Doctor Who: Delta and the Bannermen (3 page)

I’m Murray.’

Mel introduced herself and the Doctor. Murray’s face lit up. ‘That’s great! Knowing Nostalgia Trips we may need a doctor.’

The Tollmaster flashed Murray an irate glance. ‘That’s why the tourists like him – for his wry sense of humour,’

he chuckled sheepishly.

Ignoring the Tollmaster’s remark, Murray turned to the waiting tourists. ‘Come on folks. All aboard!’ he said and started shepherding the passengers onto the waiting bus.

The Doctor and Mel were the last to step up, but the Doctor turned aside at the last moment. ‘You go ahead on the bus, Mel. I’ll follow on in the TARDIS.’

Murray raised an eyebrow in query but got onto the bus behind Mel. ‘What’s the matter Doctor? Don’t you think the old bus can make it? Take my advice and don’t be fooled by appearances. This baby goes like a fireball.’

Murray shut the door with a bang, causing the wing mirror to drop off. The hangar doors started to slide open.

‘Have fun now!’ cried the Tollmaster, blowing on his razzer one last time as the bus fired up its engines and turned towards the black night.

Delta set the Bannerman craft on autopilot and went to kneel beside her dead bodyguard. A tear rolled down her cheek as she remembered friends and family, cut down by the barbarous Gavrok. Just then the video screen flickered into life. There in front of her was the malevolent face of the Bannerman commander, his shoulder bandaged and bloody. Gavrok had an ugly smirk on his face.

‘You cannot escape me. I’ll track you down wherever you go,’ he hissed.

‘How many of my people are left?’ Delta asked in a quavering voice. Seeing her distress Gavrok started to shake with laughter, a dry rasping sound that turned Delta’s heart to ice. ‘You are the last – there is nowhere you can hide,’ he spat at her.

Delta’s eye fell on the flashing green light of the ship’s homing device. ‘Your Trace Finder can follow the ship, Gavrok, but you’ll never take me. Never!’ She punched a button which abruptly shut down the video screen.

Desolately, she sank back into her seat, not knowing what to do next. Her concentration was interrupted by a mechanical warning signal: ‘Attention incoming craft. You are approaching tollport G715. Please have your credits ready.’ Delta swung round. She raised her weapon and aimed point-blank at the flashing green signal generator, knocking it out of action. Freeing the auto drive, she took over the controls, wrenching the ship into a tight turn.

On board an identical fighter Gavrok was leering at his viewer screen which showed the regular blip of Delta’s craft. Suddenly the blip went out. Gavrok banged the device with a gloved hand. ‘She’s somehow cut the Trace.

Visual pursuit!’ he ordered.

The ship’s pilot activated the optical viewer. In the distance Delta’s craft suddenly veered steeply to one side, disappearing completely from the screen. ‘Copy her vector!’ barked Gavrok at his long-suffering pilot. The pilot pulled the controls into a steep angle. ‘You’re overshooting, fool! She’s ducked into that space toll!’

shrieked Gavrok.

Just then, unaware of the effect it might have, the synthesized voice cut in with its now-familiar litany.

‘Attention incoming craft. You are approaching...’ It never managed to finish its message because Gavrok’s heavy fist smashed into the loudspeaker, silencing it for good. He glared at the pilot as their ship raced past the tollport and turned tightly, ready for a return run.

Down on the tollport surface the bus rumbled out of the hangar onto the apron and stopped beside the TARDIS. It was guided into position by the tollport navigator waving what resembled huge ping-pong bats. As the bus went through a pre-launch check the sky was split by the scream of a jet engine. Using maximum reverse thrust, Delta managed to stop her craft within metres of the cruiser. Her ship’s hatch flew open and she sprinted across the runway to the bus, tightly clutching the silver orb. Delta jumped aboard, avoiding the searching looks of the other passengers. Murray simply assumed that she was a latecomer and continued feeding power to the engines.

As the bus started its run, Delta glanced out of the window catching the Doctor’s eye. He was standing beside the TARDIS, his forehead wrinkled in thought. Satisfied with the checks, Murray opened up the engines to full thrust.

The Doctor blocked his ears against the high-pitched whine and clutched at his hat as the strong backwash enveloped him. There was a brief incandescence and a screech of afterburners, then it was gone. In the sudden silence which followed, the Doctor turned his eyes skywards, scanning the void, searching for a clue. Seeing nothing unusual amongst the constellations and distant star clusters, he entered the TARDIS.

