The Ghosts of N-Space - Barry Letts [72]
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Sarah tried not to scream at him. ‘Look, mate, unless I get something sorted, the whole plan will go for a burton.
With my hair up I look like a startled hedgehog. You think Louisa won’t sus out that we’re up to something? Why should I go for a walk in the woods and cut all my curls off?’
The Doctor gazed at her for a moment, turned and walked out of the control room.
Now she really had blown it, she thought gloomily, pushing a lank wet hank of hair out of her eyes. She’d never get invited into the TARDIS again.
Almost at once he was back. He dumped a largish box made of heavy shiny cardboard in front of her: It had a label on it with the legend, in neat faded copperplate: Sarah, Her Hair.
Unbelievingly, she opened it, releasing a strong odour of mothballs into the TARDIS. It was full of wigs, fringes, falls, the lot. She picked up a bunch of curls of a tolerably good match to her own hair and plonked them on top of her head; perfect.
‘Sarah who?’ she asked. ‘Bernhardt?’ She might as well give him the chance to do a bit more name dropping.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Sarah Siddons. Does it matter?’
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They did not have long to wait for the second attack in the battle of the castello. Almost as soon as Jeremy had arrived back to report that the warning had been given, the Brigadier heard a yell from Maggie, who was sharing the left-hand tower with Umberto.
Moving swiftly to the front left corner of the gatehouse, which gave a view of the whole wall between the two towers, he saw that a man had emerged from the woods carrying a ladder.
Good girl, he thought, as he saw Maggie coming down from the tower onto the top of the wall ready to receive them. But even as he heard another shout – ‘Ladder, man, ladder!’ – from the other side, the staccato burst of automatic gunfire made him duck down below the parapet.
This was not what he’d expected at all. If his neophyte troops had really taken in their hasty training, a simple attack via ordinary ladders had very little hope of success –
unless there were scores of them, and he doubted whether the size of the attacking force would allow for that. A man climbing a long ladder was in no position to fire any sort of weapon, so his ascent would have to be covered by fire from below.
But when he neared the top – at the very moment he was most vulnerable to a well-judged push (sideways, as he’d taught his mixed bag of trainees, not backwards) – his 253
confederates on the ground would have to stop firing; they couldn’t take the risk of hitting their own man.
He ran to the back of the tower to assess the total situation. It was clear that an attempt was being made on all four walls. He could see Roberto lurking ready, and Mario skipping unsteadily down from the other side of the west tower. Umberto was already in position – and yes, Maggie was tensing herself for the first push.
By now the sound of firing was continuous, and coming from all sides. He ran back to the front and using an embrasure on the left side of the battlements – the east – for its true purpose for the first time for many a long year, he was able from its cover to espy in the shadows of the woods the flashes of the rifles of those firing up at Maggie’s wall.
There were two of them; even though they’d taken cover, he could see the shapes of their bodies.
Lifting the stun-gun, he took careful aim at the nearer one of the two and fired. To his surprise, both guns abruptly stopped firing. It was as if he had indeed killed his two birds with one stone.
Even as he ran to the west side to try his luck there, he heard Maggie’s shout of triumph as she toppled her assailant. Almost tripping over the crouching figure of Jeremy, who seemed to have found something of 254
extraordinary interest in one of the cracks between the paving stones, he placed himself in his firing position.
This time, he was not only able – with one shot – to immobilize the two who were firing up at Roberto from the shelter of the orange grove, but also, apparently, the attackers further off whose target must have been Mario.