Doctor Who_ Island of Death - Barry Letts [103]
There could be no doubt of it. She was dead.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Everything stopped. The audience... the congregation - the Doctor found it difficult not to categorise the watching Skang in some such way - had all risen to their feet at the same moment, the moment that silence came, as if they were going to join in a standing ovation. But after a deep exhalation, they remained quite still, watching with their great eyes.
The waiting seemed to last only a minute or so, but with the utter lack of movement or sound it was difficult to judge, and afterwards the Doctor reckoned it must have been more like five minutes before he realised, with a gulp of nausea, that the dead girl was growing thinner, and that Alex’s grip on her arms was tightening until the muscles on his arms stood out like a weightlifter’s, and his Skang body was trembling.
A strange sound, like a sob from many voices, called his attention to the watchers in the arena. He could see that they were shaking too. Were they sharing the satisfaction, the consummation, they could see before them?
It didn’t take long. In a matter of minutes, the proboscis was withdrawn, and the corpse, now no more than a covered skeleton, allowed to fell to the ground.
Alex sat down on the immense throne behind him, and the rest of the Skang also sat down. All remained quite still as two guards appeared and carried off Emma’s poor desecrated body to the side and into one of the caves in the volcano wall.
A temporary storage place, a ‘chapel of rest’? Or was it destined to become a charnel house for the victims of the coming massacre? How would they dispose of nearly two hundred?
The Doctor wasn’t quite sure what would happen next. If the Prime Assimilation was to trigger the coming of the Beloved, he would have expected it to arrive within a few seconds. Nothing can travel faster than light, but even in those terms the moon was less than one and a half seconds away, and Hilda had said that the swarm that formed the Great Skang was on the other side of the moon. On the other hand, it couldn’t be entirely composed of psionic energy; there must be a physical component, no matter how tenuous.
That in itself would slow it down.
What actually happened was a surprise. As Alex Whitbread
- the Doctor found it almost impossible to think of the thing on the stage by that name - as it sat there with its great head bowed, it started to sweat.
But this wasn’t the glow of perspiration you’d see on an athlete who’d run his course. It ran off the Skang in streams, in rivulets, in waterfalls; so much that puddles were forming on the ground beneath.
Surely the act couldn’t have been so strenuous? If it took so much energy, as the sweat implied, then it was difficult to believe that the absorption could be worthwhile.
But then the Doctor realised. The human body is about seventy per cent water. It had to go somewhere.
If all the faithful were to ‘get their reward’, each of the Skang below him would be ingurgitating the insides of some nine bodies. More if the guards were to be included in the final total. Each Skang would have to get rid of well over a hundred gallons of water... or burst.
The Doctor’s thoughts were broken into by a new sound, like a distant wind. It was growing louder and louder, until the howl of a hurricane assaulted his ear - or was it heard only by the mind? Certainly the tops of the trees growing on the outer slopes of the volcano showed no sign of disturbance.
At the first murmur, all the Skang started to mutter in unison. It was impossible to hear what they were saying, but the Doctor turned in surprise when he realised that Hilda was joining in. She had her eyes closed, and her head bowed like the rest of the Skang, seemingly oblivious to her human form.
The noise stopped. All the Skang lifted their heads, stood up as one and raised their arms to heaven.
The Skang that had been Alex Whitbread did the same, turning towards