Doctor Who: The Sea-Devils (6 page)

The Doctor left the cabin, Jo following. Out in the passage the Doctor started to call out ‘Hello? Anyone around?’ There was no answer.

‘It was above somewhere,’ said Jo as they neared a metal staircase leading upwards.

The Doctor bounded up the stairs. ‘Hello? Anyone at home?’

Now they were on another deck. They stopped and listened, but there was no sound of any living thing.

‘I definitely heard someone moving up here,’ Jo said.

‘We can but search,’ said the Doctor, and moved off down one of the many corridors leading from the deck.

Jo thought to follow, then realised it would save time if she did a little searching on her own. She went to the opening of another corridor, and stood stock still. ‘Doctor,’ she called, ‘quick!’

The Doctor came running to her side. ‘What is it?’

Jo pointed down the corridor. ‘I think it’s a man.’

The light was failing fast, and all they could see at the far end of the corridor was a huddled mound on the deck. The Doctor led the way to the end of the passage. It was indeed a man, doubled up and lying very still. His rough denim trousers and heavy roll-neck sweater suggested that he worked on the rig. The Doctor bent down close to the man and touched him. Then he straightened up.

‘Poor chap. He’s dead.’ The Doctor moved round so that he could see the face of the corpse. ‘I don’t see any obvious marks. He might just have had a heart attack.’

Jo knew the Doctor was only saying this to put her at ease. ‘He’s been killed,’ she said. ‘I think it’s time we found a radio, if there is one, and got someone out here to us.’

‘Perhaps you’re right,’ said the Doctor. ‘Also this poor fellow’s people will have to be told the sad news.’

They moved back down to the main deck. Just as they came to the bottom of the stairway, they both stopped dead. There was no mistaking the sound of dragging footsteps coming along one of the corridors that opened on to the deck. The Doctor looked round quickly, and drew Jo into the opening of one of the passage-ways. ‘I suggest,’ he said, ‘that we keep absolutely still.’

The dragging footsteps came closer. Then, from their hiding place, they saw a man emerge from one of the corridors. He was a big fresh-faced man, wearing grubby blue jeans and a heavy sweater. Clutched firmly in his giant-sized hand was an evil-looking monkey-wrench.

‘Just an ordinary
homo sapiens
,’ whispered the Doctor. ‘Let’s be grateful that it was nothing more terrifying.’ He stepped out on to the deck where the man could see him. ‘Hello!’

The man stopped and turned. He was breathing very heavily, like someone in a state of severe fright. On seeing the Doctor his eyes dilated and he rocked on his heels.

‘I know we’re trespassing,’ said the Doctor pleasantly, ‘but we wanted to find out a few things.’

Suddenly, the man raised the monkey-wrench and charged straight at the Doctor. The Doctor sidestepped, then tripped the man as he went by. He fell heavily on to the metal deck, the monkey-wrench spinning from his hand. Before the man had time to struggle to his feet, the Doctor had sprung upon him and was applying a Venusian judo hold. The man was not in pain, but he was as helpless as a child where he lay.

‘It’s all right, old man,’ said the Doctor. ‘We don’t mean to harm you.’

The man looked up into the Doctor’s face, his eyes wild with fear. ‘Hickman,’ he said, his breathing becoming heavier, ‘he’s dead. It killed him.’

‘What killed him?’ asked the Doctor.

‘Lizard,’ said the man. ‘Tall as a man—taller!’ Then he collapsed into a faint. The Doctor relinquished his hold on his captive.

Jo stepped out from the opening to the corridor. ‘Is he dead?’

‘No,’ said the Doctor. ‘But he’s a bit deranged. I’d better get him to that cabin we found.’ Despite the man’s size and weight, the Doctor was able to yank him up on to his back and carry him. ‘You lead the way, Jo.’

Jo obeyed because the Doctor was almost bent double under the man’s weight and couldn’t see where he was going. She managed to find the inhabited cabin again and the Doctor laid his burden down on to one of the bunks.

‘This man is suffering from severe shock,’ pronounced the Doctor after he had carried out an inspection of the man. ‘We must get him to a hospital.’

‘With no boat,’ Jo asked, ‘how do we get him anywhere?’

The man on the bunk started to murmur something. The Doctor spoke quietly and calmly to him. ‘You’re safe now, old chap. Where is your radio transmitter?’

The man pointed to a cupboard. While the Doctor crossed to the cupboard containing the transmitter, Jo tried to talk to the man.

