Doctor Who: The Green Death (11 page)

The Doctor returned to the Wholeweal Community house and found almost everyone gone to bed except Jo. She was in the living room, curled up in an armchair reading a huge old book about the peoples of the Amazon.

‘Isn’t it time you went to bed?’ the Doctor asked.

‘I’m going to read on for a bit,’ she said, without looking up.

The Doctor regarded her. ‘Very interesting, is it?’

She nodded, still reading. ‘Cliff gave it to me.’

‘Cliff?’

‘Professor Jones.’

‘You seem to be getting very friendly with him.’

She nodded again, still reading, and this time didn’t answer.

‘The TARDIS came up trumps,’ said the Doctor, trying to get her interested. ‘I got to Metebelis Three, you know.’

‘So you mentioned over dinner.’

‘Did I?’ He drew from his pocket the beautiful blue sapphire. ‘I got this from there. Like to see it?’

She glanced at the precious stone. ‘Great,’ she said, and turned back to the book. ‘Well, goodnight, Doctor.’

The Doctor had never known Jo to be like this before. In their many travels together they had always been very close. No one had come between them. He turned away, to go up to the little room Nancy had allocated to him. As he entered the hall he met Professor Jones who was making for the living room. The young professor seemed slightly embarrassed to see the Doctor.

‘On your way to bed?’ asked Professor Jones.

‘I
was
,’ said the Doctor truthfully, ‘but since you’re still up, I wonder if we could talk about this so-called virus.’

The professor hesitated. ‘Well... ‘

Jo’s voice called from the living room. ‘Cliff?’

‘If you’ll excuse me a moment,’ said Professor Jones. He popped his head round the door of the living room. ‘The Doctor wants to have a discussion with me. I’m sorry.’

The Doctor had guessed that Jo was really waiting for Professor Jones in the living room. He felt an almost childish satisfaction at spoiling her date. When Professor Jones came back the Doctor put his arm round the younger man’s shoulder and led him away.

From the living room, Jo heard the Doctor’s voice through the open door as he took Professor Jones—Cliff—away from her.

‘It seems to me that if you postulate an active nucleus,’ the Doctor was saying loudly, and then he was out of earshot.

‘He knows I’ve fallen in love,’ she thought to herself. She felt rather sorry for the Doctor, and wondered why he had never married. Were there, she wondered, lady Time Lords?

Did Time Lords get married and have babies? How
old
was the Doctor? She realised there were many things she didn’t know about him.

Since the Doctor had ruined her date with Cliff, she felt like going to bed. But first she wanted to finish the chapter of her book. As she started to read again Jo thought she heard something moving on the floor. She looked behind her armchair at the open door. There was nothing. She went back to her book.

The maggot came quietly round the open door. It looked across the floor to the armchair. It could just see the naked flesh of Jo’s leg. The sight of so much delicious food was irresistible. It arched its back and started to wriggle silently across the floor.

Jo turned the final page of the chapter. She suddenly had the feeling that she was not alone and looked up. A man’s face was at the french window. She drew back into the chair, in terror. Then she realised the man wasn’t looking at her. Turning her gaze to follow the direction of the man’s eyes, she looked at the floor. The giant maggot was less than three feet from her legs. She drew up her legs and screamed at the top of her voice.

The french windows burst open and the man, Hinks, blundered into the room. He carried an old blanket and went forward to throw the blanket over the maggot to to catch it.

The delicious flesh had suddenly gone from the maggot’s view. And now it sensed danger from this mountain of flesh that had entered the room. The maggot arched its back, and instinctively realised that its way out of danger was to leap.

As Jo screamed again and again, the maggot leaped at Hinks, wrapping its slimy body round the man’s head. Hinks fell to the floor, at first cursing, then screaming, and finally moaning.

The maggot bit into the flesh of the neck. The taste of the man’s blood was very enjoyable, and the maggot would have happily eaten right through the neck. But the man kept writhing about, squashing the maggot against the hard floor. And the other supply of food, the one in the chair, continued to make a frightful noise. The maggot recalled the ease with which it had devoured the mouse. The french windows were open, letting in the smell of all sorts of other foods that existed beyond. Reluctantly but prudently, the maggot released its hold on the man’s neck, and crawled as fast as it could into the safety of the garden.

