Doctor Who: The Rescue (14 page)

Bennett smiled contemptuously. ‘You may as well give up old man,’ he jeered. ‘Why not make it all much easier for both of us? Stay where you are and let me finish off this unpleasant little business with the minimum of fuss.’

Just then the Doctor caught sight of the torch lying where it had been kicked in the previous scuffle against the base of the altar. Playing for time, he gave a conciliatory smile. ‘Mr Bennett, do you spell your name with one “t” or two?’ he inquired calmly.

‘What possible significance could that have for you?’

The Doctor shrugged and edged very slowly round towards the torch. ‘Oh, I just wondered whether you were related to the great Bennet, the cosmological engineer,’ he said casually trying to hook the torch towards him with his toe. ‘You
have
heard of the Bennet Oscillator of course?’

Bennett hesitated, uncertain how to react to this.

‘No? Oh well, perhaps it hasn’t been invented yet,’ the Doctor said, dragging the torch nearer. ‘A beautifully simple but highly effective device.’

‘You are quite mad!’ Bennett breathed, starting to advance slowly round the altar.

The Doctor jack-knifed at the waist, picked up the torch and straightened up again. Switching on the torch, he was relieved to find that it was still functioning. He flashed the powerful beam into Bennett’s eyes.

‘It works!’ he cried. ‘Or rather it will when it has been invented, on the principle of photon inertia using a small array of multiply vectored lasers,’ he babbled on, backing away towards the huge pillars leading to the entrance. ‘I do hope I’m not blinding you with science, Mr Bennett?’

Bennett shouted out in frustration, shielding his eyes from the brutal glare as he tried to pursue the retreating figure of the Doctor.

‘I refuse to believe that there is not at least
some
good in everybody,’ the Doctor continued, talking nineteen to the dozen. ‘So who knows? Perhaps one of your distant descendents will give the world the Bennet Oscillator. Let us hope so.’

‘I have no children!’ Bennett spat with savage scorn. ‘It would be madness to bring new life onto a doomed and poisoned Earth. I am not prepared to do it!’

The Doctor felt his way around the first pillar. ‘Most alturistic of you. But you
are
prepared to take life away, it seems.’

Bennett kicked the bulky Koquillion garb out of his way and the talons skidded across the floor squealing and hissing against the glazed slabs. ‘What do you know about me?’ he snapped between hard white teeth.

‘You are a self-confessed murderer. You have even succeeded in misusing a peaceful tool developed by Didonian technologists as a weapon!’ the Doctor retorted as Bennett’s boots crunched over the remains of the sonic laser.

‘I killed in self-defence,’ Bennett protested.

‘On which occasion?’ the Doctor demanded sardonically, backing towards the next pillar nearer the entrance.

Bennett stopped. ‘On the mission... Eight years cooped up with McQuade... He was high...

Deoxyphenylsulphonates... I caught him trying to alter the navigation programme... But I was too late... We were forced to divert here to Dido... It was McQuade...’ Bennett clenched his huge hands and his big body shook with rage.

The Doctor paused, puzzled. ‘Then if you were acting in defence of the
Astra Nine
and its personnel, why should you want to conceal McQuade’s death by even more killings? It seems a curious method of defending people.

They perished anyway.’

Bennett rushed at the Doctor. ‘I don’t have to justify myself to you, you senile old fool!’ he snarled savagely.

Taken by surprise, the Dpctor attempted to turn and flee but he was cornered against the pillar. He struck out at Bennett’s crazed face with the torch, but next moment Bennett’s powerful hands closed around his throat. ‘Then why bother?’ he gasped, his grip on the torch loosening and his arms lolling at his sides as Bennett’s grip tightened.

‘The others got in my way, just like you...’ Bennett growled, his eyes goggling with hysterical passion. ‘Why do people always have to interfere?’

The Doctor wanted to reply that he had often asked himself exactly the same question, but he was unable to speak or even gasp, so tight was Bennett’s crushing grip around his windpipe. His knees buckled and he slowly slid down the pillar, his face fixed in a purplish mask of mute desperation as he stared pop-eyed at his assailant. Bennett’s face was frozen in a trancelike spasm of raw hatred as he squeezed the breath out of the feebly twitching busybody.

