Doctor Who: The Sensorites (4 page)

While the Doctor
and Ian were busy attempting to override the locking mechanism of the
flight deck's main exit door, Maitland and Carol were standing some
way back, engaged in a fierce but whispered argument.

'We've been over
this a hundred times before, Carol,' Maitland hissed. 'We must not go
after John.'

'But the other
times the Sensorites made the decision for us,' countered Carol. 'The
Doctor and the others have shown us that we can resist them. It's
only fear that makes us weak.'

'Carol, it's too
dangerous,' Maitland pleaded. He remembered all too well his own fear
when the Sensorites took control of the ship.

'What you mean is,
I mustn't go in there,' accused Carol 'You're afraid for me . . .'

Maitland's voice
was suddenly tender and sympathetic. 'I know how much John meant to
you, Carol.'

Carol sighed,
pained by the memory. 'The last time I saw him he didn't even know my
name . . . But I must see him and find out. Besides, there's Barbara
and Susan to think about.'

'Maitland!' called
Ian, angered at his and Carol's lack of assistance. 'Help
us get through this door!'

Finally swayed not
by Ian's anger but by Carol's sad determination Maitland shook
himself into action. 'Yes . . . we have some cutting equipment here -
I'll get it rigged up and cut through this lock.'

'Well, get on with
it then!'

His attempt to open
the door finally having met with failure, Ian walked over to Carol.
'Tell me,' he said, 'what is it you're afraid of?'

Carol turned away,
not wanting Ian to see the tears which were welling up in her eyes.
'John is in there,' she said. 'He and I were going to get married
when we got back to the Earth. But we arrived here and . . . and the
Sensorites affected him far more than Captain Maitland and myself. I
... I had to sit here helplessly and watch him get worse and worse
... It was terrible . . .'

'So they've taken
over his mind,' Ian said gently. 'What's it done to him?'

'He'll be
frightened of strangers. He may become violent . . .'

Barbara and Susan
cautiously ventured down the passageway, looking warily around for
any sign of their pursuer. But he seemed to have vanished,
disappeared once more into the dark shadows which had so effectively
concealed him.

Suddenly the lights
were switched on, temporarily blinding the girls whose eyes were
unaccustomed to such cutting brilliance on board this gloomy
spaceship. They steeled themselves for an attack.

It was an attack
which never came. Before them, now fully visible in the harsh glare,
was the madman, who once again fell down at Barbara's feet and
emitted a long sorrowful moan.

Susan looked down
at him in disbelief. 'He's crying,' she said.

'Who - who are
you?' the man asked, his tear-stained face looking up into Barbara's
eyes. 'You're like my sisters . . . Have you come to help me?' His
voice was plaintive, like a little lost child's.

Barbara bent down
on one knee and held the man's hand in hers. In the light
and close up he didn't look so terrifying after all, she thought; in
fact, he looked more like a frightened little boy.

'Are you one of the
crew of the spaceship?' she asked, noticing for the first time his
grey uniform. 'Do you want us to help you?'

The man nodded
frantically, tears of delight and relief streaming down his face.
'John,' he said. 'My name is John.'

'Don't be afraid,
John, we'll take care of you,' Barbara promised him, cradling his
sobbing head in her arms. She suddenly looked for all the world like
a teacher, comforting nothing more than a bullied child at Coal Hill
School.

'Can't you work any
faster?' demanded the Doctor, irritated and impatient. 'My
granddaughter's in there!'

Maitland had opened
up a storage locker and taken out a small cutting tool, in appearance
much like a pencil torch. He was now applying its thin laser beam
around the locking mechanism of the main door. But the process was
painfully slow. As the Doctor and Ian stood by helplessly they had
more than enough time to think of the terrible things which might be
happening to Barbara and Susan on the other side of the door.

'We should be
through the lock very shortly,' Maitland told them from his crouched
position by the door. Suddenly he stopped and looked up. His eyes met
Carol's and a glimmer of fear and recognition passed between them.

'What is it now!'
cried the Doctor, totally at odds with Maitland. 'Do get on with it!'

