‘There’s a back lift that goes straight down to the car park.’
‘Then I wonder,’ said the Doctor, ‘if you’d be good enough to lead us to it, and as quickly as possible.’
The door of the Director’s office burst open and Dr Bell staggered in, wild eyed. Dr Stevens looked up from his desk. He liked people to knock on the door before entering.
‘What is it, Dr Bell?’ His voice was stem.
‘I have... a... headache.’ Dr Bell had difficulty saying the words.
Dr Stevens got up from his chair immediately and hurried round the desk to Dr Bell’s side. All the sternness had gone out of his voice now. ‘Of course you have,’ he said soothingly. He knew from personal experience exactly what kind of headache Dr Bell must be enduring. ‘You’ve been working too hard, old friend. Sit down.’
Gently Dr Stevens helped the sick man to a comfortable chair. ‘Remember how I helped you before when you had a headache? I’ll always help you.’
‘God is love,’ mumbled Dr Bell. ‘Today Europe, tomorrow the world.’
‘You’re just a bit confused,’ Dr Stevens said as he hurried to the cupboard in his desk and took out the special pair of earphones. ‘But very soon your headache will go away and everything will be fine. Shall we put them on?’ He stood over Dr Bell with the earphones.
‘Every time I hear the word “culture” I reach for my gun,’ Dr Bell babbled. ‘The meek shall inherit the Earth.’
‘Panorama Chemicals will inherit the Earth,’ said Dr Stevens, ‘as you will soon agree. Let me help you.’
Dr Bell sat quite still while the Director placed the earphones in position. ‘There,’ said Dr Stevens, ‘we’re all set.’ He hurried back to his desk and plugged the lead from the earphones into the special socket in his intercom. Instantly Dr Bell started to writhe, agony showing on his face. Dr Stevens felt sorry for him, but knew the process was necessary. After a full minute Dr Stevens pulled the earphone lead from the socket. Dr Bell slumped in his chair, his face at peace. Dr Stevens went back to him.
‘How do you feel now?’ Dr Stevens spoke loudly so that Dr Bell would hear through the earphones.
‘You’ve done something to my mind,’ said Dr Bell, his voice now quite normal.
‘I’ve tried to help you to see things more clearly. Are you still confused?’
‘No,’ said Dr Bell. ‘I know that what we’re doing is wrong.’
The harsh voice of Boss suddenly spoke from above. ‘The processing was a failure. This man is of no further use. I suggest self-destruct.’
Dr Bell seemed too weak and dazed to hear the voice, but Dr Stevens looked up instantly. ‘Surely that isn’t necessary?’ he said to the ceiling.
‘You are a sentimentalist,’ said the voice of Boss. ‘I repeat: self-destruct.’
Dr Stevens looked down at Dr Bell. He felt sorry for the man. But he knew what he must do. He crossed back to his desk and pressed a red button on his intercom control panel. Dr Bell stiffened, and for a moment his hands went up to touch the earphones. But then they dropped to his sides. There was no expression on his face, and his eyes stared ahead vacantly. Dr Stevens took his finger from the red button, went back across the office and gently removed the earphones.
‘Goodbye, Dr Bell,’ he said. ‘You are useless and have no further right to exist.’
Like an automaton Dr Bell stood up from the chair. ‘I am useless, and have no further right to exist.’
‘Then you know what you must do,’ said Dr Stevens, opening the door to the corridor.
‘I know what I must do,’ echoed Dr Bell, and walked away stiffly.
Elgin led the way down the corridor, taking a route that would avoid offices he knew to be occupied.
‘Why are you helping us like this?’ asked the Doctor. ‘Because,’ said Elgin, ‘I suspect that this Company is somehow doing wrong.’
‘I thought you were supposed to be the public relations officer,’ said Jo. ‘You’re meant to say that everything the Company does is right.’
‘May we discuss that some other time, Miss Grant?’ Elgin hurried on ahead to look round the corner of an intersection. He paused there, staring at something. The Doctor hurried up to him.
What is it?’
‘Dr Bell—look at him.’
The three of them peeped round the corner and saw Dr Bell walking stiffly towards them.
‘He’s in a trance,’ Jo said.
As Dr Bell came close the Doctor stepped out from their hiding place. ‘I say, old man, are you feeling all right?’
Dr Bell walked on as though he heard or saw nothing. He was making his way straight down a corridor towards a big plate glass window.
‘Arnold,’ Elgin called, ‘where are you going?’
Some yards from the window Dr Bell broke into a run.