Gradually the Doctor’s body went limp and hung in Bennett’s hands like a bundle of old clothes in a jumble sale.

Bennett gazed blankly at his victim for a moment. Then his eyes filled with uncertainty and fear. His hands slackened around the Doctor’s throat and he half-turned his head as he heard strange soft sounds behind him. With a hollow moan, the Doctor slumped onto his side at the base of the pillar and lay deathly still and silent. Bennett swung on his heel with a startled cry and then he began to back away, shaking his head and making odd little gibbering noises as he gaped in horror at something standing on the altar. ‘No... no... no... You are all dead... I killed you all... You are all dead... !’ he suddenly shrieked.

The tall silver figures had appeared on the altar as if from nowhere, like gods. Their lithe frames, more than two metres in height, shimmered in the shafts of coloured light reflected from the altar slabs. Their emerald eyes stared expressionlessly in Bennett’s direction, but seemed to look right through him as if he did not exist. Their suits reflected the surroundings like mirrors and Bennett gazed at his own awestruck and terrified face frozen in the dazzling sheen of the material. It was as though the things had stolen his image, even his very identity, and left him an empty shell.

Bennett glanced at the entrance. It was still closed and he had not heard the ear-splitting shriek of its hinges.

‘How did you... get in here?’ he stammered, breaking out in an icy sweat.

He tried to distinguish their features, but as always the things seemed to have none, the brightness of their silver suits somehow making their faces fade into insignificance except for the circular eyes which gave nothing away. ‘Why don’t you ever answer?’ Bennett yelled, beating his fists together in frustration.

The figures continued to stare through him, silent and absolutely motionless.

Bennet was unnerved by their silence and he began to panic. ‘I could help you...’ he offered, in a pathetically submissive voice, taking a few hesitant steps towards the altar. ‘Your civilisation is in ruins. I could work for you.

We could restore all the magnificence...’

Bennett’s voice cracked into silence as the two figures suddenly moved forward and stepped down onto the floor, their slender limbs suggestive of enormous strength and suppleness.

Sweating and trembling, Bennett continued to gibber and gesticulate helplessly as he backed away from the inexorably advancing figures. Suddenly they separated, and by moving swiftly in opposite directions round the altar, trapped him in front of one of the thrones which formed the corners of the octagonal structure. Terrified out of his wits, the big man clambered up onto the stone seat still mouthing meaningless words and phrases at the silent relentless beings. Then he stepped up onto the central slab and moved slowly into the centre, as if he was steeling himself to make a break for it across the altar and up the length of the huge chamber to the stone door.

One of the figures put its silver gloved hand onto the arm of the throne. There was a sharp crack, like the sound of a whiplash, and the top of the altar snapped open like a huge black mouth. Bennett was suspended for a moment in mid air, like a character stepping off a cliff in a cartoon film. ‘I killed you all... I killed you
all
...’ he croaked.

Then he vanished into the void, the sickening thump of his body against the sides of the shaft echoing time and time again, until at last it was swallowed up in darkness and silence.

With another whiplash crack the altar snapped shut.

The two silver figures turned abruptly and strode back to the pillar where the Doctor lay motionless and pale as chalk. Their eyes brilliant in the subdued light, the figures stooped over him and stretched out their jerkily clasping hands.

The Doctor’s eyes flickered open for a moment and he stared dully at the two blurred things which kept merging and separating crazily in the air above him.

His mouth opened as if he was about to speak. Then it sagged shut and his eyes closed again, as though for the last time.

The
Seeker
Mission was in serious trouble. In the navigation module First Deputy Weinberger and Trainee Oliphant sat shoulder to shoulder at the console trying to work out what was wrong.

‘It cannot be the mach inertia system or the laser gyros,’

Oliphant reported, sitting back in his padded seat and rubbing his tired bloodshot eyes. ‘They all check good.’

Weinberger nodded up at the incredibly detailed galactic neighbourhood chart shimmering on the wide curved screen above their heads. ‘Beats me, son. There is no apparent malfunction anywhere, but we are fifty per cent further away from Dido than we should be and we were tracking thirteen microarcs off true course before we corrected.’ The big American brushed his bristling crewcut and chewed his gum morosely. ‘I surely would love to know what we encountered back there.’

