‘The Upper Cretaceous Period.’
‘I mean how did it come to be here in London today?’ she persisted.
‘Ah,’ he said, ‘a very good question.’
‘Don’t you know the answer?’
‘That isn’t such a good question,’ he said, working hard with the file. ‘How could I possibly know?’ He paused. ‘Am I hurting you?’
‘Not yet,’ she said. She could see that she might be hurt once the file neared her flesh.
He continued filing. ‘Since the only people we have spoken to up to now have been either criminals or rather stupid soldiers, I haven’t much to go on.’
Sarah tried to work it out. ‘Suppose there was an egg buried in the ground somewhere, and somehow or other it hatched!’
‘Producing a sweet little baby monster?’ asked the Doctor, smiling.
‘Yes,’ she said, enthusiastically. Then she realised the fallacy in that idea. ‘But how did it grow to that size without anyone noticing?’
‘Maybe someone kept it as a pet,’ said the Doctor, ‘and turned it out when it got too big to feed.’
‘You’re making fun of me.’
‘Because I think you’re forgetting the pterodactyl. I’m almost through now. Grit your teeth in case I hurt you.’
Sarah closed her eyes and nerved herself to feel the file run across the flesh of her wrist. But the Doctor took great care. After a moment Sarah felt the cuff fall away from her wrist. She opened her eyes.
‘Thanks.’ She rubbed her wrist.
Wasting no time, the Doctor opened the vice a fraction of an inch, let the remains of Sarah’s cuff fall to the floor, then put his own cuff in the vice and set to work again with the file.
‘You see,’ he said, ‘we are talking about many reptiles, not just one. According to that unpleasant young man we met in the drill hall, there have been a large number of monsters popping up.’
‘Could it be something that we’re all imagining?’ asked Sarah hopefully. ‘A kind of mass hallucination?’
‘It’s possible—but unlikely. You can, if you know how, hypnotise a whole crowd of people, and make them believe they’re seeing all sorts of things. But I don’t think you could do it to millions of people spread all over a city the size of London.’
‘Then what is the explanation?’
‘I think it’s got something to do with Time,’ speculated the Doctor. ‘There! I’m through!’ He opened the vice, and the cuff fell to the floor. ‘People tend to think of Time as being inflexible, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. But if you apply Einstein’s Theory of Relativity to the question of time, you find that it may move in great curves…’
His voice trailed off. He was staring towards a darkened corner of the garage.
Sarah said, ‘What is it?’
‘I think we are not alone,’ he said. He raised his voice. ‘Hello, old chap. What can we do for you?’
Sarah watched, her heart beating fast, as a man came forward from the corner. He was about forty with long straggly hair and a faded blue smock that came down to his knees. On his feet were crudely-made leather shoes, encrusted with mud. His right hand clutched a rusted knife.
‘Back, back, accursed wizard!’ He spoke with a strong Midlands accent.
‘We’re not wizards,’ replied the Doctor quietly. ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of. Do you know where you are?’
The man’s frightened eyes darted from the Doctor to Sarah.
‘The witch,’ he said. ‘She put a spell on me. I shall tell the priest and he will burn her at the stake.’
‘Do you know what year it is?’ asked the Doctor.
The man looked puzzled. ‘What strange tongue do you people speak?’
‘Modern English,’ said Sarah. ‘Tell me, what is the name of the king?’
‘’Tis a stupid thing to ask,’ said the man. ‘All people know the name of the king.’
‘But we don’t,’ said the Doctor. ‘At least, not your king. Think of us as strangers in your land. Who is your king?’
‘Richard, but he’s in the Holy Land, fighting the Infidel. John rules now.’
‘Good gracious,’ cried the Doctor. ‘We’re not only dealing with reptiles that died out millions of years ago. This man has just stepped right out of the Middle Ages!’
3
The Time Eddy
At UNIT’s temporary Headquarters in the classroom, the Brigadier and Sergeant Benton stood watching the radio operator as another report came in about the sighting of a monster.
