Doctor Who: The Sensorites (3 page)

'What is it? What's
happening?' cried Ian, his teeth chattering helplessly together.
Barbara held her hands over her mouth, fearful that the
stomach-churning vibration would make her vomit.

'Back to the flight
deck! Quickly!' commanded the Doctor.

As the four
time-travellers stumbled back down the corridor, hopelessly
attempting to keep their balance in this madness, the frightening
reality of their situation crashed down on each of them.

They were marooned,
separated from the safety of the TARDIS, alone in the unimaginable
emptiness of space.

Totally helpless,
they were at the unrelenting mercy of unseen foes who lurked in the
shadows. Unseen foes who could invade the inviolable sanctity of the
TARDIS. Unseen foes who seemed intent to tear apart this spaceship as
a child would an unwanted toy.

Helpless. Alone.
Afraid.

The Sensorites were
in control.

War of Nerves

The Doctor's party
burst onto the flight deck and onto a scene of barely supressed
hysteria. Maitland and Carol were in a state of semi-shock, almost
unable to move, and seemingly powerless to operate the ship's
controls.

They sat trembling
at their consoles, their hands pressed to their temples as though to
shut out the mind-jarring vibration all around them. Carol was
moaning over and over to herself: 'Get back . . . get away ...'

The Doctor grabbed
Maitland by the shoulders and shook him vigorously. 'What is it,
man?' he demanded. 'Can't you control your own ship?'

Maitland looked at
the Doctor in despair. 'It ... it's no use,' he stammered, 'I. . .
I'm powerless. The Sensorites are stronger than I am.'

Recognising that
Maitland could be of no help to them, the Doctor pushed him aside and
took charge in the midst of the chaos. A glance at the control panels
told him that the ship was veering wildly off its predetermined
course.

'Which is your
parallel thrust?' he demanded of the terrified captain. Maitland
gestured to a bank of levers to the left of the control panel, and
the Doctor immediately initialled a series of delicate adjustments to
the orbital balance. Addressing Ian who had joined the whimpering
Carol by the navigation console, he snapped, 'Velocity, Chesterton.
Check it!'

'It's not
registering, Doctor!' he said through clenched teeth.

Maitland looked at
the Doctor in wild-eyed terror: 'To try and control the spaceship is
suicide, I tell you!'

'Oh, do go away!'
The Doctor dismissed him and then reconsidered: 'Which are the
stabilisers? Think, man!'

Maitland pointed a
quivering finger to the controls. With a preciseness all the more
remarkable in the circumstances the Doctor eased the
stabilisers into place.

Almost as quickly
as it had begun the shuddering of the ship ceased and relative peace
returned once more to the flight deck.

'There!' beamed the
Doctor, smug satisfaction filling his face. 'All systems are steady.
The ship was spinning about on its axis,' he explained.

But they were far
from safe. As soon as one horrifying fate was averted, a new danger
threatened. Turning to the observation port, they saw the yellow orb
of the Sense-Sphere appearing brighter and larger than before. The
spaceship was on a collision course, heading straight for the planet!

'Where are your
deflection beams, Maitland?' asked the Doctor.

'There,' he
replied, indicating a series of red buttons on a white panel. 'But
it's useless, I tell you . . . useless . . .' he repeated.

'Pschaw!' The
Doctor made obvious his contempt for Maitland's defeatism. 'I'll see
about that! Velocity reading, please.'

Happy to have
something to take her mind off the surrounding chaos, Carol replied,
'Mach three . . . and increasing.'

The Sense-Sphere
now filled the entire view port. It was Ian's turn to panic. 'We're
only nineteen miles to the nearest point of impact!' he cried.

'Barbara!' cried
Susan, automatically clutching her teacher's arm. 'We're going to
crash!'

Calm among the
pandemonium, the Doctor barked out his orders as he adjusted the
ship's controls. 'Check course now!'

'We're lifting
slightly,' said Ian. 'But the velocity's still increasing.'

'Check reverse
thrust to starboard-now!'

'Doctor!' screamed
Carol, 'we're increasing to mach four. We're still going down! We're
heading for point of impact!'

