Doctor Who: The Devil Goblins From Neptune (28 page)

They were all over him, ten or more, obviously left behind by the main force to prevent investigation of their landing site.

The Doctor cursed himself that he had thought the Waro so stupid as to leave the propulsion unit unguarded.

He was forcing himself higher in the water but the little creatures clung to him, sharp teeth and claws cutting into his wet suit and then his skin. The Doctor thrashed with his arms and legs, knocking another two of the creatures away from him, but there were too many of them and he was being dragged back down again by their weight and ferocity. With the last of his failing strength, he unhooked the oxygen tank from his back. Taking a final gulp of air from the mouthpiece the Doctor aimed the top of the tank away from him and twisted at the valve. The pressure within the cylinder was released, and the Doctor found himself flying upward through the water. The burst of oxygen from the tank was just enough to fling the Waro aside.

The Doctor held his breath, his eyes stinging as he shot through the water. Then, suddenly, he broke through the surface and gulped in fresh air. A helicopter hovered above him, lowering a line in his direction.

'What kept you?' he managed to say as he grabbed on to the steel cable with the last of his strength. He looked up to see Mike Yates's beaming face sticking out of the helicopter door.

'You look like you need a hand, Doctor,' shouted Yates above the roar of the blades.

'I was getting on quite nicely, thank you,' replied the Doctor drily.

Once aboard it took the Doctor some minutes to fully recover his senses and then struggle out of the wet suit. He was aware that Yates was asking him something but his ears were ringing loudly. 'Sorry, Captain?'

'Did you find what you were looking for?' repeated Yates.

'More than I bargained for,' said the Doctor. 'Why the helicopter?'

'It was sent down by Shuskin.' said Yates sourly. 'To let us know our presence is required urgently.'

'Why?' asked the Doctor.

Professor Trainor has been kidnapped. Liz didn't quite make it

lime. But she saw Viscount Rose's car leaving the professor's chambers at great speed. Oh, and Benton's awake again. Gave us a very good description of someone who left the hippie site just before the attack.'

'Rose?' asked the Doctor.

'Rose.' came the reply.

By the time the helicopter landed on the shore a large number of UNIT vehicles were already in place. Teams of divers, armed with Ilan guns, were disappearing beneath the cold water of the Channel. The Doctor and Yates climbed out of the helicopter, and walked over to the communications truck that was functioning as a temporary command centre.

Shuskin stood impassively, listening to a UNIT sergeant. She dismissed him as she saw Yates and the Doctor approach.

'Is Liz all right?' asked the Doctor.

'Dr Shaw is unharmed.' stated Shuskin. 'I have arranged transport for her. And local police have been alerted to the abduction of Professor Trainor.'

'So it seems the professor is innocent of duplicity,' said the Doctor, relieved.

'But Rose is in it up to his neck.' said Yates.

'He left this morning.' said Shuskin, gesturing towards old Norton's stately home. 'A search of the grounds has revealed only another victim of the alien creatures. All ports, terminals, and stations have been alerted to watch for Rose.'

'Viscount Rose is probably rich enough to charter his own plane.' said the Doctor sadly. 'We might well not see him again.' He turned, looking out over the English Channel.

'Have the divers found the propulsion unit?'

Shuskin turned towards the water's edge. 'Let us see.'

As the Doctor and the two soldiers stood and watched a number of divers broke the surface. One of them swam over, pulling off his mask, while the rest struggled with plastic bags full of metallic objects.

The leading diver saluted as he approached Shuskin. 'It's gone, sir. No creatures, no space rocket. We've picked up what they left!

The Doctor immediately took the bags from the other men, and emptied their contents out on the ground. There were various thick cables, what appeared to be junction boxes, a number of empty cylinders, and all sorts of brass-coloured components. 'They did a very thorough job if this is all that you found.' said the Doctor. 'They've stripped the entire propulsion unit in a matter of minutes, probably moved everything further out into the Channel.'

He pulled a jeweller's eyepiece from the pocket of his smoking jacket, and stared intently at a number of circuit boards. It's all primitive enough,' he said. 'But. ..' His voice trailed away. 'Oh dear.'

'What's the matter?' asked Yates.

The Doctor examined another alien module before continuing. 'These components didn't survive the journey from Triton.' He dropped the eyepiece into his pocket. 'They look like the remains of a bomb primer.'

