Doctor Who_ The Paradise of Death - Barry Letts [77]
‘It’s difficult to disentangle the two. In any case, I’ve still a long way to go. If I had the skill the tribe think I have, the skill my teacher had – I’ve tried to tell them –
well, I wouldn’t need this to find my way.’
She held up the black box.
‘What is it?’ asked Sarah. ‘Some sort of direction finder?’
Onya nodded. ‘Calibrated to the ER matrix the Entertainments Division uses for the hunt. I’ve programmed it for Kimonya.
‘I tell you what,’ she continued to Jeremy, ‘why don’t you stay at the front with me? Then we’ll be going at your pace, not mine.’ She turned, consulted the pointer on the box, and dived into the clump of greenery, followed by the sheepish Jeremy.
I wish you joy of him, thought the Brigadier as he went in behind the Doctor and Sarah.
After a few minutes of clambering up a steep incline, he could see that where the shrubs finished the terrain flattened to an open plateau which extended for fifty metres or more before the upward slope resumed.
As the two leaders emerged, the second gave a loud exclamation. ‘Oof!’ he said.
‘Oh, Jeremy, not again!’ said Sarah.
‘A big lizard thingy ran right across my toes,’ he said plaintively.
‘Well it didn’t bite them, did it?’ his erstwhile guardian said. ‘Now please may we – ’
‘Sssh!’ said the Doctor. ‘Listen!’
A not so distant roar – or was it a squeal? – came from the sparse woods which bounded the left of the clearing.
‘That’s no lizard,’ the Doctor said.
Onya’s eyes were darting to and fro. ‘Oh my word! I told you I still had a lot to learn! I nearly led you straight into the territory of a Gargan! Quickly!’ As she spoke, she shepherded them all back into the shelter of the bushes.
‘He’s very short-sighted and nearly deaf,’ she said, hardly speaking above a whisper, in spite of her words, ‘but his sense of smell... Here he comes!’
The nearest thing in size the Brigadier had ever seen was in the Natural History Museum: a dinosaur skeleton.
The Doctor said quietly, ‘I haven’t seen teeth as big as that since the last Tyrannosaurus I met.’
Tyrannosaurus Rex, that was the fellow, thought the Brigadier. Entirely different shape, though. This chap had short, sturdy back legs and walked on his knuckles, like a gorilla. He had a long curved neck so that he could hold his head close to the ground, like a bloodhound hot on the trail. But it was only when he stopped and raised his extended muzzle high in the air to give his squealing bellow that you could really see the crocodile rows of massive teeth.
‘What a handsome animal,’ breathed the Doctor.
Handsome!
His tracking brought him perilously near to their hiding place. For an interminable breath-holding age, he snuffled round the spot where Jeremy and Onya had been standing; then, with another roar, he set off again, disappearing into the woods on the right.
‘He’s gone after that lizard thingy,’ said Jeremy in a high small voice.
‘But why didn’t he sniff us out?’ said Sarah in a voice not much bigger. ‘If he’s so good at scenting things. We were only a few feet away.’
The Gargan’s roar came again – from a more comfortable distance. The Brigadier found that he was still holding his breath. He let it out, as unobtrusively as he could manage.
‘We’re outside his territory,’ said Onya in reply to Sarah. ‘He builds a sort of cave, you see. Yes, look, you can just see it over there.’ And she pointed to the far side of the clearing, where the slope on the left became a cliff. Against the face of the cliff, there was what seemed to be a pile of stones like an enormous cairn, several times larger than the Gargan himself.
‘And he marks out his domain with a line of rocks,’
Onya continued, ‘and if any creature steps within its boundaries, he’ll follow its scent until he finds it – and eats it. He never gives up; he’d starve first.’
The Brigadier looked across the plateau. Yes, there was a line of small rocks extending from the Gargan’s lair, right round the open space. Amongst the litter of stone it wasn’t immediately noticeable, unless you were looking for it.