Doctor Who: Space War (15 page)

As Jo stepped back her arms were pinioned by an Ogron. Ogrons appeared out of the gloom from all sides.

‘What do you mean?’ she shouted defiantly. ‘You’re the one who’s trapped. I’ve given your position away.’

The Master glanced at the papers on his table. ‘You mean those planetary co-ordinates I left for you to find, my dear?’

She gasped. ‘They were fakes?’

‘On the contrary, they’re perfectly accurate. But you see this is a short-range transmitter. No one will have picked up your message unless they’re within a few hundred miles of this planet.’

Jo felt deflated. ‘No one heard me?’

The Master grinned. ‘Your friend the Doctor must have heard you. At the moment he’s orbiting the planet in a small scout craft. I picked him up on radar some time ago.’

‘How do you know it’s the Doctor?’

‘Who else could it be? You see, when the Doctor arrives we shall be waiting for him. So you’ve been very useful to me.’ The Master turned one of the knobs on his radio equipment. The radio started to emit a regular bleep. ‘That’s so he won’t get lost. He’ll think this horning signal comes from you, Miss Grant.’

The Master snapped his fingers. The Ogron holding Jo started to lead her away.

‘Oh, by the way, Miss Grant,’ said the Master. ‘I must congratulate you on escaping, which is exactly what I wanted you to do. But from now on, you’ll be kept under guard. You’ve escaped for the last time, Miss Grant. In fact, I’d say this is the last day of your short and rather eventful life.’

The scout spaceship from Earth made a perfect soft landing on grey sand. Five minutes earlier the pilot had picked up the regular bleeps of what was obviously a homing signal. By manoeuvring the craft, finding the signal sometimes weak and at other times strong, he had narrowed its source to an area of one square mile. Within that area he chose the best possible landing place. From here the party would have to walk, using a pocket receiver to locate in detail where the homing bleeps emanated from.

Alighting from the General’s spaceship, the Draconian Prince looked at their inhospitable surroundings. ‘I can well understand why neither of us showed any desire to occupy this planet.’ He turned to the General. ‘In future both Draconia and Earth must maintain constant surveys of these uninhabited planets, to ensure no one is making unlawful use of them.’

‘If there is a future,’ growled the General. ‘For all we know, during our absence our two empires may already have wiped each other out.’ He caught sight of the Doctor standing some yards away. apparently staring at the sand. ‘Doctor, if you could resist day-dreaming we need to complete our mission.’

‘Come over here,’ called the Doctor. ‘Look at this.’

The General and the Prince, followed by the group of Earth soldiers, crossed to where the Doctor was studying huge footprints in the sand.

‘According to your records,’ said the Doctor, ‘one dominant life-form. Let’s hope we don’t meet it.’

‘We are all armed,’ the General said confidently.

‘We should still hope.’ The Doctor turned on the little receiver brought from the spaceship. A regular
bleep-bleep
came from its loudspeaker. By turning the receiver he found the point at which the signal was strongest. ‘This way,’ he said, leading the party. ‘Towards those bushes and rocks.’

As they trudged through the sand, the General asked, ‘Doctor, has it occurred to you what we’re going to do when we find the source of this signal?’

‘No idea, old chap. It depends what we find when we get there.’ The Doctor paused, staring at the bushes just ahead.

‘What is it?’

‘I thought I saw something move. Let’s hope it was only a baby lizard.’

The group continued forward until there were rocks and bushes on both sides. ‘I’he ground was firmer now and they were able to make better progress.

‘It occurs to me,’ said the Prince, ‘that if these lizards are savage they must eat flesh. Therefore they
developed
as flesh eaters, which means there must have been flesh for them to eat. Is it possible, therefore, that the Ogrons have been here a very long time—’

An Ogron suddenly appeared from behind a rock, aiming a heavy blaster gun at the group. ‘Stop! Surrender!’

General Williams shouted. ‘Take cover! ‘

Everyone in the party dived behind bushes and rocks as a group of twenty or more Ogrons emerged firing their blaster guns. The Doctor, who had refused the offer of a weapon, found himself behind a stumpy bush with the Draconian Prince. Despite the hail of fire from the Ogrons, the Prince carefully took aim each time before squeezing the trigger of his gun to send a wave of fatal energy into the Ogrons he selected to kill.

