Doctor Who: The Sensorites (2 page)

'I ... I don't
know. I've got a ... feeling . . . about this. . .'

Barbara moved
closer to her erstwhile pupil. 'Yes, I can feel something too . . .'

Hardly a great
respecter of female intuition, even Ian had to admit that there
was something distinctly unnerving about this dark and silent ship.
'You mean whatever killed them could kill us too?'

Even if Barbara and
Susan could have explained their irrational fears the Doctor left
them no time to answer. In an attempt to determine the cause of
death, he had been examining the young girl and pointed out to Ian
the watch she was wearing. 'Chesterton, do you notice anything
unusual about this watch?' he asked.

Ian shook his head
in bewilderment.

The Doctor
continued: 'It isn't working. Now, this model is one of the old
automatic types: it depends on the movement of the wrist to recharge
the spring inside every twenty-four hours.'

Ian looked at the
time displayed on the watch. 'And it's stopped at three o'clock,' he
observed.

'Then if we say
that it's just stopped, that would mean that the last movement of
this poor child's wrist would be twenty-four hours ago.'

'That's all very
well, Doctor,' Barbara said practically, 'but it still doesn't tell
us anything about how they died.'

The Doctor shrugged
his shoulders. It was his habit to seek out every possible piece of
information. But even he had to admit that in this particular case
his findings had helped very little.

Susan had meanwhile
moved over to the dead man and idly lifted his wrist to look at his
watch. Suddenly she let out a little scream of shock, dropping the
man's limp arm. 'Grandfather! He's warm!'

Barbara rushed
over. 'Then this one's just died!'

'But look at his
watch, Barbara,' said Ian. 'It's stopped at three o'clock too.'

'It doesn't make
sense, does it?' said the Doctor, evaluating the situation. 'But all
the facts are here before us: the watches stopped at least
twenty-four hours ago, but we know that this poor fellow's just died.
Now, why should that be, hmm?'

He looked
challengingly at his companions, who returned his look with blank
faces. Here was another mystery for the Doctor to solve, another
solution to seek out, but. . . Like his three friends before him, the
Doctor felt the icy hand of uncertain fear
touch him. Perhaps it might be better to let the dead rest in peace .
. . He shook his head: 'I think it would be wise if we returned to
the Ship, and leave these people. There's nothing we can do for
them.'

Ian, Barbara and
Susan breathed an almost audible communal sigh of relief. At last
they would leave this place of irrational fear and unknown menace and
return to the bright security of the TARDIS.

'We can't even bury
them,' sighed Barbara.

'Come along then,
let's get back to the TARDIS,' the Doctor urged.

The four walked
slowly back to the entrance to the corridor. Allowing themselves one
last look at the sad scene on the flight deck they turned - to see
the dead man fall forward onto his control panel, and to hear him
give out a long groan of anguish.

Ian bounded over to
him, shaking by the shoulders what had but a minute ago been a
corpse. Now the man's eyelids were fluttering, and his gaunt swarthy
features were contorted in pain.

'His heart had
stopped beating, Doctor!' Ian protested. 'He was dead!'

Not only was he now
alive but his parched lips were also moving. Ian bent down to him in
an attempt to hear the words he was struggling to say. With one
painful move of his arm, the once-dead man indicated a shelving unit
at the far end of the flight deck.

Ian went over to
the unit. 'What is it? What do you want?' he asked as he searched the
contents of the shelves. His hands alighted on a small box-like
device. 'Is this what you want?'

From the man's lips
came a croak of affirmation. Ian rushed back to him, and he grabbed
the device with a surprising vigour, clutching it almost possessively
to his chest.

Within a matter of
seconds, the colour had returned to the man's deathly pale
complexion, and he was able to sit upright in his chair. He rubbed
his eyes in an attempt to refocus his vision and then handed the box
over to Barbara and nodded towards his colleague. 'Place this against
Carol's chest,' he said, his voice still barely more than a whisper.

Barbara looked down
at him with pity. 'I'm sorry, Carol's dead.'

'Please do as I
ask!'

Resigned, Barbara
did as instructed. As with the man it took but a few seconds for the
girl to revive and sit up. She looked around her in confusion until
Barbara's friendly smiling face allayed her fears.

