Doctor Who: The Devil Goblins From Neptune (21 page)

And easier to jam,' observed Liz.

'Let's hope so,' said the Doctor. 'Mechanical and electrical interference is such a complex phenomenon.

Fiendishly complicated if you want to manipulate it, but you try watching your favourite television programme when there's a thunderstorm overhead. .. '

As if on cue the sky darkened.

'Odd,' said the Doctor, still using his sonic screwdriver to construct the jamming device. 'I wasn't expecting inclement weather.'

Liz glanced upwards. 'Doctor!' she screamed. 'That's no storm cloud!'

'What?'

The first alien creature swooped into the Doctor's shoulders with such force that he tumbled backward. He tried to grab the creature's artificial wings and hurl it from him but another screeching Waro crashed into him.

Liz saw yet more creatures diving down, like vultures attracted to the dying. Soon the Doctor was swamped beneath a mass of black leathery wings.

FOURTH INTERLUDE:

ELIMINATION TIME

So, what were they actually like?' asked David Arthurs.

'Amazing,' replied Bob Decker. 'They did loads off the White Album. They started with "Happiness is a Warm Gun", then "Yer Blues". It was a really happening scene, you know?'

Arthurs nodded knowingly, but secretly he was fuming.

He'd waited years to see the Beatles, only to miss them at Madison Square Garden because of work commitments.

Decker had arrived back from leave and had been talking about it non-stop ever since. Arthurs was torn between wanting to find out more and trying to pretend the whole thing had never happened.

'No old songs, then?' he asked.

'Just "Rock and Roll Music". A girl next to me was screaming for "1 Feel Fine". All the cats were laughing at her!'

'If I were you, I wouldn't mention you'd been to see them to any of the uniforms. They think they're long-haired, pinko, fag subversives on drugs.'

'Small minds, man,' said Decker with a cheeky grin.

'Yeah well, if you don't like it, go live in Russia!'

'You know,' he said wistfully, 'New York looks really beautiful at this time of year.'

'You're crazy,' said Arthurs, as he checked his computer screen. 'I hate cities, man, they freak me out. I need the space and the clean air to get my head together.'

'Oregon's OK,' said Decker quickly, 'but nothing happens here. Leastways, not that Joe Public's going to hear about'

Arthurs laughed. 'This is UNIT, baby. If something happens here, the whole world knows about it.'

The pair were just starting a twenty-four-hour shift at UNIT'S 'listening station' in the foothills of the Columbia plateau. Their work, as computer operatives, was important, if sometimes tedious. Being 'a pair of buggers', as Decker and Arthurs often dubbed themselves, was frequently boring, and they occasionally wondered if they weren't frittering away their MIT talents looking for 'space junk, little green men, and communists'. But they knew that, almost uniquely in the Western world, they were able to put their dreams into practice. When the alternative was working for NASA with a bunch of jumped-up college dropouts, collecting bits of rock from the moon, this was the real thing.

But the long hours often took their toll. Several of their colleagues had burnt out during the early years of UNIT's existence, unable to face another night staring at a blank screen, waiting for a blip that might be the start of an invasion of Earth by hostile aliens. It was Decker who had been among the first to track the trajectory of the Nestene mother ship the previous summer, and Arthurs who had spotted the massive Julsaen fleet's attempted landing in Argentina.

'John read some of his poetry,' said Decker, swinging around in his chair. 'New stuff. It was wild. We all held lighters up when they did "Something". Man, you should have been there.'

'There'll be another time,' said Arthurs abruptly as he took a bottle of cola from the freeze box behind him. He hurriedly changed the subject. 'Who do you think's going to win the Republican primaries?'

Decker shook his head. 'Difficult to say. Nixon should be dead in the water by now, but he keeps coming back. I've got a funny feeling about Rockefeller.'

'What about Reagan?' asked Arthurs.

'Mad Ronnie? You crack me up sometimes,' said Decker.

'He might be OK for all those uptight geeks in California, but no country in its right mind would elect an actor.'

'None of them will take Kennedy,' noted Arthurs with a grin.

