Doctor Who: Planet of Fire (6 page)

In his adjacent TARDIS the real Master gazed into the coherer glass and saw his own image, as in a mirror.

‘Excellent Kamelion. Now quickly. To my TARDIS.

Release me.’

Obediently his
doppelgänger
opened the doors of the Doctor’s time-machine and took hold again of Peri’s arm.

‘I’m waiting here for the Doctor!’ shouted Peri, kicking and struggling.

‘You will come with me,’ hissed her tormentor, tightening his grip till Peri screamed, ‘or you will remain in the TARDIS...’ he gave another chuckle... ‘dead!’

As they emerged into the ruined building where the blue police box had materialised, Peri momentarily forgot all her fears and discomfort at the sight of the ship’s exterior. ‘That’s all I need,’ she groaned. ‘A flying closet!’

Her captor was about to add some observations of his own on the Doctor’s substandard TARDIS, when the earth started to shake.

‘Now what?’ cried Peri.

‘Merely the death throes of this blighted planet,’

observed the Kamelion-Master, as he dragged his victim across the creeping ground.

‘It’s now or never,’ thought Peri as she followed her leader for a few more deceptive paces, then, taking her cue from a further convulsion of the earth, sprung sideways.

But the metal Master followed her every movement, tightening his grip on her arm until Peri begged for mercy.

The large stone which fell from the wall onto the creature’s head missed the girl by inches. The Master’s surrogate toppled like a ninepin and Peri was away, pausing only to dodge around a yellow, fluted Corinthian column which the earthquake was rocking alarmingly.

In the pitching laboratory, the Master struggled to steady his precious machine, but, as his TARDIS finally keeled over, both Time Lord and metamorphosis projector, with the whole paraphernalia of the workroom, tumbled like dice.

Outside, a second column crashed onto the fallen TARDIS, and a third amidst a shower of loose stones. Pediment and entablature from the derelict colonnade thudded into the growing pile of masonry.

The Master’s TARDIS was well and truly buried.

The Master opened his eyes to find himself lying in the corner of his laboratory under a huge pile of equipment, his head aching vicariously from the blow to Kamelion. He got to his feet and looked round at the damage. The metamorphosis projector rested on its side in the centre of the wall which had now become the floor of the laboratory.

The Master righted the machine, which was his lifeline with his slave. He breathed a sigh of relief for there was no sign of malfunction. A few adjustments to the controls and Kamelion appeared in the coherer glass in the image of the evil Time Lord. ‘Excellent,’ he whispered as he increased the power. ‘Come, my Kamelion, revive!’

Kamelion clawed his way out of the mound of loose stones and mortar. He staggered to his feet and surveyed the general dilapidation. The Doctor’s police box, he observed ruefully, was unscathed, while blocks of carved stone, columns, capitals, the lintel of a door were piled above and around the toppled, yellow, time-machine. The robot struggled for a while with the enormous chunks of masonry, but, for all his amazing powers, he was not Superman.

But his
alter ego
in the trapped pillar was not dismayed.

‘Quickly,’ called the Time Lord. ‘Go to the Doctor’s machine and materialise that preposterous box inside my TARDIS.’

The Master’s other half hurried over to the blue police box and set the co-ordinates for the short journey while the Master speculated pleasurably on the Doctor’s dismay at finding himself without the amenities of a TARDIS in such an uncomfortable corner of the Universe.

It should have been simplicity itself to navigate the undamaged time-machine into the buried console room, but although the lights on the control panel flashed while the column jerked and the whole console grumbled and groaned with effort, the Doctor’s police box would not move.

In the nearby laboratory the Master was growing impatient.’why do you delay?Activate immediately!’ he called.

‘There is some malfunction,’ the metal Master replied.

‘There is always malfunction with the Doctor’s TARDIS. Override the disabled units.’

The Kamelion-Master began to extract circuit boards from the centre panel and soon spotted the cause of the trouble. ‘The comparator is missing!’

The Master gave a cry of anger. ‘The girl must have removed it while my control was weak. You must find her before she rejoins the Doctor!’ And he vowed that, come what may, the wretched child would die for her interference, marooned with the Doctor on the benighted planet of Sarn.

