like the moment before the start of an unknown ski-run off piste.
He was using a pair of the powerful binoculars provided for the lookouts, vainly trying to see through the mist, which still hadn’t shown any sign of clearing. What was waiting for them on the other side of it? The wretched followers of the cult herded together in this horrible place to await the pleasure of their alien masters?
That would be the good news. At the worst, they could be looking at a pile of bodies reduced to skin and bone - including that poor foolish lad who was a friend of Sarah’s - what was his name? Oh yes, Jeremy. Jeremy Fitzoliver.
Whatever. He was going to make damn sure that those responsible - human or non-human - paid the price. In blood if necessary.
There was an air of suppressed excitement on board now that the other two officers and the Cox’n had been given the whole story, which the petty officer greeted with a sceptical raised eyebrow. They had been told that the standing orders for action stations, which had fallen into abeyance as soon as they left the South China Sea with its smugglers and pirates, were to be reinstated.
‘Landing party... As you were! Rogers! Wipe that grin off your face! Landing party... HOWNG!’ Long years of Petty-Officer Hardy’s bellowing of the word ‘Shun’ had mangled it past recognition.
The Brigadier peered over at the boat deck below. The port launch was already in the water, and the dozen men who were to be transported in it were on the deck by the davits, dressed in full battle gear, helmets and all, with rifles by their sides, bar the two who had machine guns instead. They were standing at an easy attention (very different from the rigid smartness he was accustomed to from the men of his erstwhile regiment), as the Petty Officer reported their readiness to Bob Simkins, who was to lead them. Like the Brigadier, they both had pistol holsters at their belts, and, in addition, the Cox’n was sporting an old-fashioned naval cutlass in its scabbard.
The sight of them made him all the more certain that they had made the right decision about Alex Whitbread, leaving him on board under guard. Not exactly cricket, of course.
After all, they had agreed to bring him to the island in return for his information. But then, the fellow was obviously not to be trusted, even if he hadn’t tried to murder Sarah - and that was almost impossible to prove, one way or the other.
‘Right Brigadier, Doctor, when you’re ready.’ Pete Andrews had climbed the ladder and gave an inclusive nod towards Sarah as he spoke. The three were to accompany him in the smaller launch, which would also carry another six seamen, armed to the teeth like their fellows.
But Sarah wasn’t looking at him. ‘That’s funny...’ she said.
They all turned to see what she was looking at. The band of mist that had seemed to cover the entire island had shrunk to a patch about two hundred feet across, which nevertheless still hid from them the landing place described in the Pilot book.
Blown by an offshore breeze, it was approaching the
Hallaton
at a brisk walking pace, and in a few moments it had enveloped the ship from stem to stern. There the haze remained, sitting on the ship, a slight blue dampness pervading the atmosphere with a subtle smell, a smell of... of what, exactly?
‘What a lovely scent,’ said Sarah. ‘What is it?’
The Brigadier knew exactly what it was. It took him straight back to the English garden his mother had so lovingly tended at their summer home in Simla, so many years ago. He’d left India at the age of eight to go to prep school, never to see his mother again. But that particular perfume would always bring her back.
‘Roses,’ he said. ‘It smells of roses.’
They all looked at him in surprise.
‘Not roses,’ said the Doctor. ‘It’s a flower, certainly, but not from Earth. It’s very similar to the scent of the schlenk blossom - and you only get that on Gallifrey. When you walk through the fields, it’s almost overpowering.’
‘Not violets?’ said Sarah, uncertainly.
Pete Andrews suddenly burst out laughing. ‘You’re round the bend, the lot of you. It’s unmistakable. That’s the smell of bacon frying in the open air!’
It was the Doctor who noticed first.
Still chuckling over Pete’s ludicrous interpretation of the flower-like scent - yet pigeon-holing the oddity of their different reactions as something to be considered later - he turned to look at the island.
Now that they were no longer trying to see through the thick mist, the landing place was quite visible, between cliffs of ancient volcanic rock that were white with nesting seabirds, some of which were circling overhead. At a glance, the island didn’t look much like the description in the whaler’s report.
‘They were right about the seagulls, anyway,’ said the Brigadier.
‘They’re gannets, aren’t they?’ said Sarah.
‘Boobies!’ said the Doctor, picking up the glasses that the Brigadier had discarded.
‘I beg your pardon?’ said the Brigadier, indignantly.
‘The birds. They’re boobies. More specifically, masked boobies. You get them all over the world in the tropics.’
‘They look like gannets,’ said Sarah.
‘I thought you did Biology at school,’ replied Doctor, looking through the glasses at the beach. ‘Gannets don’t have black tails.’ He paused. ‘Well, well, well,’ he went on, ‘the developers have been busy.’
He was surprised to feel the glow of pleasure that surged up inside him at the sight of a beach of golden sand framed by lush greenery covered with flowers. A number of figures clad in white were gathered near the shore, gazing out towards the ship. Behind the beach was what could only be thought of as a street: a double row of little pavilions or stone chalets of shining white (of course!) separated by a wide avenue of elegant palms, curving away into the interior, the causeway of golden sand looking for all the world like the yellow-brick road in Oz.
‘Here, Lethbridge-Stewart, take a look,’ he said, handing him the glasses.
‘Good grief!’ said the Brigadier, after a moment. ‘There you are you see, Doctor,’ he went on. ‘I never did buy your doom-and-gloom scenario. We’re going to look a proper lot of onions if we charge in all dressed up ready for World War Three. Like a police raid on the vicarage tea party. I’ve always believed we were dealing with nothing more sinister than a few New Age Utopia merchants. Harmless nuts.’
