Doctor Who_ The Paradise of Death - Barry Letts [13]
The Piranhatel Beetles were much more like it. They’d been thrown some sort of carcase just before the gang came in. They came swarming out of the undergrowth from every direction, hundreds upon hundreds of them: six inches long, with scarlet and black shells (did beetles have shells?) and these great tearing, biting thingies sticking out of their faces. They’d set upon the dead cow or whatever it was and in thirty-two point seven seconds – Kitson timed it with a stop watch – they’d stripped it down to its skeleton; just a lot of bare bones; just sticking up out of the grass. Made you think. Could have been you! Great!
But the best of all, so far, was the Stinksloth. He smelt worse than old Smellybelly Jenks in the third form – funny how his people took him away after only a term – and that was saying something. He lived in a pit of foul mud or worse – the Stinksloth, not Jenks, though that wouldn’t have surprised anyone – and slurped around looking like a
– well, a bit like one of those big sea lion thingies that lie around on the beach (the ones that have a thousand wives, and jolly tiring that must be, so no wonder they lie around!) only crossed with a jellyfish, sort of out-of-focus at the edges.
‘The stench of putrefaction coming from his pit,’ Kitson was saying, ‘is due, I’m afraid, to his habit of storing the decomposing corpses of the giant slugs that he likes for breakfast in his sleeping corner. Ah, there! He’s eating one now!’
Oh, yuck! Oh, double yuck! Jeremy thought.
And then, just when he was really enjoying himself, there was Sarah, pulling at his elbow and hissing in his ear.
‘Come along, Jeremy,’ she was saying as if she was his sister or something.
‘Can’t take it, eh?’
‘Oh, don’t be so silly. Come on!’
And she pulled him out of the pavilion and down the steps.
‘Where are we going?’ said Jeremy, desperately trying to keep up as she set off at a fast walk, almost a trot, while glancing from side to side as if she didn’t want anybody to see where they were off to.
‘I need you to keep watch,’ she replied through her teeth. ‘I’m going to get a candid camera shot of that Kamelius thing!’
Luckily, everybody they saw seemed to be far too busy getting ready for the afternoon opening to notice them, even when Sarah, with a quick secret-service-type look left and right, disappeared behind the Kamelius house. Jeremy blundered after her.
‘Where are you going?’
‘We can hardly march straight in through the front door,’ she hissed.
‘But what about that fellow with the gun?’ he whispered, almost tripping over the mess of cables in the small back room which led to the side door.
‘Sssh!’ With infinite caution, Sarah eased open the door and peeped through the crack. ‘It’s all right,’ she whispered, ‘there’s nobody here.’
‘Oh. I say,’ said Jeremy as he followed her in, ‘the beastly thing’s gone.’
‘No, there he is – coming out from behind that dune.’
Jeremy peered across the the heat shimmer rising from the sand. Oh, yes. But how could he be forty yards away, or more like fifty, when the pavilion itself was less than half that size? A phrase shimmered in his head like the hot air in front of him. Optical... illusion? Yes, that was it. Sort of scientific conjuring. ‘Oo look! He’s eating a tortoise thingy!’ He could hear the crunch as the Kamelius cracked open the shell with its immense claws.
Sarah already had the camera up to her eye and was muttering under her breath.
‘Sorry?’ said Jeremy.
‘I said...’ Sarah took the camera away from her eye and turned to him. ‘Oh, for Heaven’s sake? Don’t just stand there! Go and see if there’s anybody in the lobby. Keep a lookout!’ She spoke in a cross stage-whisper, sort of shouting at him under her breath.
Feeling got at – after all, she hadn’t said – Jeremy went to