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Authors: Malcolm Hulke

Tags: #Science-Fiction:Doctor Who

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BOOK: Doctor Who: Space War
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The Ogron raised its hand gun and fired. The Doctor sprawled forwards on to the deck. Jo threw herself down beside him. ‘Doctor! Doctor!’

The Doctor remained still. Slowly Jo looked up. The Ogron stood over her, its gun pointed at her head.

3
Stowaways

General Williams sat watching the President as she dictated a statement into her desk microphone. ‘Although distress signals have been received from yet another of our cargo ships, until the arrival of the Earth rescue ship we must reserve judgment. Relations between ourselves and the Draconian Empire are admittedly tense, but this is all the more reason not to indulge in ill-informed speculation which can only worsen the situation.’ She paused, then decided that her last words suitably ended the statement. For the benefit of the technician who, in another part of the presidential palace, was recording her words, she said, ‘Please have copies of that sent to all news services throughout Earth.’ She touched a button that turned off the microphone.

Williams said quietly, ‘Do you think that will satisfy the world?’

‘Why not? It was the truth.’

He did not relish what he had to report to her. ‘Madam President, there have been anti-Draconian riots in Tokyo and Belgrade, and the Draconian Consulate in Helsinki has been burnt to the ground. In Los Angeles demonstrators burnt an effigy of you.’

‘I see.’ She considered. ‘We must compensate the Draconian Government for the loss of their consulate.’

‘Really, Madam President!’ Williams felt his temper flaring again. ‘What about them compensating us for—’

A light on the desk telephone began to flash. The President lifted the phone. ‘Yes?’ She listened, then quietly replaced the phone. ‘That cargo ship, it’s just been found drifting in Space.’

‘Any sign of the Draconians?’ Williams had heard it all before and knew what the answer would be.

She shook her head. ‘The rescue ship arrived too late to catch them. The Earth ship isn’t responding to any signals. Our people are about to board it now. We’ll soon know what really happened.’

‘Perhaps,’ said General Williams. if there’s anyone alive to tell the story.’

The flashing lights and high-pitched buzzing inside the Doctor’s mind slowly subsided. He realised he was lying face down on a metal deck and that somewhere a girl’s voice was calling to him.

‘Doctor! Over here!’

It was Jo’s voice. The Doctor tried to move his arms first. They felt heavy as lead weights. Slowly he drew up his legs.

‘Here, Doctor! I’m locked in here!’

He looked round to the source of the calling. The bolted door to the cubicle swam into vision. A hand, Jo’s hand, protruded through the little grille, waving to draw attention. By now the Doctor’s twin hearts were starting to pump blood through his veins. He staggered to his feet, lurched across the deck towards the cubicle door, slid away the two bolts. The door opened and Jo came out.

‘Doctor, are you all right? I thought they’d killed you.’

He shook his head. ‘Some kind of neutronic stun-gun. But why didn’t they kill me?’ He shook his head again, to clear it. ‘What happened?’

‘An Ogron threw me back into this little cell place, then they took all the cargo. And, Doctor...’

‘Yes. Jo?’

‘They took the TARDIS.’

The Doctor looked at the corner where the TARDIS had materialised. It was empty.

‘We’re stranded,’ said Jo. ‘What are we going to do?’

The Doctor forced himself to recover quickly from the shock of losing the TARDIS. ‘We’d better see what’s happened to those two fellows.’

‘But they wanted to kill us,’ Jo protested.

‘Because they thought we were Draconians. They may see things differently now. Come on.’ The Doctor walked up the corridor towards the air-lock.

They found the air-lock door repaired and Hardy and Stewart lying unconscious near by. ‘Both stunned,’ said the Doctor, ‘just as I was. They’ll be all right.’

Jo was studying the repaired door. ‘Why did the Ogrons go to all this trouble?’

‘If they hadn’t fixed the door,’ explained the Doctor, we’d have lost all the air in the ship when they cast off, and we’d all be dead.’

‘But why should that bother them?’

‘Maybe they’ve got kind hearts, Jo. There’s good in everyone, you know.’

Jo pulled a face. ‘You’re making fun of me, Doctor. Ogrons don’t have kind hearts, and they certainly haven’t got the intelligence to do all this
and
mend that door. Do you know what’s really going on?’

‘I’m thinking about it, Jo—’

The Doctor stopped short as he heard a voice coming from the flight deck. ‘Look after these two fellows, Jo. I’ll go and see what that is.’ He hurried along the corridor to the flight deck. The voice was coming over the loudspeaker.