'But you were both
dead,' Ian maintained. 'What was in that box?'

'It's a heart
resuscitator,' the man explained to the baffled schoolteacher. His
voice was rapidly becoming steadier and stronger. 'When you found us
we were in a very long sleep. Most of our vital functions had been
suspended - but we weren't dead.'

With a little help
from Barbara the girl called Carol came over to the man who
introduced himself to the time-travellers. 'My name is Maitland. This
is Carol Richmond, my co-astronaut.'

'We're pleased to
meet you,' said Ian and introduced his party to the astronauts.

'Tell me, young
man,' began the Doctor, 'are you from Earth?'

Maitland nodded.

'How's it looking
then?' asked Barbara cheerily, suddenly realising that Maitland and
Carol were the first near-contemporaries she and Ian had met since
they began their travels with the Doctor.

'There's still too
much air traffic,' Carol replied wryly.

'They got it off
the roads then, did they?' was Ian's rejoinder. Like Barbara he had
quickly warmed to the two astronauts. 'We come from London,' he
offered. 'Tell me, is Big Ben still on time?'

'Big Ben? What's
that?' asked Carol.

'It's a clock near
Westminster Abbey,' Barbara explained.

Maitland attempted
to enlighten her. 'The whole lower half of London is now called
Central City,' he said. 'There hasn't been a London for over four
hundred years.'

Barbara and Ian
exchanged a look of astonishment as Maitland continued: 'This is the
twenty-eighth century. Which century do you come from? The
twenty-first perhaps?'

Before the
development of hyper space travel, it had become customary to
put astronauts in cryogenic suspension, so that they would sleep the
long journey to their destination. With the establishment of hyper
space travel it was becoming increasingly common for astronauts to
actually overtake spaceships which might have left Earth generations
before using conventional power sources. Maitland had quite naturally
assumed that the Doctor's party were astronauts from an early age who
had been reawakened from their suspended animation and come aboard
his ship.

Carol interrupted
Ian and Barbara's hesitant explanations. 'Captain Maitland, these
people must leave us immediately.' There was a quiet determination in
her voice of which both Barbara and Ian were acutely aware.

'Yes,' agreed
Maitland, 'you can't stay here.'

'Why not?'
protested Ian. 'There are so many things we want to learn.'

'No. There's danger
here. You must go.' The tone was final.

'Danger?' asked
Barbara, her senses alerted. 'What sort of danger?'

Maitland shook his
head. 'It's better you don't know what happened to us . . .'

'But we might be
able to help,' she insisted.

The Doctor had been
listening to this conversation with increasing interest and
interrupted his companion. 'No, Barbara, I learnt not to meddle in
other people's lives years ago,' he chided her.

Ian instantly
snorted with disbelief, as though Attila the Hun had just declared
that all he wanted to do was stay at home and look after the
children. The Doctor did not fail to notice this.

'Now, don't be
absurd!' he snapped. 'There's not an ounce of curiosity in me, my
dear boy!' Ignoring Ian and Barbara's chuckles of derision, he asked
Maitland, 'Tell me - why are you in danger?'

There was something
in the Doctor's eager searching eyes which made Maitland realise the
utter futility of dissuading the old man now that his curiosity had
been aroused.

'Very well, I'll
try to explain,' he said and pointed to the view port near the
navigation console. Framed in the port was a bright yellow
planet. 'Out there is what we call the Sense-Sphere. Its inhabitants
- the Sensorites - have always prevented us from leaving this area of
space.'

'You mean that they
have some sort of power over your spacecraft, keeping it in orbit
around their planet?' asked the Doctor.

'It's not quite
that simple.They not only control our craft, they also have some sort
of influence over us.'

'Hypnosis?'

Maitland shook his
head and the Doctor pressed him further.

'They have some
sort of control over our brains,' Maitland said. 'These Sensorites
are hostile but in the strangest possible way: they won't let us
leave this area of space, but neither do they attempt to kill us.'

'What had happened
when we found you then?' asked Susan.

'The same thing
that's happened many times before,' said Carol. 'The Sensorites had
put us into a deep sleep, which gives the appearance of death. . .
And yet they've never tried to destroy us.'

