Doctor Who: The Sensorites (5 page)

'Barbara's right,'
Susan reassured him. 'We'll look after each other. That's what
friends are for.'

'Friends?' asked
John, and Barbara and Susan nodded. 'Friends . . .' he repeated the
word so contentedly that Susan half-expected him to put his thumb in
his mouth and suck it. Then he sat bolt upright and shouted out an
oath of defiance to his unseen assailants. 'No! They are my friends!'

Not far from the
cabin in which Barbara, Susan and John huddled, a pair of alien
figures walked slowly and purposefully through the ship's
interconnecting passageways.

Occasionally they
stopped and looked around, as if trying to sense the location of the
two girls and their tormented charge. After a brief pause they would
resume their steady pace.

So synchronised
were their silent footsteps that one would have been forgiven for
thinking, in the half-light, that they were robots rather than
creatures of flesh and blood. They moved remorselessly down the
corridors, their eyes fixed straight ahead, apparently unaware of
anything but their quarry.

Throughout their
progress they did not exchange one single word with each other.

'Barbara, I've got
an idea.'

Barbara looked
enquiringly at her former pupil who had been pacing about the cabin
for some time, increasingly disturbed by the power which the
Sensorites seemed able to exercise over John's mind.

'John's quiet now,'
she said, 'but we can't be sure that the Sensorites won't make him
help them - and attack us. Look, if they can use their brains, why
can't we use ours?'

'To defend John,
you mean?' Barbara asked, looking down pityingly at him. He was
crouched in a corner of the room, rocking to and fro with his hands
clasped firmly around his knees.

'And ourselves,'
Susan stressed. 'Grandfather and I were once on a planet called Esto.
The plants there used thought transference to communicate amongst
themselves. If you stood in between two of them they sent up a sort
of screeching noise. Grandfather said it was because they were aware
of another intelligent mind.'

'Breaking in on
their conversation?' asked Barbara. 'And blocking it?'

'Exactly!' I
thought that if we both tried together, our combined thoughts might
be enough to -'

'The Sensorites!'
cried John, his face suddenly tense again and his eyes wild with
terror. 'They're near us now!'

'This is our
chance!' urged Susan. 'We must both think of the same thing at the
same time.'

'Think what?' asked
Barbara. ' "We defy you." Something like that?'

'Yes! We must
concentrate very hard. Ready?'

Barbara nodded:
'All right then: when I count to five. One. . .'

(In the passageway
outside the Sensorites stopped, and nodded at each other in silent
agreement. . .)

'. . . Two. . .'

(One of the aliens
took from a side pouch a strange multi-wired device. It looked rather
like a small tennis racquet and seemed to be made out of ivory. He
held it up at arm's length and pointed it at the locked door leading
to the cabin . . .)

'. . . Three. . .'

(The device began
to hum slightly, as it emitted a beam of invisible energy . . .)

'. . . Four. . .'

(Slowly the cabin
door began to open . . .)

'. . . Five. Now,
Susan, now!'

We defy you. We
defy you. We defy you!

(In the passageway
the two Sensorites crumpled to the floor, unable to withstand Barbara
and Susan's combined act of mental resistance. They writhed in agony,
holding their heads as though they were about to burst. Like fish out
of water their limbs jerked this way and that as they lost all
control over their environment.)

We defy you. We
defy you. We defy you!

Exhausted with her
mental struggle Susan fainted into Barbara's arms, who lowered her to
the ground. After a few minutes Barbara turned around to see the door
of the cabin open wide - to reveal an anxious Ian and Maitiand who
had broken through the main door and had at last found their
companions.

The tension finally
broken, Barbara rushed sobbing into Ian's arms.

Some time later and
reunited with the Doctor and Carol, Barbara and Susan were recovering
in the crew lounge just off the flight deck. Maitiand and Ian had
taken John to his former quarters where he was now sleeping
peacefully. When the two men returned to the flight deck it was to a
council of war.

The Doctor was
looking thoughtfully at his granddaughter who was stretched out on a
sofa sipping at a drink of protein concentrate.

'It might be
possible for Susan's thoughts to reach out to the Sensorites,' he
surmised.

