Doctor Who_ The Green Death - Malcolm Hulke [42]
From behind the metal grille Mike Yates watched with glee as the Doctor escaped. Then guards closed in on him, guns at the ready. Dr Stevens came running up.
‘Don’t kill him,’ he called out. ‘He can be useful.’
10 The Green Death
Nancy straightened Professor Jones’s bedclothes, tucked in the sheets. He lay unconscious, breathing heavily.
‘How did it happen?’ she asked.
‘It could have been the explosions from those terrible napalm bombs,’ Jo said. ‘I still feel pretty shaky myself.’
‘He hasn’t got any broken bones, that’s for sure. So it could be concussion.’ Nancy regarded the professor carefully. ‘I don’t like that heavy breathing, though.’
Jo prayed silently to herself that Cliff would be all right. In answer to her call on the walkie-talkie, the Doctor and Sergeant Benton had driven in Bessie through the sea of squirming maggots. To clear the maggots from the entrance of the old bunker, the Doctor had used his sonic screwdriver, adjusting it to emit a high pitched buzz that deafened Sergeant Benton and caused the maggots temporarily to back away. By the time the Doctor and Benton got into the refuge, Cliff was already semi-conscious. The three of them had to lift him into Bessie for the bumpy drive down the side of the slag heap and back to the safety of the Wholewealers’ house.
The Doctor came into the bedroom. ‘Any improvement?’
Nancy shook her head. ‘I think we should call in Dr Davis. He’s the GP for the village.’
Then the young professor opened his eyes. He stared up at the ceiling unseeingly. His lips started to move. ‘Seren... ‘
Jo held his hand fast. ‘Cliff, please wake up! Please, for my sake!’
His lips moved again. ‘Seren... serendipity...’ His eyes closed, and he lapsed back into unconsciousness.
‘Serendipity?’ said the Doctor. He turned to Nancy. ‘Do you know what he meant?’
‘He’s rambling,’ she answered. ‘It isn’t a word.’
‘Ah, but it is,’ said the Doctor. ‘It was coined by a chap called Horace Walpole, after the fairy-tale called The Three Princes of Serendip . It means a happy accident.’
‘Doctor,’ said Jo, trembling, ‘Look at his neck.’ She pointed to a small green patch just under the professor’s ear. ‘The green death. The maggot that leapt at me—it must have touched him on the neck.’ She burst into tears.
‘Come to mum,’ said Nancy, putting her arms round Jo as she sobbed. ‘Believe me, luv, while there’s life there’s hope.’
The Doctor quietly left the bedroom, worried and puzzled. He had already injected the professor with a broad spectrum antibiotic to slow down any infection, but so far as he knew they had no cure against the green death. Despite all the efforts of highly-skilled hospital doctors, Hinks had died that morning. The Doctor knew that he had two major problems to solve. First, the green patch meant the young professor’s life was now in danger—if no antidote could be found, Professor Jones would die within twenty-four hours. The second problem was the maggots. They had burrowed to the surface because they needed daylight. The Doctor suspected there was another development yet to come. In the next few days they would pupate in their thousands, turning into some other kind of insect. If that had wings, the green death could be spread all over the world.
He went into the professor’s untidy laboratory and looked at the mass of notes and calculations on the work bench. ‘Serendipity,’ he murmured to himself, ‘a discovery by happy accident...’
The door of the laboratory opened quietly and Mike Yates entered. The Doctor turned, glad to see him. ‘Welcome to the Nut Hatch, Mike. How did you manage to get away?’
‘They let me go,’ said Yates.
‘Really? That was good of them. Do you