Doctor Who_ The Twin Dilemma - Eric Saward [23]
At least, that's what they hoped.
The boys fell into silence as Drak entered the room carrying a tray of food. Gratefully they accepted the simple meal, devouring it greedily. They had forgotten how hungry they were.
If Archie and Nimo Sylvest had been present, they would not have believed the twins were their children. Gone were the arrogance and the overbearing desire to be the constant centre of attention.
They had even eaten their food without comment, unlike at home, when mealtimes became grotesque competitions about who could be the fastest or messiest eater.
Fear may not be the best regime to form and mould children's characters, but in the short time they had been Azmael's prisoners, Romulus and Remus Sylvest had grown up a great deal.
The only question was, would they remain alive to enjoy the benefit of that development?
Azmael yawned and stretched. For him, it too had been a hard day, but unlike the twins, he could not afford the luxury of sleep.
Instead he would have to be content with a brief sojourn in the revitalising modulator.
This is a machine not unlike a matter transporter, in as much as it breaks down the molecular structure of the body. Instead of then transporting it to a pre-set destination, the modulator bombards the atoms of the body with Ferrail rays. This induces a feeling of well being and contentment. Although no substitute for natural sleep, it does allow a person without time for sleep to continue working at maximum efficiency for a short period of time. Abuse of the machine can, of course, also induce death, as Professor Zarn, its inventor, found out.
Professor James Zarn enjoyed life very much. Although he was a gifted molecular engineer, his main interest was going to parties.
Inevitably on such occasions, he drank too much Voxnic, and as he went to parties seven nights a week, he lived with a permanent, mind-splitting hangover.
Awakening one morning and feeling particularly wretched, he decided it was time to do something about it. A man of his ability, he concluded, should be able to find a cure for the common hangover. Several weeks later he had built the first working revitalising modulator.
Much to his delight the machine not only massaged away his hangovers, but also revitalised him, allowing him to increase his party going. As he no longer lived by day with the permanent side-effects of Voxnic poisoning, his performance at work had also risen to new heights.
In the year 2310 AD he won the coveted Astral-Freed award for his contribution towards the eradication of space plague. Space plague was a particularly nasty disease carried by a tiny flea which lived exclusively in the hold of intergalactic balk freighters. It could leap, vertically, exactly one metre ninety, which by that year was the eye level of the average humanoid male.
No-one knew why it had evolved to leap that precise height, as no-one knew why it would then spit a fine, sticky substance into the eye of the chosen host.
But it did. And the effect was devastating.
As the flea's spittle entered the blood-stream, the victim would become relaxed, friendly and agreeable. He would stop arguing with his fellow crew members, preferring to co-exist affably.
Worse still, he would become indifferent to his bonus - the only reason anyone undertook the mind-numbing work in the first place
- preferring to coast along at his own relaxed pace.
Even worse than that, an infected person was unable to lie.
Therefore when his ship docked, he would willingly declare any illegal cargo being carried. Point out the deliberate errors in the manifest. Report the captain for any illegal moves or shortcuts he had taken that might have endangered life or his ship. In fact, tell the precise, literal truth.
As every established and developing planet depended upon intergalactic trade to survive, the 'truth tellers', or space plague victims, became more and more embarrassing to