'Yeah, right.'

A silence settled over the pair while Arthurs finished his drink. Men he turned to Decker. 'You ever think about the future, Bob?' 'How'd you mean?'

'You know, what the world's going to be like in, say, twenty 'ears? If we don't get wiped out by aliens before then!'

Pecker grunted noncommittally. 'The world's a ball of confusion right now, baby. Things can only get better.'

'Sure, said Arthurs, with the excited zeal of a man who has undergone a Damascus-Road-like conversion. 'See, a few weeks ago I was talking to one of the installation guys when he was fixng the mainframe crash. He told me about the latest developments. Man, it's so exciting. I can see a time when computers will be as important a household item as a television is now. Computers are the future.'

But Decker wasn't listening, he was looking intently at his secondary terminal. 'Come and have a look at this'

'What?' asked Arthurs, propelling himself across the floor on a swivel chair.

'I was just having a random trawl through the subsystems and I hit this. It's in the New Mexico UNIT personnel log.'

'So?' Arthurs raised his eyebrows.

'It's got a restricted access code. Nothing in the personnel logs should be "eyes only", except maybe that guy in England who's got highest clearance. Certainly not some grunt in the desert'

'Maybe it's a glitch,' said Arthurs, picking up his phone and calling their supervisor at the field office on the next level of the building.

In the minutes before the man arrived, Arthurs and Decker started to crack the access code. When the supervisor finally appeared, he was shown the file. He said he'd never seen a code like it, and immediately contacted UNIT's New York HQ, who revealed that the prefix was unknown to the Head of Personnel.

He was as perplexed by its existence as the men in Oregon. After sanctioning Decker and Arthurs to continue attempting to access the file, the supervisor left them to it.

It took them almost four hours before they got through the seven levels of security and found the final password to be badgeman'. Decker gave a short cry of delight as the screen went blank, then filled with a standard UNIT

disclaimer and the words 'Top Secret - Eyes Only'.

'Yes!' he shouted, bringing Arthurs scurrying back from a trip to the lavatory.

'What's up?'

'We're in,' said Decker with a broad grin.

Arthurs looked over his shoulder at the message. 'Right,'

he

said quickly. 'I'll get Stark down to have a look at it'

'I want to see it first,' said Decker angrily.

Tut it's Top Secret. Level Seven security. We're not supposed to -'

'I don't care. I've spent the last four hours trying to get into this goddamn file, and if it's the last thing I do, I'm gonna know what it says.'

Decker began to scroll down the document. The first twenty or so pages contained detailed eye-witness statements regarding various alien incidents, from the initial setting up of the organisation in the aftermath of the robot Yeti attack, through to recent events, like the Inferno project.

Only a fraction of this information was public knowledge - if this were to fall into the wrong hands...

'What the hell is this doing here?' asked Arthurs, reading a report from a Captain Turner on the Cyber invasion of London in the spring of 1969.

'This is amazing,' said Decker. 'I mean, you could sell this to the newspapers and make a million bucks'

'Don't even think about it,' said Arthurs, leaning over and scrolling down further. He stopped at an insignificant three-line message at the bottom.

THE PROPERTY OF THE CIA. AWAITING COLLECTION.

IF YOU ARE NOT AUTHORISED TO VIEW THIS MESSAGE

YOU HAVE THIRTY MINUTES TO LIVE.

'What the hell does that mean?' asked Decker, not knowing whether to laugh or take the message seriously. As he said it, airtight metal emergency doors began crashing down with resounding clangs all around the access room, entombing the pair.

'I think it means we kiss our sorry asses goodbye,' said Arthurs in resignation.

One by one the lights and the computer terminals flicked off.

COME TOGETHER

The Waro swarmed over the Doctor's fallen body, their talons and claws etched with red. The entire attack had taken seconds -even the soldiers hadn't had time to respond - but to Liz it was all in terrible slow motion. She watched, her body as cold as the arctic wind, as more and more of the creatures landed on the Doctor's motionless form. All the while they shrieked like grotesque children. Liz had never heard anything more chilling in her life.

