Doctor Who: The Devil Goblins From Neptune (22 page)

Filer had only one question, and it wasn't the one Yates expected. 'Bruce who?'

'Davis. Your crash retrieval officer. Just arrived here.

'Never heard of him,' came the reply.

At that moment a few things started to make sense. Then came the confirmation from Dr French that the body in the lab was, in fact William Donald. 'I couldn't find dental records for Davis,' French had told a less-than-surprised Yates, 'but I could for poor Billy, and they're a perfect match'

If was almost inevitable, therefore, that Corporal Bell was hearing the brunt of Yates's increasing frustration.

'What's the latest from the police?'

'No sign of the fugitive. I suppose we ought to assume that he's slipped through the cordon by now After all, the officers were looking for Billy Donald, not Mr Davis'

'Or whatever his real name is, said Yates. 'I don't suppose there's been any word from the Brigadier?'

Bell shook her head.

'Do you know, they used to kill the bearers of bad news?'

said Yates.

The Doctor's jamming device worked almost immediately.

Artificial wings that had been motionless or gently flapping as the creatures bit and slashed at his comatose form suddenly began moving vigorously. The goblin creatures clutched at the Doctor, looking bewildered, but one by one their wings pulled them off and up into the air. Some ascended and became pinpoints circling in the crystal-blue sky; others pitched and yawed and crashed into the ground.

Shuskin came and stood next to Liz, a grim smile of satisfaction on her face. The other soldiers formed a protective ring around the Doctor, shooting at the Warn as they flew into the air and preventing any more from approaching with a constant barrage of machine-gun fire.

When none of the creatures remained on the Doctor's body Liz handed the device to Shuskin and ran to his side.

He was still and very cold. His face was covered with numerous cuts and bruises, although one arm had been thrown up to protect his eyes. Deep gashes had been made into his chest and shoulders. He'd already lost a lot of blood -

if, indeed, that stuff that flowed through his veins could be classified as blood.

Liz tried to move the arm that protected his face, but it was stiff, as if the Doctor's entire body had been cast in bronze. She )laced her fingertips over the Doctor's pale lips.

She felt the gentlest tingle of exhaled breath.

'Not again,' she said sadly.

You really should stay in for another night or two, Mr Benton,'

aid the consultant neurologist. 'I can't overstress the potential

!angers of treating concussion lightly.'

'So you've said,' noted Benton. Five times already. 'My mind's made up. I need to get back to work' He glanced at himself in the mirror opposite his bed and saw his head swathed in bandages. He looked like the top half of an Egyptian mummy. Funny really. Benton smiled and returned his attention to finding his jacket.

It's on the back of the chair,' said the consultant helpfully.

'Thank you.'

Benton slipped on his brown suede jacket. It had been in the bag of clothing brought into Challesford Royal Infirmary by Corporal Bell. She'd been chatty, as usual, and admitted that she was worried about Mike Yates's ability under pressure, but Benton had been too out of it to take much notice.

It had been even worse when he'd first arrived. When Benton recovered consciousness in the sterile surroundings of the hospital he had been confused and groggy, unsure of anything much, including where he was or how he'd got there. Then, gradually, the pieces started to slot into place.

He'd been in the Doctor's lab and...

something important was missing, some vital piece of an enormous jigsaw. Benton struggled to remember, but still it refused to come to mind. He could remember all sorts of stupid timings.' that the last three winners of the European Inter City Fairs up were Leeds United, Newcastle United and Arsenal; that the capital of Bolivia was La Paz; that the girl with whom he'd lost his virginity was called Deborah Phelan, and that her brother played wing three-quarter for London Irish. His brain was clouded by trivia. Long-forgotten scenes from his childhood, of his early days in the service, were as fresh as daisies, and yet he couldn't remember what he'd been thinking about immediately before t I me explosion.

Carol Bell had told him about the bomb - that Mike suspected t he Russians but that, thankfully, he'd talked to the Brigadier who had given him alternatives. Mike, she said, seemed to be heading for a breakdown. Benton nodded passively at this new bit of information, and stored it next to a memory of a scene from Steptoe and Son, when the old man dunked his pickled onions in his bathwater.

