Doctor Who_ The King of Terror - Keith Topping [68]
One moment the desert sands were baking in the full blaze of a sun high in the clear azure sky. The next, quite unexpectedly, in the blinking of an eye, unearthly brilliant shades of ultraviolet, crimson and orange tinged the sky and the day was almost done. Mutated shards of light streaked across the vista beneath the rapidly forming clouds and the night descended, hovered and then settled itself over the land like a blanket.
Milligan, Tegan and Paynter had spent most of the day flying over the Bernadino Hills and the Mojave desert in a UNIT helicopter, crossing into 131
Nevada and following the Colorado river to a tiny, unmarked US Air Force base near Boulder City.
Now they were in a staff car with malfunctioning air conditioning on the final stretch of Highway 95 approaching Las Vegas, a bright, multifaceted jewel gleaming spectacularly on the distant horizon.
Paynter was quite upbeat all things considered, looking on a three-day R
and R order as a licence to forget about the problems back in Los Angeles and actually have a bit of fun. Tegan, on the other hand, was sullen and disinterested, furious that the Doctor had parcelled her off with the army whilst he continued to poke into dangerous situations. And, even more importantly, she still couldn’t get Turlough’s abduction out of her mind. It seemed ludicrous to go on holiday in the middle of an adventure as dangerous and confusing as this, but that was what the Doctor was making her do.
Tegan had told him she felt like a child being patronised, and he had made a few soothing noises about needing some breathing space. So she accepted the situation with her customary bad grace. Only more so than usual.
She enjoyed Dave Milligan’s company well enough, she was forced to admit.
He was friendly and witty and seemed to know when to laugh, when to nod and say nothing and when to tell her that what she really needed most was a vodka and orange with ice and, hey, didn’t he know just the place for one.
Paynter, on the other hand, she just couldn’t get a handle on. He was boorish and arrogant and everything else that Tegan hated most in life. Yet she could not, despite herself, forget the brief glimpse she’d had in the hospital of a vulnerable, slightly melancholy man who had seen too much horror. He reminded her of a character from a story she remembered from her childhood.
Ichabod Crane in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. A man in search of a mythical terror to fight in place of the real ones that haunted his world. Perhaps, once Paynter found this terror he would have some peace. And so would the rest of the world.
‘You been in the desert before, love?’ asked Paynter casually.
Tegan considered a long-winded reply about how northern Queensland was all desert. But then she thought better of it. ‘A few times,’ she said simply and carried on looking out of the window at the curtain of night that was falling around them.
‘Weird place this,’ Milligan told no one in particular. ‘Like Salisbury Plain.
Very X-Files, know what I’m saying?’
‘Oh yeah,’ noted Paynter. ‘That Area 51’s around here somewhere isn’t it?
Very much a hot spot for activity. You want to read the Waro mission logs, it’s a textbook case-file for this part of the world. Some of the scientific advisers believe it’s something to do with the fault line – that it’s an energy source.’
‘In a country this size there’s bound to be somewhere that’s a magnet for 132
spooky goings-on,’ continued Milligan. ‘A guy I met in a bar reckons it’s all the CIA doing covert operations with black helicopters. He said aliens don’t exist.
I didn’t have the heart to tell him otherwise!’
‘Innit marvellous?’ asked Paynter cynically. ‘Everyone’s a critic.’
Tegan briefly wondered if the conversation was leading somewhere but she didn’t have the chance to find out as the Star Jumpers CD suddenly cut out. It was followed, a second later, by the car itself.
‘What the . . . ?’ Milligan gave Paynter a puzzled sideways glance as the car slowed almost to a standstill. ‘It’s dead.’
‘Can’t be,