'On the contrary,'
continued Maitland, 'we have very hazy memories of them actually
returning to our ship from time to time to feed us.'

'But they've never
communicated with you?' asked the Doctor.

Maitland shook his
head again.

'It just doesn't
add up,' said Ian.

'Yes. And that is
why you must go at once. Otherwise the Sensorites might try and
prevent you from leaving too. You must not delay any longer.'

While Maitland had
been speaking Barbara had noticed a faint acrid smell in the air. Now
it was stronger. 'I can smell something burning,' she said to Susan.

'Now you mention
it, so can I,' the girl agreed.

Neither the Doctor
and Ian nor the two astronauts paid the girls much attention. The
Doctor, for one, was far more interested in Maitland and Carol's
seeming reluctance to talk about the Sensorites. Was there something
they were hiding from him?

'Surely there must
be something we can do for you?' asked Ian.

The Captain shook
his head despairingly 'No. No one can help us. . .'

'Couldn't we take
them with us in the TARDIS, Grandfather?' asked Susan.

'No. We cannot
leave this ship,' said Carol. 'You see, there's . . . there's John to
think about. . .'

'John?' The Doctor
was immediately intrigued by this new addition to the crew, and by
the tremor he detected in Carol's voice when she spoke the name. 'And
who might John be, hmm?'

'He's our
mineralogist . . .' Carol said. She felt herself suddenly very close
to tears.

Barbara interrupted
the Doctor's questioning. 'There is something burning!' she insisted,
her concern growing.

Ian sniffed at the
air. 'I think you're right, Barbara. Maitland, you wouldn't have a
short circuit, would you?'

'No, that's
impossible.'

Barbara moved over
to the open door and beckoned Ian to follow her down the corridor.
'It seems to be coming from down here. Let's take a look.'

Relatively
unconcerned with what was in all probability an overloaded junction
box, the Doctor resumed his conversation with Maitland. He still
insisted upon the immediate departure of the TARDIS crew.

'There does seem to
be nothing else I can do for you here,' the Doctor admitted, casting
a pitying look at Maitland and Carol. There was undoubtedly something
they were concealing from him, but he could tell from their
determined faces that they would not allow him to help them. Well, if
that was their wish, so be it. He made up his mind: 'Goodbye, my
friends. Come along, Susan.'

He took his
granddaughter's hand and for the second time they sadly took their
leave of the flight deck. As they left, Maitland and Carol exchanged
looks of relief and regret.

As the Doctor and
Susan walked down the corridor which led to the TARDIS they caught up
with Ian and Barbara. 'It's stronger down here, Doctor,' Barbara
called out from the gloom in which the time-machine had materialised.

'Perhaps it's
coming from inside the TARDIS,' the Doctor suggested.

Susan took out her
key to open the door. Suddenly she started. 'Grandfather, look!'

The Doctor followed
Susan's pointing finger. On the left-hand door of the police
telephone box, where there should have been the TARDIS lock, was now
nothing but a large hole and a patch of charred woodwork. A few wisps
of smoke still hung around the space.

'Good grief!' cried
the Doctor indignantly. 'They've taken the lock!'

'No, Grandfather,
don't you see?' Susan's voice was now almost hysterical. 'It's not
just the lock - it's the whole opening mechanism. The doors are
permanently locked!'

'Permanently?'
repeated Ian, a hint of panic in his voice. 'There must be a way in,'
he insisted. 'Can't we break down the door?'

'And disturb the
field dimensions inside the TARDIS?' said the Doctor, outraged at the
very idea. 'We dare not! We have been most effectively shut out!'

'The Sensorites?'
asked Barbara.

'Who else?'

'But why? What do
they want from us?'

'I don't know,'
admitted the Doctor. 'And for that matter why have they kept those
two astronauts in captivity?'

'Grandfather . . .'
began Susan. 'What's that? Can't you feel it too?'

At first she had
thought it was her imagination, but even as she spoke her companions
could also detect a faint vibration in the floor of the spaceship. It
rapidly grew stronger, louder, shaking the floor beneath their feet
and the walls all around them; shaking the travellers like dice in a
can; shaking the entire world. It seemed that the whole spaceship was
about to fall apart.