‘One moment,’ said the Brigadier, walking over to the open door. ‘Is anybody there?’ he called into the building.
No response.
‘Let’s go,’ he said with abrupt decision, striding over to the Land Rover.
‘Wait!’ The Doctor held up his hand. ‘What’s that?’
They all froze.
No wonder they’d missed it, thought Lethbridge-Stewart.
The faintest possible knocking - somebody hammering on a distant door, perhaps - and, yes, the ghost of a voice...
‘He-e-elp! Help me! Let me out...!’
Sarah couldn’t make up her mind. As she rode through the racket of the city centre and out to the comparative peace of the dockside (in a three-wheeler this time, like a motor bike inside a mini-taxi), she was contemplating her possible future with the adrenalin rush she always felt when she was about to dive into the deep end.
These people would stop at nothing, the Doctor had said; so if she were caught searching for the Skang creatures...
And the alternative possibility, to stow away and get the entire story as it unfolded, was even more dicey. Let’s face it, she needed the Doctor. Together they made a great team, whereas on her own...
‘Come off it, Sarah Jane Smith,’ she said to herself. ‘Why not be honest? You’re just plain scared!’
She soon forgot her dilemma when they arrived at the docks. Having paid off the driver, she was riffling through a bundle of notes from her bag in search of one hundred rupees - her unofficial ticket into the dockyard - when she became aware that she could see through the gate right across the harbour to the Royal Navy ship and the others at anchor. The
Skang
wasn’t alongside the quay where she’d been yesterday.
Of course! If she were sailing this afternoon, she’d have to refuel, and get water and all that stuff.
She hurried across to the gate. Good. It was the same security man as the day before. His grinning face was alight with anticipation of favours yet to come, and his hand was hovering ready to receive his bribe.
‘Where can I find her? The
Skang?’
His face and his hand both fell. ‘Go to the Harbour Master’s office. They will be telling you to where she travels.’
‘Yes, but where is she now? I need to go on board.’
He shrugged. She was no longer his friend. ‘You have missed the boat, miss.’
‘What? What do you mean? You mean she’s gone?’
He gave the little sideways wobble of his head that signifies assent in India, together with a little smirk of pleasure at the bad news. ‘They did not tell you? Your friends all came on board just after the middle of the night. She left Bombay at two o’clock this morning!’
‘My name? Whitbread, Alex Whitbread. What does that matter? Have they gone? Have they sailed yet?’
Whitbread! The man they were after in London! Now they might get some answers, thought the Brigadier.
Brother Alex could hardly stand. His usual, carefully tanned complexion was now a jaundiced yellow-white, and his eyes were sunken in deep pits of shadow.
The man was obviously on his last legs. The questions would have to wait. ‘You’re ill, man. We must get you to a doctor,’ the Brigadier said. ‘Sorry,’ he grunted to the Doctor, who, with a look, took hold of Alex’s wrist to feel his pulse.
‘Who was it that has locked you in the office, sir?’ asked Major Chatterjee. ‘That in itself, you know, is a criminal offence, no doubt.’
‘For God’s sake!’ Alex was almost screaming. ‘It can’t go without me! I must be on that ship!’
‘I’m sorry, sir. That’s out of the question. Until you’ve answered our...’
But Alex wasn’t listening. Wrenching himself free from the Doctor, he pushed violently past the others, in a rush to escape.
‘Stop him!’ barked the Brigadier.
‘Sah!’ barked back the enormous sergeant, who was standing by the broken door.
But Alex wasn’t giving up easily. With an animal howl of desperation, struggling with a fanatical strength that was quite at odds with his apparent state of near-collapse, he beat at the sergeant’s chest with his free hand as he fought to get away from the great hand clamped around his arm. For a moment, it almost looked as if he might manage it.
But the Doctor was beside them in an instant. He touched the frantic man at the base of his skull, finding some esoteric pressure point. The Brigadier had seen him do the same in the past, and was now equally taken aback at the result. For Alex Whitbread, with joints suddenly resembling those of a rag-doll, sank to the floor and lay still. His arm fell lifelessly as the sergeant let it go.