'What sort of bomb?' asked Yates.

'I don't think I'd surprise you by saying nuclear, would I?'

said the Doctor gravely. 'Which explains the radiation levels.'

The Doctor paused, scratching his chin. If these fragments are a reliable guide, I'd say that the nuclear device or devices brought to the Earth by the Waro actually lack much of the necessary fissile material.’ He closed his eyes for a moment, muttering. Yates glanced across at Shuskin, but she seemed unperturbed by the Doctor's behaviour.

'Cobalt-60,' said the Doctor at last, opening his eyes.

'There's no cobalt on Triton, but the Waro knew that there would be some on Earth. Rose must have told them all they needed to know.'

'What does Rose hope to achieve?' asked Yates.

'I'm not sure,' said the Doctor. don't think he's realised quite how dangerous the Waro are. But the important thing for the moment is cobalt-60. We can't let the Waro get their hands on any, or they'll render the Earth uninhabitable!

Sometime later, Yates sat back in Bessie's passenger seat and reflected on the Brigadier's dealings with authority. He had often listened to the Brigadier's arguments with the

'bureaucratic buffoons' of Westminster, but never before had Yates been forced to grapple with the tortuous logic that represented common sense in the corridors of power. Over the last few hours he and Shuskin had endured telephone conversations with a seemingly endless procession of jobsworths, pedants, and self-interested civil servants.' forty-five minutes had elapsed before anyone had admitted that the United Kingdom even possessed a significant amount of cobalt-60. At length, Yates had been told that, while most of the Earth's reserves of cobalt-60 were in military establishments in the US, Britain did have a 'reasonable quantity' of the material. It was kept, with minimal security as far as Yates could ascertain, in a nuclear power station on the Northumberland coast. He and Shuskin then spent many fruitless minutes trying to persuade the authorities to move the fissile material to a top secret MoD base some miles away. There had been objections to bringing the cobalt out on to the roads, but eventually the civil and military commanders had agreed to the UNIT proposal. Once the cobalt was safely stored in the MoD facility it would, it was hoped, be safe from Waro attack.

The ensuing convoy of vehicles - with Bessie at the centre, like a surreal yellow bull's-eye - reminded Yates of footage he'd seen of Soviet May Day parades. He'd rarely seen so many military vehicles in one place before.

Yates turned to the Doctor. If the Waro are going to attack, they'll do it soon.'

The Doctor nodded. It's certainly their best chance to take the cobalt.'

Yates scanned the sky, but saw nothing. Dusk was falling, grey clouds trailing across the dark sun. 'No word yet on Rose,' he said.

'He's long gone,' said the Doctor. 'Wealth can buy so many things. It can influence, persuade, cajole. You know, Karl Marx once told me that -'

Without warning something flew over the convoy. Yates had been told to expect flapping goblin creatures, not aircraft.

He quickly reached for the binoculars resting on the back seat.

'What was that?' exclaimed the Doctor, keeping his eyes on the road.

'A plane of some sort?' said Yates, trying to find the craft in the binoculars. 'Very fast. I didn't recognise it.' Even the faint glow of the engines had faded from sight, so he turned his attention in the other direction, trying to see if there were any more of them. 'What can you see?' asked the Doctor.

'Nothing,' said Yates. 'Perhaps it was one of ours... '

'Captain Yates,' said the Doctor with a smile, 'I never thought I'd find you clutching at straws.'

'Well,' said Yates, 'I don't think we -' He stopped, catching sight of something in the binoculars. 'No, there they are. An attack formation!' He reached for his radio. 'What are those things?' he asked rhetorically.

'Alien craft,' said the Doctor quietly. I've been analysing the sound of the engines since the first one flew over. They aren't using jet turbines.'

'All units!' snapped Yates into his radio. 'Prepare for attack from the west. Deploy anti-aircraft batteries now. Other vehicles...' He paused, a light smile passing across his lips.

'Don't spare the horses.'

The convoy began to pick up speed just as the alien craft shot overhead. Yates saw a number of matt-black dart-shaped craft, still maintaining a tight formation. He estimated their speed to be at least Mach 2, but somehow they made little more noise than a group of light aircraft puttering through the skies.

