Doctor Who_ The Paradise of Death - Barry Letts [47]
‘Right, Dogar,’ he went on. ‘Find out where he’s going, what his schedule is. Full surveillance. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, Vice-Chairman.’ said Dogar.
‘Sooner or later he’ll make a slip. I shall enjoy teaching the arrogant young whipper-snapper a lesson.’
Tragan switched off the screen and leaned back in his chair. He heaved a deep sigh and closed his eyes. His skin faded to a pale lilac; and the movement of his face was no more than might be occasioned by a balmy summer breeze wafting across the calm surface of a slime-covered stagnant pond.
Chapter Sixteen
Sarah had no idea how it was that Tragan had managed to get her back into his clutches. Her head was swimming as though she’d been drugged, or perhaps was recovering from a blow.
He was dragging her along a narrow path – a path which seemed to stretch to a far horizon. All around the carnivorous plants were swaying and snapping to get at her.
But now at her feet yawned the mouth of a deep pit, from which echoed and re-echoed the ghastly howls of the creatures from the spaceship.
She turned in terror, to find the staring eyes, set deep in folds of flowing flesh, only inches from her own.
She started back – and as she plunged down into the blackness, she could hear the voice of a rescuer, come too late, calling to her desperately, ‘Sarah! Sarah!’
She opened her mouth to scream but no sound would come. This was it. She was going to die.
With a jolt, she landed; the thudding of her heart melded with a knocking. The voice came again.
‘Sarah? Sarah! Are you awake?’
She lay for a moment, still possessed by the horror of her dream; and then it faded.
‘Sarah?’
‘Yes, I’m awake,’ she managed to say.
‘You asked me to give you a shout when it was nearly time to go to this do of Captain Rudley’s,’ went on Jeremy’s voice.
‘Shan’t be long,’ she said.
By the time she’d had a shower (needle jets coming from every angle; a cleanser and a pepper-upper, she decided, for the mind and spirit as much as for the body) and dressed in the fresh, clean clothes she found laid out for her, her own having vanished during her sleep, she was a new woman.
A new woman? she thought, as she turned in front of the mirror, frankly admiring the straw-coloured high-necked shirt and narrow slacks and the way they set off the lines of her carefully slim figure. A New Woman? There’s an old cliché turned into a new cliché for you. And if I am a New Woman, how come my subconscious cast me in the role of the victim? How come I didn’t turn round and kick him in the goolies? If he’s got any.
Postponing the effort of self-analysis to another occasion, she shrugged ruefully, gave a final push at the swing of her short hair and went to join Jeremy, who also proved to have changed his clothes. A short chalk-green tunic, which came down to mid-thigh, allowed his skinny bare legs, with championship-level knobbly knees to emerge like a hen’s below her skirt of feathers.
‘Do I look all right?’ he said. ‘To be honest, I feel a bit of a charlie.’
‘Mm. Tasty,’ she answered. ‘That tunic makes you look like a Greek god. Well, a Greek something or other. Didn’t they give you any trousers?’
‘Not that I could see.’
It must have been Sarah’s expression that made him decide to have another look. She sat down to wait.
Their suite, while lacking the grandiosity of the quarters of the supposed ambassadors next door, was in no way less comfortable. In a way it was almost too comfortable. The pastel colours – amber, a smoky tan, jade green – of the decoration and the furnishing; the thickness of the carpet; the softness and the reclining shape of the chairs: all were so relaxing in their effect that it would be difficult not to go straight back to sleep, Sarah decided. She looked round for something a bit more energizing.
She hauled herself out of the seductive embrace of the armchair and wandered over to the window, realizing with a small shock that it did not show the park of the Presidential Palace as might have been expected, but a lake surrounded by mountains.
There was a row of buttons at the side of