Doctor Who_ The Paradise of Death - Barry Letts [73]
‘You know, it’s amazing what getting one’s trotters into the trough and one’s snout into a glass or two of slosh will do for the spirits, Tragan. I begin to feel optimistic again.’
‘I’m glad to hear it.’
‘I’m almost persuaded that your catastrophic inefficiency is merely an amusing – or dare I say, lovable? –
little idiosyncracy.’ He squinted with unamused, unloving piggy eyes at his victim. ‘Almost,’ he said.
‘Of course, a repetition could lead to the most painful consequences,’ he continued. ‘And you do understand, dear boy, that when I say painful, I mean ag-o-nising. But of course you do’
‘There’ll be no repetition,’ said Tragan.
‘Good,’ said Freeth.
He ate another half dozen oysters.
‘Will that be all, Chairman?’ said Tragan.
‘No,’ said Freeth.
He ate two more.
He took another swig of wine.
He ate the last three; and sighed.
‘Still,’ he said, removing the napkin and delicately dabbing the corners of his thick lips, ‘what harm can these wretched people do to us now? As long as we hold their ship they can’t return to Earth; and as for the rest, aren’t they fugitives? If they show a nose above the parapet – pop!
I’ve always enjoyed shooting a sitting bird’
‘All the same, Chairman,’ said Tragan. ‘I think it would be as well to tread very delicately, until we’re sure.’
Freeth nodded vigorously, his jowls wobbling. ‘Oh, belt and braces, belt and braces every time.’
He belched loud and long. He smiled sweetly and spoke in a voice brimming with affection.
‘That’s why you’re going to find them for me – and destroy them. Aren’t you, Tragan my pet?’
From the start, Jeremy found it difficult to keep up. Onya led the way. Before leaving the flycar, which they had buried under a pile of branches and leaves, she had changed from her housekeeper garb into the boots and slacks more suitable for fighting a way through a jungle.
They’d been going for what seemed like hours. Jeremy could see Onya at the head of the column. She never seemed to need a rest, he thought. She just ploughed ahead, without a thought for the poor blighters at the back.
Sometimes she’d pause and have a bit of a look round, or glance at a sort of compass thingy she carried, but before you could so much as catch your breath, she was off again, chopping her way through the tangle with a big heavy knife – what did they call it? A matchet, wasn’t it? Like hatchet. Only matchet. That sort of thing, it was.
Apart from anything else, she’d told everyone to look out and keep together, because of all the nasties they’d got in these woods (if those giant plummy things that ate you from the tummy outwards were anything to go by, he didn’t need telling) and then went racing on ahead like those fellows at school who won the Victor Ludorum and stuff – and Jeremy had always come last in those races too.
He was hot and thirsty. And then there was that bird, if it was a bird, which must have followed them all the way, just making a noise like an unoiled hinge – eeerk! eeerk!
eeerk! – over and over, one every three seconds regular as Hickory Dickory; and then it would stop – and just when you were about to say ‘Thank the Lord for that,’ it started again: eeerk! eeerk! eeerk!
He was just about to call out for them all to slow down a hit, when it happened. He’d put on a bit of spurt to catch up, so they’d hear him, and just as he was opening his mouth to shout, something grabbed his right foot.
For a moment he was frozen. But then he let out a yell that must have been heard in Parakon City.
‘What’s the matter?’ called the Brigadier.
‘Something’s... Something’s got me by the foot!’
‘Keep very still!’ said the Doctor.
‘I can’t do anything else,’ squeaked Jeremy.
The Doctor turned to the others. ‘Don’t move, anybody,’ he said. ‘Onya, have you any idea what it might be?’
Jeremy could only just hear her low reply. ‘No,’ she said.
‘Unless it’s a trap lizard. You’d have to cut its head off before a trap lizard would let go – and if it’s an arrow serpent, we’re all in trouble.’
Oh, help!
‘He-e-e-lp!’ he called in a sort