‘It’s a lot of ridiculous nonsense,’ I said angrily. At last I felt anger rushing through me. Susan glanced at Barbara desperately.
‘Tell him. Make him understand. It mustn’t be too great a shock.’ She turned and followed her grandfather and the glass door slid into place behind her.
Barbara walked away slightly and sat down on one of the stools, her head turned away from me.
I said: ‘I’ll be all right if you can give me five minutes. Then we’ll get out of this mad-house.’
‘I’m afraid we won’t.’
‘Wouldn’t you like me to take you out to dinner somewhere? I think we both deserve it.’
She still turned away from me, silent and uncommunicative. I put a hand up to my forehead and the bump had completely gone. Whatever the ointment was that the girl had smeared on, it was certainly very quick. I tested my legs again and felt stronger. I stood up and there wasn’t any dizziness any more. I tried a few steps, keeping near the bed just in case, but I didn’t have any more trouble. Suddenly I found that Barbara was watching me.
I crossed over to her and sat down on the stool next to her.
‘For some reason or other you believe the old man, don’t you?’
‘There isn’t any reason behind this,’ she said slowly. ‘This is something that’s happened beyond our powers of reason. We just have to accept it.’
‘I don’t have to accept anything. What’s he done to you for heaven’s sake? Listen, the girl’s all right. Let’s get out of this asylum and leave them to their own fantasies. It’s only about a hundred yards down the road to my car. I can run you home.’
She shook her head slowly and turned her head away from me again. The old man has really convinced her, I thought. She got up from the stool and walked over to the glass door and looked through it. I noticed that it didn’t slide open this time.
‘I’d like to tell you how this all started. For me.’ She turned and looked at me inquiringly.
‘All right, if it will tell me why you automatically believe everything the old man tells you.’
She leaned against the glass door.
‘I put an advertisement in one of the papers about four months ago – “Extra cramming in special subjects. Personal tuition. Prefer History or Geography but will generalize.” You know the sort of thing. I was fed up being a secretary in an office and those were the subjects I knew well. I thought it might be the beginning of bigger things. I rather fancied the idea of running a school all of my own and I’ve done quite a lot of teaching anyway. Relief work and that sort of thing.’ She smiled briefly. ‘I only had one reply, asking me to ring a certain telephone number. I did and spoke to Susan. She told me her name was Susan English and that her grandfather, a doctor, wanted her to have a course of special studies in History. From ten until four every day except Saturdays and Sundays. I asked if I could meet her grandfather and discuss the eventual object of the classes – was she to try for one of the universities? Why she wasn’t going to a finishing school? How much I was to be paid and so on. Susan told me I couldn’t meet her grandfather because he was very busy on research but that the object was to have a working knowledge of general English History and that I was to be paid twenty pounds a week.’
I stared at her.
‘I don’t wonder you took her on.’
‘Well, it wasn’t only the money, although that was marvellous. I think I told Susan every week it was too much but she just laughed about it and said her grandfather was very rich.’
‘What about her previous schooling?’
‘Yes, I asked her about that. She just said she’d been travelling. In fact, she was pretty vague about every question I asked her.’
‘Surely in four months you must have found out something definite?’ I argued.
‘Once in a while she’d let something slip out. She hadn’t seen her mother and father for a long time; she’d never been to England before; little things like that. It never got anywhere because she simply turned the conversation away whenever I tried to follow something up.’
She moved away from the glass door and sat opposite to me on one of the stools. ‘It was in the History itself where I learned most about her. She once wrote me a thirty-page essay on Robespierre, which even went into details about what walks he took and the measurements of some of his clothes. On the other hand, she made the most terrible mistakes.’
‘Such as?’
‘She thought Australia was in the Atlantic Ocean. Oh, a dozen and one things. She thought the Spanish Armada was a castle. Some of them were so wrong they were laughable. And it wasn’t a lack of attention or carelessness. She was really upset when she made a mistake. She started crying once when I was cross with her because she had written that Japan was a county in Scotland.’