The Doctor and Professor Jones were the first to answer Jo’s screams, followed by a group of Wholewealers in their night clothes. Jo, now weeping with fear, pointed to the slime trail left by the maggot. The young man who had been an army colonel rushed into the garden in pursuit of the maggot. While Nancy rushed to the phone to call an ambulance, and Professor Jones took Jo into his arms to comfort her, the Doctor examined Hinks.

‘Who is that man?’ asked Jo, bewildered.

‘One of Dr Stevens’s strong arm men,’ said Professor Jones. ‘How is he?’

The Doctor straightened up. ‘Weak, and getting weaker.’

The young ex-colonel came back from the garden. ‘There’s no sign of it.’

‘No,’ said the Doctor. He pointed to the slimy trail that the maggot had left across the floor. ‘But at least we can analyse that. It could provide the answer to everything.’

The Brigadier felt much happier now. UNIT soldiers had arrived in force at dawn. At 8 a.m. he had been called to Dr Stevens’s office, where the Director of Panorama Chemicals had the Minister of Ecology on the phone ready to speak to, and give orders to, the Brigadier. On the face of it, the Brigadier agreed with the orders he was given. Aided by Sergeant Benton, he had quickly carried out the first part of the orders. Explosive charges were laid down the mine shaft, and, as the Brigadier stood by the pit head watching his men work, wire was attached from the explosives to the plungers that would detonate them. And then the Doctor arrived, driving his vintage car Bessie.

‘Morning, Doctor,’ called the Brigadier cheerfully. ‘Glad to have her with you, are you?’ He indicated the Doctor’s beloved car, which the Brigadier had had brought from London by a UNIT driver.

‘Very thoughtful of you,’ said the Doctor. ‘Now what’s all this about blowing up the mine?’

‘Best in the long run,’ said the Brigadier. ‘Anyway, orders are orders. Those maggots you saw in the mine, we’ll seal them in for good.’

‘But I need one,’ said the Doctor.

‘What on earth for?’

The Doctor got out of Bessie and explained. ‘Professor Jones and I put some of the cells from the maggot’s trail—the maggot that almost attacked Jo last night—with some human body cells. The maggot cells changed the internal structures of the human cells into their own nature.’

‘If you’ve discovered all that,’ said the Brigadier, ‘why do you need another maggot?’

‘Because we don’t know enough. So kindly don’t do anything stupid, like blowing up the mine, until I’ve been down there.’

‘Out of the question,’ said the Brigadier.

Sergeant Benton ran up to them. ‘Everything’s ready, sir.’ He saw the Doctor and grinned. ‘Hello, Doctor.’

‘Good morning,’ said the Doctor. ‘Very pleased to see you here, Sergeant. But
not
very pleased about what you’re going to do.’ He turned back to the Brigadier. ‘When do you intend to commit this particular folly, Brigadier?’

‘I shall carry out my orders,’ said the Brigadier sternly, ‘at exactly eleven o’clock.’

‘That gives me thirty minutes to try to talk sense into someone.’ The Doctor got back into Bessie, and drove away.

‘In the first place,’ said the Doctor, addressing Dr Stevens across his vast desk, ‘what right have you to order the destruction of property belonging to the National Coal Board?’

Dr Stevens smiled. ‘My company bought the mine from the Government late last night.’

‘Very convenient,’ the Doctor said. He realised he had lost on that score and quickly moved to another approach. ‘As you know, that mine contains a species of giant maggot—’

‘As
you
know,’ Dr Stevens cut in, ‘I have yet to see proof.’

‘Your own man, Hinks, was attacked by one last night, when forcibly entering private premises!’

‘Hinks was a drunkard,’ said Dr Stevens. ‘I cannot be held responsible for what he did in his free time. And how do we know what attacked him?’

‘Miss Grant saw it happen.’

‘A young woman?’ asked Dr Stevens. ‘Late at night, and possibly half asleep? Was she the only witness?’

‘Dr Stevens,’ said the Doctor, ‘what possible reason have you against delaying this destruction for one more day so that I can go back into the mine?’

‘Because you have convinced me you are a sensation monger, a political hot-head and a scientific charlatan!’ Dr Stevens smiled again, but it was a hard smile. ‘You, and others, have suggested that these mysterious deaths are in some way the fault of my Company.’ He pressed a button on his inter-corn and spoke into the microphone. ‘Stella, ask Mr Elgin to bring in the man from the Ministry, will you?’ He turned back to the Doctor. ‘If you persist in these slanders I shall have you restrained under the Emergency Powers Act.’

