Doctor Who: Target - Novelisations [104] - Galaxy Four by William Emms

Author:William Emms
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science-Fiction - Doctor Who
ISBN: 9780426202028
Publisher: Target Books
Published: 1986-05-14T22:00:00+00:00

3

Airlock

Rigid with fear, Vicki stared at the side of the Rills’ spaceship. The Doctor followed her gaze and was greatly interested. A shutter had slid aside. Behind it was a somewhat bigger observation port and behind that two huge, heavily-lidded eyes were watching them. They looked like soft pools of concern, dark brown and gentle.

What they could see of the face surrounding them, which was bigger than the port, was a scaly coat resembling that of a lizard. Around this vision swirled thick strands of ammonia gas.

‘What is it?’ Vicki gasped.

‘At a guess, my dear, that is a Rill.’ The Doctor moved closer and looked into the eyes that looked into his. ‘Yes, I’d say I’m right. What I’m looking at is intelligence, and considerable at that. Come and have a look for yourself.’

Vicki shuddered. ‘No, thank you. And I’ll tell you now, I find it difficult to believe that an animal like that has “considerable intelligence”.’

‘Animal?’ The Doctor tutted to himself. ‘No intelligence indeed. When will you learn that not all life forms are structured like man? Some are better, some not. But they all have one thing in common: they’ve learned to adapt. And sometimes from that adaptation comes intelligence, as in this case.’

‘But that scaly head!’

‘What of it?’

‘It’s horrid!’

‘I do hope it isn’t listening to you,’ the Doctor said reprovingly. ‘For all you know, it finds our appearance revolting. I can’t think why it shouldn’t. I’m not too fond of mine.’

‘It’s a good deal better than that.’

‘A charming if somewhat back-handed compliment.’ He returned his gaze to the eyes, to see again what Vicki could not, the high intelligence. The eyelids blinked only every fifteen or so seconds, coming down like purple blinds in a most leisurely manner and contrasting oddly with the green scales, to open again equally as calmly. He wondered what it made of them. Whatever it was, the Rill showed no alarm, which indicated to the Doctor that either it knew no fear or felt quite secure where it was. He wished he could communicate, but knew that no sound, however loud, could penetrate the ship’s walls. It seemed a pity. He put his hands together and bowed slightly to indicate that he came in peace. Nothing happened. He repeated the gesture and again the response was nil. He sighed. ‘I’m afraid it doesn’t speak our language. I might as well beat my head against a brick wall. Such a pity. I know I could learn something worthwhile from it.’

‘It seems to me you’re presuming too much,’ Vicki said dustily.

The Doctor turned to her with raised eyebrows. ‘And what, pray, do you know of other life forms? Is your experience so vast that you can tell me what I can see and what I can’t? Have you been a time-traveller so long?’

Vicki was put down. ‘Sorry, Doctor. But I do find it very frightening.’

‘Then don’t. If you stumble through life believing that anything that doesn’t look like you is necessarily bad you’ll make a very poor fist of it.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.