Doctor Who_ The King of Terror - Keith Topping [69]
‘Try the lights . . . ’
‘Nothing’s working, skipper,’ said Milligan. ‘The battery must be flat.’
In the dull fading light Paynter looked less than convinced. He stood with his hands on his hips gazing towards the lights of Las Vegas in the distance.
‘What do you estimate, Dave?’
‘Twenty-five miles. Maybe thirty.’
‘That’s what I was thinking, maybe a touch more.’
Paynter picked up a small stone from the side of the road and threw it, angrily, into the desert. Where it bounced, a puff of dust flew up in a miniature mushroom cloud. ‘Damn and bugger it, that’s all we need.’ He turned with a rueful smile. ‘Oh well,’ he continued. ‘Worse things happen at sea. I suppose we’d better get the suitcases open, bed down here and wait for first light. Ifs a pity, I was looking forward to a hot shower.’ He gave Tegan an apologetic look that still managed to seem offensive to her. ‘I’d get another pair of tights on if I were you, love, it gets a bit nippy in the car when there’s no heat on!’
‘Shouldn’t we keep moving?’ Tegan asked, not unreasonably. She wasn’t overjoyed at the thought of spending a night with these two jokers. Well, one of them, anyway.
‘I doubt you’d enjoy yomping through the desert in high heels and a miniskirt,’ noted Paynter sarcastically.
Milligan chuckled at the image Paynter had conjured up. Then he attempted to placate the scowling woman. ‘The temperature at night in the desert drops really low Tegan,’ he said. ‘The car will be like an icebox, but it’ll be marginally warmer than outside. If we get well wrapped up we’ll be all right.’
Tegan was beginning to shiver already. ‘I knew this was a bad idea,’ she said.
Paynter was moving to the boot of the car to remove his kitbag. ‘You and me both,’ he muttered. He took another look at the distant city and it seemed 133
to Tegan that he was reflecting that somewhere within the dancing lights on the horizon fortunes were being won and lost. Then he looked at the sky.
‘Holy Jesus,’ he said suddenly. The others followed his gaze across the desert to a series of bright lights that were swooping out of the sky at a phe-nomenal speed and hovering several hundred yards to the right of the UNIT
car.
Time seemed to stand still, at least to Tegan. The lights were stationary for an impossibly long time. Like something wading through treacle, they seemed to be inert and lifeless. She suddenly realised that she had caught her breath and hadn’t bothered to release it. Feeling slightly light-headed she did, and was shocked at how loud it sounded. Everywhere else there was a glistening silence.
‘That’s a Comanche stealth helicopter, right?’ asked Milligan, shattering the moment like a brick through a window. ‘USAF. Or one of those new reconnaissance planes, yeah?’
‘You reckon?’ asked Paynter sarcastically without taking his eyes from the lights in the sky. He was clearly unconvinced.
The lights were coming closer, slowly. They were part of a circular object, elongated at the sides into an egg shape. The lights strobed in a three-second pattern that was both calming and hypnotic. Tegan had her car door open and was standing beside Paynter in the eerie blue-white light.
‘Got to be. What’s the alternative?’ asked Milligan, scrambling over the passenger seat to join them.
‘I didn’t know you were a UFO virgin,’ Paynter said, as the lights sped towards them and flashed over the car at otherworldly speed. ‘You’ve had the briefings even if you’ve never seen one before.’
High above them, the lights in the sky continued to pulse at regular intervals as they grew more distant until they merged and became merely one tiny, brilliant speck of starlight.
‘It looks like Jupiter or one of those Chinese satellites,’ Milligan noted as the lights finally disappeared from view. ‘I never realised they shone like that. So brightly.’
‘That was a UFO,’ said Tegan excitedly.