Peri had never seen a more forbidding place. The land was barren, devoid of colour, a slagheap that stretched as far as the eye could see. Smoke from the volcano on the horizon clouded the sky. If this was interplanetary travel she would stay at home in future.

She looked nervously back at the ruin. At least she had escaped that vile creature from the ship. There was a distant boom. Out of the frying pan into the fire, she thought morbidly, as the volcano rumbled. Unless she could find the Doctor and Turlough... With a stab of relief she spotted two tiny figures hiking across the black tufa, about half a mile away from where she had stopped to get her breath back. `Doctor! Turlough!’ she called. But it was a voice crying–quite literally–in the wilderness. The Doctor and Turlough continued, unaware of the girl’s frantic efforts to attract their attention.

But Peri wasn’t letting them out of her sight. She quickly abandoned the rough path that led away from the ruin to make a beeline for the distant explorers.

She soon learned the reason for the well worn track.

What had appeared to be a gentle slope ended in a precipice. A deep ravine lay between her and the Doctor.

Peri slithered to a halt, like a hang-glider pilot with second thoughts, on the edge of the drop. Several dislodged pieces of brittle rock and an avalanche of small stones cascaded over the cliff while Peri picked herself up and hurried back to the safety of the path.

The metal Master left the ruin in the opposite direction to that taken by the girl in whose pocket lay the vital comparator. The path followed by the robot led upward to high ground. Despite the loose rock and pumice the creature moved swiftly and had soon established himself on an excellent vantage point. As Kamelion looked slowly round, the Master’s evil smile contorted his plastic features. In the far distance he could just make out the Doctor and Turlough, followed, some way back, by Peri who was halfway along the winding ridge path. The steep hillside between the young American and her single-minded pursuer would present no problem to a robot. He would intercept the girl before she caught up with the Doctor.

The Kamelion-Master laughed and started down the cliff.

Peri ran as fast as she could along the narrow ridge path, desperately trying not to lose sight of the Doctor and Turlough. As she hurried along she noticed other buildings beside the track, smaller than the ruin they had arrived in, but equally derelict. Clearly, this was not a healthy place to live and she couldn’t wait to get out of it.

‘Doctor!’ She could see the man talking nineteen to the dozen with the rather sneaky boy who had pulled her from the sea. Why couldn’t they look back for a moment!

The track led downhill for a short section, and, to her dismay, Peri could no longer see the Doctor and Turlough.

She ran even faster, coming abruptly to a junction in the track. Instinctively Peri turned to the left... So much for female intuition! The new path ended almost immediately at a tumbledown gazebo perched on the cliff edge.

Peri had no time to admire any more ruins, however picturesque, nor the splendid view of the valley, but she was intrigued to see a large brass telescope, mounted on a tripod in the tiny courtyard of the observation post.

Perhaps there were people alive in this wilderness? She ran forward for a closer look.

The well polished spyglass was dust free and turned smoothly on its pan head. It was pointing back towards the ruin where the TARDIS had landed, and, as she looked through the eyepiece, Peri could see the blue police box and the fallen columns. No sign of the creature. She swung the instrument round hoping for a view of the Doctor and Turlough.

Something large and dark blurred across the lens. Peri fumbled for the focus. She slowly turned the knurled wheel, and in sharp perspective carne the smiling face of the Master.

‘My dear Peri!’

Peri leapt back from the tripod. The robot, in its least attractive shape, stood blocking the path.

‘How positively evanescent you have become.’ The creature was smiling sadistically. Peri took a nervous step back into the gazebo. ‘In fact your disappearance has caused me a great deal of trouble.’ The Master, still smiling, took a step forward.

‘Keep away from me,’ stammered the terrified American.

The smile vanished from the Master’s face. ‘You have removed a component from the Doctor’s TARDIS.’ In fact Peri had quite forgotten the tiny piece of circuity that the friendly version of the robot had given her back in the ship. It weighed more heavily on the Master’smind. ‘Give it back to me instantly!’ he commanded.

The small, key-shaped wafer meant nothing to Peri, but she instinctively knew that, once in the hands of this odious man-machine, the Master would have some power over the Doctor and Turlough. And Peri needed the Doctor, in possession of all his faculties, to take her home.

