Doctor Who: The Devil Goblins From Neptune (16 page)

Pakilev could just perceive the arms of the creatures moving in his direction, firing something -

The world exploded: blood-red, then black.

'He's lucky to be alive,' said Dr French as he stood and brushed the dust from his trousers. 'Must be all that square-bashing, it's given him a thick skull!'

Captain Yates ignored the sarcasm and watched mutely as the stretcher on which Benton had been secured was picked up by two paramedics and carried along the rubble-strewn corridor. 'My fault,' he muttered angrily, and then turned back to the young doctor, who was absorbed in clearing away the emergency medical kit.

'I'm sorry?' inquired French.

'Nothing.' Yates walked into the laboratory. 'Hell,' he said to no one in particular. 'The Doctor's going to go ballistic when he sees this.'

Dr French nodded sympathetically. 'Who do you think is responsible?' he asked. 'Black Panthers? Red Mole? The Weathermen? Baader-Meinhof ? The PLO?'

'Couldn't give a toss,' snarled Yates, sweeping concrete rubble from the bench top. 'Anyway, that's classified.'

'Of course,' whispered French conspiratorially. 'Mum's the word'

Yates peered through the huge hole blown in the work surface. The bomb had been meant for the Doctor, that much seemed clear. It was just blind luck that poor old Benton had been sent to fetch the file. 'Must have had a heat sensor on it,' he noted out loud. Then again, Benton's distance from the bomb implied that the thing hadn't gone off immediately.

Perhaps it was just a warning, or a threat. But a potentially lethal one, all the same.

Yates turned to the door. 'If you'll excuse me, Doctor, I have to find the scum responsible for this and crucify them.'

The summer sun was just fading down towards the horizon when Mike Yates reached the Brigadier's office. He slammed the door behind him, and sat down wearily.

French's speculation on which terrorist organisation had been responsible had set off a chain reaction in Yates's mind. The choices were mind-boggling - any one of those mentioned would have had good reason to strike at the heart of UNIT, but none seemed to have had any opportunity. The inescapable conclusion was that this had been an inside job.

And the consequences of that eventuality were simply too horrible to contemplate.

A knock on the door snapped Yates from his solitary gloom. 'Come,' he said in a voice that betrayed much of the anxiety that had descended around him.

'The results of the report, sir,' said Corporal Bell, coming into the office with a grave look on her face.

'Give me the edited highlights, Carol,' said Mike, reaching out for the file.

'Inconclusive,' she said with an embarrassed sigh.

'Meaning... ?'

'The technology is basic. It could have been made by anyone. But there was a UNIT serial code on the timing mechanism. It seems to be Russian in origin.'

Yates sat bolt upright. 'I see,' he said quickly.

'But that's all, sir. There's nothing else to tie it to anyone in particular. I don't think we should jump to too many conclusions, just yet.'

'Thanks for the advice,' said Yates, somewhat dismissively. 'Anything else?'

'Yes,' replied Bell. 'The Brigadier made contact whilst you were in conference with the police. He's staying at the Hotel Europa in Geneva. I have his number if you want me to raise him for you.'

Yates nodded. 'Yes, I think I'd better have a word, don't you?'

'We're under attack!' yelled Shuskin as the helicopter pitched violently.

Liz glanced round to see the Doctor, his face pressed against the glass of one of the tiny windows, legs braced against the motion of the helicopter. She ran to his side, clinging on to a rail overhead. 'What's happening?'

'Alien creatures,' said the Doctor. 'Firing some sort of heat or directed-energy weapon.' He turned to Liz 'No wonder the planes couldn't cope with them. How can you be expected to attack a target the size of a child in a jet travelling at Mach three point two?'

'So the helicopters are holding out against the aliens?'

queried Liz.

The Doctor's face was downcast. 'I wouldn't really put it like that, I'm afraid.'

The Mi-6 lurched again, struggling to evade its pursuers.

'There must be something you can do,' said Liz. Even the Soviet soldiers were staring at the Doctor, as if they realised his key role in all that was taking place.

'Well,' said the Doctor. 'First things first.' we need to be able to protect ourselves from those heat weapons.' He turned to Shuskin. 'I must get to the helicopter's electrics -

some sort of junction box that's accessible internally.'

