their Beloved, who would grace the Mass Assimilation of the rest of the faithful with the divine presence, absorbing the psionic energy of their vital young bodies, as a token of the richness that would be offered as soon as the Earth had become theirs.
And he, Alex, would be the privileged one. The first of the candidates lining up again outside the temple would be brought inside, and he, as leader (again the thrill as he relished the word), would be the first to taste the joy and the deep fulfilment he’d already sampled illegitimately in London.
He lifted his hands in the air to quieten the murmurs coming from the arena. In the silence he raised his voice and called across to the guard standing by the entrance. The time has come. Bring in the first of the faithful!’
At last he’d managed it! He was first in the queue. But Jeremy had found that it wasn’t quite so simple as he’d expected.
He’d idly watched - to tell the truth, getting a bit bored after a while - as the guards, with reinforcements garnered by walkie-talkie, ministered to the injured and carried away the dead.
They did seem to be very slow in going about it. But there you were, it was the same all over. Mama was always complaining that you couldn’t get the right sort these days.
The faithful retainer was an endangered species, she often said, like the mountain gorilla.
He liked gorillas.
He didn’t like being kept waiting.
He was seriously thinking of making his way down to the village to see what was going on when he saw them all coming back through the rocky bit into the clearing, shepherded by a lot of