'So we really can
resist and fight them?' asked Carol.

'And communicate
with them!' added the Doctor pertinently.

'I heard hundreds
of voices in my head, Grandfather,' Susan said, gently massaging her
forehead.

'And that was a
very dangerous thing to do,' chided the old man. 'Because you were
strong-willed and without fear they couldn't harm you. Whereas our
friend John. . . How is he?' he asked as Ian and Maitland walked onto
the flight deck.

'He's resting now,
but he looks so old,' answered Maitland. 'Did you know his hair was
almost completely white?'

The Doctor raised
himself to his full height and glared down at Maitland with a look
usually reserved for fools and pompous officials. 'There's nothing
wrong with that,' he declared, stroking his own silver mane.

'In a man of
thirty, Doctor?' Maitland threw up his hands in despair. 'What have
the Sensorites done to him? What do they want from us?'

'Doctor,' began
Ian, 'John muttered something to me just before he passed out: it
sounded like "the dreams of avarice".' The Doctor shrugged
his shoulders, unable to guess the significance of the remark, and
urged Ian to continue. 'On Earth we have a saying: "rich beyond
the dreams of avarice" . . .' Ian warmed to his theme. 'John was
the ship's mineralogist, wasn't he? I think he discovered something
the Sensorites wanted kept secret. That's why he's had the worst of
it: the Sensorites silenced him and kept Carol and Maitland prisoners
above their planet.'

'I see . . . and
now they're trying to do the same to us by taking the lock of the
TARDIS . . .' The Doctor studied Ian with reluctant admiration, and
rubbed his hands with glee. 'Chesterton, my boy, I do believe you've
hit on the answer!'

Not far away in
another part of the ship, the two Sensorites had now recovered from
their mental attack. They talked to each other in
hushed voices. One of them held a white disc to his forehead.

'I have
communicated with the First Elder,' he said. 'He says he is
interested in the human voice which said "we defy you".'

'These
Earth-creatures which are newly arrived seem to possess more
intelligence than the others. We cannot control their minds as easily
. . .'

His companion
hesitated a moment, using the ivory disc to communicate with his home
planet thousands of miles away. Then he continued: 'It is because
they have less fear of us. We are to stay here and watch and listen
to them closely. If they try to attack us with force we are to summon
our Warriors - and destroy them.'

On the flight deck
the time-travellers and Maitland and Carol were gathered around a
spectograph which was located in a small alcove near the navigation
console. It was here, Carol explained, that John was first attacked
by the Sensorites while he was making a routine survey of the
Sense-Sphere.

With his glasses
perched on his beak-like nose, the Doctor studied the read-outs from
the spectrograph: long strips of light sensitive paper patterned with
vertical bands of colour. By examining the colour and width of the
bands, which were caused by the radioactive emissions of certain
minerals, it was possible to determine the exact geological
composition of any planet. Unable to spot anything out of the
ordinary, he passed the print-out over to Ian who looked at it
closely before reaching the same conclusion: the Sense-Sphere was a
perfectly ordinary planet, circling a perfectly ordinary star. He
handed the results back to the Doctor.

'It's no use,'
Maitland told them. 'I studied the readings whenever I could, but
there didn't seem to be anything which could be of any importance.
The Sense-Sphere is a completely average planet with a slightly
larger land mass than usual-but that's all.'

'Yes, yes, I
suppose you're right. You know I was so sure . . .' sighed the
Doctor, thoughtfully rubbing his chin. Finally he admitted defeat and
tossed the graph onto an adjacent work table. As it fell his eyes
caught the bands of colour at a
different angle. He immediately snatched the read-out back and
excitedly showed it to the others.

'Look! I knew it
was there all the time! But it's all diffused and mixed up with the
other elements!' He pointed enthusiastically at several thin bands on
the graph: 'There -and there-and there!'

'But what is it,
Doctor?' asked Ian.

'Molybdenum!'

Barbara looked
blankly at the old man and pressed for a further explanation.

'It's used as an
alloy in steel,' Maitland said. 'It's able to withstand extremely
high temperatures. It's a major part of all our spacecraft: most of
the galaxy's space fleets would be useless without it.'

