Doctor Who: Planet of Fire (11 page)

‘I’ll take care of the Doctor,’ said Amyand, pointing to his sabre.

‘There’s not much you can do against laser guns,’ said the Doctor’s companion. rolling up his sleeve. ‘But if they see this...’

The Doctor stared at the brand on the boy’s arm. ‘Does everyone from Trion have that mark?’

‘No,’ said Turlough enigmatically. ‘You have to be very special to wear the Misos Triangle’. Unwilling to continue the conversation, he led the way through the black fissure in the wall of the cave.

The Doctor noticed the smell of sulphur in the tunnel was now stronger. It seemed warmer, too. As they hurried on through the narrow cleft he tried to puzzle out what had happened to the Master that he should need Kamelion’s help so badly.

‘Perhaps he’s into another regeneration crisis?’

speculated Turlough.

‘His current body must be good for a few more years yet,’ said the Doctor, wishing heartily that the evil Gallifreyan was indeed near the end of his unnaturally prolonged life. ‘No,’ he added. ‘There must be another reason.’

The Master knew that Kamelion was returning. He could feel the approach of his
alter ego
, together with the band of primitives who would swiftly release his TARDIS. He laughed at the good fortune that had brought him to Sarn.

Not only was he to be reunited with his slave, but the TARDIS sensors indicated a transforming power on the planet beyond anything he could create in his laboratory.

He peered into the viewer, eager for the arrival of his rescuers.

The crocodile of Sarns wound along the ridge path like pious Athenians on the Sacred Way to the Acropolis. So much walking in one day had exhausted the Elders, but the Outsider would not let them rest. Peri, still in the savage grip of the automaton, glanced anxiously in the direction of the volcano, now venting continuous black smoke.

Timanov entered the ruin, gasping for breath, but he forgot his discomfort as soon as he saw the blue box–a most remarkable object. To his surprise, the Outsider gave the divine transporter hardly a glance, going directly to a pile of masonry in the far corner. ‘Beneath that rubble,’ he announced, ‘is an object of incomparable value. A gift from Logar,’ he added quickly, remembering the orthodox susceptibilities of his labourers.

Inside his TARDIS laboratory the real Master was busy bracing his equipment for the lifting of his precious column.

Outside, the Sarns toiled to move the many tons of rubble and stone that had collasped on the Master’s time-machine during the earthquake. The children scavenged the small bricks and debris whilst the women conveyed away the light stones in a human chain, the men levering apart the heavy blocks and pillars, to reveal at the bottom of the heap a yellowing, Corinthian column with a door in the side.

‘A pillar of stone?’ cried Timanov in dismay.

‘A TARDIS!’ The Kamelion-Master smiled with satisfaction. ‘I am most grateful.’

Peri was now very worried, for there was still no sign of the Doctor and Turlough. If she was abducted by this Master, her chances of seeing New York again were nil.

‘You realise this creature is about to do a bunk?’ she said, trying to stir up trouble between the Master’s robot and the Chief Elder–only to wince with sudden pain as the steel hand of her captor tightened around her wrist.

But Timanov, who was growing more and more suspicious of the Outsider’s strange behaviour, needed no promoting from the American. ‘The Outsider will not leave without rewarding his faithful Sarns,’ he warned.

The metal Master gave him an icy smile. ‘As my word is my bond, Chief Elder, this is the day of reckoning for us all.’ He took a step towards his TARDIS as the strongest men of Sarn began to haul on the ropes they had attached around the top of the column.

Inside, the Master clutched the metamorphosis projector as he felt the whole laboratory shake, then tilt like a beached yacht yielding to the incoming tide. Slowly the room revolved until floor, ceiling and floor were, once more, in their rightful positions.

‘At last!’ The Kamelion-Master surveyed the upright column with immense satisfaction, and tugged Peri towards the door.

‘Don’t let him escape!’ screamed the girl.

‘Where are the gifts?’ protested Timanov angrily, little suspecting that both Outsider and stone pillar were about to disappear into thin air.

‘Gullible idiots!’ The robot Master laughed in the face of the disappointed Elders and dragged the struggling Peri through the entrance.

‘We’re too late!’ cried Turlough, running into the ruin with the Doctor and Amyand, just in time to see the door of the Master’s TARDIS slam shut.