She edged towards a small wall at the end of the ruined belvedere. There was a sheer drop to the valley below.

The Master chuckled with pleasure at Penis predicament. But Miss P. Brown did not give in that easily.

She pulled the much sought after component from the pocket of her shorts and held it at arm’s length over the parapet. ‘Take one step nearer and you’ll never get this back!’

The Kamelion-Master stopped in his tracks. He had not expected such defiance–least of all from a mere girl. ‘If you damage the comparator, the Doctor’s TARDIS is useless,’

he warned.

Peri felt much better. The possession of this device gave her some bargaining power with the creature. ‘Then keep your distance,’ she retorted, starting to think she was in with a chance.

The Master, even as a robot, was not used to receiving orders. ‘Give that component to me!’ he blustered.

Peri stood her ground. ‘This thing belongs to the Doctor. So it’s the Doctor I give it to, or nobody.’ She even managed to deliver the ultimatum with a Puckish smile–

which enraged the Master.

‘You will obey me!’ he cried.

‘Negative,’ replied the recalcitrant Peri.

The Master could not believe such affrontery. ‘I am the Master!’ he declared, as if he were the Tsar of all Abe Russias. But this cut no ice with Peri who had been brought up on a college campus and was quite used to dealing with pompous little men who stamped their feet and behaved like spoilt children. ‘So what?’ she jeered. ‘I’m Perpugilliam Brown and I can shout just as loud as you can.’

The Master was so angry that the robot all but blew a fuse, and it was several moments before he could trust himself to speak. ‘Peri, be reasonable.’ He now used his velvet voice, adding an instant smile like a dab of lipstick.

‘Without the comparator you can never return to Earth.’

The young American did not move.

‘Do you wish to stand here until the planet is destroyed!’ The Master was beginning to lose his temper again.

Peri was thinking fast. Somehow she had to break the stalemate. She remembered the effect that her anxiety had had upon the robot inside the TARDIS. Perhaps if she concentrated hard enough...

‘Well, answer!’ shouted the Master impatiently.

‘Kamelion!’ cried Peri, staring straight into the Master’s eyes and willing the friendly robot to appear in his place.

‘Come on, Kamelion. Show me your real self!’

‘No!’ The robot Master felt the power of her will and raised his hand across his face.

Peri was delighted; it was all in the mind. ‘Kamelion!

Kamelion!’ she called, exalting in her new found influence.

‘Kamelion! Howard! Anybody!’

The Master’s features began to blur, his voice lost its human timbre. ‘Resist... obey... resist... obey,’ he repeated mechanically.

Peri could just make out the ghost of the genuine robot superimposed on the shimmering figure of the Master.

‘Come on, Kamelion, you can do it,’ she urged.

In the laboratory, the real Master was beside himself with fury. His own image had gone from the glass.

Kamelion had succumbed to the power of the wretched stowaway from the Doctor’s TARDIS. He tried to boost the metamorphosis projector. ‘Kamelion,’ he called. ‘My slave! Resist! Have I travelled a billion light years through time and space to be thwarted by this brat?’

Kamelion did not answer.

‘Resist the girl!’ the Master screamed. ‘Kill her immediately!’

Kamelion stood, shining impotently at the entrance of the gazebo. He was without motivation, identity or any recognisable shape, halfway between pure robot and metamorphic projection.

‘Stay where you are, Kamelion,’ whispered Peri, appealing to the machine’s better nature. ‘I’m your friend.’

But, friend or foe, Peri was keeping as clear as possible from the dazzling creature that still blocked the path to safety. She dropped behind some of the fallen stones and crawled, unseen by Kamelion, to the far corner of the ruined pavilion. Here the parapet had fallen away and gave access to a section of the cliff that was almost climbable.

Mountaineering had never been one of Miss Brown’s accomplishments, but there was a first time for everything.

With a glance back at the stricken automaton, Peri launched herself into the abyss.

6

Timanov insisted that the Watchman return with him to the pagoda. As soon as they were inside Malkon’s apartments he pressed for more details of what he had seen through the eye of the telescope.

‘A sort of blue box,’ said the young man.