The Ghosts of N-Space - Barry Letts [90]
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‘Sorry,’ he blurted, but they hardly seemed to notice him. Typical! They wouldn’t just trample all over Sarah, now would they?
‘Secondly,’ the Doctor was saying, ‘now that he’s in there in his immortal body, with all the power of N-Space at his command, he doesn’t even need the flaw in the barrier.
He can break through whenever he feels so inclined.’
‘I see,’ said the Brigadier.
‘I’ve somehow got to uncouple the merged bodies. If I can do that, his power is gone,’ said the Doctor, plugging the leads into the back of the machine. ‘Now, where is that girl? She should be here by now.’
Jeremy took a deep breath and stepped forward. ‘Can I come too?’ he asked. Oh, sugarlumps! It should have been, may I. If the Doctor was as strict on getting things right as Nanny had been he’d blown his chance already.
The Doctor looked at him in some surprise. ‘Well, I take that very kindly, Jeremy. I wish I could take advantage of your offer. In the enterprise I’m about to undertake, the more allies the better. Unfortunately, I’ve only got an opening for one other, and I’m afraid I have to offer it to the person who has the experience. Ah, here she is at last.’
Huh! Exactly the same answer he’d had from all the crummy lot he’d tried to get jobs from before Uncle Teddy pulled a few strings and got him onto the Metropolitan 314
magazine. Still, he couldn’t help feeling a surge of relief. A career in fiend-space was liable to prove a fairly short one.
And at least he’d shown willing. On top of his reputation as a crack shot that ought to go a long way towards –
‘Oh, sorry,’ said Sarah. ‘Have I kept you waiting? I’ve been listening to Roberto singing. He’s not at all bad, you know.’
She climbed on to her couch. ‘He keeps reminding me of somebody,’ she said.
‘Elvis?’ said Jeremy.
‘Don’t be daft,’ said Sarah. ‘He doesn’t look a bit like Elvis.’
The Doctor had by now fitted the metal cap to her head and given her the brass hand-grips to hang on to.
‘Oh, by the way,’ he said as he climbed onto his own cot and attached himself to the circuit, ‘the barrier had its worst shake-up yet last night. Don’t be surprised if you get a sudden increase in phenomena.’
‘Phenomena?’ said the Brigadier. ‘Do you mean fiends?’
‘N-Forms – fiends, yes. And of course, if they can’t find suitable partners to merge with, they’ll be on the lookout for food, if you take my meaning.’
‘Thanks for the tip. And what do you propose we should do about it?’
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‘I’m sure you’ll think of something, Lethbridge-Stewart. Didn’t the stun gun turn out to be of any use? It should have given them a nasty jolt at the very least.’
The Brigadier’s mind went back to the canine caterpillar creature. ‘I only tried it on one, a pretty miserable specimen certainly. But, yes, it made him think twice.’
The Doctor lay back and picked up the hand-grips.
‘Well, if you need more power, adjust it to the fine beam. I left it on the cone pattern – the spray – to make certain it couldn’t miss, no matter who used it. Idiot-proof, in a word.’
So saying, he switched on the current to send him and his partner into N-Space, leaving one of his listeners in the position of the unfortunate in the parable: having no talents, he’d just had taken away from him even the one that he had.
Sarah’s insouciance was only half real. Although she was pleased, and flattered too, that the Doctor had asked her to come, the double thought of facing both the fiends and her own feelings about Louisa made the coming trip something of an ordeal.
But now that she was actually feeling again the tingling, swishing, bursting out of the heaviness of matter into the floating enlightenment of the body she remembered from last time, she could only compare the experience with 316
jumping out of an aircraft – and for a split second not caring whether the parachute opened or not.
As she followed the Doctor into the light and this time forced herself to let it crumble away (crumble? What a ridiculous word to use about light! Yet that’s exactly