The brief battle was terminated by the roar of one of the planet’s giant Ogron-eating lizards. Its great head and shoulders suddenly appeared in the Doctor’s view as it reared up from behind rocks. The shape of the head, reminiscent of Earth’s one-time
tyrannosaurus rex
, with savage shark teeth angled backwards into the mouth, was the same grey colour of the sand and rocks. Different from Earth’s most vicious reptile, this lizard’s upper limbs were long and mobile, ending in enormous seven-fingered claws.

All the Ogrons turned at the sound of the lizard’s roaring approach. Unruffled by the creature’s appearance, and working strictly to the rules of military opportunism, the Draconian Prince promptly shot dead two Ogrons in the back. The creature roared again, as though it knew the mesmerising effect this had on its victims, leaned forward, picked up a stupefied Ogron and popped him in its mouth. At the sight of their comrade being eaten, the Ogrons dropped their blaster guns and ran for their lives. The lizard, its huge mouth dripping with blood, disappeared from the Doctor’s view. The Earth party remained in cover for some moments. From the distance they could hear the screams and cries of the retreating Ogrons and the roars of the lizard in pursuit.

General Williams emerged from his hiding place. He was badly shaken by what he had just seen, but quickly recovered himself. He looked at two dead Earth soldiers. ‘Which way, Doctor?’

‘Straight ahead, General.’ The Doctor looked at the two dead soldiers. ‘I’m very sorry.’

‘We shall take them back with us,’ said the General. ‘That is our custom.’

The party went forward.

The Master spoke deferentially into the microphone of his communications equipment. ‘Yes. I admit there have been setbacks. But I have now lured the Doctor to my trap. With your help we shall have no further difficulties. I await your arrival with the greatest pleasure and will meet your ship at the landing place.’

He switched off the transmitter. An Ogron entered.

‘Well, where’s the Doctor?’ asked the Master.

‘The big lizard came.’

‘And I suppose you ran like rabbits?’ The Master turned to leave the cave-room. ‘You will answer for this to your masters.’

The Ogron looked startled. ‘
They
are coming?’

‘Yes,’ the Master hissed in the Ogron’s face. ‘They’re on their way. Fortunately I can now dispense with your assistance.’ The Master hurried away to meet the new arrivals.

‘
They
are coming,’ the Ogron said to himself. ‘
They
arc coming!’ The significance of this finally penetrated his tiny mind. He hurried away into a gloomy corridor, very worried.

‘That sound,’ said the Draconian Prince. ‘Another ship is surely landing.’

The party paused to listen. By the approaching roar of rocket motors it was clearly a spaceship landing fairly close to them.

General Williams suggested, ‘Perhaps someone else picked up your young friend’s May Day message.’

‘Perhaps,’ said the Doctor thoughtfully. ‘I wonder...’

‘What is it?’ asked the General.

The Doctor shrugged. ‘I just had a feeling, some kind of premonition. Anyway, let’s press on.’ He held up the little receiver. The bleeps were very strong now. ‘It seems we must go through this valley. I suggest we all be on our guard.’

As they went forward again the ground on both sides rose in big rock-covered shoulders. Some distance ahead were cliffs and the Doctor thought he could see the mouths of caves. Between them and the cliffs lay huge boulders, as though some giant had cast pebbles along the floor of the valley.

The General looked up at the sides of the valley. ‘That’s where we should be, Doctor, with a commanding view—’

The Master suddenly stepped out from behind a boulder a few yards ahead of the party. ‘Hello, Doctor! There you are at long last!’

General Williams raised an arm to halt his party. ‘Surrender or you will be shot down!’ He aimed his blaster gun to fire.

‘No! ‘ said the Doctor. ‘He’s unarmed.’

‘Thank you. Doctor,’ called the Master. ‘Always the good pacifist. I am unarmed, but not alone. I’ve brought some old friends along to meet you.’

As he spoke a Dalek glided out from behind the boulder, its deadly firing weapon trained on the Doctor.

‘Don’t do anything rash, Doctor,’ shouted the Master. ‘Look around you.’

The Doctor looked up at the rising ground. On all sides Daleks had appeared.

‘What are these machines?’ asked General Williams. ‘He says they’re your friends.’

‘The Master’s little joke,’ replied the Doctor. ‘No, they’re not machines, not exactly. They are what remains of one of the greatest species of the galaxy. Unfortunately they turned to war, a terrible conflict of nuclear weapons. It backfired on them. Through mutation they started to decay. Realising that soon only their brains would be left, they devised these mobile domes that you see now all around us. In their bitterness they became the most vicious, ruthless creatures ever to live in Space. They are my most deadly enemies.’

