Doctor Who_ The Paradise of Death - Barry Letts [10]
‘I feel more like crying. You don’t know anything about taking photographs.’
‘No, no,’ said Jeremy eagerly. ‘You’re going to do all that stuff. Clorinda’s sent her own camera and if a monster eats it we’re both sacked.’
Yes, very funny, she thought. noticing out of the corner of her eye the smile twitching at the corner of the Doctor’s mouth.
‘I’m so sorry.’ she said, hearing herself echoing Jeremy’s la-di-da tones. ‘Doctor, Brigadier, may I introduce Jeremy Fitzoliver? Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and the Doctor,’
she said to Jeremy.
‘How do you do,’ Jeremy said stiffly. Typical! Why couldn’t he have said ‘Hello’? Or even ‘Hi, there’? ‘How do you do’ hardly went with his casual soft leather jacket (which must have cost a bomb and a half), or his designer jeans. Though on second thoughts, looking at that knife-edge crease...
The music stopped. The babble of the assembled men and women of the press died away, as the voice of a slim young man standing with Freeth on the steps of the first pavilion boomed across the open square: ‘Ladies and Gentlemen! If you would like to gather over here?’
‘Fitzoliver?’ said the Brigadier, as they started to drift over with the rest, ‘Any relation of Teddy Fitzoliver?’
‘My Uncle Edmund, sir?’
Sarah knew Uncle Edmund – or rather knew of him.
Only the majority shareholder in Metropolitan, wasn’t he?
‘Good Lord. I was at school with him.’
‘I went to Hothorough too,’ said Jeremy. ‘Only left last year as a matter of fact.’
The Brigadier chuckled. ‘Haven’t seen Pooh Fitzoliver for years.’ His recollections were apparently tickling his sense of humour. ‘Well, well, good old Pooh.’
‘“Pooh”?’ the Doctor said unbelievingly.
‘Came of being called Teddy,’ explained the Brigadier.
‘Bear of very little brain, you know.’
That figures, thought Sarah. trailing along behind the newly established Old Boys’ network.
Sarah couldn’t pay proper attention to the Chairman’s introduction – in which he contrived to mention the Parakon Corporation three times in as many minutes –
because of her very real fears for his safety. Perched on the top of the flight of steps leading to the pavilion containing the Crab-Clawed Kamelius (the what?) he kept rising to the very tips of his elegant. over-polished shoes. Teetering on the edge, his massive form swayed with passionate intensity as he extolled the delights of Space World and the wonders they were all about to experience.
She was vastly relieved when, having invited them all to join him afterwards for a ‘wee snifter and some munchies in the Space Restaurant at the top of the Apollo Tower’, he handed over the running of things to his friend and colleague, Maroc Kitson, and tripped lightly down the steps and out of sight.
‘Maroc? What sort of a name is that?’ said the Brigadier.
‘You may well ask.’ replied the Doctor.
Kitson, having explained that the Crab-Clawed Kamelius was a native of the deserts of Aldebaran Two, a small planet about the size of Venus, invited them all to make its acquaintance. Before they could go inside, however, he stopped them.
‘There’s just one thing,’ he said gravely. ‘Although every precaution has been taken, I should point out that all the creatures I am going to show to you are killers. Keep on the right side of the barrier and, for your own safety, make no sudden moves or loud noises.’
This was greeted by laughter, combined with cries of
‘Come off it!’ and the like.
Sarah had her eye on the Doctor. He’s not laughing, she thought. Nor’s the Brig.
For that matter, it was plain that Jeremy had no idea why anybody should be laughing at all; and when Kitson continued, ‘And, of course, no photography is allowed,’ he glanced at Sarah as if he were afraid she would send him back to the office.
Kitson’s dictum was greeted by cries of protest; it was only when it became clear that the Kamelius’s guests would not be allowed past the lobby without surrendering their cameras to the large Space Cop at the inner