Doctor Who_ The Sea-Devils - Malcolm Hulke [19]
‘How about a cup of tea?’ she asked, before registering the Doctor’s state of urgency.
‘Just met a Sea-Devil,’ he said. ‘A related species to those lizard men we met in the caves in Derbyshire.* Completely hostile!’
As he talked he was shutting and bolting the door. Then he took the main electrical lead to the smashed radio transmitter and connected both its terminals to the.metal bulkhead.
‘What are you going to do?’ Jo said.
‘They can cut through rock, metal, anything,’ said the Doctor. ‘This is one way we may be able to fight back.’
Even as he spoke a circle of heat started to appear in the thick metal panel of the door, as though an oxyacetyline burner was being played on it from the outside. The circle of heat was exactly the same diameter as the circular marks on the underside of the lifeboat now held at the Naval base. Within a few seconds a round disc of metal had fallen out of the door. The Sea-Devil’s scaly hand came in through the hole, groping for the bolts. The Doctor switched on the electric power that would normally feed the radio transmitter. There was a flash of electricity across the hole in the door, and a roar of pain from the Sea-Devil as it whipped its hand back through the aperture.
‘Quick,’ ordered the Doctor, ‘help me unbolt the door.’
‘What are you going to do?’ asked Jo anxiously.
‘Go after it, of course,’ said the Doctor, feverishly pulling back the bolts with Jo’s help.
They went out into the corridor and listened. From the distance they could hear the groans of the Sea-Devil, still shocked from the charge of high voltage electricity.
‘This way, I think,’ said the Doctor, and went off down the corridor.
Jo followed cautiously. ‘It could be leading us into a trap,’ she said. ‘There may be others of them.’
The Doctor had already reached the main deck. ‘Look,’ he said, pointing down the deck. It was almost dark now, but Jo could see the silhouette of the Sea-Devil as it lurched along the deck. Then it reeled towards one of the wire-meshed windows, and fell straight through it—and was gone. A couple of seconds later they heard the splash as the Sea-Devil hit the surface of the sea.
‘You realise,’ Jo said quietly, ‘that if it isn’t dead, it will return here with all its friends?’
‘But we’ve found how to defend ourselves,’ said the Doctor.
‘I asked Mr. Clark where the electricity comes from for this rig,’ Jo said. ‘There’s a cable on the sea-bed that comes from the mainland. If the Sea-Devils cut that, we’ve got no light or heat—and no means of defence.’
‘Then let us hope,’ said the Doctor, ‘that the thought doesn’t occur to them. Did you say something about a cup of tea?’ They turned and went back down the corridor towards the inhabited cabin.
* See DOCTOR WHO AND THE CAVE MONSTERS
5 Air-Sea Rescue
Police-constable Watkins stood before Captain Hart’s desk, his helmet respectfully held beneath his arm. ‘You say he called here, sir?’
Captain Hart nodded. ‘Late yesterday afternoon. Then a young lady turned up with UNIT passes for both of them.’
‘And he arrived by boat?’ said P.C. Watkins. It was the first time he had ever been inside the Naval Base, and he intended to make the most of it. For fifteen years he had been the only policeman on the island, where he knew everyone and everybody’s business, and it rankled with him that this Naval Base was virtually out-of-bounds to him. Today, however, he had a perfect right to he here. He was investigating what, by the values of the island and its tiny population, was Big Time Crime—someone had stolen Thomas Robbins’s boat.
‘I think we are repeating ourselves,’ said Captain Hart, who wanted to get on with his own job. New sonar equipment was due to arrive at any moment, and he would have to be present to check it over. ‘He arrived in a boat, somewhat unexpectedly, and then this young lady turned up.’
‘And they both left in the boat?’ said Watkins.
‘Yes,’ replied Hart for about the third time. ‘They left in his boat.’
‘Well it wasn’t his,