‘Then they must be destroyed,’ said General Williams. He called to his soldiers, ‘Open fire!’

Before the Earth soldiers could raise their weapons, the Daleks had fired on them. Williams tried to raise his blaster gun but the Doctor knocked it from his hands.

‘It’s no good, General. We must submit.’

The Doctor, General Williams and the Draconian Prince were led into the main meeting cave of the Ogrons’ stronghold. A Dalek was waiting. It addressed the Doctor in a harsh, mechanical monotone.

‘Doctor, you are in the power of the Daleks. You will be taken to our planet and exterminated.’ Even the Ogrons present quavered at the deathly sound of the Dalek’s voice.

‘If I may speak,’ said the Master. ‘This man has been my enemy as well as yours. He does not fear death. I wish him to suffer a worse punishment. Leave him with me so that he can see the results of the war which my cunning and skill has created. Let him see the galaxy, including that planet Earth he loved so well, in ruins. Then exterminate him.’

The Dalek turned towards the Master. ‘He will re-main your prisoner until the war is concluded. Then you will bring him to us. We shall return to our planet now and prepare the army of the Daleks.’ The Dalek glided away down a corridor into the darkness beyond.

‘I suppose I should thank you,’ the Doctor told the Master. ‘You seem to have saved my life.’

‘Not for long, Doctor. It will be a very short war.’ The Master turned to the Ogron guards. ‘Take him away.’

The Doctor was put into the cell with Jo, who promptly flung her arms round him. General Williams and the Prince were placed in the adjacent cell. The hole Jo had dug was filled in with rocks.

‘These Dalek creatures,’ the Prince spoke through the bars. ‘Why do they wish to set my people against Earth?’

‘Because war will mean the end of both empires,’ explained the Doctor. ‘The Dalcks will emerge as supreme rulers.’

‘Doctor,’ Jo said excitedly, tugging at his sleeve, ‘I’ve got one of those things. Look! I stole it when I escaped for a while.’ She produced the dull grey box, keeping it well out of sight of the Ogron guard on the other side of the bars.

‘What is it?’

‘You know,’ she whispered. ‘It makes people see things.’ She tilted her head to indicate the Ogron guard. ‘You could use it to frighten
him
!’

‘He’d only run away,’ said the Doctor. ‘We’d still be locked in.’ An idea formed in his mind. ‘But there is something we might do with very fine adjustment...’ He started to inspect the controls. In an undertone he whispered through the bars to their fellow prisoners. ‘General, if we get out of here, and Miss Grant and I create a diversion, could you two find your way back to the ship?’

‘Naturally,’ said the General.

‘Good. I want you to take off immediately and get the truth to your respective governments.’

The Draconian Prince put his snout close to the bars. ‘I shall stay and help you.’

‘No, Your Highness. We need you to convince the Emperor,’ said the Doctor, making final adjustments to the controls on the hypno-sound device. ‘Incidentally, Jo, I take it that the TARDIS is here somewhere?’

She nodded. ‘I could lead you there—I think.’

‘Excellent. Now all of you, close your eyes and block your ears. If you don’t it could be rather unpleasant for you.’ The Doctor went forward to the bars and called to the Ogron guard. ‘Flow long are you going to keep us stuck in here? Hey, I’m speaking to you.’

The guard lumbered forward menacingly. ‘You keep quiet or I fill mouth with fist.’

‘Charming,’ said the Doctor. ‘Well, let’s see how you feel about this.’ He turned on the hypno-sound device to full strength.

The Ogron guard stopped, eyes dilated. The strange sound made his mind reel. As he stared, the Doctor’s form on the other side of the bars became blurred, then re-formed as a Dalek.

‘Open the gate,’ the Doctor told him, imitating a Dalek voice. ‘Open the gate or I shall exterminate you.’

The Ogron tried to assemble his thoughts. ‘Master say keep gate locked.’

‘We are the masters of the Master.’ the Dalek looked menacingly at him through the bars. ‘Open or I shall exterminate you. Exterminate,
exterminate!
’

Shaking with fear the Ogron produced a massive key and turned it in the lock. Then he fled in terror.

The Doctor and Jo stepped out to freedom. The Doctor took the key, unlocked the gate to the other cell, went inside and touched the General and the Prince on their shoulders. ‘You can open your eyes now.’