Captain Shuskin paused in thought, and then led the way to a point just behind the cockpit. Thick cables ran into what reminded Liz of a domestic fuse box. The Doctor smiled delightedly, and ripped off the metal cover.

Shuskin went to say something, but Liz stopped her.

'Yes, he knows it's live. And, no, he doesn't really know what he's doing.'

The Doctor spoke 'Yes, through gritted teeth, tugging against an inch-thick wire. 'I think you've been working with me for too long,' he said.

The helicopter pitched again, and Liz could see dark shapes flitting by the windows.

The Doctor pulled his sonic screwdriver from his pocket, and aimed the point at the cable. With a shrill noise it began to melt the plastic covering. Moments later the Doctor twisted the screwdriver around and unceremoniously shoved the blunt end into the revealed bare wires.

There was a loud crack that reminded Liz of ice breaking on a pond, and the interior lights flickered for a moment. 'Are you OK?' she asked.

'I'm fine, Liz,' said the Doctor. 'Now what I need is a small piece of metal, about an Inch or two in length. A hairclip or some such.'

Liz and Shuskin exchanged glances, shrugging their shoulders. 'Not sure we can help there, Doctor,' said Liz.

'What? You're both women aren't you...? There must be something,' said the Doctor, looking around the helicopter's interior. Was it Liz's imagination, or was the temperature already beginning to rise?

One of the soldiers came running forward with a thick pin used to secure an ammunition box. 'Perfect,' enthused the Doctor. Gingerly he used the piece of metal to establish a connection between the helicopter's hull and the sonic screwdriver. 'Make sure that nobody touches the hull from now on,' snapped the Doctor. He waited for Shuskin to bark out an order, then he twisted a dial high up on the screwdriver. It began to flicker, Liz catching glimpses of the interior mechanism through the brilliant white glow.

The Doctor stood up. 'That should do it,' He turned to Shuskin. 'I suggest we land as soon as possible.'

She nodded and walked into the cockpit.

'What did you do?' asked Liz.

'I've diverted all the auxiliary electrical power to the helicopter's outer structure. Suitably modulated, of course.

The sonic screwdriver is insulated against electric shock, but here I'm using it to divert the power supply from the wire to the ship's exterior, via that metal pin.'

'So?'

'So it will protect us from the weapons of those creatures'

He looked around him, then drew a Paisley handkerchief to wipe across his brow. 'Is it me, or is it getting hot in here?'

The last rays of the dying sun caught the surface of Lake Geneva, throwing off a bedazzling display of fractured light.

Lethbridge-Stewart rested on the balcony rail of his hotel, looking across the lake towards Montalegre harbour on the southern side. A little inland was the Villa Diodati, where Milton had once lived, and where in 1816, at the maddest Mad Hatter's tea party of all time, Lord Byron, Percy and Mary Shelley, Claire Godwin, and John Polidori had terrified each other with ghost stories.

'And what were thou, and earth, and stars and sea,/ If to the human mind's imaginings/ Silence and solitude were vacancy?"' he mumbled to himself.

The Brigadier shook his head. A childish passion for dead poets was the last thing he needed on his mind right now. And yet he couldn't help but let himself drift back to Harrow school in 1943, and an essay on the homoerotic content of Adonais'. Now, like Ozymandias, the king of kings, he found himself sitting amid 'the decay of that colossal wreck'. His attention turned to a minor domestic incident in the street below - an angry holiday family arguing with a gendarme over the loss of their car. So much for the most civilised country in Europe.

He left the veranda and went back into his hotel room, sitting on the bed and opening his briefcase. He took out the stock on his Colt Commando high-velocity rifle. Having screwed the barrel into place, he checked the weapon's sight, aiming at the fountain in the lake. Click. His finger touched the trigger lightly and, metaphorically, the fountain lay dead.

As if in acknowledgement of the Brigadier, the water pressure seemed to dip momentarily. Lethbridge-Stewart's heart pumped faster. Join the army. Be a man. Kill someone.

The noise from the street, the babbling conversations in French, irritated him. He stood the rifle by the bed and crossed again to the window. He had put off thinking about the full consequences of his visit, but now knew that something had to be done. He still wasn't sure what that something was.