Mike had always been a bit panicky, especially when he was given the 'Big Chair', but Benton had always assumed that, with his public-school background and his training as an officer, it was just something that Yates would grow into.

Damn it! Why could he remember the name of the fifth Marx brother, but not this... whatever it was?

* * *

Liz had just finished using the Doctor's sonic screwdriver to solder the wires together. She looked up, about to argue.

Shuskin raised a hand. 'I understand your concern for the Doctor.' she said. 'But we must complete the mission. I will leave five men behind to move him to safety.'

'It's just a shame there isn't time to rig up another one of these jamming devices,' said Liz. 'That way -'

'In a few hours' time,' said Shuskin, glancing at her watch, 'missiles more powerful than the bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki will be flying overhead, to a target not more than ten miles away.' She smiled, and Liz detected warmth and honesty there, perhaps for the first time. 'You seem to think it bizarre that I love my country. That is your prerogative. But if it is all the same to you, I would rather not marvel at the nuclear weaponry of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics from this close a distance' She snapped a fresh magazine on to the Kalashnikov. 'So, let us do what the Doctor wanted - find a more subtle solution'

'You speak as though he's already dead.'

Shuskin stared down at the seemingly lifeless body. 'For all I know, he is'

Despite continued protestations that he should stay in hospital, under observation, at least for one more night, Benton was adamant.' he was going and that was all there was to it. The doctor threatened to call up UNIT and have them force Benton to stay; Benton promised the man a 'good chinning', and he quickly found someone else to bully.

Benton finished slipping on the last of the clothes that Bell had brought him, took a quick drink of Lucozade from the bedside table, and then, with a throbbing in his head that was not a million miles away from Ringo Starr's percussion on the last Beatles LP, he walked out of the hospital, hailed a taxi, and asked for St Anthony's railway station.

On the back seat of the taxi was a discarded copy of the previous day's Daily Mail. Benton flicked at it idly as the taxi driver made small-talk about the World Cup, and the price of petrol, and the state of the country. Benton grunted absentmindedly as he found himself looking at a familiar face in the pages of the newspaper.

'Ado,' he said, wondering why life so often seemed to run on coincidences just like that.

'You what, guy?' asked the taxi driver, taking a break from his

racist rant to check on his heavily bandaged passenger.

'They've gone to Wiltshire,' said Benton, scanning the page for we information.

'Who's that, then?'

The Venus People.'

'Oh yeah, them loonies. I had one of them in the cab a few months back.'

Benton wanted to scream at the man to shut up, to stop the mayhem in his head, but he bit his tongue and looked out of the window as they approached the railway station. He had business to complete.

The dark forest was as dead as the cold soil that crackled underfoot. Liz and Shuskin made their way swiftly towards the Waro mine in unnatural and unnerving silence. No birdsong, no animal cries, barely a breath of wind. The sky overhead, a blue jewel framed by the ragged angularity of the trees, was occasionally crossed by the sinister flapping shape of a Waro on patrol. None seemed to see them, and Liz began to wonder if the Waro were preparing instead for another Soviet air attack.

The gradually thinning trees let more of the afternoon light I splash down on to the ground, the gentle incline becoming steeper. Shuskin's map-reading appeared to be reliable.' they had avoided the strange alien roads, along which the Waro seemed to concentrate their interest, and the summit of the hill should give them a view down on to the Waro's base.

A different image crossed Liz's mind, and it made her shudder. The roads didn't go anywhere - she'd looked at their positions plotted on Captain Shuskin's map, and they encircled the base and extended outward into the taiga, but terminated suddenly. Now it struck her that they weren't roads so much as strands of an enormous spider's web.

What better reason to build roads in the middle of a forest than to tempt a military force into certain locations and along certain paths?

Liz considered mentioning this to Shuskin, but she seemed instinctively to have come to the same conclusion. 'If we avoid the roads,' she had said before they left the Doctor and the others behind, 'I think we are in with a chance'

Moments later they came to the top of the hill, and Liz turned her thoughts away from the deadly silver pathways.