‘The signal’s very faint, sir.’ The radio operator turned up the volume control on his console to ‘full’. ‘It’s no good, sir. They’ve faded out altogether.’
The Brigadier had noticed that this always happened. There must be some connection between the appearance of the monsters and his radio operator’s inability to pick up signals from the military mobile patrols.
‘Did you hear anything?’ he asked.
The radio operator turned to the Brigadier. ‘Only that one of the big flesh-eaters had stopped a truck taking two prisoners to one of the detention centres, sir. I think they said the prisoners escaped.’
‘I can hardly blame them.’ The Brigadier turned away.
‘But they are villains, sir,’ protested Sergeant Benton. ‘I mean to say, any civilian in the Central Zone must be there for the pickings. We have to stop the looting.’
‘So I keep being told,’ snapped the Brigadier, returning to his desk, ‘by General Finch, and now by special despatches from the Government. What they all forget is the main problem. We seem to be far more interested in capturing petty crooks than slaughtering monsters.’ He glanced across at Benton’s desk where the ‘In’ tray was piled high with despatches recently received. ‘You’d better get on with your filing, sergeant.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Benton obediently returned to his desk.
The Brigadier sat down at his own desk. As an officer he was supposed to set a good example of leadership and hard work. At this moment in his career he had no idea where to lead anyone, and could think of no work that he could usefully do. It had been so much easier when he was fighting reptile menfn1 in the caves of Derbyshire, or even trying to exterminate giant maggotsfn2 that came up from a disused mine in Wales. In both instances, the enemy was tangible and permanent. With these giant reptiles, he had no idea at all where they came from; even worse, he didn’t know where they went. In every instance when his troops had pursued a monster it had gone behind buildings—and, by the time his troops turned the corner, the monster had vanished as though it never existed. He earnestly wished that the Doctor had not gone off on one of his jaunts into Time and Space.
‘Sir!’
The excited voice of Sergeant Benton interrupted the Brigadier’s thoughts. He looked up.
‘What is it, Sergeant?’
‘Look, sir.’ Benton was holding a photograph of the Doctor before the Brigadier’s eyes.
‘Very good, Benton. Pin it on the wall as a souvenir, and we can all wish he was here.’
‘But he is, sir,’ Benton persisted. ‘It’s a mug shot from one of the Army posts. Listen to this.’ Benton read from an official paper. ‘“Found accompanied by a young woman in possession of stolen furs and a stolen van.”’
The Brigadier sprang to his feet. ‘The Doctor’s been arrested as a looter?!’
‘That’s right, sir. And Sarah Jane Smith with him. They’re being held, or were being held, at Number Five reception area.’
The Brigadier hurried across the classroom to the radio operator. ‘Get Number Five reception area on the R/T.’
The radio operator shook his head. ‘Can’t do it, sir. The interference is too bad. Must be more monsters about, sir.’
‘All right, then,’ said the Brigadier. ‘I’ll go myself. Sergeant Benton, I don’t know what the Doctor thinks he’s playing at, but he’s going to have to answer to me!’
The Brigadier marched out of the classroom.
T
he Doctor smiled at the peasant from the Middle Ages. He was acutely aware of the man’s fear—and the knife clutched in his hand.
‘Tell me, old chap, can you remember what happened to you?’
‘’Tis a curse of the witches.’
‘Quite probably,’ replied the Doctor, wishing to sound agreeable. ‘But what were you doing when… when it happened?’
‘I were doing no harm to God nor Man,’ said the peasant. ‘I were about to slaughter a pig with this knife.’
Sarah recoiled. ‘Perhaps this is a vengeance on you for killing a poor defenceless animal.’
The peasant glared at her. ‘’Tis no crime to slaughter swine,’ he roared. ‘I have always been a good man, paying the tithes, tilling my master’s land three days of the week, and my own for three days. I go to church on Sundays and have my children christened.’
‘But you also believe in witches,’ said the Doctor.
‘They cast spells against good Christian folk,’ said the peasant. ‘Be a friend, wizard, and take the curse off me.’
