Doctor Who_ The Paradise of Death - Barry Letts [81]
Exactly,’ answered Rance. ‘Though I must say, in certain circumstances I would have preferred...’ Sarah noticed a slight narrowing of Onya’s eyes. Evidently Rance noticed it too. ‘All right, all right,’ he went on with a grin, ‘I know when I’ve lost an argument.’
They moved down the but to the monitoring area. Sarah managed to get next to Onya, who seemed quite oblivious of her. She was just on the point of pulling on her sleeve out of sheer desperation, when she became aware of what Rance was saying.
‘Down here, we scan the ER frequencies to try to pick up the hunts in the Lackan area. We’ve managed to save seven so far. How’s it going, Ungar?’
‘As boring as it was yesterday,’ said Ungar, turning a knob in a lackadaisical manner.
‘Now look here --’
But Rance stopped short, throwing a glance at the visitors.
Sarah started to speak, only to be forestalled by the Brigadier. ‘Isn’t that rather risky?’ he said. ‘Bringing them here, I mean, when their brains are transmitting everything back to Corporation HQ?’
‘Not if they’re deactivated, Lethbridge Stewart,’ said the Doctor.
‘Oh yes, of course.’
Now, thought Sarah. ‘But what about –’
‘All the same, we have to be careful,’ Onya said. ‘The rescue itself will be transmitted. We have to make it look as if they’d managed to escape without help.’
Ungar sat up, suddenly alert. ‘Hang on, I thought I had something there... Yeah, there it is again. He’s on the run all right. Quite near. Just over the eastern hills. Look at the coordinates.’ He gestured to the figures appearing at the bottom of the screen.
‘Put it on the monitor matrix so that we can all experience it,’ said Rance.
Ungar threw a switch and at once Sarah found herself back in the jungle she and the others had so recently left.
Yet at the same time she could see and hear everything that was going on in the hut. It was like looking out of the window of a lighted house at dusk; with a change of attention, you could choose to see the garden outside or the reflection of the room behind you.
She closed her eyes and saw that she was stumbling up the same rocky slope where Jeremy had twisted his ankle; she was struggling for breath and throwing quick glances over her right shoulder. Panic was rising in her throat.
‘Oh no, no!’ she gasped. ‘It must be Waldo!’
‘Poor devil,’ she heard the Brigadier say.
Concentrating on climbing the hill, as if the effort she put into it could somehow help, she was hardly aware of what was being said: ‘Try scanning the other channel for the hunters.’ That was Onya.
The Doctor’s voice: ‘Isn’t that rather a tall order?’
Onya again: ‘It’s usually a nearby frequency. They’ve very little imagination, these people.’
With a jolt, the ground Sarah was walking on changed. It wasn’t so stony, and there were tussocks of grass; she was further down the hill. Although she was still climbing, she wasn’t nearly so out of breath, and she was carrying a gun just like the one she carried when... but her mind refused the dreadful image. There was a man with her, and she could hear his voice.
‘Got him,’ he said. ‘Look, dodging behind that outcrop.’
Yes, she could see him! She opened her eyes and turned to the others, almost weeping in her frustration. ‘We’ve got to do something!’
‘Steady on, old girl,’ said the Brigadier. ‘We can all see him, you know.’
‘There’s plenty of time,’ said the Doctor. ‘The last thing they want is a quick death. They’ll try to stretch it out as long as possible. Don’t forget, they’re in the entertainment business.’
‘Exactly,’ said Onya. ‘Those two could go on chasing him for days. And we haven’t a hope of going in while the sun is up. We’ll have to wait for nightfall.’
The Brigadier shushed them sharply. Sarah found that a man’s voice was speaking through her mouth, a deep rough voice. ‘The fool’s making for the Gargan territory.’
The Gargan!
‘I’ll have to try and stop him,’ Sarah could hear herself saying. She felt herself lifting the gun, just as she had before, and carefully aiming at the distant stumbling figure.