Doctor Who_ The Green Death - Malcolm Hulke [38]
She swallowed hard. ‘No, not at all.’ She was rocking on her heels with happiness.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘I’m glad you didn’t mind.’
The Brigadier hurried back. ‘Mike Yates can’t help us. Just thought I’d tell you that the Doctor’s gone off to get some of the oil waste himself.’
‘How?’ asked Jo.
‘Bit of a subterfuge,’ grinned the Brigadier. ‘It’s an old trick, but it may just work. Anyway, must rush to see how the maggot swarm is getting on.’ He went, and in a moment they heard his jeep start up.
‘Now,’ said Professor Jones after the interruption, ‘where were we?’
‘You were kissing me,’ Jo said. ‘And I was helping you.’
‘Oh, yes,’ he said, remembering. ‘First, the next slide.’ He looked along the bench, found the one that the Doctor had prepared, and fitted it under the microscope. ‘Then you could put this test tube back in its rack.’
Jo took the tube and leaned over the bench to replace it in a rack under the window.
‘Look, Jo,’ said the Professor, ‘When all this horrible business is over— look out! ’
But his warning was too late. Leaning over the bench
Jo knocked a couple of jars containing a brown powdery substance. The stopper from one jar fell off, and powder sprinkled all over the slides of maggot slime.
‘You clumsy young goat,’ the professor roared. ‘You’ve ruined all my dried fungus. I’ll have to do the whole lot again.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Jo said, ‘really I am. Can I help put it right?’
‘No, definitely not!’
He got on with his work grumpily. Jo slunk back miserably. ‘What you really need is a maggot, isn’t it?’ He nodded.
‘That would help. But first things first.’
She perked up, hoping he’d let her help. ‘Yes? What first things?’
‘Make some coffee.’
‘Like a dutiful little girl?’
He didn’t notice her sarcasm. ‘Perfect,’ he said, peering into the microscope.
With a frilly apron and cap?’ she said.
He made a minute adjustment to the focus of the microscope and wasn’t really listening. ‘Good idea,’ he murmured.
‘Or topless?’ she asked.
‘Hm?’ He was in a world of his own, absorbed in his work. What he saw in the microscope made him frown.
She stood up, exasperated. ‘How about a nice cup of arsenic?’
‘Fine,’ he said, not hearing. ‘Whatever you’ve got.’
Angrily she tore a clean sheet from the notebook on his work bench and scribbled a message on it. ‘Since you don’t want to listen to me, you can read this!’
He took the sheet of paper without looking, turned it over and started to make calculations on it in pencil.
Jo turned on her heel and stalked out of the laboratory.
Unnoticed by either of them, the powdery brown fungus had started to envelop and destroy the traces of green maggot slime on to which it had fallen.
The village milk float pulled up at the gates of Panorama Chemicals. It was driven by a bent old man wearing oilskins and a sou’wester that was pulled well down over his face. A guard came forward.
‘Where’s the usual milkman?’ asked the guard. ‘Taken very ill,’ mumbled the Doctor.
‘Who are you?’
‘His dad. “Dad,” he said to me this morning from his sick bed, “Dad, someone’s got to do the milk round.” “I done it for fifty-two years,” I told him, “I’m too old to do it now,” I said. But he said, “Dad, there’s no-one else,” he said, so I said, “Well, son, there’s life in the old dog yet,” I said—’
Very bored by this the guard flung open the gate. ‘All right, go in.’
The Doctor drove the milk float round to the car park. He ripped off his disguise and went into the building. Soon he had reached the floor of the main administrative offices. Suddenly loudspeakers set in the walls of the corridor made their announcement: ‘Attention all guards! Milk float found in car park. Intruder suspected in building disguised as milkman. Find and detain! Find and detain!’
No sooner had the Doctor heard the announcement than heavy footsteps pounded down a nearby corridor. He looked about, saw a door, opened it and went in. Mops, cloths and buckets fell on him. Holding the door of the