Maitland waved for
the Doctor to be silent. 'Listen,' he whispered. 'Can't you hear it?'

Impressed by the
urgency in his voice the Doctor and Ian stood to attention. Yes,
there was something: a quiet hiss at first but now growing louder and
louder into a high-pitched whine, like finger nails being drawn
repeatedly across a blackboard. It came from the sub-space audio
receivers by the command console.

Carol was the first
to speak and there was no mistaking the nervous apprehension in her
voice. 'It's the Sensorites,' she said. 'That interference is caused
by the machines which carry them through
space . . .'

Fighting the fear
already mounting within him, Maitland abruptly took charge of the
situation. 'Carol, get back to your instruments,' he ordered.
'Doctor, will you take the controller's seat?'

As the Doctor
hurriedly complied, Ian moved over to the observation window. Moving
rapidly towards the spaceship were two tiny pin-pricks of light.

'Are those the
Sensorites?' he asked. Maitland nodded. 'But they must be miles
away,' Ian continued.

'It won't take them
long to get here,' remarked the captain wryly. 'The Sensorite
travel-machines move at unbelievable speeds.'

Ian turned to the
Doctor for confirmation. The old man nodded. 'Remember, Chesterton,
they've been here once already. They took the TARDIS lock.'

'You mean, you
think they took it back down to their planet?'

'Yes. And now
they're coming back. With what orders, I wonder? To take over our
minds? Or to kill us?'

'We're not going to
be destroyed,' Maitland said wearily. 'If they intended that they
could have done it many times before.'

'If that collision
course was their idea of a joke I'd hate to be one of their enemies,'
Ian added bitterly.

Carol turned to him
from her position at the navigation console. 'They weren't really
trying to crash us, Ian. They just keep on playing this horrible game
of nerves, breaking our will to resist. . .'

'But there must be
something we can do!' he insisted. 'We can't just sit around and wait
for them to arrive!'

'That's all we can
do!' Carol retorted.

'But surely we can
take steps to protect ourselves?'

The Doctor joined
in the argument. 'My dear Chesterton, it's our minds they take over.
So we have to assume that the brain is all-important. Now, let our
intelligence be our own defence - and attack!'

Ian was about to
counter with his own arguments, but stopped dead. The high-pitched
whine from the Sensorites' travel-machines which had reached an
almost unbearable crescendo had
stopped. The flight deck was plunged into a sudden eerie silence.

Ian looked at his
three companions. Maitland and Carol were staring past him, looking
with stunned recognition at the observation port behind him. Even the
Doctor's face betrayed an unaccustomed and uncomfortable expression
of fear.

Slowly Ian turned
around to see what the others were staring at in the port.

White and
ghost-like against the blackness of space a figure floated by the
spaceship. The creature's lack of any apparent spacesuit or breathing
apparatus made it seem almost super-naturally impervious to the
sub-zero temperature outside, or the lack of air. The long elegant
fingers of its outstretched hands guided it slowly along the outside
hull of the ship, while its bulbous head searched this way and that
for entry.

Sensing the humans
on the flight deck it tilted its head towards them, allowing them to
look into an alien face which returned their gaze with cold,
unblinking eyes. It regarded them curiously, observing them as one
would specimens in a zoo. As the creature continued its steady
appraising stare, the Doctor, Ian, Maitland and Carol all felt a
thrill of spine-chilling terror.

The Sensorites had
arrived.

The Dreams of
Avarice

The Doctor glared
at the alien being in the observation port with arrogant defiance, as
though he were engaged in a massive battle of wills. Without taking
his eyes off the creature he reached out for Ian's trembling arm.

'Steady,
Chesterton,' he said. 'The calmer you are, the stronger you will be.'

Ian indicated
Maitland who sat transfixed by his console. He waved a hand in front
of his face, but the captain's unblinking eyes did not register the
schoolteacher's presence: all they seemed to see was the alien at the
window, gazing in at them.

The Doctor nodded
his head: 'Fear, my boy - that's what it is. It's loosened his mind:
it gives the Sensorites the power to control it.'

Turning away from
the alien in the observation port, he went over to the captain and
fixed him with an almost hypnotic stare. 'Maitland, can you hear me?'
he said. 'There's work to be done. I need you!'

