‘It would seem that there is going to be a mass slaughter of the cult members. And what then? The creatures will have no further food. Isn’t that right?’
What on earth was he getting at? thought Sarah.
‘I am convinced that what we are seeing is merely an advance guard - a scouting party. If we are concerned for the lives of a hundred and eighty-eight poor deluded fools...’
Trust the Doctor to know the exact number!
‘...because of a mere twenty or so Skangs, what would we be looking at if there were thousands or even millions of them on the planet?’
It made sense, what he was saying. There was no logical reason for the trip to Stella Island. He must be right. Unless they could stop it happening, the Earth would be taken over by these nightmare creatures.
And the human race would become nothing more than their cattle.
Alex Whitbread lay on his bunk in a state of utter despair.
Even on an everyday level he was in deep trouble. Although he hadn’t been seen that morning, he had been placed under arrest, pending further investigation.
Nobody, it seemed, thought that the searchlight had fallen by accident. The target was obviously Sarah Jane Smith -
and it would be ludicrous to believe that any member of the ship’s crew had suddenly turned into a homicidal maniac. So that left only the Brigadier, the Doctor and himself; and the other two had a perfect alibi, as they were being served their bacon and eggs at the very moment when Sarah screamed.
Every so often his whole bunk was shaken by his violent shivering as he recalled yet again that his last chance of getting rid of the journalist kid had gone.
How was it that she hadn’t worked it out already? Or had she? The very fact that the Brigadier and the Doctor were going to all this trouble seemed to indicate that they knew that they were dealing with something far more serious than just a cult. If they confronted Mother Hilda with their suspicions, or perhaps their certain knowledge...
The rigor of desperation shook him once more.
...if Mother Hilda knew for sure that it was through him that their secret had been betrayed, he would be condemned forever to this state of half-existence, terminally cut off from his brothers and sisters of the Skang community, never again to be absorbed into the collective bliss.
He turned his face to the wall, to shut out the sight of the armed guard outside, and gave himself up to his misery.
‘But why are you heading to the west instead of the south, Bob? Have you missed it?’ Sarah stared down at the chart with its pencil line that showed their course making a right-angle, some way off to the east of the supposed position of Stella Island.
Chris, who was perched on the stool near the man at the wheel, apparently practising being the Officer of the Watch, laughed. ‘That’s right. He’s missed it. Can’t get the staff these days.’
‘Take no notice of the lower orders,’ said Bob. ‘I’ve missed it on purpose.’
‘Eh?’
‘The island’s position we’ve been given may be way out. As far as we know, it’s only been visited twice. If we aimed straight there and there was no sign of it, we’d have no idea whether to turn to port or to starboard, to the east or to the west. Doing it like this, we’ll know which area is the most likely for a box search.’
It all sounded a bit hit or miss. ‘What about the radar?’ she asked.
‘Steam-driven. They wouldn’t waste state-of-the-art on the likes of us. The poor old
Hallaton
can’t see over the horizon any more than you can!’
‘Don’t worry,’ he went on. ‘According to the pilot book, we can get in on a high spring tide. Well, my love, you can’t have anything higher than the equinoctial spring tides. Tomorrow is September the twentieth, the day before the equinox, when the day is as long as the night. With any luck, we’ll be anchoring in the lagoon well before lunch.’
‘Are you suggesting that some sort of UFO full of these creatures has landed without anybody noticing? Don’t you think we might have heard about it?’
That had been Pete Andrews’ first question, the evening before, once they got down to the nitty-gritty of planning their next step, and the atmosphere had become markedly more friendly.
‘If the Skang make a habit of finding inhabited planets to colonise,’ answered the Doctor, ‘they’ll have long ago perfected a way of arriving without getting a headline in the
Daily Mail.’
‘Such as?’ said the Brigadier.
‘I have my own ideas on the subject, but I’d hesitate to put them forward without more evidence. Just ask yourself this question: Why were the bodies that have been found those of young humans, rather than your local farmer’s prize beef cattle?’
This was greeted by a baffled silence.
‘Well, why?’ asked the Brigadier at last.
‘Maybe we’ll find that out tomorrow,’ said the Doctor.
But what else would they find out, thought Sarah, as she left Bob checking, yet again, the effect that the tidal currents (which were apparently rather vaguely charted) might have on their new course.
She wandered across the bridge to look at the radar repeater screen, with its cursor endlessly going round and round. Would the
Hallaton
herself be the first to spot the island, or would they hear a hail from the lookout who’d been stationed on the upper bridge? Belt and braces, Pete had said with a grin.
Once he’d taken on board the idea of the Skang, he’d turned back into the amiable, slightly furry, friend-to-the-world they’d got to know. After dinner, he’d entered with enthusiasm into a discussion with the Brigadier about how to go about arresting the leaders of the cult, as had originally been intended, or how to hold off an armed attack if it should arise.
It was agreed almost at once that it would be foolish for the landing party not to be fully armed and ready for anything.
But what were they going to do with the stranded devotees?
They’d have to bring them back on the
Skang,
obviously, but that was taking for granted the co-operation of its crew. They might have to arrest them as well.
Not for the first time, the Brigadier had bemoaned out loud his serious lack of UNIT back-up.
Sarah had gone to bed, leaving them to it, noticing that the Doctor, with his second glass of what Pete called ‘cooking port’ in his hand, was quietly listening with an ironic smile.
She could understand why. In their professional enthusiasm for their contingency plans, covering the logistics of every eventuality, they seemed to have quite forgotten who the actual enemy was.
Watching the radar screen was almost hypnotic; and as the line of light went round it had something of the flavour of a roulette wheel. Would this time be the winner? Would this be the time that a little blip would show up near the top of the screen that...
There it was! A spot of light on the very edge of the display, a little bit to the left.