Then the craft stopped - no hint of slowing, just a sudden absence of forward motion, as if they'd hit an invisible wall -

then rotated back towards the convoy, and started firing.

Crackling bolts of green light stabbed out from the alien planes, hitting the trucks at the heart of the convoy. In an instant the cargoes seemed to wink out of existence, leaving the lorries virtually unscathed.

The first salvo of heat-seeking missiles flew from the ground towards the vessels, but they darted off at dizzying speed, twisting and turning around each other like fireflies.

The green bolts stabbed out towards the missiles, vaporising them in eerie silence.

The Doctor was shouting something, but Yates couldn't hear it above the noise of more anti-aircraft missiles streaking into the air.

A stray beam from one of the alien aircraft snaked out towards the vehicle in front of Bessie, hitting the truck's cabin rather than its cargo. The entire vehicle exploded in a black-and-orange ball of smoke.

'Watch out!' shouted Yates as Bessie flew towards the fireball.

SIXTH INTERLUDE:

DREAMTIME

'You seem unusually pensive tonight,' said David Boyd, pushing a stick into the embers of the fire. The shimmering heat sent tiny sparks spiralling up into the air.

Maurice Fisher smiled. 'And you're not normally up this early,' he said, pointing towards the faint glow that seemed to come from within the pale, ghostly gumtrees and the deep-red earth. It was rakarra-rakarra -'dawn-dawn' - that mysterious period just before sunrise. The old Aborigine brushed dirt from his Jeans, and stared at the white man.

'What is bothering you, Boyd?'

Boyd observed the man closely. In the fitful, spitting light of the fire he seemed young again, the fissures and caverns that wrinkled his skin becoming less visible. Boyd had been with the Kukatja people for two years, and from the outset the old man had been able to read him like a book. But for all Boyd's seeming sophistication, his knowledge of cutting-edge principles of anthropology and interpersonal communication, he had never been able to read Fisher in the same way.

'I had a dream - a nightmare, I suppose,' said Boyd. 'You know how well I normally sleep.'

Fisher nodded. 'I could hear you snoring,' he said, with a gleam in his eyes. 'What happened in your dream? You know how important they are to us.'

'When I was younger,' said Boyd, had a recurring dream.

The situations were different, but one character remained the same.' a small man, almost a dwarf. Pure evil. A hooked nose, eyes deep in shadow. He would often fool my family, appearing in some sort of disguise, but I always saw through him. I tried to warn them, but - you know what it's like in dreams - you try to cry out, but you can't. And this man - this creature - used to turn towards me. And then he'd smile. And that smile was terrifying. I always woke up at that point.' Boyd found himself staring deep into the fire, watching the writhing orange and yellow tongues of flame.

'I don't suppose I've dreamed about him since I was eight or nine.'

'And yet you started seeing him in your dreams six or seven nights ago.'

Boyd smiled, barely surprised. 'Yes. Every night since.'

Fisher pushed his hands deep into the pockets of his jacket, his breath a white mist against the dark sky. 'Do you remember the lights in the sky that night? The shooting stars? They were like dreams painted across the sky,' he said with a grand gesture.

'Comets and meteorites are portents of doom in a lot of cultures,' said Boyd.

Fisher nodded, getting to his feet. 'What we saw that night went beyond superstition. There is someone I must see.' He looked down at the researcher. 'You have more Dreaming than most kartiya.' he said, affectionately using the word for a white outsider. 'And you've always been much more open with me than I have with you.'

'Oh, I don't know -' said Boyd immediately.

'Perhaps you had better come with me,' interrupted Fisher. 'But promise me that you will not speak of this to anyone.'

'Of course,' said Boyd. 'Who are we going to see?'

'Nedenah,' said Fisher after a pause. He walked slowly down the shanty town's one street, and out into the desert.

Boyd followed a few steps behind, somehow sensing that the old man wanted to wrestle with his own thoughts without interruption.

They headed out towards the rose-red canyon to the west of the town, at length coming to a cave, its dark maw partly hidden by stunted bushes and tall grass. Boyd stood for a moment in the entrance, admiring the art scrawled all over the walls. There were snakes, roos and human faces, painted in shades of brown and yellow, and then more realistic and intricate snapshots of everyday life.' children playing with spears, marriage ceremonies, funerals.