The Doctor turned
to Maitland. 'Boost the engines,' he ordered. 'Engage forward
thrust.'

The captain looked
blankly at the old man. He was totally immobile in his terror.

'Oh, for heaven's
sake, man!' cried the Doctor. He pushed past Maitland again
and pulled down the main booster lever in front of him.

Instantly the view
of the Sense-Sphere dropped from the observation port, as the
spaceship responded to the Doctor's adjustments and shot out of its
collision course.

In the general sigh
of relief, Maitland sat alone, his face covered in a cold sweat. Like
a man possessed he looked at the main booster lever which he had
failed to engage and then back at his trembling hands.

'Why couldn't I do
it?' he asked despairingly. 'Why couldn't I do it?'

A little while
later everything had returned to its semblance of normality and the
spaceship had resumed its usual orbit of the Sense-Sphere. Barbara
and Susan had left the flight deck to prepare a meal from the
spacecraft's supply of iron and protein concentrates, while the
Doctor assessed the situation to an audience of Ian, Carol and a
still shaken Captain Maitland.

'You know,' said
the Doctor, 'these Sensorites weren't trying to kill us at all. I
think what we've just undergone was an exercise in fear and power.
They have incredible mental facilities - we've all experienced how
they can control our minds.'

'Yes,' agreed
Carol, 'but for some reason your minds aren't as open to them as ours
are.'

'And you, my dear,
found a way to resist them,' he reminded her. 'Whereas our friend
Maitland's power to resist them was taken from him.'

'I was afraid,'
Maitland said simply. 'All my training and I was so afraid I couldn't
even move.' He was totally, utterly despondent.

Ian laid a
reassuring hand on his shoulder. 'No, you weren't,' he said kindly.
'They just made you feel hopeless.'

'Quite right,
Chesterton,' the Doctor said. 'You know, it's all quite
extraordinary. These Sensorites are dangerous and cunning, certainly,
but that's not all. They can control, they can frighten - but they
don't attempt to kill. Furthermore, they feed you and keep you alive
up here in that death-like trance. Now, why are you so important to
them, hmm?'

Maitland and Carol
exchanged blank looks. There was no imaginable reason for the
Sensorites' apparent desire to keep them prisoner in eternal orbit
around the Sense-Sphere. If they posed a threat to the aliens surely
it would be better to kill them, rather than take all this trouble to
keep them alive and healthy? And why had they so efficiently marooned
the Doctor and his friends? Did the Sensorites have some terrible
unknown plans for them?

'Has either of you
ever seen or met these creatures?' asked the Doctor.

Carol nodded sadly.
'John has . . .'

'Ah yes, your
mineralogist,' said the Doctor, 'I'd like to have a talk with him.'

'I'm afraid that's
quite out of the question,' snapped Maitland, suddenly on the
defensive.

The Doctor raised
an enquiring eyebrow. 'Really? And why not?' he asked, aware of the
raw nerve he had touched in both Maitland and Carol.

Maitland dismissed
the Doctor's insistent questioning with a shrug of the shoulders. 'I
- I don't want to talk about it . . .' he said lamely.

The Doctor looked
curiously at the two astronauts who avoided his gaze. A sixth sense
was buzzing in his mind. At last he had found the key which might
begin to unlock this mystery.

That key was John.

Barbara and Susan
stood alone in the gloom of a small passageway, unsure of which way
to turn. They had come to a dead end and were faced with a choice of
two doors to take. Barbara secretly suspected that they had taken a
wrong turning, but said nothing to Susan. To be lost in this maze of
half-lit corridors was not something to be desired: it was hardly
worth alarming Susan.

She indicated the
right-hand door. 'Let's try this one. I'm sure Carol said that the
ship's galley was this way - though I really can't imagine a kitchen
on board a ship like this . . .'

'Oh, it won't be
anything like you've seen,' Susan said cheerily. 'Just stocks of iron
and protein pills - and recycled water,' she added mischievously.

Barbara made a face
of mock horror and disgust, and pressed her hand on the
touch-sensitive panel by the door. The large circular door opened,
sliding soundlessly upwards.

As she and Susan
passed through the doorway they failed to notice a dark form detach
itself from the shadows at the far end of the room. Slowly,
relentlessly, it shuffled after them.

