Part 6
Now droops the milkwhite peacock like a ghost…
. . .
"Rapunzel, this is Greyhound." Benton's voice came over the radio speaker. Though he had let up a bit over the night, he was still being cautious. Only the barest shades of dawn were lightening the Cornish sky.
"Eh?" Jo said, suddenly startling out of her sleep, half-tumbling from the chair in a tangle of blanket.
The Doctor, who'd been half-dozing at the table over his projects, snatched up the radio com. "Benton, blast you, you've gone and woken her up! Can't you hold your tongue until a more decent hour?"
"Good morning, Doctor," the Sergeant's slightly apologetic voice replied. "Sorry, but the Brig said we were to be sure you were safe. It's the top of the hour. Breakfast is underway down here, care to join us?"
"No! Go away. We'll be down when we're good and ready." He switched it off, gave it a glare, then turned to Jo with a suddenly gentled demeanor. "I'm so sorry, my dear. Sometimes they've positively no manners. Go back to sleep."
Jo had already pulled herself back into a ball of blanket on the chair and scrunched her eyes shut. "We could get breakfast," she mumbled.
"Later," he adjusted her blanket, tucking it around her shoulders for her. She'd only slept fitfully during the night. He hovered his hand over her for a moment as if in indecision, then gently smoothed her hair. "Now get your rest," he murmured. She was silent, drifting deep into a fearless sleep under his touch.
. . .
Not wanting to leave her alone, the Doctor stayed up in the tower until luncheon, answering the radio check-ins on the hour to keep away any worried visitors. He used the time to finish repairing and improving his original design and to go over the samples of fern and spider-webbing one more time, adjusting his equations as he did so.
When Jo finally woke from her sleep, well-rested and clear-eyed she was amused to see the radio speaker had a pillow firmly fastened over it. "Good morning, Doctor," she said, stretching under her blanket and giving a yawn. "I must have slept in. What time is it?"
He smiled at her from where he was peering through the microscope. "Nearly one, I believe."
"In the afternoon?" She asked with disbelief. "Why, I've slept the entire day away! You should have woken me up."
"How do you feel?"
"Famished."
"Good. The Brigadier is waiting for us to join him for lunch."
"Oh! Well, I can't go dressed in pyjamas. Give me a two minutes and I'll be ready!" She bounced up from the chair went to her bedroom, dragging the blanket back with her like a cape.
. . .
"Good morning, I mean, afternoon Brigadier," Jo greeted their commander as they came into the tent.
"Good afternoon, Miss Grant. Doctor. Sleep well?"
Jo blushed slightly. "Yes…"
"No," the Doctor said to head off her discomfiture. "But I did get that fractalization device functioning again with some improvements."
"Ah," the Brigadier nodded. "Well. Have a seat." He signaled to a man near the opposite entrance who ducked out, returning shortly with a tray of food for three. The Brigadier turned to the hotplate at the end of the table that was serving as a desk. "Tea?"
"Yes, please," Jo said.
The Doctor took one of the folding chairs and stretched his long legs out in front of him. "Any sign of our visitor, Brigadier?"
"No. No reports from anywhere else either, so it doesn't seem to have wandered off. Are you sure you didn't kill it with that machine of yours?" The Brigadier passed a cup of tea to Jo.
"While it is a slight possibility, I very highly doubt it," the Doctor said. "I expect it is either licking its wounds or trying to figure out a way to get at me. Have you distributed those devices to the men?"
"Yes, but we'll be needing more, assuming they work."
"Of course they work," the Doctor said, mildly offended. He leaned over and helped himself to some of the tea. "Would it help if I explained it to you? If you have a basic grasp of fractal mathematics and chaos theory…"
"No thank you, I'll leave that part to you," the Brigadier interrupted. "You can explain it to Miss Grant if you must get it off your chest. What I'd like to know is if those chaps it ate…"
"Fractalized."
"Whatever. Do we know what's become of them? I mean, they aren't merely invisible or in some alternate dimension or something?"
"I wondered that too," Jo said, nibbling at a cup of salad. "I mean, are they sort of floating about somehow?"
The Doctor popped a quarter of a sandwich in his mouth. "Well, we know it may be possible for a living entity that has been fractalized to exist in some form. The creature itself is testimony of it. We know it can learn the pattern of an earthly, physical living thing and adapt to it, as it did with the ferns. The fern was fractalized, so to speak, but it was still living."
"So those men could exist?"
"In light of the way this creature has behaved thus far, I really haven't much hope for them. Not because they could not be converted and live, but because they were the first and apparently taken at the same time. The first set of ferns were completely consumed, an it appears they may have been used as a template to learn from. The second set fared better, only being changed."
"They're gone then," Jo said.
"I regret to say I do think so. They were a pattern for it to learn from. By the time it encountered you and I, it already knew something of human physiology and mental functioning. It was unpracticed, but not untutored."
"So what happens if someone else runs afoul of it? Would they survive?"
"One problem at a time, Brigadier. First we need to do what we can to ensure it doesn't convert anyone else. And to do that I need your technicians to get to work constructing these." He rummaged in his pocket and pulled out some pieces of paper. "The supply list is here, multiply it out by however many men you need covered. And here," he bent to finish scribbling on one of them, "are the diagrams they'll need."
"Sergeant Benton should have some of these supplies already," Jo put in. "We sent him off for some yesterday."
"We'll get right on it."
