Doctor Who_ Island of Death - Barry Letts [105]
‘Well?’
‘She’s dead,’ he replied.
Now the anger was very apparent, not only in the voice, but in the colour of the scintillations that made up the Great Skang body, which were rippled with deep reds.
‘Again you lie! She is here - but she is not here! She is confined. She is imprisoned. We can see her buried in stone.
Where is she?’
Would he answer?
But no. Even at such a time the pride of the man Alex Whitbread, the supreme conceit that had ruled his whole life, was greater than his fear. He remained silent.
‘Very well,’ continued the great shining figure, ‘you have made our choice for us. This planet Earth will be remembered as one of the failures. We shall destroy all who know of our existence.’
Exactly what Hilda had warned might happen! But what to do? If the Doctor shouted through the limited gap in the window his voice would never carry; and it had been proved conclusively that he didn’t have the strength to escape.
‘But first,’ the Great Skang continued, ‘although it will pierce our heart with a wound that will never heal, we shall destroy you.’ It raised an arm and pointed a finger at Alex.
As he realised what was to be his fate, his shell of arrogance cracked, and the power of words he’d lived by deserted him. He tried to plead for mercy, but all that came out was an incoherent babble of terror - which soon turned into a scream of the purest agony.
Again the Doctor witnessed an Incandescence. Again he had to cover his ears against the burning power of the sound, which this time came from the Great Skang itself. Again he saw the network of flame that fluttered over the skin and spread to become a white-hot blaze that blinded the eye; and again he heard the swoosh as it faded.
Only then did the screaming stop.
In the silence that followed, the Doctor realised that Hilda’s murmured voice behind him had continued right up until that moment. Indeed, it was the fact that it was no longer there that called attention to it, like the sudden silence of an unwound grandfather clock. He turned.
But it was no longer Emeritus Professor Dame Hilda Hutchens standing behind him. It was a Skang.
It walked past him to the doorway, put out a hand and leaned on the pile of massive stones that blocked it; and the mound collapsed like a sandcastle when the tide comes in, leaving the way open to the outside.
There’s very little that wouldn’t collapse under the weight of a double-decker bus.
The coming of the Great Skang had been a conduit for the complex of psionic and gravitational energy that she’d needed.
At the door, the new Skang paused and looked at him. ‘I’m sorry, Doctor,’ said Hilda’s gentle voice.
She went out onto the gallery, and the Doctor heard her voice again, now clear and young, ringing out through the amphitheatre below.
‘Here I am,’ she said.
At least the threat of the immediate massacre of all those on Stella Island had been averted. But only at the cost of the greater danger: the continuation of the ‘reward’ ceremony and the mass ingurgitation of the faithful, which would provide the psionic energy for the seeding of the entire planet with thousands of Skang.
But if the Doctor showed himself, he risked incurring the fate of the late Alex Whitbread. He moved over to the door, where he could get a better view of what was going on.
The Hilda Skang had walked down and taken her place in front of the giant figure on the stage. At her feet, there was the small pile of dust, still smouldering, that was all that was left of the worldly dreams of Alex Whitbread.
The angry crimson streaks had vanished from the ever-changing carapace of light before her, giving way to a more gentle glow, a burnished gold that spoke of calmness and harmony; and the voice had lost its fury and become loving in tone.
‘We give you our greetings, Mother, and the gratitude of our heart, which tells us you have gathered a cornucopia of plenty for our delight and nourishment...’
For a being that had spent thousands (if not millions) of years cruising through empty space, with only the occasional pitstop