'Hey, this is
brilliant!' Susan exclaimed upon entering the room. 'It's a library!'
She indicated the rows of shelves containing microfilm and log books,
and the study desks, each with its own microfiche reader.

'I don't think we
should stay here,' Barbara advised. 'Let's get back to the others.'
She was now certain that they had indeed lost their way, and in the
dimmed lighting of the ship's interior that odd sense of unease she
had felt before was returning.

There was something
not quite right here. The rhythmic pulse of the life support system
sounded strange, as if another noise had been added to it, a harsh,
irregular sound, almost like...

She nearly jumped
out of her skin when Susan clicked on the microreader. The harsh
light from it threw three grotesque moving shadows on the wall.

Three.

Susan was absorbed
in reading the microfiche entries. 'Barbara, look at this - it's a
log of the ships's journey. The last entry seems to have been made
over a year ago. They dropped most of the crew off at Space Station
Two-Alpha-Five and were on their way home when -' The grim
realisation suddenly struck her: 'Barbara, they've been asleep for
thirteen months!'

But Barbara was in
no mood to listen as she silently drew Susan's attention to the
doorway and the lumbering shape which stood before them.

Silhouetted against
the light it stood motionless, challenging Barbara and Susan. As it
staggered slowly towards the two terrified girls the light from the
microreader cast a macabre light on its face, revealing a shock of
white hair and two unblinking white eyes staring out from a deeply
lined and careworn face.

Susan clutched
Barbara in terror: 'What is it, Barbara?

What is it?

Back on the flight
deck the Doctor and Ian continued their relentless questioning of
Maitland and Carol about the third member of their crew.

'Don't you see?'
argued Ian, infuriated at the astronauts' apparent unwillingness to
understand. 'John might be able to give us some valuable information
about the Sensorites.'

'I told you - you
can't see him.' Carol's steely defiance was matched by Maitland who
answered the Doctor and Ian's questions with an impassive,
emotionless stare.

The situation was
hopeless, thought Ian. Maitland and Carol were locked in a conspiracy
of silence. In an attempt to break the tension he asked casually,
'What's keeping Barbara and Susan? I'm starving.'

That seemingly
careless remark suddenly galvanised the two astronauts into action.
Maitland sped over to the main exit door through which Barbara and
Susan had gone in search of the ship's galley. Hoping against all
odds, he waved his hand over the opening mechanism.

Locked.

He turned
despairingly to Carol. 'We should have warned them!'

'The door must have
been locked from the other side,' she said and then addressed the
Doctor and Ian: 'Quickly -they're in danger. We must get in from the
other door.' She ushered Maitland and the bewildered time-travellers
to a secondary exit door at the far end of the flight deck. That too
was now locked.

The Doctor grabbed
Maitland. 'What is it, man? What is going on behind that door?' he
demanded, his concern for Susan's safety evident in his voice.

'It's no use,'
Maitland said, all hope gone. 'There's nothing we can do for them. We
can't get off the flight deck . . .'

'Who's done this?'
asked Ian, pointing at the two locked doors. A dreadful fear crept
over him as he asked, 'Are there Sensorites in there?'

It was a man, gaunt
and emaciated, looking more dead than alive, but a man nevertheless.
His wide, maniacally staring eyes bulged out of
their sockets as he stumbled remorselessly towards Barbara and Susan.

The girls were
cowering in a darkened corner of the library, scared out of their
wits. As he drew nearer to them he held out his arms, almost in a
gesture of supplication. Suddenly he stumbled and fell to his knees
at the girls' feet.

Seizing this
opportunity, Barbara and Susan took flight, rushing past the man, out
of the library and into the passage outside. But to their horror the
exit from the passage had now been locked. As they struggled to pull
open the door, which opened outwards, they were aware of the crazed
man following them once more, his breathing harsher this time, and
his footsteps sounding somehow even more menacing. . .

He was within
almost a foot of them when he suddenly pressed his hands to his throbbing temples and let a cry of anguish escape from his
dried and cracked lips. And then, to Barbara and Susan's utter
astonishment, he turned around and rushed wailing down the corridor.