"This," the Doctor added, jotting and sketching on another piece of paper. "Will create one that we can use as a potential boundary. This estate is far too large to fence in with these of course, but if we can define a target area we should be able to keep the creature corralled within them, provided they are set no more than twenty feet apart. At least that's the theory. I don't think it would stop it if it were determined, but it would certainly dissuade it from casual passage."
"Right. Twenty feet," the Brigadier echoed, neatly folding the papers in half.
"Problem is, I'm not sure what it might do to anyone who has been converted, if someone has that ill fortune and if they do still exist in any form," he mused. "I don't want to disrupt them, of course. We just want to keep the territory of this creature from spreading. Once that's accomplished, then we can work on untying other knots." He picked up the other half of his sandwich. "These are rather good. Are there more?"
"I'll get some," Jo said. "We'll save them for tea."
"One more question," the Brigadier said as they all stood up. "When we set up these boundaries, should we cordon it off from its landing site? Your report says there was no sign of any ship, but could it just be, well, invisible?"
The Doctor looked at him with something like horror. "Why would you want to keep it from the only familiar thing it has?"
"I'm not trying to be cruel, Doctor. But what if this site gives it the strength to attack us? You mentioned that it has specifically targeted you, what if it has additional resources to renew that attack? Should we isolate it from its potential arsenal?"
"Arsenal? What are you talking about Brigadier? The creature has no arsenal, Good God, it hasn't even got a ship! It's isolated from its kind, most likely doomed to die in exile on this alien planet. What it does it does to try to survive. To keep it from the only point of contact it has with its home environment would be inhumane."
The Brigadier was unswayed. "But if it makes it more likely to be an aggressor?"
The Doctor met his eyes for a long moment. "I ask you to leave it a way to its landing site, at least until it proves itself to be the aggressor you fear. If it does, do as you like."
"Very well. We'll continue with hourly check-ins, let me know if anything comes up. Good day."
. . .
As the shadows slid into the late afternoon, the man on watch at the tower door turned on his heel and walked back and forth across the walkway yet again, stifling a yawn. He looked at his watch. One more hour and it would be his turn to go walking about on recon. So far there'd been no sign of anything out of the ordinary, but he'd heard enough from the others to be wary everytime the breeze picked up enough to move the foliage around.
Somewhere above him, he knew that scientist, the Doctor, was working on an answer to all this. He himself was relatively new to UNIT, but he'd seen the respect the others had for this strange, flamboyant man and his pretty assistant. He had been flattered to draw a chance to guard them, even if it was only in broad daylight when everyone knew the creature attacked at night.
He stifled one more yawn and tried to look alert, in case anyone was watching.
Someone was. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a shimmer.
Instantly tensed up and on the alert, he squinted at the shimmer and unshouldered his gun, out of pure habit. They'd been told to not be confrontational, so he purposely stepped away from it as he did so. He backed to his com unit and carefully picked it up. "Trap 1 to Greyhound..." he said in a low voice. As he spoke, the shimmer stopped, then slowly wisped back into the bushes.
Benton's voice came to him, crackling. "Greyhound here."
"I saw it, sir. It's in the bushes," his excitement showed in his voice. "It was trying to enter the tower, I think. Pulled back when it realized I was here."
"Keep calm," Benton said. "Don't try to stop it."
"But, sir…. What if it goes after that Doc fellow and Miss Grant again?"
"The Doctor is working on something to help, he just wants it observed," Benton said firmly. "He'll watch out for them."
"But…"
"Soldier!"
It was a rebuke, and the man knew it. "Yessir!"
"It will react to aggression. Stay back. Calm yourself."
"Yes sir. What about this torch thing I have? Doesn't that keep it away?"
"According to the Doctor, yes, but he said it might just wound or anger it too. Just observe. Let us know if you see it again. Greyhound out."
The man stood, still gripping his radio com. In spite of his words of obedience, he wasn't convinced. He'd heard from the other men that the creature had already nearly done in the Doctor the previous night, and that Miss Grant had been knocked clean out. He wasn't going to let it happen again, no he wasn't. Not on his watch. He reluctantly shouldered his gun and fingered the rectangular device at his belt, staying wary.
The bushes waved gently as if in a breeze, but the air was still. A shimmering curtain coalesced, rapidly lifting up before him and he wobbled on his feet as a hard wave of vertigo washed over his senses.
Forgetting about the light he'd been given, he automatically brought the gun back up and let off a shot, though shooting at something with so little substance seemed impossible and he knew it would be a direct disregard of orders. Adrenaline pounded. He lost his balance and staggered into the doorframe, blinded by silver light.
"Greyhound….!" he gasped into the com before it fell from his hands. Reeling back he gave a cry as it brightened to gold and red, surrounding him. The radio and gun both clattered down to the paving stones as the soldier dissolved away into silver feathers, golden iced wisps fading to invisibility. The light dimmed and gathered back like a wave on the shore, an exploring tendril briefly waving over the fallen gun, the dangling radio com swinging on its cord.
"Trap 1!" came Benton's voice over the abandoned radio. "Trap 1! Do you read?" There was nothing but crackling, interference, then silence.
Benton slammed down the radio and turned to the men behind him. "To the tower, quickly! Split up and circle 'round. Something's gone wrong. Be careful, stay back from it! Keep your hands on those lights!" He snatched the radio back up. "Rapunzel! Rapunzel! Doctor, we think it's coming your way!"