The telephone rang, startling him. He picked it up, half expecting to hear someone from HQ demanding to know what he thought he was doing sitting in a hotel room playing espionage games. Instead the hotel receptionist informed him that he had an overseas call from London, England. A knot tightened in his stomach.

Merci beaucoup,' he replied quickly and waited for the line to clear. 'Lethbridge-Stewart,' he said, hoping to cover his anxiety with bluster, as usual.

'Good evening, sir.' It was Yates. 'I'm sorry to trouble you'

'That's quite all right, Captain' Relief flooded through the Brigadier. 'How are... things?'

'Well, sir,' said Yates, with a dip in his voice that told the Brigadier that 'things' weren't good, 'I'm rather afraid we've had a terrorist incident.'

The Brigadier listened intently as Yates quickly explained about the bomb, adding that apart from Benton's relatively minor injuries no one else had been hurt.

'That's a small consolation, I suppose,' said the Brigadier.

'How on Earth was security penetrated?'

'As far as we can tell, sir, it wasn't,' continued Yates. 'The most important aspect of the case seems to be the design of the bomb. Certain elements indicate that it's of Soviet origin.

And there was a UNIT serial code on it.'

The Brigadier said nothing for a long time. He was thinking about what Shelley had written in 'The Mask of Anarchy'.'

Shake your chains to earth like dew

Which in sleep had fallen on you

Ye are many - they are few.

'Are you still there, sir?' asked a worried Yates.

'Yes, Captain. The Russians would not have gone to all the trouble of trying to kidnap the Doctor when they could have blown him up as easily as that. And I don't believe that Captain Shuskin would further jeopardise the future of UNIT

by trying to pull a stunt such as this.'

Yates seemed to be struggling to follow Lethbridge-Stewart's logic. 'Do the Communists need an excuse to interfere with our operations?' he asked strongly.

'Of course they do,' replied the Brigadier angrily. 'Use your brain, man - this isn't comic-book international intrigue we're talking about. The future of the planet may be at stake.'

'So who do you think planted the bomb, then?' asked a chastened Yates.

The Brigadier paused. 'Give me the serial number, Captain' 'It's 261063240268, sir.'

The Brigadier noted the number on hotel headed note paper. 'Thank you, Yates.' And with that, he put down the phone, took his UNIT clearance documents from his luggage, and headed for the door.

The pilot landed the helicopter as close to the construction site as possible. Smoke was pouring from the turbines; perhaps that was sufficient to fool their attackers into thinking that the Mi-6 would explode on impact. Certainly the small creatures seemed to turn their attention elsewhere, and so they missed the craft's abrupt landing, splitting asunder the huge coniferous trees to create its own clearing.

Just before the wheels hit the frozen soil the engine casing exploded outward, sending more thick black smoke into the air.

Liz emerged from the downed helicopter gingerly. The soldiers fanned out to the periphery of the clearing, guns trained upward into the night sky. Engineers, coughing against the smoke, were already swarming over the mountings beneath the rotor blades.

Liz looked up. The night sky was streaked with black and grey, like some grotesque modern painting. There were certainly no helicopters or planes there now. Even the goblin-like creatures seemed to be heading away in a dark swarm.

She shivered at the sound of their rustling wings, fading all the while.

The Doctor joined her. 'I don't think I recognise the alien species,' he noted, 'But their intent so far has been unequivocal.'

'That was a clever trick you pulled with the modulated power supply.'

'It's always very difficult to ascertain precisely how different types of energy will interact,' the Doctor observed.

He pulled his sonic screwdriver from his pocket. The casing was dark and scorched. 'Much longer and I think this would have gone pop!' The Doctor and Liz turned as two BTR-40PB

scout cars trundled down the ramp at the back of the helicopter, the gun turrets swinging from side to side. Shuskin came over to them, delighted, it seemed, to have got this far.

So, Doctor, you still believe that subtlety might work where an entire armoured column did not?'

'It's better than the other option you presented me with.'

'The mechanics report that the helicopter needs much repair.'

'Leave the scout cars here,' said the Doctor. 'Their guns might come in useful in case the helicopter is attacked again.

But for us, going in on foot means just that.'