"Waugh! 900 years of time travel, and I never knew Daleks could fart!"
The Bodysnatchers
Chapter 10: Sound Bite
The Doctor looked proudly at his screwdriver. He grinned impishly at Martha. “What is this chapel made of?” Martha shrugged. “I don’t know…limestone?” “Riiight!” The Doctor exclaimed. “And the thing I love about limestone is, is that it resonates beautifully. It’s made of up stone quartz crystals. Resonate these crystals just right, and the whole structure falls down on us--which we don’t want to have happen, do we? So---“ he paced around the walls, “---what else can we do with this knowledge, eh?” Martha frowned in thought and said, “I don't know. Change the resonance?”
The Doctor gave her a delighted grin. "Very good Martha Jones! Four marks for you. Go to the head of the class." Martha was both astonished and pleased. "So I'm right, then?" The Doctor shook his head. "Uh-no. Sorry. But, you were close though--very close indeed." Suddenly, the heavy church doors began to shake violently, and a pale clawed hand slowly began to emerge through the solid wood. Martha threw the Doctor a worried glance. He smiled reassuringly, and then flicked a switch on the sonic screwdriver. It hummed briefly.
Slowly, inexorably, an arm followed the hand, taking solid form as it came through. The Doctor's head was bent over the screwdriver. “Alright then, according to this reading, this stone will resonate at a frequency of 28, 344 kilohertz. But…” he said as he made a quick adjustment, “if I tone that down to a fractal frequency of the quartz, say, oh, a base number of 64, then resonate just a tiny portion of the binary crystal---” He turned to her, suddenly serious. “Cover your ears.”
Martha saw the tip of the sonic screwdriver turn blue, and felt the back of her head buzz for a few seconds. She winced. The Doctor cast a worried glance in her direction, but he didn’t seem the least bothered by anything else. “Alright?” He mouthed to her. The buzzing sensation left as quickly as it had come, and she removed her fingers from her ears. “I’m fine---” She was interrupted by a long, drawn out screech by the tall man, who’d been standing outside the door.
The Doctor pocketed his trusty instrument.“Well, that takes care of old nosy face--at least for a while, anyway.” Martha was puzzled. “What did you do to him? And just what is he, anyway, if he’s not human?” The Doctor smiled bleakly. “I sent a sound wave with a very low frequency out through the stone---low to you or me, but to a Kreigal, it’s quite painful. Excruciatingly so.” Martha sat down on a bench and gazed at the Doctor curiously. She tilted her head, “A Kreigal? What sort of creature are they, then?"
The Doctor flopped down on the bench beside her, propping his feet up in front of him. "They’re from the planet Galvin. The Kreigal are humanoid in appearance--but their physiology also has some mammalian qualities, as well." Martha was fascinated. "Like how are they different?" The Doctor looked at the ceiling. "They really should dust this place more often." Martha chided him, "Doctor!" He shrugged, "Well, they have bodies like you and me, but their ears, as you may have noticed, are rather more like cats--or bats. Actually, the way they hear is very much the same as your common ordinary bat--no wings and teeth like the Krillitanes, thankfully." "The what?" Martha asked, but the Doctor continued as if he hadn't heard, "Very, very sensitive creatures. Can hear for miles, under the right conditions. That’s why I wanted you to be quiet, back there, at the gravesite. But---“
The Doctor jumped up and strode over to the mysterious alcove. “That doesn’t explain what he’s doing here, why they’re using poison marsh gas from Draxil , why they’re killing innocent humans and snatching dead bodies or what his so-called master is up to--and there’s only one way to find out the answers to all these questions.” So saying, the Doctor pulled aside the curtain.
