The Ghosts of N-Space - Barry Letts [92]
But most disturbing of all was the fiery red glow which lit up the far side of the heights; and as they flew into the narrow canyon ahead the air grew hotter and the light more glaring until it seemed that they must surely be flying towards the mouth of the eternal furnace of Hell itself.
320
Twenty-Five
‘Happy, Uncle?’ asked the Brigadier, dubiously surveying the little man, who was reclining with his feet up on a chaise‐ longue which had been carried out of the (unused) small drawing room by the library by a grumbling Jeremy and a warbling Roberto.
It had been strategically parked in the cloisters so that Mario could be in a position to watch the comatose bodies in the cage of wire. There was a pile of books on a table nearby, with Mother Goose prominent on the top, a bottle of vino and a glass – and of course the faithful blunderbuss.
‘Happy? Si. Happy as a pig in a rug,’ replied Mario.
‘Good. Now, if the Doctor comes back – that is to say, if he wakes up, tell him we’ve gone out to collect the guns from Vilmio’s people.’
‘Right on, man,’ said Mario, picking up his favourite book.
As the Brigadier made his way over the broken wall and round to the front of the keep, he was still kicking himself for not having thought of the guns earlier.
Blasted fiends, he thought. And ghosts. At least with aliens from the other side of the Galaxy you were dealing with flesh and blood. Even if the blood turned out to be purple or green, you knew where you were.
321
Once Vilmio’s lot had been dealt with so successfully by the stun-gun (and a flicker of amusement lightened his mood as he thought of Jeremy’s recent discomfiture), their rifles had just gone out of his head. Thank Heavens the stun-gun effect lasted for as long as it did.
Roberto and Jeremy were waiting for him by the main gate with a decrepit wheelbarrow they’d found in one of the outhouses. They’d calculated that there were at least twelve guns out there, not even counting the ones that Maggie had blasted, possibly more; no mean load.
The Brigadier led the way out of the gatehouse.
Everything seemed quiet. The mangled remains of the helicopter were the only sign that it wasn’t a perfectly ordinary spring morning, with the heat of the sun starting to be felt through the morning breeze. The goats, having discovered that their gate had been left open by Max Vilmio in his bolt for the chopper, had left their sparse field. They seemed to have recovered from their surprising experience and were happily discussing the quality of the scrubby grass on the pathside verges.
‘Hey, man,’ called out the Brigadier’s forward scout,
‘this baby ain’t gonna wake up like this side judgement day.’
The Brigadier hurried over, followed by Jeremy gloomily trundling the barrow. The man who had fallen 322
from the top of the ladder which Maggie had pushed over at the beginning of the attack was now a corpse with a broken neck. His gun was found nearby in the long grass at the bottom of the wall.
‘What’s that?’ hissed Jeremy in sudden fright.
A gargling animal noise was coming from the wood.
Stun-gun at the ready, the Brigadier cautiously investigated.
The two companions of the dead man were lying where they had fallen, with their open mouths making the noise in question, which was disconcertingly not quite a snore. Their rifles were added to the one in the barrow.
Good show, thought the Brigadier. If the rest were as easy, they’d be done in two shakes of a billy-goat’s tail. He wouldn’t be really happy until he got back inside and relieved the old man.
The Doctor, to Sarah’s surprise, came to a stop before he rounded the corner where the source of the red glare would have been revealed, coming to earth near the summit of a small peak of black granite. As she landed nearby and followed him cautiously to the top, she became aware of a cacophony of sound, composed of snarls and roars, cries of fear and screams of agony, melded into an uproar of pain and terror.
323
When she could overcome the vertigo the oven heat induced, her first