‘... Do you read me? I repeat, this is Earth Battle Cruiser to Earth Cargo Ship C-982. We are now approaching you. Do you read me?’

The Doctor pulled the stalk microphone towards his lips. ‘Hello, Battle Cruiser. This is the cargo ship.’

‘What is your situation?’

‘The ship has been attacked and the cargo stolen,’ replied the Doctor. ‘The crew are stunned but otherwise unharmed.’

‘We shall lock on five seconds from now,’ said the voice. ‘Stand by.’

The Doctor went back to Jo, who was giving a drink from a water pack to the semi-recovered Stewart. Even as the Doctor approached they heard the clang of the Earth battle cruiser locking on. The sound and the vibration startled Jo.

‘It’s all right,’ said the Doctor. ‘We’re being rescued.’

Stewart looked up at Jo and the Doctor. ‘Who are you people? What happened?’

The Doctor smiled. ‘Don’t worry, old chap. You’re all right now, in safe hands.’

The air-lock door started to creak open. Stewart looked at it in sudden fear.

‘The Dragons! They’re boarding! ‘

‘That’s all in the past,’ said the Doctor. ‘The people coming on board now are friends.’

The air-lock door was now fully opened. The Captain of the Earth battle cruiser stepped forward warily, blaster gun at the ready. He was a short, stocky man, with a tough square chin. He wore trousers and tunic of metallic yellow with insignia to denote his rank. On seeing the Doctor—the velvet jacket and the frilly shirt—he registered restrained surprise. ‘Who are you?’ The Captain held his blaster gun aimed at the Doctor.

‘We’re passengers,’ explained the Doctor.

‘I see,’ said the Captain, not seeing at all. ‘Having a fancy dress party?’ It wasn’t a question that needed answering. He looked down at Stewart and Hardy on the deck. ‘Is this all the crew?’

Stewart nodded. ‘Me and my co-pilot. Dragons attacked us.’

‘I’m Captain Gardiner,’ said the newcomer, gun still at the ready. ‘Did they get the cargo?’

‘Everything,’ said Jo.

‘Including some rather valuable property of mine,’ added the Doctor.

Captain Gardiner holstered his gun at last. ‘Tough luck.’ He moved to where Hardy was lying still unconscious and shook hint roughly. ‘Are you dead or just stunned?’

Hardy started to revive. ‘Dragons... They attacked us.’

‘All right, we know.’ Captain Gardiner straightened up. ‘Passengers, you say? On a cargo ship? That’s very unusual.’ He looked back to Stewart, the more conscious of the two pilots. ‘Where did you pick these two up?’

‘Don’t know,’ said a dazed Stewart. ‘Can’t remember.’

Gardiner’s voice became gruff. ‘Pull yourself together, man! How did these two people get on board your ship?’

Stewart made a visible effort to concentrate. The one thing he couldn’t sort out was the presence of this tall man and the young woman dressed in strange clothes. Carrying passengers on cargo ships was strictly forbidden. For his own sake he had to produce some explanation. ‘Stowaways,’ he said suddenly. ‘That’s right, they were stowaways!’

Hardy had regained his senses enough to realise the position he and Stewart were in. Even if stowaways had got themselves on board unnoticed by the crew, it could still result in a bad report on the pilots for lack of security. ‘Not ordinary stowaways,’ he said. ‘They were helping the Dragons!’

Gardiner, who during his career as a military officer had heard every excuse, asked simply, ‘How?’

Hardy flashed a glance to Stewart, hoping the younger man could think of a reason. Stewart said, ‘They were... they were sending signals, leading the Dragons to us.’

‘That’s right,’ supported Hardy, pleased with Stewart’s quick thinking. ‘They were signalling to the Dragons to attack us.’

Jo exploded, ‘That’s absolute nonsense! We didn’t want to be on this ship at all. It was an accident.’

Gardiner turned to her. ‘Your companion said you were passengers. Passengers don’t get on ships by accident.’

The Doctor produced his most winning smile. ‘I merely wanted to avoid a lot of tiresome explanations, old chap. In any event, these two poor fellows are very confused. The people who attacked this ship weren’t Draconians at all.’

To this Hardy retorted with all the force of a man who having told a lie was now in the enviable position of being able to tell the truth—or what he believed was the truth. ‘He’s trying to fool you, sir. They were Dragons all right. We saw them with our own eyes.’

Gardiner looked at the Doctor. ‘Well?’

‘These men’s minds were attacked by some sort of hallucinatory device,’ explained the Doctor. ‘They’re still suffering from the after-effects, trying to fit us into the pattern of their delusions.’