‘Unfortunately I can’t,’ confessed the Doctor. ‘You see, I’m not a wizard—’
The man, without listening to the rest of the Doctor’s sentence, raised his knife high above his head. ‘Then I’ll slaughter you as I would that pig!’
As the peasant lunged forward with the rusted knife, the Doctor jumped back, tripping and falling. Sarah flung herself at the peasant, trying to grapple with him. All at once, as the knife was poised to slice into the Doctor’s throat, Sarah felt a strange force pulling her back to where she had been standing. At the same time, the peasant went backwards until he also was exactly where he had been standing. Then, as Sarah watched, the peasant became transparent—and disappeared.
The Doctor staggered to his feet. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Are you all right?’ she asked in return.
The Doctor felt his throat, and grinned. ‘He never touched me.’
‘I can’t understand what happened,’ she said. ‘I went backwards—and so did he. Everything seemed to go backwards.’
‘Fascinating,’ commented the Doctor, brushing down his frock coat. ‘A time eddy. Just for a moment, Time went into reverse.’
‘That’s impossible, Time can only go forward.’
‘Are you sure of that?’ queried the Doctor.
‘It’s the only way I can think,’ she said, lamely.
‘Then let me stretch your thinking a little,’ said the Doctor. ‘Light travels at about 186,000 miles per second. Right?’
‘Everyone knows that.’
‘I imagine our friend from the Middle Ages didn’t know that,’ continued the Doctor with a smile, ‘but let that pass. If you are looking at a distant star, you may be looking at it as it was at the time of the birth of Jesus. If that star, or sun, has a planet and there are people living on it with a telescope strong enough to observe events on Earth, what would they see?’
Sarah got the point. ‘The Romans invading Britain. But that doesn’t explain people and animals appearing from the past.’
‘No,’ said the Doctor, ‘but it puts to question the idea that Time is inflexible. On your planet, it was that chap Einstein who began to realise what was happening. Time, you see, moves at different speeds in different parts of the Universe. If I can find something to write on, let me show you some equations…’
The Doctor looked about for something to write with. But Sarah’s attention was focused on sounds coming from the mews outside.
‘I think you’ll have to continue the lecture tomorrow,’ she whispered. ‘I’m sure that’s soldiers outside—probably looking for us.’
The Doctor listened. Nailed boots were clattering on the cobblestones beyond the big double doors. ‘I think you’re right,’ he said. ‘I’ll try to bolt the door.’
He hurried over to the big double doors and looked desperately for some means to hold them fast. The approaching footsteps had now reached immediately outside, and someone was trying the handle of the door through which the Doctor and Sarah had entered.
‘Hide!’ the Doctor called across the garage to Sarah in an urgent whisper. She quickly hid behind some of the machinery.
The Doctor poised himself by the door to attack whoever might enter. Suddenly the door flung open and a khaki-clad figure stepped into the garage. The Doctor moved forward to apply Venusian karate to the intruder’s neck.
The Brigadier, aware someone was approaching him from behind, turned to face the Doctor, whose hands were poised ready for his neck.
‘Good grief, Doctor,’ he said calmly, ‘whatever do you think you’re playing at?’
‘I was just about to render you unconscious,’ grinned the Doctor.
‘So I gathered. If you can resist the temptation, perhaps you’d be good enough to accompany me back to our temporary Headquarters. We’re having a bit of bother with prehistoric monsters popping up. You should be just the person we need to help sort out the mess.’
The Doctor regarded the classroom which had been taken over by UNIT. ‘Is this the best you could do, Brigadier?’
‘We have everything we need. A school provides plenty of rooms, toilet facilities, and a big kitchen. And with all London’s children gone, no one was using it. Would you care to take a seat?’
But the Doctor had become too interested in the map of London that covered the blackboard. ‘What do all the flags mean?’
Sergeant Benton stepped forward to explain. ‘It’s a colour code, Doctor. Red flags for the sightings of a tyrannosaurus, blue for a triceratops, green for your stegosaurus, and pink for the pterodactyls.’
‘You’ve had all those different types of monsters?’ Sarah asked.