‘You have no such right!’

‘The necessary authority was brought to me this morning,’ said Dr Stevens.

A tap on the door and Mark Elgin entered, followed by a tall lean young man wearing a smart pin-striped suit. ‘The gentleman from the Ministry, sir,’ he said to Dr Stevens.

Dr Stevens rose. "This is our troublesome friend, the Doctor,’ he told the newcomer. ‘Perhaps you can impress on him what powers I now have from the Minister.’

The Doctor looked up at the young man in the pin-striped suit. It was Captain Mike Yates of UNIT, whom he knew well.

‘Good grief,’ said the Doctor. ‘I mean good morning.’ He rose and shook hands with Yates. ‘If you have some authority here, you must stop this destruction of the mine—’

The roar of an explosion cut through the middle of the Doctor’s sentence. He swung round and saw through the windows a pall of black smoke rising from the pit head.

Dr Stevens looked at his watch. ‘Eleven o’clock, gentlemen. Orders have been carried out. I feel, Doctor, that any further discussion would now be academic, don’t you?’

‘Mike Yates?’ said Jo in astonishment. She also knew the young UNIT Captain very well, and had been out to dinner with him a number of times.

The Doctor peeled off his jacket. They were in Professor Jones’s laboratory where the professor was examining culture plates. The Doctor was about to assist him. ‘It’s all right, Jo. The Brigadier explained it. Mike’s spying for our side.’

‘Who thought of that?’

‘The Brigadier. Strange, isn’t it? He goes and obeys a ridiculous order because, as he explains, he’s a soldier. But he doesn’t really trust Stevens. So he’s got Mike rigged up in his best civilian clothes to pretend to be a Government official.’ He turned to Professor Jones. ‘What can I do to help?’

The Professor held up a test tube containing a lump of green-stained cotton wool. ‘That slime we got isn’t good enough. We still can’t find an antidote without some living maggot cells to try it on.’

‘But since the mine is now closed,’ observed Jo, ‘there can’t be any more green death. So why do we need an antidote?’

‘You’re forgetting Mr Hinks,’ said the Doctor. ‘We don’t know why he broke in here—perhaps to get that egg. But he certainly saved you from being bitten. And right now he’s in hospital, and no one knows how to save his life.’

Blodwen Williams entered the room marked ‘AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY’. With her bucket and mop and cleaning cloths she was ‘authorised personnel’ anywhere in the Panorama building. She didn’t really like her job as a cleaner, but ever since her husband, Rhys, lost his job when the mine closed Blodwen had gone out to work.

She was just about to dip her mop into the bucket of warm soapy water when she saw the maggots. They were packed tight on the other side of the transparent port-hole in the wall. They were two feet long, and they were squirming in one living mass. For a moment she remained static, horrified at the sight, unable to speak or move. Then she began to scream.

Mark Elgin, coming along the corridor, heard the screams. He rushed into the room in time to see Blodwen Williams collapse in a faint. He looked at the port-hole and felt he wanted to be sick.

Ten minutes later, after Elgin had carried Blodwen to the staff rest room, he stormed into Dr Stevens’s office.

‘You’re talking nonsense,’ Dr Stevens protested.

Elgin repeated his story. ‘The pipe’s packed full of them, sir. Come and see for yourself.’

Dt Stevens did not move from his desk. ‘There’s a simple solution. We shall have to pump down more waste and flush them away.’

‘That’s just shoving the problem underground,’ said Elgin. He had never spoken up to an employer like this before. ‘Haven’t we poisoned the mine long enough?’

‘Poison?’ said Dr Stevens. ‘I don’t like the words you choose, Elgin. Anyway, the mine is now sealed.’

Elgin turned to go. ‘If you intend to do nothing, sir, I must go and find someone who will.’ He tried to open the door but it seemed jammed.

Dr Stevens took his finger from the button he had just pressed, the one that automatically locked the door to his office. ‘Come and sit down, Elgin,’ he said, soothingly.

‘Will you unlock this door, sir?’

Dr Stevens pressed another button on his desk console. A deep humming filled the air. Elgin shook his head; he was suddenly feeling a little dizzy.

‘Sit in that chair,’ said Dr Stevens, pointing to the chair where Dr Bell had once sat.

Elgin obeyed. Dr Stevens quickly got out the special earphones and went to put them on Elgin’s head.