I wondered if this vulnerability to cold might be the clue to the destruction of the Animus. I asked the Doctor if he thought that the Animus was still a threat now that the Zarbi were retreating - if it still intended to invade.
'Oh yes, undoubtedly,' he answered, 'But tell me young man; haven't you noticed something very singular about the Animus? Mmm? No? Why; there's only one of them!'
Suddenly, the ground began to shake violently. Thundering through the hot vapours of the air came a loud execration in some localised accent and dialect of Disneyland / Scots Gaelic ( which, thanks to modern 'Celtic' scholars and romantics is probably now extinct ). Something similar we heard from across the North Channel. Beyond the warm, red mists we could see, in Scotland, the dark shape of a gigantic man. A dark shadow was cast over us by the first speaker standing behind us. It was the famed battle of the giants Finn MacCool and Benandonner!
We hurried into the Tardis and watched the events on the screen inside. Finn lifted a huge piece of the Disneyland ground in both hands and chucked it through the air at the giant in Scotland. Pieces of rock fell from his shot and smashed into the Zarbi / Animus space-ship, breaking its pillared sections apart and sending them flying through the air towards the coast, and across to the Hebrides. The Doctor began to chuckle.
'That craft was made from sort of subst...or a 'molten' substance, rather, which will cool in the waves and harden to something like rock, along the coast there, ' he said, 'Just think - 40,000 hexagonal and pentagonal pillars of solid rock. Should make quite a tourist attraction some day.'
The Doctor set the co-ordinates for 1988, and he dematerialised just in time, for Finn stooped to pick up this little blue box with the white light, probably fancying it for a jewel for his dagger.
~~~
Ace and I found Doctor number seven under the bonnet of my Mini which he had managed to get back up onto the road with his super-human strength. It was getting very windy and looked like it might rain.
'Should get you back to Ballymena,' said the Doctor, 'as long as you don't push it.'
'Where are we off to now, Professor?' asked Ace.
'I think that that crashed Zarbi space-ship, the 'Giant's Causeway', will be quite big with the tourists one day,' he said, 'I think they'll be in need of a railway.'
'But it's 1988,' said Ace, 'Don't you think they're a bit late, Professor?'
'They had one of the first hydro-electric railways along this coast in the 1880's', said the Doctor, 'I think they'll need a hand with technology!'
'Not from you, Professor! Who knows what year we'll end up in!'
Before they left in their Tardis, the Doctor offered me a bag of jelly-babies. He told me it was a present from someone who couldn't make it because they were having problems with Krynoids. Sounded painful. A sudden gust of wind blew the bag from his hand and across the sea, seemingly to Kintyre.
'Let's hope that Paul McCartney likes jelly-babies,' said Dr. Who.
~~~
And so, listeners, ends the mystery of the disappearing dulse. The hole left by Finn MacCool's shot at the Scottish giant became Lough Neagh, the largest fresh water lake in the British Isles. But what of the soil itself? Now, some folk say that it became the island of Arran. What do you think? Well, now, I'm no' sayin'.
~~~
(End note: And so, readers, the story is over. Music by Ron Grainer and all that jazz. My thanks to the many anonymous contacts who helped me to gather this investigative information. My thanks, also, to Dr. Who for saving the world; to Ned Smith for 'Oklahoma Backroom Dancer'; to Finn MacCool for a pleasant holiday on the Isle of Man when I was eight; and to Guglielmo Marconi for 'The Beeb's Lost Beatles Tapes' - Ian McPherson 1988)
written by
IAN McPHERSON
copyright 2011
artwork by
COLIN JOHN
IAN McPHERSON
copyright 2011