The Doctor was already running towards the blue police box. ‘I’m going to materialise around him,’ he shouted as he ran. But he had reckoned without six angry, disillusioned Elders, who were less than mollified to see three prisoners from the cave at liberty, and were about to assault the great box. They rushed to the Doctor’s TARDIS, laser guns at the ready.

Pushing Amyand and the Doctor between himself and the police box, Turlough turned to face the old men. ‘It is the will of Logar that you obey me,’ he announced in a grave voice. ‘Put up your staves, for I am your new Chosen One.’ He raised his arm in a Nazi-style salute to display, on his underarm, the brand of the Misos Triangle.

There was consternation amongst the Elders. Could the mantle of the dead Malkon really have fallen on this heretic? Timanov examined the embossed triangles. It was beyond doubt the authentic mark of Logar.

‘What are you waiting for?’ Turlough nudged the Doctor towards the TARDIS door.

‘The box is sacred to Logar,’ protested Timanov. ‘It may not be profaned by his enemies.’

‘The Doctor is no enemy,’ replied their self-appointed leader. ‘He is the rightful custodian of the box.’

The Elders continued to hold the Doctor and Amyand in their sights, though they dared not point the deadly lasers at Turlough, for no one dared kill a second Chosen One.

‘Who is this Doctor?’ asked Timanov, still suspicious of the young man by the box.

‘He has been sent to help you. You have been cheated by the false Outsider.’ Turlough stepped forward in front of the lasers and pushed Amyand and the Doctor into the TARDIS. ‘Will you compound the murder of Malkon by defying your new leader!’ he shouted, hoping no trembling finger would pull the trigger.

As Amyand stared in wonder at the interior of the TARDIS control room, the Doctor hastily replaced the comparator and set the co-ordinates that would reconfigure the TARDIS around the nearby column, while Amyand, via the scanner screen, watched Turlough haranguing the old men.

The Doctor glanced up and saw his worried look. ‘We only need a few moments and the TARDIS will provide a spectacular diversion,’ he explained as he activated the the dematerialisation control, whereupon the column shook and shuddered and corruscated with lights. Amyand was frightfully impressed, but not so the Doctor. ‘We’re stuck!’

he cried, diving under the console. ‘Oh, no,’ he wailed, his head inside the pedestal. ‘The temporal limiter has been disconnected.’ He got wearily to his feet. ‘Another old trick of the Master!’

‘Just like the Doctor’s,’ said Peri, looking round the Master’s control room.

`But infinitely superior,’ sneered the Kamelion-Master.

‘As I am to that galactic philanthropist.’

‘I have computed the source of the power,’ came the voice from the laboratory. ‘Set these co-ordinates.’

As the automaton began pressing buttons on the console, Peri stared at the screen where she had seen the Doctor and Turlough arrive at their police box. Her heart sank, as the barrel in the centre of the room began to rise and fall and the image disappeared from the viewer.

Revelling in her dismay, the robot Master produced a round object from his pocket and, with a sadistic laugh, explained how the Doctor’s machine was inoperable.

The column was still, and a new view appeared on the scanner. While Peri peered at the gloomy cavern on the screen, wondering to what infernal region the creature had transported her, the metal Master left the control room, to return staggering under the weight of a large box which he placed on the floor beside the console. Peri could just perceive a faint humming above the ambient noise of the TARDIS. ‘It’s your control box, isn’t it?’ she said disparagingly. ‘Forward, reverse, stop, like a toy train.’

‘Very perceptive, my dear,’ the Kamelion-Master replied as he opened the double doors. ‘But the real power of my control is well beyond your inadequate comprehension.’

The mocking smile left his face as he produced a sinister, black tube. ‘No more childish heroics, if you please,’ he advised as he directed her to the entrance.

They appeared to have arrived in the Hall of the Mountain King–or at least, thought Peri, in his boiler room. Everywhere, in the massive cathedral of a cavern, were ducts and conduits, cables and pipes of all sizes and shapes. Tubes and flues zigzagged across the walls and under gridded floors. At one side of the cave a column of fire rose from a vent, right up to a chimney in the high, rock roof. There was a continuous rumbling all around them and the floor vibrated like the deck of an ocean liner.

‘Where are we?’ said Peri nervously.