I burst out laughing but Barbara didn’t seem to share my amusement.
‘I know it seems funny, but looked at in another way it’s a little frightening don’t you think?’ I shrugged. ‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘I was determined to have a chat with this grandfather of hers. The last two or three weeks have been a succession of evasions and excuses. Then tonight there was fog and I insisted on driving her home. I practically forced her.’
There was silence for a moment or two while I considered everything she’d told me. I had to admit there were some strange things to explain away. None of it made me change my opinion that the old man was either very eccentric or a lunatic. I wasn’t feeling too happy about the young girl called Susan either. I was just coming round to the belief that some straight talking was in order when the glass door slid open and Susan looked in.
‘Grandfather says you can come out now. We’ll be arriving soon.’
‘And will it still be foggy on Barnes Common?’
She didn’t smile. I had the uncanny feeling she thought I was the one who was insane.
‘It’s very kind of your grandfather to tell us when to come or go,’ I said coldly. ‘You might tell him we certainly are coming out. And furthermore,’ I stood up and heard the anger sharpening my words, ‘you can tell him I want those doors open and no more arguments.’
Susan turned and went out of the room again without saying a word and I turned to Barbara.
‘You’ve told me a story that had some odd things about it. The whole evening has been peculiar. It’s made you believe one thing and it’s made me sure of another. Let’s go and find out who’s right and who’s wrong.’
She nodded briefly and walked into the other room. I followed her and we walked through a short corridor that was made up entirely of tall, square pillars of coloured glass, the reds, blues and yellows alternately glowing and dying down. I thought about the old man’s electricity bill and had to admit he’d gone to a lot of trouble and expense to bolster up his absurd story of travelling from another world. Then we turned into the first room I’d seen, the control room as the Doctor called it, and I saw him standing over the central panel, his hands darting from switch to lever to button, pressing some and turning off others. I began to feel a faint shivering in the floor beneath me and the lowering decibels of an engine whine sounded in my ears. The Doctor looked up and beckoned us over to where he was standing.
‘Stand near me,’ he commanded, ‘and look up at the scanner screen.’
‘Never mind about any of that,’ I said sharply. ‘Open the doors and let us out.’
He leant on the panel and looked at me seriously.
‘You disappoint me. I had the mistaken idea that you were intelligent. Or at least that you had some imagination.’
The shuddering started to increase in the floor and I could feel it tingling up through the bones of my legs.
‘I don’t know what you think you’re doing but if you don’t open the doors I’ll kick them down,’ I shouted. It wasn’t anger or fear that made me shout at him. The engine noise was now filling the control room. It was rather like a dozen of those war-time sirens all running down and not quite together.
&nb
sp; ‘You won’t have to do any kicking,’ he said, quite mildly I thought. ‘I will open the doors in a moment and then you’ll see for yourself.’ He glanced at Susan. ‘So dogmatic, my dear. They can’t accept anything they can’t explain.’
‘She believes us, Grandfather.’
I looked at Barbara. She was staring up at the place the old man had told us both to watch, the scanner screen. I looked too. There was a kind of mist, rather like the fog on the picture, and I was sure we were looking out on to Barnes Common for a moment. Suddenly the floor gave a final shudder which made all of us stagger and Barbara clutched hold of my arm for support. The whine of the engines stopped suddenly and in dead silence I saw the screen clear. I felt the first real doubt since I’d run through the doors of the police box. I was looking at an extraordinary forest of white looking trees. The picture altered and gave a closer view of one of the trees. There were no leaves and it had a dead look about it.
‘Not particularly inspiring,’ murmured the Doctor, ‘but not very dangerous either.’
‘Where are we?’ asked Barbara.
The Doctor shrugged. ‘Very difficult to say. I do have what Susan is pleased to call a “yearometer”. Unfortunately, on a previous expedition it was slightly damaged. I really must get around to seeing if I can’t mend it.’
