Doctor Who_ The Paradise of Death - Barry Letts [86]
‘A good point,’ said the Doctor. ‘We’d better make a stretcher.’
The Brigadier produced a knife, remarkably large and sharp for one carried in a trouser pocket, and he and the Doctor quickly constructed a stretcher from a couple of saplings and the whippy branches of young trees, bound together with creeper.
As Sarah brought back a bundle of leafy twigs, she caught the end of a slightly acrimonious exchange.
‘You were singing an old Venusian lullaby? Really, Doctor!’
A lullaby! Yes, that’s just what it sounded like, she thought.
‘It’s been remarkably efficacious in the past,’ said the Doctor huffily. ‘Unfortunately, the Gargan didn’t seem to have the same ear for music as my old friend Aggedor.’
‘That gun thingy was certainly efficacious,’ said Jeremy, warily eyeing the recumbent monster. ‘I mean to say!
Wallop!’
‘Yes. Handy little weapon,’ said the Brigadier, taking the twigs from Sarah and weaving them into the stretcher.
‘That’s all very well,’ said the Doctor, sitting back on his heels and letting the Brigadier get on with it. ‘If he’s dead, Lethbridge-Stewart, Kaido’s people will probably throw Onya and the rest of them out of Kimonya. If he’s not, he’ll track us down and have us for dinner.’
‘Yes, well,’ said the Brigadier, as he tucked in the last twigs, ‘if we’d stayed with Rockabye Baby, he’d be onto the port and walnuts by now.’
It was the Brigadier, too, who had the Bright Idea.
Having managed, with a great deal of difficulty, to get Waldo up the slope to the top – they’d had to tie him onto the stretcher at the steepest bit – they were on their way down the rather more gentle incline on the far side. Sarah and Jeremy were carrying the front end of the stretcher, with the Doctor at the back. The Brigadier was leading the way, following the line of the stream, when he suddenly stopped. Sarah nearly cannoned into him.
‘Eureka!’ he said.
‘That’s usually my line,’ said the Doctor. ‘What have you found?’
‘I was only thinking earlier today,’ he answered, with a half-grin on his face, ‘about my fox-hunting days as a young man. Do you know, there was one run where hounds lost the scent time and time again. And do you know why?’
‘Yes, I do! Indeed I do!’ said the Doctor in high glee.
‘Well done, Lethbridge-Stewart.’
What were they on about? thought Sarah. Why did they have to speak in riddles?
‘Why then?’ said the Brigadier.
‘Because the fox took to the water. Am I right?’
‘Quite right,’ said the Brigadier, shortly. He seemed to be quite miffed at having his moment of triumph pinched from under his nose.
Thus it was that the next hundred yards or so were uncomfortably spent wading down, clambering down or falling down (in Jeremy’s case) the cascading waters of the little tributary. It was quite dark by now, and becoming really cold. Sarah found it very nearly impossible at times, even though the Doctor and the Brigadier had taken over the carrying of the stretcher, but the thought that the Gargan might be fooled by this stratagem, and Waldo’s life saved, gave her a glow inside which made up for everything.
Even though the welcome with which Onya received them seemed somewhat reserved, her first concern was for Waldo – but whether he would survive was another matter.
To Sarah’s horror, Onya and the Doctor agreed that there was nothing they could do, apart from cleaning him up and bandaging the wound.
‘They shot him with a simple old-fashioned firearm, you see. They always use them in the hunts – the audience prefers it. We can’t replace the blood he’s lost.’
Sarah wanted to stay and help, but she was shivering so much that Onya insisted that like the others she should go to her but and dry off.
This wasn’t ordinary shivering, she thought to herself, as she desperately rubbed herself with the Kimonyan equivalent of a towel. What was the matter with her? Yes, of course she was wet and cold, but this terrible shaking had come on when everybody seemed to be insisting