‘Good grief,’ cried the Doctor, ‘we’ve got to stop him!’
But it was too late. As they watched, Dr Bell ran straight at the huge window. In the last moments he put his head down to act as a battering ram. On impact the window burst outwards, and Dr Bell sailed forward into space to his death.
From his office window Dr Stevens looked down at the pitiful inert body sprawled on the concrete roadway below. The twisted neck and the great pool of blood told Dr Stevens that Dr Bell must be dead. Already security guards were running from the front gate to the dead man. Dr Stevens turned away from his window, saddened and sickened.
The voice of Boss spoke down at him. ‘You are a sentimentalist, Stevens.’
‘I know,’ admitted Dr Stevens.
‘Have you got a headache? Do you need the earphones?’
‘I have not got a headache.’
‘That is good,’ said the voice of Boss. ‘It means you accept that what we are doing is right.’
Dr Stevens said nothing.
‘Please say that what we are doing is right,’ the voice insisted.
Dr Stevens took a deep breath. ‘What we are doing is right,’ he repeated.
‘Good,’ said Boss. ‘Now drink some sherry or whisky. It will make you happy.’
‘Our sherry and whisky,’ said Dr Stevens, ‘is slow poison.’
The voice of Boss chuckled. ‘But it will make money for Panorama Chemicals. Sell it but don’t drink it.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Dr Stevens.
‘Continue with your work,’ ordered Boss.
Dr Stevens sat down behind his desk. After seeing Dr Bell’s body on the roadway he did not much feel like doing anything.
‘Get to work!’ said the voice of Boss, sharply.
‘Yes,’ said Dr Stevens, ‘straight away.’
For the next two hours he tried to overcome his gloom with a pretence of desk work. The events of the past few days, the deaths of the miners and now Dr Bell, had sapped his enthusiasm. Above all, he could find no direction in what he was supposed to be doing. He remained in that mood until early evening, when Hinks tapped on the door and came in. Hinks looked as though he had been drinking.
‘What is it?’ Dr Stevens asked. He could smell the beer on Hinks’s breath.
‘Just been down to the pub,’ said Hinks. ‘Somehow the people at the Nut Hatch got hold of one of the eggs.’
Dr Stevens sat bolt upright. ‘How?’
Rinks shrugged. ‘In the mine, I suppose.’
The news triggered off all of Dr Stevens’s induced loyalty to Boss and the main purpose of their work. ‘You must go and get it for us, Hinks.’
Hinks grinned. ‘What if they won’t let me have it?’ He was a bit drunk.
‘Don’t go and ask for it,’ Dr Stevens said patiently. ‘Take it!’
‘Right.’ Hinks clenched his fists.
‘At all costs that egg must not be in their hands when it hatches,’ said Dr Stevens.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Hinks. ‘I’ll get it back.’ He hurried out.
After Mark Elgin had secreted the Doctor and Jo out of the ground in the boot of his car, he deposited them at the Nut Hatch. The Doctor thanked Elgin warmly and asked whether he knew what Panorama Chemicals was really doing. Elgin replied honestly that he didn’t know.
‘But you’re the public relations officer,’ said Jo, ‘you should know everything about the Company!’
‘Perhaps,’ said Elgin, ‘they pay me such a big salary so that I won’t ask questions.’
The Doctor tried to get Elgin to go into the Nut Hatch with them, to have a hospitable cup of herbal tea. But the PRO felt he had gone far enough in helping the Doctor and Jo to escape; he still worked for Panorama and should be back there.
For the evening meal Nancy had prepared a vast cauldron of stew, which the Doctor, Jo, and the Brigadier were invited to share. While the table was being set, the Doctor went along to Professor Jones’s laboratory with the egg they had found in the mine.
‘Extraordinary,’ said the young professor. ‘You really think that thing’s going to hatch out?’
‘Those maggots must come from eggs,’ said the Doctor, as he carefully let the egg roll from its plastic bag onto a laboratory tray. ‘Perhaps we’ll be lucky. By the way, I shouldn’t touch it.’
The meal was a great success, the Doctor amusing the Wholewealers with stories of his travels. It was during his account of life on Metebelis Three that he was wanted on the phone. With the Doctor gone from the table, conversation started between people sitting next to each other. The Brigadier politely turned to the young man beside him who had shoulder-length hair, a flowing beard, and wore a kaftan and chunky wooden beads. ‘Ever fancied life in the army?’ the Brigadier asked brightly, as a joke.
