If he said no, he was dead, with no hope of regeneration, and it would be no help to the youngsters outside.
But saying yes wouldn’t help them either, and he would be actively helping in the enslavement - maybe even the destruction - of the entire human race.
Round and round went his thoughts. A decision seemed impossible.
‘Well, Doctor? Mother has offered you mercy. Do you accept?’
Round and round...
Round and round?
Of course! There was one last chance - a slender one, true but...
‘I accept,’ said the Doctor.
He was going to make jolly sure it didn’t happen again. He had to admit a sort of sneaking admiration for the way Emma had made it to the front, though. Even Mama would have approved. What a wife she’d make!
They still had to hang around. Not very organised, this lot.
After all, what did it take to sort out a few rewards?
He wondered what his might be. He’d always fancied a Merc, and Mama had promised him one as soon as he passed his test; and if he hadn’t had such a wimp of a driving instructor, he’d have passed it and got one in the last summer hols.
But of course, they wouldn’t have brought a Merc all the way out here. It had to be something more portable...
His ruminations were interrupted as the shining mahogany doors swung wide open.
‘First sixteen only, right?’ said the officious guard in charge.
Jeremy took great pleasure in giving him what he felt was a good imitation of one of Mama’s looks as he marched through at the head of the column; but then...
He took it all back. This was a knockout!
He’d been pretty impressed when they’d had a guided tour round the temple after they’d disembarked from the
Skang.
All the white marble seats and stuff were really something.
And the enormous painting or tapestry or whatever it was, on the wall at the back, had made him go all goose-pimply.
But now, they’d managed to set up this colossal Skang figure, all covered with flashing lights! Sort of animated, too.
He’d seen nothing like it since Uncle Teddy had taken him to Olympia when he was ten to see
Snow White and the Seven
Dwarfs on Ice,
and the Prince’s castle at the end lit up like a Christmas tree. And this was even better.
It had paid off, getting to the top of the queue, because he was escorted right to the front where he’d get a really good view of the ceremony. Probably a bit like Speech Day at school, only this time he was one of the prizewinners.
No sign of Emma. There must be a back way out.
And no sign of the teachers...
Ha! How stupid could you get? Obviously, it was the teachers who were all dressed up. Bit over the top, perhaps, but jolly good fun.
There was a lot of chattering going on as they sorted themselves out, with one of the faithful sitting next to each teacher. A jolly good way of doing it. So as you couldn’t get things wrong. He wondered who he was sitting next to. Could be Brother Alex or anybody; there was no way of telling, with the masks and all.
The big doors had been closed behind them, and the teacher on the stage held up his hands - her hands? - to shut them all up.
‘My children...’ she started.
It was Mother Hilda! You’d never have guessed. Brilliant costumes.
‘I think of you as my children,’ she went on, ‘even though I haven’t met all of you lace to face.’
He’d met her! Had a drink with her, hadn’t he?
‘I want you to know that you have my gratitude - and my love - for all your dedication, your commitment, your devotion. Now you are going to get your reward.’
Goodoh! About time too.
But then she started rabbiting on about the nature of reality and stuff, and how everybody was the same as everybody else deep down - and that just wasn’t true. He certainly wasn’t the same as some of the oiks he knew.
By this time he’d lost the thread, and just stopped listening; until the magic word ‘reward’ came once more.
‘You may be surprised when you find out what your reward is,’ Mother Hilda was saying. ‘Don’t be nervous. Just do as I say, and all the sadness, all the anger, all the loneliness in your life will be washed away; and the deepest longings of your heart... even if you’ve never recognised them... will be satisfied. The emptiness will be filled.’
‘You are about to have the most sublime experience a human being can possibly have. And you’ll never be unhappy again.’
At these words, there flashed across Jeremy’s mind a flickering picture show of all the times he’d hidden in a cupboard to escape the Bulstrode gang at Holbrook; and the times old Gaga got the class laughing at him; and the many times he’d huddled up in bed, sobbing, sobbing, sobbing until it hurt his throat, because Mama had been abroad for months, and Nanny had been so beastly; and the times that...
‘Now I want you to stand up. The time has come.’
Jeremy stood up, with tears in his eyes.
Oh, please let it be true! Please, please, please!
The teacher next to him stood up too, and put out a gentle hand to turn him so that they faced each other.
He looked up into the strangely beautiful face.
What was going to happen now?
There may have been a way through in 1923, but it had long been overgrown. The jungle was as thick as when Sarah had made her way back to the ship by herself, if not thicker.
Fighting your way through the prickly, coarse undergrowth was bad enough, but trying to do it when you were wearing a gas mask was just about impossible. Apart from anything else the sweat couldn’t get out, and it was like the steam room at a Turkish bath in there.
Sarah had at least made sure that this time she was wearing jeans, and a top with long sleeves. But this only made it hotter. She glanced up to nod a thank you to Bob Simkins, who’d chivalrously stopped to hold back a particularly vicious branch.
Well, really! He’d pulled his gas mask off his face so that it was resting on the front of his head.
And so had the others, Pete and the Cox’n... and the Brigadier had even taken his right off, and had got it hanging round his neck.
She promptly followed suit, and wiped the perspiration out of her eyes with her sleeve.
Just as well, otherwise she’d never have got up the slope of the volcano, especially as they were having to do the snaking bit again to keep out of sight. There were twenty-three of them, including the unprotected seamen with their automatic rifles, all trying to be as unnoticeable as possible in case they were seen by one of the guards. True, they were round the corner from the path, but you couldn’t be too careful.
