Doctor Who_ The Paradise of Death - Barry Letts [11]
‘You’ll get them back at the end of the tour,’ said Kitson. ‘Don’t worry. You’ll all be supplied with a handsome pack of shots in the hospitality room at lunchtime.’
Thank you. Clorinda dear, thought Sarah, slipping the mini-compact that Jeremy had brought into her jacket pocket.
Inside, the occupant of the pavilion was still not in view.
A long handsome gallery in a vaguely classical-but-alien style was bounded on one side by a shimmering curtain of opalescent light, full with changing colour like the sway of shot silk. A murmur of appreciation rippled through the audience.
‘I say,’ Jeremy whispered to Sarah, ‘this is something else!’
Something else? Honestly, he was always about ten years out of date! (Sarah was now feeling almost affectionate towards him.) Still, he wasn’t wrong. She’d certainly never seen anything quite like it before.
Kitson made his way to the front of the gathering, as another security guard dressed as a Space Cop, carrying a heavy rifle which looked as if it would stop a rhinoceros charging, came in through a small door at the side. Sarah became aware of a low chattering gobble, apparently coming from behind the obscuring luminescence.
Kitson raised his hand for attention; the noise grew in a rapid crescendo to a great roar like the sound of an entire brass band playing together the ultimate discord; Kitson was forced to raise his voice to an undignified bellow.
‘Ladies and Gentlemen!’ he cried. ‘May I present to you
– the Crab-Clawed Kamelius!’
The curtain of light melted away. The Kamelius was revealed.
‘Good grief!’ said the Brigadier.
A remarkably realistic desert background seemed to stretch away into the distance, but the Kamelius was standing only a few yards away. In spite of its name, it had the merest suspicion of a hump. Its body was like that of an armadillo the weight of an African elephant, with legs of a similar size, though these too were clad in armour-like scales. Its cavernous red mouth, still gaping as it roared its displeasure, revealed two rows of teeth designed, it would seem, to crunch up a mouthful of rocks. Most fearsome of all, the claws – very like a crab’s – at the ends of the two extra limbs attached to its shoulders, were clearly capable of snipping through the odd arm, or leg (or even neck) that ventured too near.
The ladies and gentlemen of the press drew back. Sarah felt Jeremy moving discreetly behind her.
‘It’s a real animal!’ said the Brigadier, as the jabber of astonishment mounted in volume. ‘It’s the real thing!’
Sarah quite agreed with him. This was no animated puppet. She looked to see how the Doctor was reacting to the extraordinary beast.
‘Have you ever seen a Crab-Clawed Kamelius before, Brigadier?’ asked the Doctor.
‘Of course not.’
‘No. And you’re not seeing one now.’
Was he saying it wasn’t real? Was she supposed to disbelieve the evidence of her own eyes? ‘Well, I certainly wouldn’t like to meet it up a dark alley,’ she said.
The Doctor raised his voice, over that of the Kamelius, which had subsided to the grumbling gobble they had first heard. ‘Where did you say this beast comes from, Mr Kitson?’
‘The deserts of Aldebaran Two,’ he replied, ‘which cover most of the planet.’
‘I see,’ the Doctor went on. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Aldebaran about sixty-eight light years away from Earth? Something in the region of four hundred billion miles?’
‘Quite right.’
‘Then would you be so good as to explain how you managed to persuade the creature to come to Hampstead Heath?’
Kitson smiled. ‘That, sir, would be telling.’
The assembled company, who had rather sheepishly regained their nerve now that the Kamelius seemed to have lost interest in them, laughed sycophantically.
What a lot of creeps, thought Sarah, pretending they hadn’t been scared.
She looked over at the enormous creature, which was moving slowly away from them, its little red eyes scanning the ground as it swung the great head from side to side.
Kitson went on to explain that it was searching for its prey – a creeping