The Ghosts of N-Space - Barry Letts [22]
He turned the instrument some ninety degrees and consulted the dial again. 'Come on,' he said.
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Again they were floating – no, flying – through the air.
Sarah could feel the wind on her cheeks as they sped along just above the ground. Curiously, they were not following a straight course but every so often swooped from one sode to the other, like ungainly birds, though as far as Sarah could make out always travelling in the same general direction.
'Keep looking,' said the Doctor.
What was he on about? Was he telling her to look where she was going? Of course she would.
But as she followed him on a steep curve to the left and then an S-bend to the right, she realized what he meant.
Fleetingly, she became aware of what it was that he was dodging on this occasion: a group of three figures, seated on the ground in attitudes which spoke of the utmost despair, who flickered into existance and then were lost again.
It was as if there was a knack to be learnt, a way of seeing out of the corner of the mind.
It must be like those optical illusions, where you can suddenly see a hidden face or whatever, thought Sarah, as more and more of the emptiness was peopled by the sad, angry, desolate inhabitants of N-Space, dressed in clothes from every conceivable period. There were only a few glimpses at first, but as she got the idea of how to look, they stayed. Not only people, but also where they lived. (If that's the word, she thought.) She saw an ancient Greek temple; a 77
medieval street; a lavish country park; the whole compendium of scenes from the long tale of humankind –
sometimes isolated, sometimes overlapping. Yet Sarah never felt that she was seeing one thing through another. It was more as though they were both in the same place at the same time.
Then, with a jolt which brought her flight to an abrupt halt, she saw the fiends. The Doctor also came to a stop and held up a hand in caution.
There were two of them. The larger was very like a small whale (a relative expression: it was some thirty feet long) with the teeth of a shark; that is, if a whale could have managed to grow a full complement of legs topped off with dinner-plate‐sized hooves. The other fiend, a nimble slug a mere twelve feet in length, spotted them shortly after they saw it chase a running figure – a man in a frock coat at full gallop, clutching a stove-pipe hat to his head – catch him and swallow him at a gulp.
Two of them, both swaying slightly as they waited and watched.
No, there were three! For as Sarah threw a panic glance behind, she saw a creature like a spiny sea urchin, a ball of yard-long spikes, rolling steadily towards them, the blood-red eyes on stalks never turning away, never blinking.
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It was at this point that she regretted having taken the Brigadier’s place.
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Seven
‘Stand perfectly still!’
Sarah didn’t need him to say that. She was frozen to the spot, hardly daring to breathe (and even at such a moment, the thought skimmed across her mind: why did she need to breathe at all?).
The Doctor didn’t stand still though. On the contrary, he seemed almost to be dancing. With a running skip and a jump, he advanced on the whale-like creature and thrust his face full at its great muzzle. ‘Boo!’ he said; and spun on his heels and bounced – yes, bounced was the only word –
towards the spiny ball approaching from the rear.
With a deep gurgling roar, the immense beast took off after him. In spite of its lumbering bulk, it sprang forward on the thick muscles of its hind legs and nearly caught him in its very first bound.
But the Doctor was prepared. With a leap Nureyev or Nijinsky would have been hard put to emulate, he side-stepped its rush – and at once changed direction towards the giant slug, whose swaying face seemed almost bewildered by this unexpected turn of events.
With a tripping rush, the Doctor darted forward and slapped the fiendish monster on its head, Just between its 80
protruding eye-stalks, and immediately sprang