‘But we’re not… in England any more?’ The old man looked at her in surprise.
‘I thought I’d made that quite clear, Miss Wright. We have not only left England but we’ve left Earth. I shall have to sample the atmosphere outside and do various other little tests, but we’ll know more in a few moments.’
‘The temperature seems quite good,’ Susan said.
I took three short steps and swung the Doctor round.
‘Now listen, you! I’m fed up with all this game playing. If you don’t open those doors, I swear to you I’ll smash them down.’
He knocked my hands away sharply and it crossed my mind that he was surprisingly powerful for a man of his age and build. He stepped back and suddenly pointed a finger at me, his eyes gleaming with fury.
‘You invaded my Ship! I didn’t ask you in here, you assaulted me and forced your way in.’ He dropped his hand and some of the fury died away in his eyes, to be replaced by a superciliousness that didn’t do my temper any good at all.
‘All that stupid, ridiculous mystery out on the road,’ I stormed. ‘Why didn’t you tell us you were Susan’s grandfather? Why lie about the key? Why run away? Of course we were worried because we didn’t know who you were and Susan was missing, so don’t start accusing people of forcing their way into your home when you know perfectly well there was an excellent reason to do so.’
‘Yes, well that’s all fairly logical, as far as it goes. Concern and curiosity are valid feelings, but scepticism, my dear Chesterton’ – and he was so superior I felt like kicking him – ‘yes, scepticism is a failing in your world.’
‘Then open the doors and let us take our feelings as far away from you as possible.’
There was a short pause, then the Doctor turned his head and looked at Barbara.
‘I believe you have more of an open mind on the subject, Miss Wright.’
‘It doesn’t make sense to me,’ she said, ‘but, yes, I believe you.’ I looked at her in astonishment.
‘How can you accept any of it? Time and space travelling, people from another world – it’s all absolute nonsense.’ The Doctor gave a short, harsh little laugh and walked up to me and tapped me on the chest with his forefinger.
‘I imagine this is the treatment Columbus received when he propounded his theory of your planet being circular.’
‘For a space traveller you seem remarkably well informed about the history of Earth.’
‘I have read a little,’ he admitted, ‘but I much prefer to experience history. The younger Columbus was a man of such obvious promise that I always regretted leaving him before he made his theories known.’
I looked at Barbara helplessly.
‘You can’t believe this man, you simply can’t! At the very least, he’s an eccentric…’
The Doctor brushed past me rudely. ‘Open the doors, Susan,’ he ordered. ‘That’s the only way to make this young fool realize.’
‘But we haven’t checked everything properly yet, Grandfather.’
‘I don’t care about that. I simply won’t stand here and be subjected to insult from a young man whose intellect can’t even stretch out to accept known and proved scientific fact. Open the doors!’
Susan turned a little black switch. The lights glowed all around us again and there was the sound of that buzzing noise I’d heard before, rather like a swarm of angry bees. The two great double doors began to swing open. The Doctor marched towards them and looked back as he paused before going out.
‘You wanted to go out. Come along.’
I moved after him slowly, only just conscious that Barbara was walking beside me. The trouble was that I could see past the Doctor quite clearly and what I was looking at was what I had seen on the scanner screen. White, dead-looking trees, a kind of ashy soil, a cloudless sky. The heat fanned my face as I stopped at the doorway of the ship. I heard Barbara make a small sound in her throat beside me. Somebody touched me on the arm and handed me my shoes which I put on, only half aware that other hands were tying the laces. I heard Susan’s voice telling me I ought not to walk about in stockinged feet, because there was no telling what the ground would be like. I didn’t do any of the conventional things that one reads about, like pinching myself or rubbing my eyes. I just stood there and stared about me, a dead horror of total realization creeping through my body.