Oliphant shrugged and tapped the miniature hologram plate beside him on the console. ‘Freak reception perhaps.’

Weinberger stared at him and then emitted a snort of derision. ‘A ghost?’

‘It has been known to happen.’

Weinberger chewed impatiently, waiting for his latest systems check to report on one of the monitors. ‘You’ll be talking about collisions with flying pigs next,’ he growled.

Oliphant leaned over and touched some keys on the hologram board. ‘Thank you!’ he exclaimed brightly. ‘You have solved the next clue. It is
porcine
.’

Weinberger scowled blankly at the young trainee.

‘Porcine?’

‘Pigs... To do with... Flying or otherwise... Porcine.’

Weinberger clenched his big hands. ‘Okay wise guy, just you get back on the radio to those jokers on Dido.’

‘But they are not on communications watch, Mr Weinberger. We advised them to conserve power if you remember.’

Weinberger’s cold eyes lit up dangerously. ‘I said try them!’ he snapped. ‘And keep trying them. We could use a reference fix to confirm what this heap of garbage is telling us.’ He waved his arm at the complex installations surrounding them.

Oliphant stared at his superior. ‘But Mr Weinberger, we have performed the necessary course corrections.’

‘As a result of a close encounter with what exactly, Mr Oliphant?’

The trainee hesitated, suddenly less sure than before.

‘An anomalous monopole field I suppose...’

‘And the blue box?’

There was a long silence. Weinberger’s monitor was still blank.

Then Oliphant sniggered uneasily. ‘You will be speculating about aliens next.’

Weinberger stopped chewing and leaned forward until his face almost touched Oliphant’s. ‘Never underestimate the possibility of it,’ he warned menacingly. ‘Remember, we still have no idea what happened to
Astra Nine
. That’s the only reason we have been diverted to Dido.’

Oliphant looked shocked and incredulous.

‘Oh yes, don’t fool yourself,’ Weinberger went on, his voice hardening even more. ‘Don’t imagine that Intergalax is spending all this money just to pick up a couple of castaways. Our job is to find out exactly what went wrong.

That is all that really matters.’ He turned back to his monitor just as it began to show the results of his umpteenth systems check. ‘Now, do as I tell you, Oliphant.

See if you can raise
Astra Nine
and get us a fix.’

The three trapped humans had made a bold decision. Now that the route back to the ruins was blocked by the stone shutter which had slammed down behind Barbara, they had agreed to forge on into the mountain in the hope of discovering the cavern where the TARDIS had materialised, or at least another route back to the surface.

While they had been holding their whispered conference, a sinister shifting sound had started in the bottom of the funnel behind them. No sooner had they reached their decision, than a hissing and boiling turbulence erupted in the dark chasm and as they turned, the glistening spherical head with its tiny gleaming red eyes burst out of the hole and reared up, its lurid pink mouth yawning hungrily in their faces.

Ian grabbed the girls and set off down the ramp, running recklessly into the gloom and heedless of the danger of more obstacles or traps possibly lying in their path. The wide ramp sloped steadily down at an angle for hundreds of metres and the three fugitives were vaguely aware of alcoves and tunnels branching off at intervals to left and right, but they did not stop to investigate so determined were they to get away from the hissing horror in its gaping pit. They did not notice the decaying ruins of elaborate underground constructions lying in the shadows under layers of choking dust. Their only concern was to reach the faint glow of light now visible at the end of the ramp.

When at last they did reach the end they found themselves in a kind of vast natural amphitheatre under the hazy light of the three moons. They gaped around them in awed amazement. The ramp emerged into a flat-bottomed crater at least two kilometres wide which was almost exactly circular. The steeply sloped sides rose more than three hundred metres all the way round, and near the end of the ramp a wide paved road began its gradual spiral climb round and round the curving walls of the crater until it finally reached the ridge.

Set into the crater walls all along the spiral road were the shells of huge buildings with facades made of glass, plastic and metallic materials. But the most awe-inspiring feature was the colossal tower in the centre of the amphitheatre. Also built of metal and plastic and glass, its broad glittering mass rose level with the ridge and was connected to the wide highway by dozens of slender bridges radiating out like the spokes of a gigantic wheel.