Doctor Who_ The Devil Goblins From Neptune - Keith Topping [71]
'It's just a shame there isn't time to rig up another one of these jamming devices,' said Liz. 'That way -'
'In a few hours' time,' said Shuskin, glancing at her watch, 'missiles more powerful than the bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki will be flying overhead, to a target not more than ten miles away.' She smiled, and Liz detected warmth and honesty there, perhaps for the first time. 'You seem to think it bizarre that I love my country. That is your prerogative. But if it is all the same to you, I would rather not marvel at the nuclear weaponry of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics from this close a distance' She snapped a fresh magazine on to the Kalashnikov. 'So, let us do what the Doctor wanted - find a more subtle solution'
'You speak as though he's already dead.'
Shuskin stared down at the seemingly lifeless body. 'For all I know, he is'
Despite continued protestations that he should stay in hospital, under observation, at least for one more night, Benton was adamant.' he was going and that was all there was to it. The doctor threatened to call up UNIT and have them force Benton to stay; Benton promised the man a 'good chinning', and he quickly found someone else to bully.
Benton finished slipping on the last of the clothes that Bell had brought him, took a quick drink of Lucozade from the bedside table, and then, with a throbbing in his head that was not a million miles away from Ringo Starr's percussion on the last Beatles LP, he walked out of the hospital, hailed a taxi, and asked for St Anthony's railway station.
On the back seat of the taxi was a discarded copy of the previous day's Daily Mail. Benton flicked at it idly as the taxi driver made small-talk about the World Cup, and the price of petrol, and the state of the country. Benton grunted absentmindedly as he found himself looking at a familiar face in the pages of the newspaper.
'Ado,' he said, wondering why life so often seemed to run on coincidences just like that.
'You what, guy?' asked the taxi driver, taking a break from his
racist rant to check on his heavily bandaged passenger.
'They've gone to Wiltshire,' said Benton, scanning the page for we information.
'Who's that, then?'
The Venus People.'
'Oh yeah, them loonies. I had one of them in the cab a few months back.'
Benton wanted to scream at the man to shut up, to stop the mayhem in his head, but he bit his tongue and looked out of the window as they approached the railway station. He had business to complete.
The dark forest was as dead as the cold soil that crackled underfoot. Liz and Shuskin made their way swiftly towards the Waro mine in unnatural and unnerving silence. No birdsong, no animal cries, barely a breath of wind. The sky overhead, a blue jewel framed by the ragged angularity of the trees, was occasionally crossed by the sinister flapping shape of a Waro on patrol. None seemed to see them, and Liz began to wonder if the Waro were preparing instead for another Soviet air attack.
The gradually thinning trees let more of the afternoon light I splash down on to the ground, the gentle incline becoming steeper. Shuskin's map-reading appeared to be reliable.' they had avoided the strange alien roads, along which the Waro seemed to concentrate their interest, and the summit of the hill should give them a view down on to the Waro's base.
A different image crossed Liz's mind, and it made her shudder. The roads didn't go anywhere - she'd looked at their positions plotted on Captain Shuskin's map, and they encircled the base and extended outward into the taiga, but terminated suddenly. Now it struck her that they weren't roads so much as strands of an enormous spider's web.
What better reason to build roads in the middle of a forest than to tempt a military force into certain locations and along certain paths?
Liz considered mentioning this to Shuskin, but she seemed instinctively to have come to the same conclusion. 'If