‘Well!’ said Major Chatterjee. ‘You could knock me down with a feather, you know!’
The Brigadier pulled himself together. We’d better get him to the hospital.’
‘That’s the last thing we must do, Lethbridge-Stewart,’ said the Doctor. ‘Once in the grip of officialdom, he’ll be lost to us.’
The Brigadier grunted. The Doctor was right, for once. If the rest of the cult had given them the slip, Whitbread was their only contact. And as for the others...
The telephone in the office was still connected. A quick call to the Harbour Master’s office confirmed their fears. The
Skang
had sailed. But at least they now knew where she was going. She’d filed her sailing plans, as the regulations demanded.
The
Skang
was going to Sri Lanka.
Ron had been only too pleased to let them have another room, his normal business being passing trade, with more emphasis on the passing than the trade.
Habeas corpus: you may have the body... thought the Brigadier gloomily, as he watched the sergeant tenderly laying the limp figure on the bed. We’ve got the body - and much good may it do us. ‘When shall we be able to interrogate him?’ he said aloud.
‘He’ll be out for an hour or so,’ the Doctor said. ‘It’s difficult to say precisely. You have to be careful, you see. It’s a useful technique to sedate any vertebrate, but a few micrograms too much pressure, and the central nervous system would come to a dead stop.’
Having dispatched the sergeant to wait in the car, the two UNIT officers and the Doctor repaired to the hotel hallway, which doubled as a lounge, to have a council of war.
All the delays of the last two days churned through the Brigadier’s mind. If only they had flown out straight away, instead of wasting so much time with the TARDIS! They’d missed their chance; and now they were in an impossible position, as he pointed out to the Doctor with scarcely concealed fury. To chase after the
Skang
in a helicopter, for instance, would certainly be counter-productive. What were they to do once they’d landed on the deck?
Their only hope of stopping the ship on the high seas would be to enlist the help of the Indian Navy. A destroyer, or even a frigate, could metaphorically (or even literally) fire a shot across the bows of the runaway vessel. But the chances of persuading those with the power to grant permission, purely on the strength of the Doctor’s surmises...
‘Surmises?’ said the Doctor indignantly. ‘These are the conclusions I have reached after due consideration of all the evidence. These alien beings could pose a threat to the very survival of
Homo sapiens.
They must be destroyed! Surmises indeed! When have you ever known me to be wrong?’
The Brigadier made a noble effort and managed to stop himself from pointing out the many times they’d run into trouble on the basis of the Doctor’s assumptions. ‘You agree that the evidence is circumstantial,’ he said, tight-lipped.
‘We’d have no hope of convincing them.’
‘No, indeed,’ said Major Chatterjee. ‘It is maybe hoping for a miracle to persuade even the police to be taking the matter seriously.’
‘The Yanks have a word for it,’ said the Brigadier. ‘Snafu.
Situation normal, all -’
‘So you’ve noticed. Situation normal indeed,’ said the Doctor. ‘Things aren’t going the way we want? When has life ever been different?’
‘We have no option. It is vital that we intercept them in Sri Lanka. If we catch a plane...’
He was interrupted by a tumult and a shouting in the street.
‘What the devil...?’ said the Brigadier, rising to his feet. A moment later, the burly sergeant appeared at the main door, with Brother Alex held firmly in his grasp, as if he’d caught a naughty schoolboy.
‘Absconding through the window, the miscreant was,’ he said, his moustache twitching. ‘I am seeing him, so I am taking initiative to apprehend him. Sah!’
‘Quite right, Sergeant,’ said the Major.
‘Must get to the ship...’ gasped Alex, with a sort of sob.
‘You’re too late, Mr Whitbread,’ said the Doctor. ‘The
Skang
will be over a hundred miles away by now.’
The effect on Alex was almost as dramatic as that resulting from the Doctor’s earlier intervention. He sagged in the sergeant’s massive hands. All the strength had gone from his legs, and his head drooped. Only the moan coming from his bloodless lips with every breath, like a child exhausted by too much weeping, told them that he was still conscious.
