Doctor Who_ The Green Death - Malcolm Hulke [8]
‘There are these cranks down the road,’ Dr Stevens went on, ‘Professor Jones and his mob of idiots. Mind you, I recognise that the professor is a very clever young man. He won a Nobel Prize, you know?’ He added this with some pride, as though it reflected on him personally to have such a celebrated enemy. ‘We don’t want him, or his kind, getting anything more about us in the newspapers.’
Mark Elgin spoke up, deferentially. ‘The Minister of Energy has already imposed a D notice, sir.’ D notices are sent to all newspapers, and to television and radio news services, when there is something the Government wants kept secret.
‘That’s come a bit late,’ said Dr Stevens. ‘Still, better late than never!
‘If I may ask,’ said the Brigadier, ‘had the death of the miner any connection with your company’s activities?’
‘I’ve absolutely no idea,’ said Dr Stevens quickly.
Elgin changed the subject, to get away from the death. ‘Brigadier, the Minister said you’d be bringing along some scientific chappie...?’
‘I hoped to,’ said the Brigadier. ‘He’s on leave at the moment. If I may return to the question of the miner, I understand he had turned green...’
Neither Dr Stevens nor Mark Elgin said anything.
‘Is that correct?’ asked the Brigadier.
‘My guess,’ said Elgin, ‘is that the poor man had a heart attack. He wasn’t young, you know.’
‘But why should he be green?’ the Brigadier persisted.
‘Look, Brigadier,’ said Dr Stevens, ‘your job here is to protect our establishment against hot-heads. Isn’t that right?’
The Brigadier did not like being told what his job was. ‘I feel it also my job, Dr Stevens, to find out about this man’s death.’
‘I see.’ Dr Stevens stared out of his plate glass windows at the Welsh mountains in the distance. ‘Then what do you propose to do?’
‘If I may use your phone,’ said the Brigadier, ‘I’d like to see if my “scientific chappie” is back from leave yet.’
‘By all means.’ Dr Stevens pushed a slimline phone across the desk towards the Brigadier. ‘But don’t you know when your own people are supposed to report back for duty?’
The Brigadier started to dial UNIT Headquarters in London. ‘Not with this particular man,’ he said. ‘He tends to take liberties with time.’
Two million light years away, the Doctor stood to catch his breath on a blue rock mountain. He was exhausted, having run to escape from the pecking blue birds and the blue unicorns.
‘Wait till I tell the Time Lords about this,’ he said to himself. ‘It’s the most unfriendly planet I’ve ever visited.’
Then he let out a cry as he felt something stick into his foot. Blue ants an inch long were swarming all over his left foot, digging through the shoe to get at the human flesh beneath. He brushed them off, and started climbing again.
Half an hour later he had reached the top of the little mountain. As far as the eye could see there were small mountain peaks. In some of the valleys were lakes of deep blue water. They looked inviting, but the Doctor by now suspected them all to be filled with flesh-eating blue fish. He turned his attention to a cluster of sapphires embedded in the rock. As he reached out to take one, a shadow fell across him. Looking up he saw the huge talons of a blue eagle descending on him, its great wings flapping. The Doctor grabbed the sapphire, thrust it into his pocket, and ran for his life. The eagle flapped after him, its talons trying to grab at his head or shoulders. The Doctor zig-zagged, out-manoeuvring the big ungainly bird. He saw ahead a forest of blue trees, where the eagle could not follow, and made for it.
In the forest, safe from the eagle, the Doctor leant against a tree to recover his breath. Then he noticed that one of the lower branches of the tree was moving. As he turned to run again, the branch whipped round like a snake, but the Doctor was able to jump free. Still afraid of the eagle hovering outside the forest, he raced through the trees, avoiding the whiplash of living branches. Eventually he was through the forest, and back in the valley where