Doctor Who_ The Devil Goblins From Neptune - Keith Topping [6]
They touched in the moonlight, the gentle waves lapping around them, their skin like marble in the blue-white light.
Becky's face was porcelain, with dark wet hair swept back out of her eyes. Ray felt a surge of sexual energy. He wanted her, here and now.
'Ow!' Her stifled cry shattered the moment. She looked down into the water, her face almost touching the rippling surface. 'I've just stood on a stone, or...' Her voice trailed away as she saw the water change colour around her. 'Ray.'
she said, her voice trembling, 'there's something in the water
-' She stopped again. Ray was gone, with hardly a sound - a small splash, no more.
'Ray!' she screamed. There was a sudden shooting pain down the side of one leg, as if numerous razorlike teeth were ripping at her flesh. The water rushed upward to cover her face. Her arms pinwheeled, thrashing at the sea, but the only replying sound - muffled and booming through the suffocating water - was that of a fully blooded Glandring the Forehammer ('it's from The Lord of the Rings, man') starting Journey to the Centre of the Sun', all eighteen minutes of it. Long before the first guitar solo, Becky was swallowed by the blackness that was all around her.
CHAPTER 2
Sergeant Benton and some of the men had a running joke about the Doctor's laboratory. Whenever anyone turned up at UNIT HQ to see Liz Shaw or the Doctor himself, they were pointed in the general direction of the lab and then advised to follow their senses. Almost without exception there would be a pungent odour to follow, or an explosion would rattle the building's foundations, or a creeping glow would advance down the corridor. At the very least one could normally hear the Doctor cursing in Venusian as another experiment went wrong.
But today the corridor that led to the Doctor's room was eerily quiet. The door was half closed, but Benton thought he'd better knock anyway. 'Doctor, are you in here?'
There was no reply. Benton knocked again, pushed open the door, and stepped gingerly inside.
As usual the room was packed to overflowing with oscilloscopes, flasks, soldering irons and Bunsen burners.
It was quite impossible to tell exactly what the Doctor was working on. On a bench close to the door a spherical glass ball bubbled and pulsed, as if the Doctor's current interest was biological, but towards the back of the room Benton noticed a complex rigging of microphones, portable power generators, and a Marshall amplifier. Perhaps the Doctor was working on a countermeasure against sonic attack.
In the centre of the room was the old police box that housed much of the Doctor's equipment. He had stated on many occasions that this device - his TARDIS - could travel through time and space, and Benton had no reason to disbelieve him. Although much of what the Doctor claimed seemed to be impossible, he was almost always proved correct in the end. A strange bloke, then, but certainly someone to trust when an alien invasion force was heaving into view.
For some time now Benton had made sure that he was first in line for any assignment that involved UNIT's mysterious scientific adviser. Hero worship wasn't something that Sergeant John Benton, DSO, could really claim to understand, but he knew that he would have to wait a very long time to meet someone as remarkable as the Doctor again.
'Doctor?' Benton walked around the TARDIS to the doors on the far side. Both were open, and the Doctor's velvet trousers and sturdy shoes projected through the doorway at floor level. He looked to all the world like a mechanic under a Cortina.
'Are you flanging the whatsit on the glonthometer again, Doctor?'
'I'm fine, thank you, Sergeant,' came the muffled reply. It was as if he was in a different room. 'I'm a bit busy, you know -
unless you want to help, of course. Liz is off somewhere, and there's only so much one pair of hands can do. You could start by passing me that perigosto stick on the bench over there'