Doctor Who_ Island of Death - Barry Letts [93]
The Skang had taken to the air, and were flying towards the ship.
The Doctor pulled himself to his feet and peered through the fog of stone dust. It wasn‟t quite dark, and that must mean that there was a gap for the light to get in. He half expected to see the figure of a Skang behind him but there, struggling to stand, was the frail woman who‟d been his friend for a short time - no, who was still his friend, no matter what had happened to her since they met in Oxford.
He hurried over to give her a helping hand. „Are you all right, Dame Hilda?‟
„No bones broken,‟ she said, as she sat down heavily on her chair. „I‟m somewhat shaken, I have to admit. Your friends are more determined than our revered leader would have us believe. Curiously enough, I‟ve never fancied being buried alive.‟
A grim thought; and a real possibility if they didn‟t manage to escape before the next explosion; and that could be at any minute. He quickly turned towards the light. Yes, two of the boulders that obscured the window opening had a chink between them. He gave them a shove in turn.
The one on the left was immoveable, but the other rocked slightly as he pushed. Unfortunately it was the bigger, and seemed much too heavy to shift.
His mind flashed back to a beach near Athens, where he had been out for a walk with the leading scientist of his day, the Einstein of his time. It was only a few months ago - and yet, at the same time, it was some two centuries before the ships of Gaius Julius crossed the English Channel. It was always pleasant to listen to a mind like his.
„Give me a firm place to stand on, and I‟ll move the Earth,‟
Archimedes had said.
The Doctor was desperately looking round for something to use as a lever.
Grabbing the other bamboo chair by the leg, he raised it above his head and smashed it to the ground. It obligingly fell to pieces, leaving him with a length of bamboo at least as thick as the spears of the guards, and nearly three feet long.
It fitted neatly into the crack beneath the stone, and the edge of the window - the corner, for stability - was the ideal place to provide a fulcrum. He had a mechanical advantage of nearly four to one.
But he still couldn‟t persuade the boulder to move more than a few inches, no matter how he heaved on the end of the chair leg... Until his hands were joined by the arthritic grip of his aged companion; and together they swung the lever down as easily as if he‟d been joined by an Olympic weightlifter; and the light flooded in.
„The feeling in my body is that the strength of my muscles fits my appearance,‟ she said. „But it‟s an illusion, like the rest. Whenever I‟ve remembered, my real strength has turned out to be quite useful.‟
The Doctor acknowledged her contribution with a wry grin.
„But not useful enough on this occasion, it would seem,‟
she went on dispassionately.
She was right. Though they could now see out into the arena, the gap was still far too small for either of them to climb through. The Doctor poked his head out to see if he could spot how to enlarge it - and was rewarded by seeing something very odd.
The assembled Skang, including the Alex figure on the stage, seemed to have lost it completely. They were tearing at their white gowns, frantically pulling them to pieces, and flinging them off. The sheen of the bronze bodies that were revealed was at the same time beautiful and shocking, even to the Doctor. In spite of their semi-humanoid shape, in the mass they seemed as utterly alien as any Dalek.
But a greater surprise was to come. As they became free of the trammels of their clothes, they unfurled smallish wings like those of a fairy-tale dragon, which had been invisibly moulded to their backs, and rose into the air, circling the crater as they waited for one another.
„I wondered if they might do that,‟ said Hilda, when he let her have a look.
„But... but it‟s impossible. Creatures of that size would need colossal wings - and a breastbone to match,