‘Those are the ones we know about,’ replied the Brigadier. He turned to the Doctor. ‘We soon realised that these giant reptiles only appeared in Central London. The Government therefore ordered the evacuation of the entire area.’
‘Apart from evacuating millions of people,’ said the Doctor, ‘and chasing after looters—’
‘And arresting innocent people,’ Sarah cut in.
‘—what,’ continued the Doctor, ‘have you actually done?’
‘When these creatures appear,’ replied the Brigadier, ‘we try to make sure that they keep within the evacuated area and do not wander off into populated areas beyond the boundary of this line.’ He pointed to a heavy red line on the map that ringed Central London.
‘But having contained them in this way,’ continued the Doctor, ‘what do you do?’
The Brigadier smiled. ‘That’s where you come in, Doctor. We’ve no idea where they come from, or where they vanish to. In fact that really puzzles me—the way they just seem to disappear.’
‘I should think the explanation is pretty simple,’ said the Doctor. ‘They return to where they came from. The past.’
General Finch marched into the classroom, followed by Captain Yates. Sarah took an instant dislike to the General, but warmed when she saw young Captain Yates of UNIT. Sergeant Benton leapt to attention. The Brigadier straightened his shoulders and turned to greet his superior officer.
‘All right, Brigadier,’ the General’s voice boomed, ‘I’ve arranged for the extra patrols you want. But I warn you, I shall expect results.’
Ignoring the General, the Doctor went forward to shake Captain Yates’s hand. ‘My dear Yates,’ he grinned, ‘how nice to see you again. How are you?’ Only recently, when UNIT and the Doctor had been battling against an artificially created outbreak of giant maggots in Wales, Captain Yates had been captured by a group of villains and mentally ‘readjusted’ so that he would do their bidding. At their orders he had almost murdered his good friend the Doctor, but his own conscience had prevented him from carrying out the order at the last moment. Although the Doctor had eventually helped Yates recover control of his own mind, it was generally believed that the young Captain had undergone terrific mental strain. He was given a very long leave in which to get better.
> ‘I’m fine now,’ said Captain Yates, ‘thanks to you.’
General Finch, who did not like being ignored at any time, turned and stared at the Doctor. ‘Who is this man?’
‘This is the Doctor, sir,’ said the Brigadier, ‘our scientific adviser.’
‘We’ve all been waiting for you to show up. May I ask where you’ve been?’ said the General.
‘Certainly,’ replied the Doctor.
There was an awkward silence. The General realised the Doctor was making a fool of him.
‘Well?’ he rapped.
‘You may ask,’ replied the Doctor, ‘but I don’t intend to give an answer, not if you speak to me in that tone of voice.’
The Brigadier stepped in quickly. ‘Doctor, this is General Finch. He has overall charge of this entire operation.’
‘Really?’ said the Doctor. He smiled disarmingly and extended his hand to the now red-faced General. ‘How do you do? I’m terribly pleased to meet you.’
Before the General could utter a word, the Brigadier spoke rapidly. ‘The Doctor’s already come up with a most interesting theory, sir. He believes that these creatures are coming to us from the past.’
The General touched his closely cropped moustache. ‘Very interesting. How?’
The Brigadier turned back to the Doctor. ‘That’s a good point, Doctor. How do they do it?’
‘Somebody or something,’ said the Doctor airily, ‘is causing temporal displacement on a massive scale.’
‘Temporal displacement?’ queried the Brigadier, not understanding the terminology.
‘Putting it another way,’ continued the Doctor, ‘someone is mucking about with Time.’
‘Rubbish,’ said the General. ‘Absolute nonsense!’
‘I take it you have a better theory, General?’
The General cleared his throat noisily. ‘Some mad scientist fellow has been secretly breeding these things. Now they’ve escaped.’
Sarah piped up. ‘That wouldn’t account for the man from the Middle Ages we met in the garage!’
General Finch turned and stared at Sarah, as though he hadn’t noticed her before. ‘Who is this person?’
Doctor Who and the Dinosaur Invasion Page 4