Liz ran forward. She caught sight of a dark, winged figure through the corner of her eye, and ducked just in time. A Waro flew overhead in a blur of claws. Thankfully - from her point of view, at least - most of the creatures were concentrating on the Doctor, a writhing mass from which only a velvet-jacketed arm protruded.

She dived towards the Doctor's outstretched hand. It was holding something tightly, although the fingers, the arm - the whole of his body, as far as she could make out - were motionless. On her hands and knees Liz approached the mass of spitting creatures, and snatched the object from the Doctor's palm.

It was the jamming device.

Liz didn't have time to wonder if it was finished, or whether it would work - she concentrated on switching the thing on, then aimed what she hoped was the business end towards the alien creatures.

Nothing happened. What was worse, some of the creatures het a me aware of her presence, turning their vile, dripping faces m her direction. From all around her there came the sound of gun fire.

Fantastic, she thought. Shoot the Doctor, ;why don't you?

The device seemed not to have had any effect. She glanced down at it. What would the Doctor do in her position?

Hit the thing, probably.

No, Liz wouldn't resort to such unscientific methods. She looked more closely at the device, based on an intercom that the Doctor had ripped from one of the tanks. He'd added all sorts of esoteric components to it, the sonic screwdriver having soldered various incompatible leads and cables together. And then she noticed that some of the wires were still trailing free. But which was supposed to be joined where?

There were two slim yellow wires, a thicker green one, and a brown flex that looked not unlike a telephone cord. Logic dictated that the two yellow ones should be joined together -

but she knew the Doctor too well. It would never be that simple, surely?

No, the answer was to be as obtuse as possible, to connect the yellow wires to the cables farthest from them.'

A machine gun fired from somewhere behind her. She'd managed to blot out all the noise and confusion since retrieving the Doctor's gadget, but this was deafeningly close.

She turned, half expecting to have to shout at a Soviet soldier

'Be a bit careful or you'll hit me '

And the Waro that had crept up behind her toppled into her lap, spewing blood and bone. Shuskin stood a few feet back, now firing at the Waro that circled overhead. She was shouting loudly Liz couldn't tell if she was telling Liz something, or ordering her troops into action, or simply swearing in colloquial Russian - but occasionally she stopped firing and seemed to be shaking her fist in the air in some madly theatrical gesture.

Liz looked down at the Doctor's jamming device. It was covered in the dead Waro's bile-coloured blood. So were her hands, her blouse, her lips, her face.

She felt nauseous, but swallowed hard, wiping her hands on her trousers. Then she set about fixing the wires together, bending and twisting them into shape, but hoping that the connections would hold. And that the machine wouldn't blow up when she came to switch it on.

'Here goes nothing,' she said lightly, flicking on the device and aiming it at the clustering Waro.

'Can things get any worse?' asked Mike Yates, throwing up his arms in anguish as yet another crisis dropped comfortably into his lap.

'Is it really our problem?' asked Corporal Bell, expecting some sort of outburst in response. She'd started to worry about Yates recently, his flashes of anger having become more frequent. He'd even developed a facial tic that she was sure hadn't been there before.

'It'll be everybody's problem if the aliens decide to invade any time during the next couple of weeks!' said Yates. He stared at the telex again. Addressed to all UNIT field officers, it described a disaster at the 'secret listening post' in America.

A sudden and unexplained spike in the power supply had caused the emergency nuclear safeguards to malfunction, leading to a 'zero-99 situation'. Or, in other words, the airtight doors had come down, the oxygen supply had switched off, and two highly trained and capable computer experts had suffocated.

The file they were working on had vanished, taking with it half of the data on the mainframe. East-coast thunderstorms, now this. According to Bill Filer, the Intelligence Chief at UNIT'S New York HQ, it was the 'biggest series of balls-ups since Pearl Harbour'.

Yates had spoken to Filer just minutes before on an apparently unrelated matter - only now it seemed that it might not be quite so unrelated after all. Yates had finally got through to New York using one of the Home Office's IE-pirated videophones, to tell them that Bruce Davis was either dead or, probably worse, a murderous traitor.