‘I see,’ said Captain Gardiner, not believing a word of it. ‘And where
do
you fit?’

The Doctor ignored the question. ‘It was some kind of ultrasonic sound wave,’ he went on. ‘They thought they were seeing Draconians when in fact the ship was attacked by a completely different life form.’

‘Ogrons,’ said Jo, presuming the Captain would instantly understand what that meant.

The Doctor scowled at her. ‘I wouldn’t try to explain everything, not all at once.’

Captain Gardiner said dismissively, ‘Either you are both raving mad or extremely dangerous.’ He looked down at the two pilots again. ‘Get up.’

Hardy and Stewart struggled to their feet, sheepishly avoiding the Doctor’s eyes.

‘I’ll put two men on board to take this ship back to Earth,’ said Captain Gardiner. He turned to one of his soldiers who crowded behind him now in the air-lock. ‘These two “stowaways”, lock them in the hold and put a guard on them.’

Soldiers sprang forward to seize the Doctor and Jo.

Jo protested, ‘But we haven’t done anything!’

‘You can explain that to Earth Security,’ said Captain Gardiner crisply. ‘But I don’t expect they’ll believe a word of it.’

The Doctor and Jo sat on upturned crates in the cubicle where they had been imprisoned before. Jo got up and looked through the door grille. ‘There’s a soldier watching the door.’

The Doctor remained where he was. ‘That’s what he’s there for.’

She turned to him, urgency in her voice. ‘Right. We’ll give it a few minutes, then I’ll start groaning and saying I’m ill, and when he comes in you can use your Venusian Karate.’

‘Then what?’

She continued, full of enthusiasm. ‘Well, we can take his gun and go to the flight deck and hi-jack the spaceship and force them to take us to Earth.’

‘Jo, this ship is going to Earth.’

‘That’s a point.’ She considered. ‘Well what are we going to do, then?’

‘Why don’t you stop bobbing about, sit down and let me think?’

Crushed, Jo returned to her upturned crate and sat down. For a full half minute she was silent, as the Doctor had requested. Then, ‘Doctor?’

‘Mm?’

‘Now that it’s all over and the Ogrons have gone, why don’t those crewmen remember what
really
happened?’

‘They’ve constructed a new kind of reality,’ explained the Doctor. ‘The true facts have been erased from their minds.’

‘But they’re telling lies about us.’

‘Partly lies, Jo, and partly what they believe to be the truth. They’re desperately trying to fit us into
their
version of things. It must have been very strange for them when we suddenly appeared.’

‘But we didn’t,’ she said. ‘Two Draconians appeared —at least, that’s what they thought.’

‘When we get to Earth,’ said the Doctor, ‘we have to reach someone in authority, someone whose mind isn’t closed.’

‘Closed to what?’

‘These people believe Draconians are attacking their spaceships, but we know it’s Ogrons. We also know that Ogron’s haven’t the intelligence to set up this hallucinatory device that fools everyone.’

‘And after that,’ said Jo, ‘all we have to do is to find the TARDIS and then we can go home. You make it sound very simple.’ She sighed and settled down to wait.

The President and General Williams looked at the face of an Earth guard on the President’s desk videophone.

‘I am speaking from the cargo ship,’ said the guard, a lieutenant called Kemp. ‘Captain Gardiner is at the controls now. We shall land on Earth in fifteen minutes. The crew are safe. Also on board are two human stowaways of unknown origin.’

General Williams spoke towards the videophone. His voice would be heard by Lieutenant Kemp, ten thousand miles away in Space. ‘I want a cordon round the landing area the minute that ship touches down. Nobody on, nobody off, till I get there. Understood?’

‘Yes, sir.’

The President flicked a switch. The desk videophone went blank. ‘You’ll handle the interrogations yourself?’

‘Of course,’ said the General. ‘I’ll go there straight away.’ His personal air-transporter was waiting in the palace grounds.

‘Whatever you find, General, you’ll report directly to me?’

About to leave, the General paused. ‘Do you doubt my loyalty, Madam President?’

‘No,’ she said, with meaning. ‘But I suspect Congressman Brook would dearly love to appear on world television with the two pilots from that cargo ship. He’s done it before.’

Williams squared his shoulders. ‘I shall report directly to you, Madam, and only to you.’ He inclined his head. ‘May you live a long life and may energy shine on you from a million suns,’ he intoned stuffily.

The President smiled. She realised he was offended by having his loyalty questioned. ‘And may water, oxygen and plutonium be found in abundance wherever you land,’ she replied.

BOOK: Doctor Who: Space War
10.37Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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