Such was the power
in the Doctor's call to his sense of duty that Maitland began to
stir. The Doctor continued his appeal 'There's a door to be opened!
Remember? Danger on the other side!'

Suddenly aware of
his obligations to those on board his ship, Maitland snapped out of
his trance-like state. 'Yes, of course,' he said. 'We must save the
girls!'

As Maitland applied
himself once more to the task of breaking through the locked door,
the Doctor turned back to the observation port and smiled smugly to
himself. His suspicions had been confirmed: now that the fear had
been broken, the Sensorite was nowhere to be seen.

Feeling ineffectual
beside Maitland, with nothing to do but stand and wait, Ian was
quickly becoming impatient with the captain's slow progress. It
seemed to be taking forever for him to make even
the slightest impression on the lock, during which time any manner of
thing could be happening to Barbara and Susan.

He voiced his fears
to the Doctor who wagged an admonishing finger at him. 'Don't you
think I'm not concerned too, Chesterton?' he asked. 'But we must
contain our emotions. Otherwise, they confuse the brain and leave it
wide open to the Sensorites. Look at poor Maitland: fear and inertia
have left him vulnerable.'

Carol who had been
trying unsucessfully to override the locking mechanism of the door
from the control panels, suddenly stood stock-still. So abrupt was
her action that the other three turned to look at her. She pointed to
a diagrammatic map of the ship displayed on a screen before her; a
green light was blinking in one section of the plan.

'The Sensorites
have come aboard,' she explained slowly.

'What!' bellowed
Ian. Was nothing secure on this ship of incompetents? 'How the hell
did they get in?'

'Through the
loading bay,' Carol said. 'They have some way of overriding our
security systems . . .'

'Then Barbara and
Susan are in even greater danger!' cried Ian, a note of hysteria
creeping into his voice. He turned back to Maitland. 'For God's sake,
man, can't you work any faster?'

'I'm working as
fast as I can!' he snapped back. 'It's a very slow process!'

The Doctor hurried
over to the two men in an attempt to quell the enmity developing
between them. Fear and panic were beginning to take hold of them
again: fear for themselves; fear for Barbara and Susan; fear of
whatever lay behind the locked door. If they allowed that fear to
gain the upper hand the Sensorites would have won.

Ian began to pound
uselessly on the door, calling out Barbara and Susan's names.

Barbara looked
imploringly into John's tear-stained face. 'All we want you to do is
open the door,' she pleaded. 'No!' John was adamant. 'I'll protect
you.' This is madness, thought Barbara. It was as if John, having at
last found someone he could trust, stubbornly wanted to keep them with him
forever. Or was that all there was to it. . .?

Susan continued the
argument: 'But please, John: our friends are out there.'

'No - no, they're
not. They're dead-all dead,' the deranged astronaut claimed, like a
sulky child telling the most terrible lies to keep his new-found
friends with him.

'But we were with
them just a while ago,' Barbara insisted, and then stopped as John
doubled up in pain and fell to the floor, his hands clutching at his
temples.

She was instantly
at his side. 'What is it, John?' she asked.

But John did not
hear her. Instead he looked up, past her and Susan, a glazed look of
terror in his eyes. 'Frighten them?' he asked some invisible
presence. 'No, I can't do that. Nononono . . .'he sobbed.

Barbara tried to
comfort him and cast a questioning look at Susan, who was kneeling
down beside them. 'Somebody's talking to him - inside his head,' she
explained.

John continued his
tortured conversation with the unheard voice: 'No, don't force me ...
I won't do it. . .' His knuckles turned white as he pressed ever
harder at his head, trying to shut out the dreaded insistent voice
which had haunted him for so long. As he did so, Barbara held him
tightly in her arms, mentally willing him to win his struggle.

Slowly his sobbing
subsided and he looked up into Barbara's eyes. 'They wanted me to
frighten you - but I wouldn't,' he boasted. 'I didn't give way.'

Barbara stroked his
hand gratefully. 'We're not afraid, John,' she told him, 'not now
that we have you to protect us.'