The Ghosts of N-Space - Barry Letts [20]
The Doctor cleared his throat. ‘My dear chap…’ he said and paused. (They’re really quite fond of each other, thought Sarah. Aren’t men extraordinary?) ‘After all this time,’ the Doctor continued, ‘that’s the last idea I’d be likely to get hold of – and of course I understand. However, the difficulty is –’
‘I’ll go,’ said Sarah.
Her rash offer, which had startled her as much as the rest of them, was eventually accepted by the Doctor with a reluctance apparently deriving from an old-fashioned gallantry.
For Heaven’s sake, thought Sarah. She was a grown woman, wasn’t she? She knew quite well what she was getting into, didn’t she?
70
But then she realized, belatedly, that she hadn’t a clue what it was that she’d so blithely volunteered for.
‘So what happens now?’ she said, hoping that the others couldn’t hear the quaver she could feel in her voice.
‘First –’ said the Doctor, and cocked his head at the distant sound of an old-fashioned gong. ‘First, we have lunch.’
So they all trooped off to the great hall to partake of Umberto’s excellent cooking: a simple dish of medallions of lamb on a bed of spinach, garnished with black olives and baby potatoes. The blend of rosemary and garlic was judged to perfection – Jeremy even forgot to ask for mint sauce.
Taken all in all, Sarah reckoned that the Doctor’s judgement had been right. If Wellington’s army (or was it Napoleon’s?) marched on its stomach – and Nelson’s people braved the broadsides of Trafalgar with their innards lined with a suet pudding known as spotted dog (as her sailing teacher had assured her) then a gourmet luncheon was surely a fitting prelude to a projected trip into N-Space.
At least the butterflies in her insides had been lulled to sleep,
They awoke again briefly as she lay stretched out on the little cot next to the Doctor’s. Her head was cradled in a metal half-cap and she was holding a couple of brass handles which, like the cap, were linked to the main circuit.
71
She clutched the grips tightly, thrusting aside the mental image of the rat’s skull sneering toothily at her from its dark hole, and tried to concentrate on what the Doctor was saying.
‘Relax,’ he said. ‘Close your eyes if you want to and just let it happen.’
It was like waiting for a general anaesthetic – or for the plane to take off on your first flight ever. Then came the tingling, in the palms and the scalp – and now in the brain, so that everything was getting to be far away and the sound of the sea – the sea? – washing over her was quite drowning out the words of the watching Brigadier to Jeremy by his side.
‘If they’re not going to be back until dinner-time –’
The crescendo of the echoing silence took over and she was a thousand miles away.
But she wasn’t. Abruptly, the Brigadier’s voice was as loud as ever. The swashing noise stopped and she was wide awake; bright awake, feeling wonderful.
‘– it gives us time to work out a plan of defence against this Vilmio chap.’ The Brigadier’s voice came from below her. She looked down and saw the top of his head next to Jeremy’s; and past them, lying asleep it seemed, the body of the Doctor – and next to it her own body, as limp as Raggedy Ann and as lifeless.
72
‘Off we go then.’
She turned a weightless head and saw that the Doctor was floating against the vaulting of the cloister a few feet away. Surprisingly, he was clutching the small psycho-probe he had used to reveal the barrier to them. How could that be? If they were only spirits… Her mind boggled and refused to finish the thought. For a moment her mind swum with a sort of vertigo, and she felt as if she must fall.
‘You’ll soon get used to it,’ the Doctor said. ‘It’s a bit like the weightlessness you get in primitive space craft. And as for this…’ – he held up the probe –’… if you know how, small physical objects can go through the barrier. Think