The sergeant picked him up and carried him like a baby over to the Victorian chaise longue near the reception desk.
He laid him on its faded velvet.
‘Thank you, Sergeant,’ said the Brigadier. ‘You’ve done well.’
‘Sah!’ said the sergeant. With a parade-ground salute, he turned smartly about and marched outside.
The Brigadier sighed with frustration. It was clear that he would get no information from Whitbread for some considerable time. ‘So. We fly to Sri Lanka and wait for them.
And what then? Are we going to arrest the entire ship?’
As he finished speaking, he realised that the noise from the chaise longue had changed. Alex was struggling to sit up, and taking deep shuddering breaths, trying to speak.
‘What is it, man?’
‘Sri Lanka...? You think they’re... they’re going to Sri Lanka? No, no, no!’
The words were scarcely audible. His face was like a drawing of a ghost in a children’s horror story. He swayed, and his mouth opened and closed silently, as he tried to go on speaking.
The Doctor strode across to him, and seized him by the shoulders, fixing him with his eyes. ‘You know where they’re going?’
Alex’s voice came from far away. ‘Of course I do. They’re going to...’ A cunning expression came over the skeletal face.
‘Are you... Are you going after them?’
‘We are, if it’s the last thing we do.’
A ghost of a sardonic smile. ‘You’ll never find them.
Unless...’ The feeble voice faded away completely.
‘Unless? Unless what?’
The urgency in the Doctor’s voice got through to him.
‘Unless... unless you take me with you...’ The effort was too much. His head dropped; and, as his body gave way, the Doctor gently let him fall back onto the braided cushions behind him.
‘Sammy!’
The young Naval officer with red-gold hair and two rings on the epaulettes of his white shirt swung round to face her.
‘Oh... sorry,’ said Sarah, disappointed. ‘I thought you were somebody I used to know.’
He grinned. ‘Afraid not. More’s the pity! You must be Sarah Jane Smith. Welcome aboard. Is that all your luggage? It’s okay, Matthews, I’ll take it.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’
The sailor who’d greeted her with a salute at the top of the gangway handed over the backpack and returned to his post.
‘Come on, I’ll show you where your cabin is. And the wardroom and all that jazz.’
And away he went down the deck.
With a skip and a little run, Sarah caught up with him, and found herself almost scuttling along to keep up with his long legs. Of course it wasn’t Sammy! Even if Sammy had grown a beard. Same colour hair, that was all. This chap was much taller, more solid and more... sort of grown up. But then, of course, Sammy would be by now.
It would be too much of a coincidence. Just as well. She’d had her fill of coincidences in the last year or so!
‘I’m Peter Andrews. The Number One. That’s -’
‘The First Lieutenant. Yes, I know. Sammy told me.’
He came to a doorway and paused. ‘That wouldn’t be Sammy Brooks, by any chance?’
‘Oh no! ‘Do you know him?’
‘Left him behind in Hong Kong. Lucky blighter. When the flotilla was rejigged, he was given command of the
Cuffley.
We got flogged to the Irish Navy. Much to the disgust of the Old Man.’
‘Who?’
‘The Skipper. Lieutenant-Commander Gene Hogben. Let’s hope this little jaunt of yours will cheer him up.’
He disappeared inside, followed by Sarah, who was trying to work out why she had an odd feeling of coming home.
‘What are you?’ she said as she followed him up a steep flight of stairs. ‘A frigate? Or what?’
His laughter echoed down the corridor at the top of the ladder.
HMS
Hallaton,
Village Class Offshore Patrol Vessel, en route from the China Seas to Chatham Dockyard for her pre-sale refit, with a skeleton crew, was hardly the best craft to go chasing the sleek, streamlined
Skang
across the Indian Ocean Built in Aberdeen, and based on the commercial design of a deep-sea trawler, she was about half the length of a frigate, but very nearly as broad in the beam.