Meanwhile, in outer space, the bus was heading towards Earth, its cargo of holiday-makers looking forward to their trip. The inky blackness outside the windows provided no clues as to their destination. A star cluster occasionally lit up the void as they hurtled through time and space. But the tourists inside the bus didn’t seem to notice; they were only concerned with having fun. The excited buzz of conversation filled the air as snacks and liquid refreshments were consumed at an alarming rate – the Navarinos were well known for their enormous appetites, Murray thought he’d create the right ambience for the journey by putting on a recording of Bill Haley’s ‘Rock Around the Clock’. He leaned forward to the microphone and addressed his passengers. ‘Please keep your lapstraps fastened during the flight, and no dancing in the aisles.

Now, are we all feeling fine?’

‘YES!’ they chorused.

‘All right,’ said Murray, setting the time indicator,

‘1959, here we come!’

Meanwhile, on Planet Earth, Hawk and Weismuller had stopped beside a small picturesque stream strewn with mossy rocks and shaded with trees. Perched on the edge of a large rock, Weismuller was trying to operate a heavy-valve radio set, which was connected to the Morris’s battery.

Balancing it precariously on his knees, he clamped the Bakelite earphones to his head as he tried in vain to pick up a signal from the invisible satellite. Hawk was up a tree, trying to locate the aerial wire as high as possible. Three curious sheep watched these strange proceedings, their dull faces turned towards the odd couple.

‘That better? You hear anything yet?’ shouted Hawk irritably, his shins already skinned from the rough tree-trunk.

All I get is ‘Housewives’ Choice’. I can’t even find any doo-wop,’ said Weismuller glumly. ‘Here, you try...’

He took off the headphones and offered them up. Hawk slowly climbed out of the tree, awkwardly feeling every step of the way. Weismuller was irritated by Hawk’s painful progress, and snatching up the brass telescope he extended it skywards. ‘It’s hopeless, Hawk. It could be anywhere...’ said Weismuller gloomily.

High above them on the fringes of the stratosphere, an American rocket boosted its crude artificial satellite into a higher orbit, while the glowing metal fuselage dropped back into the ocean.

In another part of the galaxy, Murray was trying to get the bus passengers into a holiday mood. ‘Come on all of you.

SING!’ he shouted.

Mel, who was sitting beside Delta, joined in with the chorus, but out of the corner of her eye she was watching the beautiful, sad woman seated beside her. Someone else had noticed her too. Lurking behind wraparound black sunglasses was Keillor, a bounty hunter, his scarred cadaverous face revealing nothing as he stared at Delta.

Keillor was a highly experienced professional and sensed immediately that Delta was no ordinary tourist.

He had intended a week away from the stress of

‘freelance soldiering’ as he called it, but his mind was already working overtime on all the possibilities of the case. If something was going on he had no intention of missing out on it. He thought perhaps he could kill two birds with one stone, that is, earn some currency and have a holiday at the same time.

Earth appeared through the panoramic windscreen. The satellite, accelerating at thousands of miles per hour, was rushing straight towards them.

The singing had died down and Mel leant forward to have a chat with Murray. ‘Do you often do the 50s run?’

she asked.

Murray’s face lit up. ‘Uh-huh. I love that sort of thing –

the music, the haircuts, the baggy suits.’

Mel nodded in agreement. ‘The music’s the thing that attracts me,’ she said. She turned to Delta with a smile,

‘Where are you from?’ she asked.

Murray watched them through the mirror, straining to hear their conversation. ‘You’re not a late arrival for the Navarino party, are you?’ he asked.

Delta looked him straight in the eye. ‘No,’ she said, lifting her chin defiantly, ‘I am a Chimeron.’

Keillor, a few seats away, made a note in a small black book. Just then there was a spine-jarring CRASH! as the satellite tore into the front of the bus, sending it into a corkscrew dive, hurtling towards Earth’s surface.

Passengers screamed and clung to one another in terror as Murray fought with the controls to try and bring the damaged craft around. Luggage ripped free of the racks and crashed down onto the hapless tourists. Food and drink filled the aisle.

Hawk and Weismuller, after several fruitless hours trying to pluck signals from the ether, had returned to the hillside phonebox. Weismuller, reluctant to admit failure, was still scanning the skies with his brass telescope.