‘I’m not sure about the nutty bit,’ said Sarah. ‘I jolly nearly joined, myself. I wish I had now.’
Pete Andrews lowered his own binoculars. ‘Stand ‘em down, shall I? Bit hot in all that gear.’
‘Of course, of course,’ replied the Brigadier, as if it went without saying.
Down below on both sides of the boat deck there was a rising tide of chatter from the two landing parties. The Petty Officer’s voice could be heard gently admonishing his charges. ‘Now, now. This is no way to behave on parade. Let’s have a bit of hush, shall we? There’s good boys.’
He was utterly ignored.
‘Can the boat trip stand, sir?’ he called up, when Pete told him to belay action stations. ‘I’m sure the lads would appre-ciate a run ashore.’
Pete’s instant agreement was drowned in a cheer, and a chorus of ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow...’
The Doctor stood watching and listening, and experiencing something he’d felt only once before in his entire life (at infant school, when trying to come to grips with the spookiness of quantum mechanics). It was a very nearly total cognitive dissonance - a split between two areas of his understanding, both of which seemed self-evident. On the one hand, he could remember quite well the reasons why they were there, and they seemed as valid as ever; but on the other hand, he found himself agreeing with everything that the Brigadier was saying, and sharing the party feeling that seemed to be taking over.
What on earth was going on?
As he filed this puzzle away, too, for later analysis, his thoughts were interrupted by Sarah, turning back from inspecting the island through the communal glasses.
‘I say... What about Alex, shut up down there all by himself? Shouldn’t we let him out, and take him ashore with us? He deserves a bit of fun. And we did promise, after all.
Poor old blighter.’
This was a step too far. For a moment, the Doctor’s world view shattered into ten thousand shards of broken concepts.
But then it settled, as the pieces of glass in a kaleidoscope settle, to make a new picture. If you came down to it, the world didn’t make sense. Any proposition, taken to its ultimate extent, could dissolve into contradiction. Why else did no philosopher ever reach an unarguable conclusion?
And what about Zen?
It was supposed to be a sign of a mature intelligence, to be able to hold as true two totally contradictory views. The main thing was to hang onto them both, and not let either take over. And if he wasn’t mature after all these years...
Even though he could still see the evident danger, he found himself nodding in agreement as the Brigadier took up Sarah’s suggestion with enthusiasm, and gave the order for the release of Brother Alex.
As the first launch came alongside the large flat rock that almost seemed to have been designed as a landing stage, and the Captain’s party climbed out, Alex kept down low, letting himself be obscured by the burly figures of the half-dozen seamen as they hung back not quite sure of what to do.
He couldn’t help feeling a vast sense of relief - in spite of his contempt for the methods Hilda Hutchens always chose to use. Everything that the Skang community could do had been done to ensure that the suspicions of the investigators were completely allayed. Even if the Smith girl had been thinking of betraying him, she’d be quite disarmed by their reception.
He should have anticipated it. If he had still been part of the group, he’d have taken it for granted that this was the way she’d play it. His paranoid behaviour must have been a regression to the old pre-Skang Whitbread, quite understandable in the circumstances.
Hilda herself, a motherly figure in her long white robe, with Will Cabot in close attendance, stood with both arms outstretched as if she were greeting her long-lost children.
‘Welcome!’ she said. ‘Welcome to Skang Island!’
Behind her, led by the teachers and organisers in their long robes, the white-clad crowd of smiling followers burst into spontaneous applause.
‘Doctor! How good of you to come all this way to see us.
Won’t you introduce me to your friends?’
As Alex, still doing his best to stay hidden, watched the little party exchanging courtesies, he was swept once more with a wave of bitterness at the way he’d been treated. It had nothing to do with his behaviour in London, of that he was sure. It was a political ploy by Hilda to get rid of a rival who looked at their project in a very different way.
Never mind. This very softness of heart, this craven use of the Skang secret to engender good will, had turned out on this occasion to be to his advantage - and if he played the game correctly, he could use it to get his position back, and then...
When he’d fallen from grace and been dismissed from the government, the bitterest thing to face was the inevitable loss of his long-standing ambition to become prime minister - but now, with the help of his friends in the group, a much bigger prize could be his.
‘Where’s the beer, then?’ Dusty Miller’s voice rang out, followed by a cheer from his mates, now divested of their armoury and determined to live up to their reputation as jolly Jack Tars.
The second boat had now come alongside the first, and Hilda turned with a smile and nodded to the assembled Skang faithful.
Laughing and chattering, they swarmed forward towards the remaining occupants of the two boats as they piled ashore. Taking them by their hands, they led them towards the tables, laden with platefuls of luscious fruits and other delicacies, and the goblets of sparkling drink, which had been set out at the top of the beach.
Alex Whitbread allowed himself to be swept up with the rest.
Now was not the moment.
Sarah still had, at the back of her mind, the image of the Skang in her photograph, with the proboscis that had apparently been responsible for the fearsome deaths on Hampstead Heath, but somehow it didn’t seem to matter anymore. This place was a sort of paradise; and its young inhabitants were the most beautiful people she’d ever seen.
She could feel happiness as a physical sensation throughout her body, almost oozing out of her skin. As the Brig had implied, the Doctor’s prediction of planetary disaster seemed ludicrous. One had to humour the poor old codger, of course, but that was as far as it went.
While her seniors were exchanging polite platitudes with Mother Hilda, she was scanning the knots of people behind her, on the lookout for Jeremy. After all, that’s why she was here, wasn’t it? On behalf of Mama, to make sure that he was safe.
There he was, up at the back, waving like mad!
As a smile of sisterly affection spread across her face, she noticed something with a small but very real shock, like briefly touching the terminals of a naked lamp socket. What?