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.Ian moved back again, his body tensed, and the knuckles of his hand showing white as he grasped the spanner tightly.'Who are you?' he demanded of the aliens.'What do you want?'No reply.'Goddam it, why won't you speak?'As if in reply, one of the Sensorites raised its arm and extended a long-fingered hand towards Ian's forehead.He jumped away instantly, once more raising the spanner above his head, ready to strike.Again the Sensorites reacted to his threat of physical violence by taking a step backwards, before resuming their silent, terrifying approach.Back on the flight deck Maitland and Carol had recovered physically from the Sensorites' attack; mentally, however, they were still in a state of acute shock.Barbara was desperately trying to wrench from Maitland instructions as to how to confine the Sensorites to that part of the ship where they now were.'It's no use, Barbara,' the Doctor said, turning away from Carol's impassive form.'This poor girl's just the same.They'll recover shortly but now - when we need them the most - they're useless.Try the sick member of the crew.''But he'll be in no position to help,' protested Barbara.'Just do as I say!'It seemed almost inhumanly cruel to wake John up from the first untroubled sleep he had had for months.but it was the only chance they had left.Barbara hurried out of the flight deck and down the short way to John's cabin.She roused him from his sleep, begging with him to help them against the creatures he feared most in this world.Wouldn't he try and do it - for his friends? He nodded bravely and allowed Barbara to escort him to the storeroom.As Barbara helped him along the passageway in search of Ian and the Sensorites they formed a pitiful spectacle: a half-deranged astronaut and a schoolteacher centuries out of her time, and both scared nearly to death.When they finally found Ian in a secondary corridor he was still engaged in his macabre dance with the aliens, raising his spanner menacingly at them as he backed out through yet another door.Taking his eyes off the aliens for the first time, he turned with glad relief to his two friends.Barbara urged John to lock the door.She looked on with an almost maternal pride as John challenged the Sensorites.He regarded them nervously for a few seconds and then slammed the door shut in their faces.He keyed out a combination on a small multi-squared panel at the side of the door.Smiling with pleasure he turned to Barbara.'They can't open it now-I made sure of that.'Without really thinking what she was doing Barbara hugged him: it was the only way there was of expressing thanks to a child who had just faced his greatest fear for the sake of his friends.Then she turned to Ian with concern.'Are you all right?' she asked.'They didn't harm you?''No.' Ian said thoughtfully.'I think they were as frightened of me as I was of them.''Yes, they're not very aggressive, are they.' Barbara said, begining to wonder if things were quite as simple as they appeared to be.'Come on, let's get back to the others.'When they reached the flight deck they found the Doctor and Susan fussing over Maitland and Carol who had started emerging from their state of shock.They looked up in surprise as Ian's party burst through the open door.Barbara instructed John to lock that door too.As the door slid slowly down into place, Ian turned to the Doctor and Susan, his face set in defiance.'Now we'll see what these Sensorites can do.'Even the advanced technology of the twenty-eighth century was no match for the science of the Sensorites.Using the small racquet-like device it was a relatively simple matter for them to burn through the locking mechanism of the door which John had closed on them.They walked without haste down the passage leading to the flight deck.When they reached the large circular door, the armed Sensorite raised his device again, but his companion stayed his arm and shook his head.There was a better way.A flash of unspoken agreement passed between them, and they both raised the ivory discs which they carried at their sides to their foreheads.The veins at their temples pulsed even more strongly as they used the discs to reach out to the one person on board the ship who would hear and understand them.While the others were busy discussing means of fighting back at the Sensorites, and indeed what plans the Sensorites might have for them, Susan had distanced herself from her companions.She could feel a tingling at the back of her skull and seemed to hear a voice - or rather a whisper - echo somewhere inside her mind.The voice seemed to be coming from a very long way away.As she concentrated, the sound of her friends' conversation grew fainter as the 'inner' voice resolved itself into something much more distinct.'Yes.But they won't agree to that!' she said suddenly.The others looked up in astonishment at Susan's outburst.'Agree?' asked the Doctor.'What on Earth are you talking about, child?''I'm sure they'll talk to you,' Susan continued, not hearing her grandfather's question.Then she turned and addressed her bewildered companions.'The Sensorites want to know if it's all right for them to talk to you,' she explained.'You mean to say you've actually made mental contact with them?' asked an incredulous Ian.Was there no end to his former pupil's strange talents?'Of course we shall see them,' announced the Doctor.'But they must agree not to harm us.Otherwise I shall fight them,' he warned.Susan nodded and turned away again.She pressed her hands to her temples and stared blankly into space as she tried once more to make telepathic contact with the Sensorites.Unskilled at telepathy, she silently mouthed her words as she communicated them to the aliens.After a short while she walked, as if in a dream, to the main exit door and unlocked it, following John's previous actions in reverse.The door slid smoothly upwards to reveal the two figures of the waiting Sensorites.They stepped cautiously onto the flight deck.Their effect upon the humans was immediate.Maitland and Carol cowered away from the creatures they had lived in fear of for so long; John who had been sitting slouched in a corner began to whimper to himself; Ian and Barbara, seeing their pursuers for the first time in the full light rather than the shadows of the rest of the ship, watched with apprehension as they surveyed the flight deck.The Doctor regarded them with the same searching curiosity he accorded all new life forms.Only Susan was unmoved, standing by the door in her half-trance state.'Which one is the Doctor?' one Sensorite asked the other.'The one with the long white hair [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]