‘Forget it, Weismuller. Without any co-ordinates we’re shooting in the dark.’

‘Well,’ said his partner huffily, ‘it’s not going to be me who makes that call. No sir! I wanna skedaddle out of this place. You know it’s been so long I can’t even picture May’s face anymore.’

‘So what’s to complain about,’ Hawk mumbled to himself.

‘What’s that?’

‘Nothing,’ said Hawk. By this time he was getting impatient. ‘The boss said we were to share everything.

That includes responsibility, you know,’ he whined.

Weismuller held up his hand to silence further debate.

‘Just make the call, Lex,’ he said.

Before Hawk had a chance to act, the strained atmosphere was broken by the urgent ringing of the telephone in the police box. Weismuller snatched it up,

‘Weismuller here... Yes sir, no, nothing yet. Gee, that’s too bad. I’ll do my best, sir.’ He hung up, looking grim.

‘What’s up?’ asked Hawk, a nervous tone to his voice.

‘Bad news – this satellite thing has gone haywire. The scientists think it’s gonna fall to earth somewhere around here. The Pres. wants us to find it before certain enemy powers get their mitts on it.’

Hawk collapsed the telescope and hopped into the car.

‘If we don’t screw upon this one then it could mean promotion. We could both be home by Christmas, Weismuller. Home!’ With fresh enthusiasm he started the engine and they puttered away down the road.

Inside the TARDIS the Doctor was watching his screen in horror. The bus was spiralling towards the blue planet, impact only a few moments away. An emergency siren was whooping inside the TARDIS, drowning out the sigh of the time rotor.

On board the bus Murray’s face was dripping with sweat as he twirled a defunct master control. ‘Keep calm, folks.

We’re just experiencing a little technical difficulty,’ he said. Murray’s knuckles were white as he manipulated his instruments, straining to take control of his craft. The bus shook more and more violently and he hoped that it had been built to the required specifications. If there was even a slight error in manufacture the whole craft could disintegrate under such stress.

The Doctor ran a few computations through his mind then started pushing buttons in a prescribed sequence.

When the last switch was thrown, the TARDIS started to shudder and emitted a loud droning hum. A powerful energy beam shot out from the TARDIS and locked onto the tumbling bus.

After a few moments the wild gyrations gave way to a more controlled yawing, and slowly the bus righted itself.

There existed in South Wales a quiet moorland valley with a single narrow track road running through it. The road stopped at a somewhat dismal compound of low, clapboard bungalows. Over the gate in green wrought-iron was the legend ‘SHANGRI-LA.’ It was one of the least-famous holiday camps in the country, but those who knew it liked it for its unspoilt location and quiet walks, and above all, its quiet restfulness. Its peaceful tranquillity was shattered, however, when suddenly, out of a clear blue sky, a tour bus thumped onto the road outside the camp gates, rocking on its springs and releasing a shower of pyrotechnics from under its hood.

What was even more astonishing was five seconds later a blue police phone box materialized out of thin air beside the bus. The Doctor emerged from the TARDIS and crossed to the damaged cruiser.

Murray staggered out of the bus, still shaken. ‘Th-thanks, Doctor. We ran into a piece of space junk. What did you do?’

The Doctor cast a critical eye over the bus which had the small satellite still embedded in its front grille. ‘I simply applied the TARDIS vortex drive to generate an anti-gravity spiral strong enough to halt your descent.’

Murray sighed with relief. ‘They sure could use a guy like you at Head Office,’ he said. He looked around, his eyes lighting on the grey buildings nearby. ‘Hey!’ cried Murray, ‘This doesn’t look like Disneyland!’

‘It seems as if that satellite jammed your navigation pod.

As near as I can tell we’re somewhere in Wales,’ said the Doctor.

Murray squinted at the holiday camp. ‘Well, we’re going to have to do something with all these people until we get the bus ship-shape.’ The Doctor followed his gaze. ‘Maybe that series of primitive dwellings could be used as some sort of way-station,’ he said.

Mel joined them. ‘It’s a holiday camp,’ she said.

‘Perfect!’ cried the Doctor, ‘Just what we were looking for.’

‘But Doctor,’ said Mel doubtfully, ‘it looks... I don’t know... a bit grim somehow...’

The Doctor looked sternly at Mel. ‘You shouldn’t go by appearances, Mel. Often the most interesting people stay at these places. This is the REAL 50s, don’t forget.’