‘It was quite pleasant,’ said the young man, sipping the home-made elderberry wine Nancy had produced for the occasion.
‘
You
were in the Army?’ the Brigadier looked astounded. ‘What did you do?’
‘I was a colonel.’
‘Good grief!’
Across the table Professor Jones turned to Jo. ‘Still angry with me?’
She smiled. ‘That was a long time ago.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘All of yesterday. Enjoy the meal?’
‘Super. What was the meat in the stew?’
‘It wasn’t meat,’ said the professor. ‘Fungus. My new hybrid to help solve worldwide malnutrition. It tastes fine, and looks good. But it’s still relatively low in protein.’
‘So you’ve got a long way to go?’ said Jo.
‘You could put it like that,’ said the professor. ‘Right down the Amazon River. There are tribes there that subsist for months at a time on a certain giant toadstool peculiar to the region. It serves them as meat. I want to investigate that.’
The Doctor returned from the telephone. He was grim faced. ‘I’m afraid I’ve got bad news. That was the hospital. Bert Williams, the man who went into the mine with Jo, has just died.’
‘Oh, no! And here we’ve been laughing and enjoying ourselves.’ The tears welled up in Jo’s eyes. Professor Jones saw this, and took her hand in his. She found the warmth of his hand comforting.
‘Has there been a post mortem?’ asked the Brigadier.
‘Every cell in the man’s body had been attacked,’ said the Doctor. ‘It was some sort of virus. They haven’t been able to isolate it.’
‘So we’re still fighting in the dark,’ said Professor Jones.
‘Not quite,’ said the Doctor. ‘We do have an egg, remember.’
In Professor Jones’s laboratory, a square of bright moonlight from the window fell onto the egg resting in the white porcelain tray. All at once the egg moved, as its living occupant wriggled. Like any egg-born creature, the maggot inside had started as an embryonic speck floating in the fluid that was to be its pre-birth food. In a matter of days the embryo had absorbed the fluid, growing in the process. Now all the fluid was gone, and if the maggot was not to die it had to escape. Instinctively it arched its back, heaving against the walls of the egg. And then, suddenly, the egg cracked open. The maggot lay exhausted from its efforts. Then it sniffed sharply. It was experiencing a new source of energy—oxygen in the air around it. It wriggled its little body, and realised it was quite strong. It also realised it was very hungry, and that it now had to find its own food.
It raised its head over the edge of the tray, and sniffed again. It could smell that somewhere in this room was food, somewhere low down. It heaved itself over the edge of the tray, and wriggled to the edge of the table. Below was an enormous drop, but the desire for food made it forget all danger. It rolled itself off the table, fell through space and finally hit the floor. The bump temporarily stunned its nervous system, but it had no bones to break. After a moment’s pause it raised its head and sniffed again. It wriggled as fast as it could go to the source of the food smells—a hole in the skirting board. Something with four legs ran across the floor and went into the hole. The maggot watched, fascinated, and ravenously hungry. But instinct told it not to move. It remained absolutely still, despite the gnawing pangs of hunger in its digestive system. Then a little head looked out from the hole. Tiny eyes regarded the inert maggot, and whiskers twitched.
Cautiously the mouse came forward on tip-toes, watching and sniffing as it approached the huge object lying still on the floor. It was, the mouse thought, something that could be eaten, for it too was hungry. The mouse went up to the face of the maggot, and then the maggot struck. Its jaws opened and the mouse was killed instantly.
The maggot wriggled about the floor in happiness. During all its existence inside the egg it had lived on liquid. Now, inside it, was flesh, and the sensation was wonderful.
The maggot remained in this happy state for two hours. But then hunger returned. This time the need for food was even greater than before. And it knew what it wanted—living meat. It wriggled over to the door and sniffed. Suddenly it was frantic, because the air waves coming under the door brought the smell of large amounts of living flesh.
The maggot methodically started to gnaw a hole through the door.
The Doctor walked the Brigadier to the local inn where the Brigadier was going to spend the night.
‘Sure you wouldn’t prefer to stay with us at the Nut Hatch?’ asked the Doctor, as they strode through the village in the bright moonlight.
‘Long hair and wooden beads aren’t quite my scene,’ said the Brigadier. ‘By the way, UNIT will be arriving in force tomorrow.’
‘Whatever for?’
‘Perhaps,’ said the Brigadier with a smile, ‘I feel lonely without Sergeant Benton. Good night, Doctor.’ The Brigadier went into the inn, leaving the Doctor puzzled.