In the heart of the volcano.’ The Master waved her towards a large control desk on a raised dais.

Peri stood her ground. ‘Look, if I’m to help you I want to know what you’re doing and what happens to me when...’

‘You will obey me without question!’ the Kamelion-Master interrupted angrily.

‘You said that once before,’ Peri answered smartly back.

hoping to regain mental superiority over the robot.

But the girl had more than the evil will power of the Master to contend with. ‘Perhaps you doubt the efficacy of this device,’ said the automaton, raising the black object.

He turned to the wall of the cave where Peri could see three silver suits and helmets suspended from supports in the rock. ‘Allow me to demonstrate the Tissue Compression Eliminator’. There was a red glow. First one, then another of what Peri took to be space suits, started to shrink, smaller and smaller, until each was a miniature of itself, fit only for a doll’s wardrobe. ‘The same will happen to you, my dear,’ threatened the Master as Peri followed him obediently to the central control desk.

She looked at the views of the valley below the volcano that appeared on monitor screens set into the desk. At least the Master hadn’t taken her very far. She could even see a speck of blue in the distant ruin–the Doctor’s TARDIS!

The robot laughed when he realised what she was looking at. ‘A modest thunderbolt. I think!’ He pressed a lever and there was a distant rumble. The Kamelion-Master zoomed the picture in to give a closer view of the police box. Peri could hardly believe her eyes. The Doctor’s machine was shaking, while debris rained down from the surrounding colonnade. The Master had precipitated an earthquake!

The man in the black suit smiled. ‘The entire power of the mountain is under my command,’ he announced casually, as he started to remove a panel from the desk.

‘Enough of games.’ He knelt beside the desk and indicated that Peri should help slide back the metal casing. ‘I am here for more serious work.’

After a moment of appraisal the robot proceeded to connect and reconnect various units and modules, some of which he removed entirely and handed to his pressganged assistant, before replacing in a different configuration. Peri shuddered to think what fearful power he intended to unleash.

The Master grunted with satisfaction and crawled out of the desk, the Tissue Compression Eliminator still firmly in his hand. He began to programme a keyboard on the edge of the desk. There was a gentle singing sound from across the cavern. The corona of flame from the vent had turned blue.

‘Excellent!’ the Kamelion-Master watched the plume of phosphorescence with great satisfaction. ‘We now have control of one of the greatest energy forces in the Universe.’

‘A blue flame?’ said Peri, unimpressed.

‘Numismaton, my dear,’ said the Master-figure excitedly. ‘An immensely rare catalyctic reagent from deep inside the planet.’ The singing died down and the flame burned bright and hot once more. ‘A mere test burning,’

observed the robot. ‘When the full surge comes, I shall be ready to absorb its infinite transforming power!’

‘And I shall be transformed into a very dead Peri,’

thought Peri, suspecting that the Master would soon find his young assistant irresistibly dispensable. For a moment the metal Master had relaxed, and stood complacently admiring his handiwork. The Tissue Compression Eliminator had drooped in his grasp. It was now or never.

Peri decided she enjoyed being the size she was far too much to risk grabbing the weapon. Perhaps she could create a diversion... She leaned forward over the complex controls and ran her hand wildly over the knobs and buttons as haphazardly as a kitten dancing on the piano keys.

The Master snarled with rage and would have killed her instantly, but he needed to repair the sabotage. As the rumbling and roaring echoed through the cavern, Peri darted from the dais, across the cave and behind a large metal chimney.

For several seconds the Kamelion-Master was totally occupied calming the mighty giant that Peri had awoken.

As soon as the power was checked, he reached for the Tissue Compression Eliminator to put an end to the child’s impudent pranks.

A red glow shrivelled a pipe beside Peri’s hiding place–

the robot was after her. She could see, in the distance, an entrance to the cave, but she would never make it alive.

She dodged behind another rank of pipes. The Master fired, missing her by centimetres, then strode from the control desk to flush his quarry from cover.

Peri dropped to her knees and crawled behind a ventilator unit. She peered out. Directly opposite, the Master’s TARDIS offered the only possible sanctuary. She leaped forward, expecting at any moment to feel the annihilating glow of the Master’s vile device.

‘Peri!’ shouted the robot, unable to fire without hitting his own TARDIS.