'Precisely!'
exclaimed the Doctor. 'Iron melts at 1539 degrees Centigrade-but
molybdenum melts at 2622 degrees Centigrade. It's the perfect alloy
for travel in hyper space. In terms of usage it's one of the most
precious minerals in the galaxy. No wonder John was excited: that
planet down there must be full of it. It's a veritable gold mine!'

('They know too
much.' 'Agreed. We must strike now.')

The attacks which
they had experienced before were nothing compared to what hit
Maitland and Carol as the Doctor spoke those words, and in so doing
finally revealed the secret of the Sensorites.

The strength of
this offence was almost tangible: the astronauts collapsed onto the
floor, their faces wracked with unbearable pain and horror. The
Doctor and Susan bent over their jerking bodies, powerless to protect
the astronauts from a force which seemed to be almost physical rather
than mental.

Carol screamed out
in agony as the Sensorites took possession of the fear already within
her mind and magnified it a thousand fold; Maitland flailed about
like a helpless child, scared half to death.

Ian looked down
grimly at the two pitiful victims of the Sensorites' power. He was
sick and tired of just sitting around, doing nothing, waiting for the
Sensorites to take over their minds one by one. Leaving the Doctor
and Susan to offer what comfort they could to the astronauts, he
grabbed Barbara's arm and
headed for the exit: 'Come on, Barbara. Let's find them.' It was time
to face their fear.

The most basic fear
of all is the fear of the unknown, and as Ian and Barbara walked down
the dim passageways and half-lit corridors of the ship, past the
all-enveloping inky black shadows, they relived all their childhood
fears. Once again they were little children, climbing the stairs in
the dark, not knowing what manner of unearthly horror awaited them at
the top.

The slightest sound
they heard was amplified, perverted and transformed into the
malevolent hissing of a goblin, or the mocking laughter of a devil.
Behind every half-opened door an evil spirit was lurking, and the
bogey-man made ready to leap out at them from any darkened corner.

But these evil
spirits and bogey-men were hideously -cruelly - real, and as they
made their slow and careful way they were grateful for the other's
hand in theirs.

Ian paused by a
closed door and listened. Nothing. Cautiously he pushed it open and
peered through into an adjoining room. It seemed to be some sort of
rest area. Motioning Barbara to follow, he led the way through the
room until they came to a door at the far end.

It was slightly
ajar.

'Where do you
suppose this leads?' whispered Barbara.

'Let's find out.'
Ian noticed Barbara's trembling lips. 'You needn't come if you don't
want to,' he said.

'Nonsense,' she
replied, smiling for his benefit. She knew that Ian was just as
terrified as she was, but there was no going back for either of them.
Whatever lay in that terrible space beyond the door had to be faced;
and they needed each other now as never before.

The door swung open
easily and the teachers passed into the room beyond.

It seemed to be a
storage area, piled high with crates and boxes, and lined with aisles
of shelves containing discarded equipment: perfect cover for hidden
enemies.

Suddenly Ian felt
Barbara's free hand grab his arm, her nails almost digging into his
flesh. She nodded over to the far corner of the room.

There, standing
just out of the shadows, waiting patiently for Ian and Barbara, were
two unearthly creatures.

They had found the
Sensorites.

The Unwilling
Warriors

In appearance the
Sensorites were exactly the same. To Ian and Barbara they seemed no
less than a set of ghastly twins.

Their bone-white
heads were bulbous, with an enlarged cranium tapering down to a small
v-shaped chin covered with wisps of snow-white whiskers. These rose
on either side of their jaws to end just above their tiny cat-like
ears which were covered with a fibrous membrane. Along their temples
were two ice-blue veins which pulsed rhythmically as the Sensorites
regarded the humans before them with an almost Oriental
inscrutability.

Their eyes were
their most disquieting feature. Small, dark and lidless, they
betrayed no emotion whatsoever, making it impossible for Ian and
Barbara to know their thoughts or intentions. They were surmounted on
prominent cheekbones which, together with their whiskers, gave the
Sensorites an aged, wizened appearance.