Doctor Who_ The Sea-Devils - Malcolm Hulke [48]
‘We’ll leave the introductions till later,’ said the Doctor. ‘Now stand back.’
He aimed the Sea-Devil’s raygun at the lock of the cage, and pressed the control button. The lock disintegrated into liquid metal. Ridgway and Mitchell were free.
‘Those explosions,’ said Mitchell, ‘they’ve stopped.’ It was true. There hadn’t been a detonation for at least two minutes.
‘Well let’s not stop and chat about it,’ said Ridgway. ‘We’ve got to find the sub. I think it was this way...’
Ridgway led the trio down a maze of corridors, trying to recall how he and Mitchell were brought to the cage. Because Ridgway was now the pathfinder, the Doctor gave him the Sea-Devil’s raygun.
‘The sub was drawn by some force into a kind of underwater harbour,’ said Ridgway, as he turned down another corridor. He stopped dead. At the end of the passage was a Sea-Devil, its back turned to them. ‘What do you think is the range of this raygun?’ he asked the Doctor.
‘I’ve no idea,’ said the Doctor.
‘Well,’ said Ridgway, ‘it isn’t very gentlemanly to shoot a fellow in the back, but here goes.’ He aimed the raygun, pressed the control, and the Sea-Devil leapt into the air then fell heavily.
They raced down the corridor, Mitchell collecting the fallen Sea-Devil’s raygun as they went. The corridor opened into a vast cavern, the bottom half of which was full of water. Sitting in the water was the submarine. A metal gangplank led from the water’s edge to the conning tower. As the Doctor and the two officers ran up the gangplank and started to descend into the conning tower, they heard distantly a hooter blowing at regular intervals.
‘Their version of “action-stations”,’ said Mitchell, as he climbed into the conning tower. ‘They probably just realised we’re missing.’
At the bottom of the tower, Ridgway paused and looked clown through the hole in the hatch. He could just see the lower part of a Sea-Devil standing guard. He aimed the raygun and pressed the control. Even before the Sea-Devil had fallen to the deck, Ridgway had jump-climbed down the ladder into the main control area.
Petty Officer Summers looked at Ridgway, beaming. ‘Good to see you back, sir.’
‘Any more of these creatures on board?’ asked Ridgway.
‘No, sir,’ said Summers, ‘only the one you just killed. The lads are all locked up aft. I’ll go and release them.’
In under five minutes the submarine was again fully operational, every man at his post. The big moment of tension was when Ridgway gave the order to start the engines. Would the same mysterious force still restrain them?
But the engines started, and soon Ridgway had the submarine submerged and starting to reverse out from the underwater cave.
Then the Sea-Devils retaliated. When the submarine was halfway backed out from its underwater prison, with the propellers revolving in reverse at full speed, a force field set up by the Sea-Devils started to draw it back into the cavern.
‘It’s no good, sir,’ the engine-room Chief told Lieutenant Ridgway, ‘I can’t get any more power out of the engines.’
‘There’s only one thing to do,’ said the Doctor. ‘Fire one of the forward torpedoes.’
‘Are you mad?’ said Ridgway. ‘When the torpedo strikes the wall of the cave, it’ll blow off the front of the sub!’
‘Or,’ maintained the Doctor, ‘push us out of the cave like a cork out of a bottle.’
Ridgway gave it only two seconds’ thought. If the Sea-Devils took them prisoner again, he was convinced they would all be killed. This way, there was just a chance. ‘Arm torpedo number one,’ he ordered.
Seconds later the report came back that torpedo number one was primed and ready.
‘Fire,’ said Ridgway.
For some seconds nothing happened beyond the slight remor of the sleek cigar-shaped cylinder leaving its tube. The engines were still pulling full speed in reverse.
No one spoke as they waited for the explosion. Then it happened. The shock waves reverberated through the submarine.
The Sea-Devils watching the submarine on their underwater radar saw it suddenly leap backwards from the cavern, pushed out by the force of the explosion