Doctor Who_ The Paradise of Death - Barry Letts [33]
‘Wait there, Jeremy. We’re on our way. Can you see anything?’
‘Not really. It’s in the shadows, you see, and the thing’s almost black and since they closed the doors, I can’t – oh no!’
‘What is it, man?’
‘It’s going up in the air! It’s taking off! I mean it’s not a fake at all, it’s a real – Oh Lor’, they’ve gone! They’ve gone off with Sarah Jane!’
As Bessie swung round into the centre square, the Brigadier saw, far off at the other end of Yuri Gagarin Avenue, a thickening in the sky, a darker darkness, a flash of black against the stars. They were too late.
When the doors closed behind Sarah, she was more excited than afraid. It was only a small complication, after all. As long as she kept out of sight, she was quite safe. She could always escape by going through the little service room –
there was bound to be one, like all the others – and out of the back door.
She found herself in an entrance lobby, with walls of the same dark material as the outside of the ship. There was a ladder (not very imaginative, she thought; it was like the sort you’d have on a boat) and three doors. The growling, which was a little more subdued now, came from dead ahead, through the only door that was open.
She crept forward, her steps deadened by the thick pile of the black carpet, and peeped inside, breathing deeply to try to quieten the excitement of her heart. It was okay, the room was empty. But it clearly wasn’t intended for parties of Space World punters.
To start with it was too small, but even more conclusively, it was fitted out in the most luxurious manner possible, with plump cushioned seats apparently covered with black velvet, walls patterned in grotesque but fascinating shapes which seemed to move as you looked at them, and the hi-tech equipment, some familiar, some utterly strange, that you might expect in the first class saloon of a private spacecraft of the future.
A voice! It was the voice of Tragan, pitched over the top of the continuing growls, coming through a door on the other side of the saloon: ‘Crestin!’
Quick, where to hide? Only one place: behind the large seat like a small sofa which was up against the right hand wall. If she got right down on the floor and wriggled... Yes there was just enough room, and she could still see the bottom of the farther door.
‘Warn me when you’re about to make the jump into hyper,’ Tragan was saying
‘Will do,’ came a quacking intercom voice in answer. ‘You’ve quite a while yet. I’m sorry, Vice-Chairman, but in normal circumstances I’d have completed all the preflight routine in advance. And even after we’ve taken off, we have to clear the solar system first.’
Sarah had no time to digest the implications of the interchange, for not only had the weird growling turned into a savage snarl which almost drowned out Crestin’s voice, but her restricted view of the open door showed not only a pair of shod feet – obviously Tragan’s – but also the feet of some sort of beast; feet such as she had never seen before; feet which she wished she were not seeing now.
About the same length as Tragan’s highly-polished footwear, but as broad as a teaplate, webbed toes spread wide, with knife-edged claws longer than a man’s hand, they were treading the floor like a caged leopard impatient for its dinner.
‘Very good,’ said Tragan, in acknowledgement of the pilot’s report, and moved forward to the open door, closely followed by his companion. He stopped.
‘I think you’d better come out now,’ he said. Sarah put her face down to the carpet, her eyes squeezed tightly shut, as if she could block out the reality of what she’d seen as well as the sight.
‘You, I’m talking to,’ Tragan went on, ‘behind the seat.
Or would you like me to ask my friend to come and fetch you?’
As Sarah crawled out backwards she found that she was shaking so hard that it was doubtful if she would be able to stand up. By dint of clinging on to the back of the sofa, she managed to haul herself to her feet, but her knees nearly gave way again when she saw the creature standing behind Tragan.