Doctor Who_ The Awakening - Eric Pringle [30]
‘On a space vehicle.’
That was the last straw. Cynicism changed gear and accelerated towards hysteria. A broad, pull-the-other-one grin stole across Janes face and she had to force herself not to laugh out loud. ‘A space ship from Hakol landed here?
Is that what you’re trying to say?’
‘More likely a computer controlled reconnaissance probe,’ the Doctor said earnestly.
‘How silly of me not to know.’ Jane’s voice was heavy with sarcasm.
Suddenly another piece of the jigsaw slipped into place in the Doctor’s mind. He jumped to his feet and asked,
‘Tell me, was Andrew Verney engaged in any research concerning the Malus?’
‘I believe he was.’ Jane’s smile faded as she recalled her old friend and his enthusiasm for digging up the past.
The Doctor gave a satisfied sigh. ‘That’s what must have led him to the tunnel, and the remains of the Hakol probe.’
Will nodded enthusiastically and pressed Jane’s arm.
‘See? I seed the Malus!’ he told her eagerly.
The Doctor laid an arm around Will’s shoulder and looked closely into his eyes. ‘I believe you Will,’ he said. ‘My sincerest apologies for ever doubting you.’ Will glowed with pride.
Jane desperately wanted to restore some everyday reality to this conversation, and haul it back to a basis she could relate to. If she allowed herself to believe even a quarter of what she had heard, she would soon be as mad as everybody else. ‘Doctor,’ she pleaded, ‘the Malus is a myth, a legend! Some mumbo jumbo connected with apparitions or something!’
Now that he had got this far, the Doctor had no intention of letting Jane cling to illusions. This was a time for facts, for unvarnished truth.
‘That is precisely what Will saw,’ he explained firmly.
‘On Hakol, psychic energy is a force that has been harnessed in much the same way as electricity is here.’
‘But what has that got to do with the Malus legend?’
The Doctor fixed her with an unyielding stare. ‘The thing you call the Malus was on board the Hakol probe.’
Now he had her hooked. He saw it happen – he watched the realisation dawn in her eyes. They darkened visibly, and Jane looked uneasily around the church. ‘Oh,’ she said.
‘I see what you mean ... You mean it’s still here!’
Her eyes lit upon the crack in the wall and she hurried across to examine it. ‘Doctor,’ she whispered, in a voice filled with awe, ‘that wasn’t here the other day.’
Before the alarmed Doctor could warn her to get away from it, the wall groaned loudly again, and this time there was also a cracking noise; which flew around the church like a whiplash, gathering momentum and volume as it went. At the same moment a section of the wall collapsed and caved into the hole. Now it was much wider.
Jane shrieked. She stumbled backwards. Will shuddered and clapped his hands over his ears as a renewed groaning sound squeezed eerily out of the depths of the wall. The Doctor moved forward.
Now wisps of smoke slipped through the crack, oozing out of the wall like bile. Warily the Doctor stretched out his hand towards the wall.
‘Don’t touch it!’ Will yelled. He was very frightened; his shout wailed like a cry of paw, and he was near to tears.
Jane, too, was scared stiff. She felt, rather than heard, faint noises of movements springing from all the dark corners of the church, and there was a smell of gunpowder from the smoke which spilled out of the hole in the wall.
The air had turned clammy and cold, raising goosepimples on her skin. ‘He’s right, Doctor,’ she shouted. ‘There’s suddenly a very strange atmosphere in here!’
Perhaps the Doctor could not hear her because of all the other noises. Perhaps he wasn’t listening, because he was so intent upon these strange developments. Whatever the reason, he paid no attention to the cries of Will and Jane.
And suddenly all hell broke loose.
The Doctor was pulling gently at the crack when a huge chunk of plaster came away in his hands. Almost immediately another section blew