The trees were sparse and stunted here, and Liz and Shuskin ducked from one piece of cover to another as they approached the edge. All the while Liz kept a tight hand on the device, remembering how silently the Waro had come up behind her. And there was no one to watch her back this time.

Liz and Shuskin crawled on their stomachs for the last few metres. The vista below gradually unfolded - a massive crater in the middle of the forest, as sensitive and subtle as any human opencast mine. Scattered around the edge were large buildings, not unlike grain silos, and deep in the artificial chasm were what seemed to be motor units and conveyor belts.

Shuskin immediately scanned the area with a pair of binoculars. 'Something's wrong,' she said, passing them to Liz.

'What do you mean?'

'I see Waro patrolling overhead, and moving between the various buildings. I see what appears to be mining equipment.

'But?' Liz scanned the area intently.

'None of the machinery is moving.'

'Perhaps they're having a break,' said Liz. 'Union rules or something'

'They are an invading military force,' said Shuskin, seeming to have missed the humour in Liz's voice. 'We no longer stop our battles to have tea, Dr Shaw.'

'Well, maybe there's just been a power failure. Or they've mined what they came for. There could be a hundred and one reasons why the machines aren't working'

'We had better find out,' said Shuskin.

The plan was brilliant in its simplicity. Or, alternatively, it was a foolish, desperate gambit by a man who had been sent chasing from pillar to post and was, frankly, at the end of his tether.

Either way, Lethbridge-Stewart had paid his eight hundred francs to the ladies, and now he wanted to see his money's worth.

The girl who had tried to sell herself to him was called Sandrine and was from Zurich. Her father was a bürgermeister and her mother, recently deceased, had been a hausfrau. None of this really mattered, but Lethbridge-Stewart always liked to know who he was dealing with. The girl introduced several of her colleagues, and the Brigadier outlined his plans in a mixture of French and English. To his great relief, they seemed to understand him and, equally importantly, they didn't mind taking orders. You don't have to know the language to realise that money talks.

The diversion that he asked them to perform was straightforward enough. Six girls lined themselves up in front of the warehouse and began hollering at the top of their voices, taking their clothes off, and fighting with each other.

The Brigadier had asked them to spare no indignity, just make as much noise as possible. He was hoping that the last thing the men in the warehouse wanted was a 'scene', and, as he hid in the shadows beside the doors, he knew that he had to make the most of the one opportunity he was likely to get.

Two minutes later the doors creaked open and three men emerged, two carrying sub-machine guns. They fanned out, looking suitably menacing. Sandrine and her friends, having valiantly performed above and beyond the call of duty, took one look at the guns and fled into the bright morning, their money well earned.

Thankfully, they had kept the men occupied long enough for Lethbridge-Stewart to slip through the doors and conceal himself alongside a lorry. The moment the huge doors closed again the tailgate came down, and the men began unloading large quantities of documents in plastic bags. Most of them were speaking in French, though the Brigadier heard other languages occasionally, including English. He distinguished few specific words, but one caught his attention. It was a name - 'Houghton' - and it sent a chill down the Brigadier's spine.

The man he had been sent to kill. Lethbridge-Stewart fished in his pocket and removed the piece of paper that Hayes had given him. In the dim light he looked at it again, puzzled. Executing Michael Houghton and escaping would not prove easy. Too many people about. He estimated there must be at least ten of the dark-clothed men in the warehouse.

Above him was an office, a dim light shining through the window. The Brigadier crouched low, and moved closer to the rickety iron steps that led up to the badly painted door. As he shuffled forward his attention was caught by the man directly above him at the office window. Lethbridge-Stewart didn't need to be told that it was Houghton.

Brigadier removed his machine pistol and checked the magazine, clicking it into place. So this was it.' war - to the death. Lethbridge-Stewart knelt, steadying his aim with his non-shooting hand, aiming the gun towards the man silhouetted in the light of the window.