The Ghosts of N-Space - Barry Letts [97]
Again there was the buzz from the screwdriver in the Doctor’s hand. But this time, she was able to be aware of what happened, as it happened. The body which had 337
appeared abruptly vanished, leaving the one limp corpse behind.
‘Thank you for your help,’ said the Doctor as he landed by her side.
‘Me? I was only watching.’
‘I couldn’t have done anything without the help of your belief,’ he said.
He turned and looked down at the lonely figure of the dead man.
‘Let’s go home,’ he said.
The first fiend appeared just when the Brigadier was congratulating himself on a job well done. They had collected all but the last two rifles, eight in all. One other of the climbers, the one to the immediate west of the gatehouse, was also lying at the foot of his ladder, but he wasn’t dead. He must have been caught in the sweep of the stun-gun. The two others had disappeared, taking their guns with them.
They were going through the far end of the olive grove to get the last guns from the two who had taken cover in the woods there when Roberto suddenly exclaimed, ‘Hey there, man!’
‘Get down!’ snapped the Brigadier, when he saw the six-foot spider with a lion’s face sailing over the wall 338
beyond the gatehouse. ‘And keep quiet!’ he added in a hiss between his teeth when Jeremy started to speak.
‘No, but I mean,’ said Jeremy, also in an urgent whisper. ‘The Doctor said that gun thingy would stop them.
Let’s try it.’
‘It’ll only stop them temporarily. There’s no point in calling attention to ourselves.’
He lifted his head cautiously and parted the long grass to see what was going on. The others followed suit.
They were not the only ones to be interested. One of the errant goats, standing by the orange grove gate, was gazing up at the floating spider as a human might at a flying saucer; and then its attention – and the Brigadier’s – was caught by the sight of another fiend coming over the wall, a hairy serpent with spikes for horns, while through the gate crawled a blob of green mucus some four feet across, which left plenty of room alongside for the skeletal mastodon with its giraffe legs and trunk like a stockwhip.
‘It’s a mass break-out, by God!’ whispered the Brigadier.
As the first arrivals started to roam up and down, as if seeking food, they were followed by five more, two flying through the air, two laboriously crawling and one, a crab-like beast seemingly with springs in its legs, proceeding by zig-zag leaps.
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It was this one which found the first of the unconscious men, the one they had just left, lying by his ladder at the west wall. With a creaky squeak, it leapt on his back and gripped his body with its hinged legs.
‘Oh yuk! It’s going to eat him,’ whispered Jeremy.
‘No. It’s not eating him,’ said the Brigadier, who was looking through the spyglass. ‘I’m afraid it’s as the Doctor said it might be. It’s merging with him. He’s being possessed, like Maggie was.’
The creature had by now disappeared completely and the man sat up, rubbing his eyes. He got to his feet and stared around stupidly.
The goat by the gate, who had been so taken aback by the new arrivals that it had quite forgotten to continue eating, decided to enlist the aid of this human friend. It let out a loud bleat, which made the friend in question jump.
His reaction was hardly friendly, however. Lifting his hand, he let fly a bolt of energy which in a matter of seconds had reduced the animal to a lingering stench of burning hair and a memory of Sunday dinners.
‘Here we go again,’ said the Brigadier.
‘Yes, I killed him. No, he’s not dead. You can’t kill an N-Body,’ said the Doctor, as they flew back.
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‘But he’s no longer immortal in his earthly body, because I severed the two,’ he continued. ‘That’s why we have to get back as quickly as possible and close the flaw in the barrier, before he has a chance to reunite them.’
‘And you did it with that screwdriver thing? How did it become a