At last they reached the top, and the Brigadier motioned to them all to stop and have a rest before tackling the last bit.
‘We’d have no hope at all in a face-to-face encounter,’ he’d said, when he’d spoken to the little task force just before they embarked. ‘Whatever weapons they have, we mustn’t give them a chance to deploy them. Luckily, they’ve positioned themselves in a situation which would be very hard to defend at the best of times and, given our limited fire power, there’s only one option. If we range ourselves round the top of the perimeter wall, we’ll have them at our mercy, even if they try to take to the air. But surprise is of the essence. And nobody must fire unless and until I give the order. Got it?’
It was obvious, really, thought Sarah, as she got her breath back at the bottom of the wall. Like shooting fish in a barrel, as they said in America. Good old Brig.
As long as it wasn’t too late.
At last he gave the go-ahead. Petty Officer Hardy and Bob Simkins led their men around the circle to the other side, while Pete and the Brig spread theirs at equal distances apart on this side. At a hand signal, they all started to climb to the top of the wall together.
‘Stay with me, and keep down,’ the Brig hissed to her.
A bit galling. Especially as they hadn’t let her have a pistol, or even one of Bob’s hand grenades. Still, war correspondents weren’t armed, and they were always in the thick of it.
She didn’t quite know what she expected to see when she crawled to the edge of the wall and looked down, but it certainly wasn’t the stunning light display that greeted her.
It turned all her ideas upside down.
It looked as if the Skang cult wasn’t a phoney after all. It wasn’t just a front put up by a bunch of alien monsters to disguise their real purpose. There really was a being for the devotees to worship, whether it was divine or demonic.
The Brigadier was equally taken aback, she could see that.
At least they were in time. A line of disciples was only now being ushered in through the entrance, and... good grief, there was Jeremy, in the lead!
She watched as he was ushered into the front row, only a few yards from the... the god? Her mind refused to accept the idea. It must be as the Doctor had said, a thing from another world.
But where was the Doctor?
Ah, there he was, on the other side, leaning casually against the wall, with his hands behind his back, in the upper gallery, as if he was enjoying the show.
When the Skang standing at the front of the stage started to speak, Sarah realised with a shock of surprise that she was listening to Mother Hilda’s voice. How clearly the words floated up! But of course, it was like the old Greek theatres. It was as if the speaker was at the centre of a gigantic loud-speaker.
But more to the point, it meant that the ceremony was beginning. This was what they’d come to stop!
She turned to see if the Brigadier was about to blow his whistle, which was to be the signal for the circle of armed men to show themselves.
But he’d gone; and she just caught sight of him, crouching down, making his difficult way over the rough piles of boulders, towards the top end of the perimeter wall.
She forced herself to listen to the words from below. The Skang with Hilda’s voice - could it really be her? - seemed to be delivering some sort of sermon.
What on earth was the Brig up to?
And as for the Doctor...
But the Doctor was no longer leaning against the wall. He was peering intently at something in his hand, and seemed to be fiddling with it.
‘... the emptiness will be filled,’ the Skang was saying. ‘You are about to have the most sublime experience a human being can possibly have. And you’ll never be unhappy again.
Now I want you to stand up. The time has come.’
Oh no!
All the disciples stood up and faced the Skang next to them. Each Skang took its partner by the shoulders and lifted their head.
She couldn’t look. It would be too horrible.
But then, into the silence came a faint sound like a child’s music box... and a long cry of despair from the Skang who had been speaking. All the Skang in the arena had let go of their human partners and turned towards the stage.
Briefly, the giant figure seemed to swell, and the stars that made up its tenuous ever-changing shape momentarily burned even brighter. But then it began to come apart. A strange voice - no, voices - came from the shining figure on the platform, with desperate words tumbling out that made no sense, words not just foreign to the English ear, but alien to Earth itself; and the form of the thing was writhing and turning... and now it was shrinking, shrinking, shrinking as one by one the sparkling lights that were its very substance went out.
But more than that. The creatures in the body of the amphitheatre were also in distress, losing their balance and falling to the floor; and cries of woe made a counterpoint to the desolation of the voices coming from the platform.
The disciples were bewildered and scared. Some just drew back, others tried to help the agonised Skang, others clambered over the seats to get away from the distressing scene.
For they were dying, the Skang. As their Beloved on the stage was fading away, their substance was sinking into itself, melting, disintegrating, until, as the voices fell silent on the now-empty stage, there was nothing left at the feet of the terrified devotees but scattered dust.
Sarah, with such a relief coursing through her body that she felt as euphoric as she had when they first encountered the blue mist, watched the Doctor as he pressed another button on the silver box in his hand.
The music stopped; and the Doctor sat down on the rocky floor. He looked tired. Very, very tired.
‘I think I must be getting old,’ said the Doctor.
Sarah glanced round the wardroom. How surprised they’d all be if she told them just how old he was.
There had been no time for asking questions; there was too much to do. Quite apart from the sixteen traumatised members of the faithful in the temple, the others outside had suddenly found that their paradise had disappeared and turned into an uncomfortable hell.
Pete Andrews and the Cox’n returned to the ship with a few of the men, to relieve Chris of his temporary command and bring the
Hallaton
back into the lagoon. If they’d left it much later, they would have missed the tide completely.
The others turned nursemaid, and shepherded the flock of bewildered youngsters back to their village, which they found somewhat less comfortable than when they had left it. But most importantly, apart from their being assured that a ship would be coming to fetch them home - and sending the necessary signal was one of the first things that the CO had done as soon as he was back on board - most importantly, they were told the truth about what had happened to them.