Free Island of Death by Barry Letts Page B

said and turned to go.
    Well, that wasn’t much use.
     
    ‘At this rate,’ said Mr Gorridge as he disappeared, ‘we’ll be lucky to be ready by a week tomorrow!’
    Thank you, Mr Gorridge! Thank you very much!
     
    ‘Don’t you see? It must mean that they’re going to sail away tomorrow afternoon. The whole batch. At five o’clock!’
    ‘Very good, Sarah. Very good indeed,’ said the Brigadier.
    ‘And that means, Doctor, that your softly, softly, catch monkey approach is kaput.’
    The Doctor took another mouthful of chicken curry.
    ‘Curious flavour,’ he said. ‘I haven’t tasted anything like it since a sneg stew I had in a little bistro on Sirius Two.’
    ‘What’s a sneg?’ asked Sarah, despite herself, her mouth full of buffburger.
    ‘A type of hairy newt,’ said the Doctor.
    ‘Do you like the taste?’ said Ron (who doubled as chef and waiter), as he passed by with a tray of dirty dishes from another table. He turned back at the kitchen door. ‘If you promise not to tell anybody... A large dollop of chocolate powder, that’s my secret ingredient. Takes the edge off the heat of the curry.
    Of course, some like it hot!’ he added, and with a cheeky toss of his head and a giggle, he disappeared into the kitchen.
    ‘Hmm. So that’s what’s wrong with it,’ said the Brigadier, sprinkling his curry with a generous spoonful of chopped green chillies from the dish in the centre of the table. ‘You’re changing the subject again, Doctor,’ he went on. ‘You’ll no doubt be delighted to know that, thanks to the intervention of the British High Commissioner, Major Chatterjee and I will be paying this Mother Hilda a visit first thing tomorrow morning. She has some serious questions to answer.’
    ‘Indeed? You have no more direct evidence to link the deaths with the Skang cult now than you had in London.’
    ‘I don’t need it. There’s sufficient circumstantial evidence for a proper investigation. And that would be impossible if they were to take to the high seas. Until this whole thing is cleared up, they won’t be going anywhere.’
     
    ‘And how do you think you’re going to stop them?’ asked the Doctor.
    ‘Not by having a bit of a chit-chat about philosophy,’ replied the Brigadier, who had received the Doctor’s report with some impatience. ‘I have here...’ he produced from his inside pocket an official-looking envelope, ‘...something which will stop them in their tracks!’
    ‘Bully for you. It must be a very powerful bit of paper.’
    ‘It is indeed. An injunction from a High Court judge.’
    ‘And if they defy you?’
    ‘They’ll be arrested. All the organisers. I gather from Chatterjee that those in charge come from some twenty different countries. We’ll bag the lot of them.’
    ‘I’ll believe that when I see it,’ said the Doctor.
    Here they go again, thought Sarah, and then she was struck by an appalling notion. What was so special about London? If there was a Skang creature hidden away in South Hill Park Square, why not in every country where the cult had a base? They could be looking at twenty of them, not just the one! ‘Hang on!’ she said urgently, interrupting an irritable exchange concerning the efficiency of the Indian police -
    indeed of any police, anywhere.
    She told them her thought.
    ‘Well of course,’ said the Doctor. ‘I’d taken it for granted that we’d all understood that. Why do you think I’ve been treading so carefully? As far as Earth is concerned, these are alien beings, and clearly inimical. The leaders of the cult are either in league with them or being controlled by them. With so much at stake, these people will stop at nothing.’
    It was apparently as new a thought to the Brigadier as it had been to Sarah.
    ‘In that case,’ he said, ‘it makes it all the more imperative that we take the strongest action possible. The Major is picking me up at nine o’clock. This has got to be settled once and for all!’
    ‘Sorry