‘What’s your name?’ she asked.

‘Clark,’ he muttered. ‘Alan Clark...’ His eyes rolled wildly. ‘Lizards,’ he said, choking on the word. ‘Man-sized lizards. They killed Hickman... Sea-Devils...’

Jo spun round to the Doctor. ‘He’s talking about lizards again.’

But the Doctor was preoccupied staring at a mass of torn wires and smashed radio apparatus in the cupboard. ‘I’m afraid some unwelcome visitors have been here before us,’ he said. He came back to the side of the bunk. ‘Tell me, old chap, do any of the crew have transistorised receiving units?’

Clark looked up, not understanding. ‘Have what?’

Jo said, ‘Trannies. Do any of you have a tranny?’

‘Yeah,’ said Clark. ‘In the lockers... down the next corridor... you might find one.’

‘What do you intend to do?’ Jo asked the Doctor. ‘Listen to
Pick of the Pops
?’

‘It’s possible to turn a receiver into a transmitter,’ he explained ‘... simply a matter of modulating the signal. You connect the output of the loudspeaker into the input of the low frequency amplifier. Then you connect the output of your low frequency amplifier to your oscillator. Use your loudspeaker as a microphone, and there you are. Do you get the idea?’

Jo nodded. ‘As long as you don’t ask me to repeat it.’

The Doctor moved to the door. ‘See if you can make him a cup of tea or something, with plenty of sugar.’

The Doctor stepped out into the corridor. Clark had said ‘down the next corridor’, so the Doctor went along to the main deck and found the opening to another passage-way. There was almost no lighting here, and he had to grope his way along to find the various doors opening into different cabins. On opening the first door he was hit by three brooms and a mop which fell out at him. He passed on quickly to the next door, turned the handle, gently pushed it ajar, and by groping found a light switch. The cabin contained two rows of tall metal lockers. Some were locked, but others containing the personal possessions of more trusting oil men were unlocked. He quickly sorted his way through piles of thick greasy sweaters, sea boots, used and unused underwear, to find what he wanted. Within a few minutes he had half-a-dozen pocket transistor radios safely in his enormous pockets. He turned off the light and started to go back towards the deck down the corridor. Framed in the opening of the entrance on to the main deck was the huge form of a Sea-Devil.

With the deck lights behind it, the Doctor could not see the Sea-Devil’s face, but from its shape he knew-what he had encountered. He stood very still. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said, ‘I don’t wish to harm you.’

The Sea-Devil, who was equally surprised by the sudden encounter, now raised its right hand. A sudden beam of intense heat was emitted from the weapon carried in the Devil’s right hand. It struck the metal wall close to the Doctor’s head, instantly turning the cold metal into white hot liquid.

The Doctor turned and fled for his life down the corridor. At its far end it led out on to the enclosed upper deck on the other side of the rig. He ran along this, then turned into the parallel corridor. Within moments he was back in the cabin with Jo and Alan Clark. Jo was boiling a kettle.

‘How about a cup of tea?’ she asked, before registering the Doctor’s state of urgency.

‘Just met a Sea-Devil,’ he said. ‘A related species to those lizard men we met in the caves in Derbyshire.
*
Completely hostile!’

As he talked he was shutting and bolting the door. Then he took the main electrical lead to the smashed radio transmitter and connected both its terminals to the.metal bulkhead.

‘What are you going to do?’ Jo said.

‘They can cut through rock, metal, anything,’ said the Doctor. ‘This is one way we may be able to fight back.’

Even as he spoke a circle of heat started to appear in the thick metal panel of the door, as though an oxyacetyline burner was being played on it from the outside. The circle of heat was exactly the same diameter as the circular marks on the underside of the lifeboat now held at the Naval base. Within a few seconds a round disc of metal had fallen out of the door. The Sea-Devil’s scaly hand came in through the hole, groping for the bolts. The Doctor switched on the electric power that would normally feed the radio transmitter. There was a flash of electricity across the hole in the door, and a roar of pain from the Sea-Devil as it whipped its hand back through the aperture.

‘Quick,’ ordered the Doctor, ‘help me unbolt the door.’

‘What are you going to do?’ asked Jo anxiously.

‘Go after it, of course,’ said the Doctor, feverishly pulling back the bolts with Jo’s help.

They went out into the corridor and listened. From the distance they could hear the groans of the Sea-Devil, still shocked from the charge of high voltage electricity.