He had been telling the truth. Every word made sense to me because there wasn’t any other way of explaining it. I wanted to run away, to hide, to scream out in absolute fear, but where could I go? What was the point of being afraid? I almost felt rather than saw the Doctor standing in front of me and the kindness in his eyes helped me back to a sort of reality.
‘Chesterton,’ he said gently, ‘this is the hardest part of all for you. I know exactly what you’re going through and it’s no triumph for me to be right. I have transported us all away from your world and your Universe and we have landed on a new planet. Accept that because you must. Tears and anger will not take you back to Earth, so learn from this new experience and profit by it.’
I nodded dumbly and he patted my arm pleasantly enough. ‘That’s right, Chesterton. You’ll soon get used to it.’ He looked at Barbara.
‘You’re extraordinarily cool, my dear, but I sense the sadness about you. As I have just said to your companion, try to rise above what has happened to you. At first it may be horrifying to you to be wrenched away from what you know and love and trust. I understand that, but isn’t there an enormous excitement in doing what none of your people has ever believed possible? It’s not a form of mental torture but a privilege to step out on to new soil and see an alien sun wheeling above you in another sky.’
He stepped back, regarded us both with a slight smile, then turned and moved towards the nearest tree. Barbara and I stepped out of the Ship and Susan came behind us and closed the doors. Then she ran over to her Grandfather and I heard her thanking him for being so nice to us. I turned my head and looked at Barbara.
Her face was white but there wasn’t a tear anywhere on her face or in her eyes and I thought her composure was one of the most admirable things I’d ever known. I thought of the rotten interview I’d had at Donneby’s and my subsequent depression at failing to get a job I wanted so much. I thought of a ruined supper at my digs, the fog on the Common and tearing my best sports jacket in the morning. I suppose the triviality of that last memory made me smile slightly and suddenly I realized that Barbara was smiling back at me.
She said, ‘We’d better keep up with the Doctor.’
I nodded and we started to walk over to him. The world, my world, and my life on it seemed already to be moving into the distance. I glanced over my sh
oulder and looked at the Doctor’s Ship. Outwardly, just as it had been on the Common, it appeared to be a police telephone box, but I knew without any doubt at all that inside it the dimensions were different. Around me was a world that was new to me and might well be totally different from anything I had ever come up against before.
I didn’t know whether I hated it or disliked it or what I felt yet. I only knew that the Doctor was right and that I had to accept it. Either that or go completely insane. Insanity would imply that everything around me was a stage setting of the mind, that I was hypnotized or drugged. Dreams and nightmares, I knew only too well, never sustain belief for very long and the more time I took to examine my surroundings and match them against my actions and sensations, the weaker the idea of fantasy became. I was certain I wasn’t hypnotized, I was sure I had not been drugged and I was positive I wasn’t dreaming.
I began to feel better. The Doctor had told me the wisest thing to do would be to open my mind and accept what had happened.
I did.
CHAPTER THREE
The Dead Planet
It was about twenty minutes later that I heard Barbara scream. We had penetrated quite deep into the forest of dead trees and then stopped for a breather. The Doctor decided to examine the soil and together he and I puzzled over its ashy texture. It was almost as if there had been a terrible fire in the forest at some time or another, yet this didn’t match up with the trees. They simply crumbled away when you touched them. Susan and Barbara went off in different directions, having been told to keep within calling distance by the Doctor, and Susan returned carrying a most delicate and beautiful flower she’d found. It was crystallized, of course, and the slightest touch would shatter it to pieces. I was just taking it from her to examine it more closely when Barbara screamed and the flower disintegrated in my hands.
I ran towards the sound, the branches of trees cracking and powdering in clouds around me as I forced my way through. I found Barbara with her back pressed up against a tree, the knuckles of one hand pushed hard against her teeth. She was staring away from me into some bushes. I taught the glint of the eyes of some animal or other and stopped dead still.
Doctor Who and the Daleks Page 4
