Doctor Who_ The Doomsday Weapon - Malcolm Hulke [14]
'The same,' said Winton. 'They're bringing her body out now.'
Ashe stood staring at the form lying on the ground, then crossed to the dome. Winton and the Doctor followed, saying nothing. As they approached the door, two other colonists came out carrying a make-do stretcher. On it lay the body of Jane Leeson.
'We thought of taking them both to the main dome,' one of the men said to Ashe, partly as a question.
'Yet' said Ashe. 'I suppose that's the right thing to do.' He turned to the Doctor rather shamefacedly. 'We never reckoned on people dying or being killed in the colony. We'll have to work out what to do.'
The three men waited until the stretcher had been carried out. Then they entered the little dome. The simple furniture had all been wrecked. 'We found her over here,' said Winton, indicating the radio-telephone. 'He was outside, where you saw him.'
'How did you get here before us?' asked the Doctor.
'We were patrolling,' said Winton. 'We heard the thing.'
'Did you get a shot at it?' asked Ashe.
'Yes,' said Winton. 'All three of us blazed away like mad.'
'So you actually saw it?' the Doctor said.
'For a few moments,' said Winton. 'Like a big lizard it was, from the picture books.'
The Doctor found the last remark strange, then remembered that these people of the year 2972 had probably never seen any real animals. All the Earth animals had been systematically exterminated by Mankind by the year 2500.
Ashe asked,
'Where did it go?'
'It vanished,' said Winton. 'Just vanished into the darkness.'
While Ashe and Winton discussed the possibility of finding blood tracks - assuming the monster had been hit - the Doctor examined what appeared to be claw marks in the wood of the smashed kitchen table. From a claw mark it is possible to estimate the size of the claw, and from the size of a claw, one can calculate the probable size of the animal.
'This monster,' said the Doctor to Winton, 'was it about twenty feet high?'
'Feet?' said Winton, puzzled.
The Doctor had forgotten that Earth had completely converted to metric measurements a thousand years ago. 'About six metres high?' he repeated.
'That's right,' said Winton. Then, suspiciously, he added, 'How do you know?'
'The size of these claw marks,' said the Doctor. 'And you found Mrs. Leeson's body by the radio-telephone?'
Winton nodded.
'Then we have a rather strange problem,' said the Doctor, 'because how could a twenty foot high - I mean, six metres high - lizard come through that door?'
6 The Survivor
John Ashe felt that his whole world was starting to fall to pieces. It hadn't been easy finding a group of people who might mix well together in a colony. Of the many people who replied to his advertisements, he had turned down the majority because they were too young, or too old, or just didn't seem right in some way or other. After each interview Ashe had taken the decision whether to accept or reject the applicant. Then, of the many secondhand spaceships that he looked at, he had decided which to buy for the group. The others all had their own ideas on how much food to take, but finally it was left to Ashe to decide on the exact quantities. He was now tired of taking decisions, but he knew that if he showed his feelings to the others the whole colony would collapse. They expected him to lead, and he tried not to let them down.
Then came trouble on the journey, when the spaceship almost blew itself to pieces shortly after lift-off. With the help of Leeson and Winton, both good engineers in their own ways, Ashe solved that problem. The journey took longer than they expected, but once they had landed everyone was happy. Then they saw the Primitives, and some of the women were terrified. Some of the younger men, who had never possessed a gun before, wanted to shoot the Primitives. Ashe had restrained them, and explained that they could and must live in peace with these strange people. The first days of sowing seeds brought great excitement because none of them had ever done physical work before; on Earth machines did