As she turned in excitement to tell Bob, she heard a buzzer, and a disembodied voice. ‘Radar, bridge. I have a trace, sir. Bearing two six seven degrees.’
By this time, Bob was by her side, looking at the screen.
And suddenly she had a doubt. ‘Maybe it’s the
Skang,’
she said.
‘There was never a chance of catching her up,’ he said. ‘No, she’ll be waiting for us when we get there. In any case, that’s far too big a blip to be a ship. That’s the island all right! Fifty quid to a penny bun, that’s it. It’s just where it ought to be.
Chris! Give Pete a shout, will you?’
You could practically hear his grin of satisfaction.
Chris disappeared at a run, giving Bob a thumbs-up as he passed.
‘Red one zero! Something on the horizon...’ Another voice, hollow through the voice-pipe coming down from the upper bridge: the lookout. Fine on the port bow... Looks like land, sir.’
Belt and braces.
The Brigadier, in the cotton slacks and open-necked shirt that had become his preferred ‘dress-of-the-day’ while on board, hardly looked the part of a senior Army officer in charge of a vital operation.
He was more like a little boy getting ready for a game of cowboys and Indians, thought the Doctor, as he watched him restlessly pacing up and down the upper bridge, from where Pete Andrews, with the Cox’n at the wheel, was conning the ship through the narrow gap in the reef that made an entrance into Stella Island’s large and peaceful lagoon.
Sarah seemed calmer than the Brigadier. The Doctor watched her as she leaned over the side of the bridge, trying to make out what awaited them. She was obviously excited.
Nevertheless, her face betrayed her underlying uneasiness at what might lie ahead. Of all the many companions he’d had on his travels through space and time, she was one of the most remarkable - on the face of it, an intrepid adventurer, with all the intense curiosity of an eager child, yet with much of a child’s anxiety as well. ‘I can’t see a flipping thing,’ she said.
As there was a band of mist in the way, through which the shape of the island could just be made out (very like the drawing they had seen in the Pilot book), it still wasn’t possible to get a good look at the shore. Just before they reached the mist, Chris’s voice sang out through the voice-pipe from the bridge below, where he was watching the sonar echo-sounder. ‘Seven fathoms!’
‘Stop both engines.’
The
trring-trring
of the engine-room telegraphs answered Pete Andrews’ order.
‘Five and a half fathoms. Shelving rapidly, sir.’
As the
Hallaton
ghosted forward, the new CO picked up the microphone of the Tannoy. ‘Stand by!’
Bob Simkins, in charge of the party on the foredeck, raised a hand in acknowledgement of the order.
‘Four fathoms.’
Another engine order. ‘Slow astern together.’
The twin screws took hold, the ship came to a stop, and as she gathered way astern, the order came.
‘Drop anchor!’
They had arrived at Stella Island. But where was the
Skang?
‘Maybe they’ve anchored on the western side,’ said Pete Andrews.
‘Why on earth should they? No, this Whitbread creature has deliberately misled us. Let’s get him up here and get the truth out of him! One way or another!’
‘No, no, Lethbridge-Stewart,’ said the Doctor. ‘He wasn’t lying. You could see that he was desperate. If that was acting it was the finest I’ve seen since Garrick’s Lear.’
Pete Andrews, ignoring what must have been a joke, thought it time to bring a little sense into the discussion, which was becoming a touch heated. ‘I’d say we have a choice.’ He nodded towards the island, still shrouded in fog.
‘We can either wait for it to clear, so that we can get a good look, or we can do a recce.’
The Doctor nodded. ‘Absolutely. If you’ll give me a boat, I’ll go and have a look. If I can get a chance to talk to Dame Hilda again, we’ll be in a position to assess the situation more accurately.’
The Brigadier was listening with a frown. ‘I’m sorry, Doctor.
I couldn’t allow it. The situation is very different from the one in Bombay. Now they are out of the public eye, there’s nothing to stop the aliens showing their hand. The last thing we want to do is to give them a hostage.’
‘And to wait would be to sacrifice the advantage of surprise,’ he went on. ‘There’s no reason to suppose that they could have been expecting us.’
At least he was facing the facts, thought Andrews. ‘In that case, sir, I’d suggest that there’s only one thing we can do.
We go and have a look, but we make sure that we’re ready for anything. Don’t forget that my people have spent the last few years coping with some very dodgy characters. They won’t run away from a bunch of lizards from outer space.’
The Brigadier glanced at the Doctor, who gave a little shrug. He nodded to Pete. ‘Good man,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’
After much discussion, it was decided that the landing party would consist of two motor launches, each with a group of well-tried veterans, fully armed and ready for anything.
Pete Andrews suggested that, as non-combatants who might get in the way, the Doctor and Sarah should be left out of the first foray.
‘For your own safety, you understand,’ the Brigadier said.
‘You’re not leaving me behind,’ said Sarah. ‘Not after what I’ve been through to get here.’
The Doctor soon put them right. He spoke quite gently, but even the First Lieutenant, well-used throughout his career in the Royal Navy to being blasted by his seniors, was taken aback.
Brigadier Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart DSO MC always looked forward to a scrap.
As he stood on the upper bridge with his two companions, waiting for the word from the Commanding Officer to embark in the launch, his mind went back to his most memorable experiences in the last year of the war - in particular the engagements that had earned him his gongs.
From the frustrations of his job with UNIT - especially since he’d teamed up with the Doctor, and encountered an extraordinary variety of unpleasant alien creatures, most of whom seemed to be impervious to bullets - he’d learnt not to expect clean-cut military operations like those he’d experienced in World War Two. No matter how horrible those experiences had been, he still found himself gripped by the same excitement, the same keen awareness that he was ready for anything that fate might throw at him. It felt like...