‘This way, I think,’ said the Doctor, and went off down the corridor.

Jo followed cautiously. ‘It could be leading us into a trap,’ she said. ‘There may be others of them.’

The Doctor had already reached the main deck. ‘Look,’ he said, pointing down the deck. It was almost dark now, but Jo could see the silhouette of the Sea-Devil as it lurched along the deck. Then it reeled towards one of the wire-meshed windows, and fell straight through it—and was gone. A couple of seconds later they heard the splash as the Sea-Devil hit the surface of the sea.

‘You realise,’ Jo said quietly, ‘that if it isn’t dead, it will return here with all its friends?’

‘But we’ve found how to defend ourselves,’ said the Doctor.

‘I asked Mr. Clark where the electricity comes from for this rig,’ Jo said. ‘There’s a cable on the sea-bed that comes from the mainland. If the Sea-Devils cut that, we’ve got no light or heat—and no means of defence.’

‘Then let us hope,’ said the Doctor, ‘that the thought doesn’t occur to them. Did you say something about a cup of tea?’ They turned and went back down the corridor towards the inhabited cabin.

*
See DOCTOR WHO AND THE CAVE MONSTERS

Police-constable Watkins stood before Captain Hart’s desk, his helmet respectfully held beneath his arm. ‘You say he called here, sir?’

Captain Hart nodded. ‘Late yesterday afternoon. Then a young lady turned up with UNIT passes for both of them.’

‘And he arrived by boat?’ said P.C. Watkins. It was the first time he had ever been inside the Naval Base, and he intended to make the most of it. For fifteen years he had been the only policeman on the island, where he knew everyone and everybody’s business, and it rankled with him that this Naval Base was virtually out-of-bounds to him. Today, however, he had a perfect right to he here. He was investigating what, by the values of the island and its tiny population, was Big Time Crime—someone had stolen Thomas Robbins’s boat.

‘I think we are repeating ourselves,’ said Captain Hart, who wanted to get on with his own job. New sonar equipment was due to arrive at any moment, and he would have to be present to check it over. ‘He arrived in a boat, somewhat unexpectedly, and then this young lady turned up.’

‘And they both left in the boat?’ said Watkins.

‘Yes,’ replied Hart for about the third time. ‘They left in his boat.’

‘Well it wasn’t his,’ said Watkins. ‘He’s stolen that boat from one of the fishermen, and he hasn’t returned it yet. Did he tell you where he was going off to?’

Captain Hart tried to remember. A lot of things had happened in his busy life since yesterday afternoon. ‘He wanted to visit an oil-rig—this one,’ and he rose from behind his desk and indicated the rig on his wall chart.

‘What did he want to go there for?’ asked P.C. Watkins.

Hart gave thought to this. He firmly believed that the Doctor was mentally unbalanced, or at least eccentric; but he
was
connected with UNIT, and possibly everything that was discussed yesterday should be regarded as secret. ‘I’ve no idea,’ Hart lied.

P.C. Watkins had not been a policeman all his life without recognising a lie when it was told to him. ‘Come now, sir,’ he said, ‘surely if he told you that he wanted to go to the oil-rig, he must have said why?’

Hart was now distinctly annoyed with Watkins, because clearly the latter realised he had lied. But having told the lie, he now had to defend it. ‘He was a very eccentric gentleman. I’m afraid that I can say no more than that.’

Watkins closed his notebook. He, Watkins, was now distinctly annoyed with Captain Hart, because Captain Hart was excluding him from something that was going on. Watkins liked to be the trusted servant, and not to be treated as a child. ‘Very well, sir,’ he said. ‘I shall have to report this to my superiors.’ It contained just the hint of a threat.

‘Report it to whomsoever you like,’ said Captain Hart carelessly. ‘I must now get on with my work.’

Watkins replaced his helmet on his head
before
leaving Hart’s office, just to remind the captain that he represented the Law.

Alone, Captain Hart spent a few moments thinking over what P.C. Watkins had told him. Although a bit odd in his way of doing things, clearly the Doctor was not the sort of person who would
steal
a man’s boat, or even borrow it without taking it back. The oil-rig was not very far from the island, and although there had been a heavy swell late yesterday afternoon, at no time had the sea been particularly rough. On that basis, the trip to the oil-rig and back would have been well within the range of the little boat in which Hart had seen the Doctor arrive at the base yesterday. So what had happened to the man? Why would he voluntarily stay on the oil-rig all night?