Doctor Who: Planet of Fire (3 page)

‘There has been no confusion,’ replied Kamelion, blandly. ‘My function has never been impaired.’

The Doctor stared into the unblinking eyes of the man-machine. Either the creature was being devious or there was a serious malfunction. He walked thoughtfully back to the control room to rejoin his companion, who was only too relieved that Kamelion chose to turn a deaf ear to the incoming signal.

‘Did you get a fix?’ asked the Doctor.

‘There wasn’t time,’ replied Turlough, seizing on the most plausible excuse. ‘The transmission stopped.’

The Doctor began to remove a small self-contained unit from the communications section of the console. ‘If that signal transmits again, we’ll get a fix on it with this.’

Checking the temperature outside the TARDIS, the Doctor slipped out of his frock coat and opened the double doors.

‘Wait while I go and change!’ shouted Turlough. He slipped through the inner door, then under the pretext of going to his room ran up the corridor and into Karnelion’s quarters.

Kamelion pivoted round as the boy came into the room.

‘Take care, Turlough. It is very hot. With your fair skin you will easily burn.’

To the Doctor’s anxious companion, the inhuman monotone of his voice seemed to turn the advice into a threat. He stared at the robot, wondering what two-faced game it was playing. ‘The Custodians won’t take me,’ he whispered defiantly. ‘I’m going to stay with the Doctor.’

‘I do not understand your concern.’

‘You heard the signal,’ shouted Turlough angrily. ‘You set the co-ordinates. You’re helping
them
!’

Kamelion stared back at him, as inscrutable as a waxwork. Turlough felt a surge of rage–he was sure the robot was laughing at him. He leaned forward, grabbed the cable that linked Kamelion with the TARDIS computer, and pulled it sharply out of the socket. He turned back to the silver automaton. ‘One word to the Doctor and I shall destroy you!’

3

The warm sun outside the TARDIS was a welcome change from the grey chill of London and Turlough found himself enjoying the walk along the edge of the sea. As he sniffed at the scent of wild thyme and mint and listened to the frantic midday chorus of cicadas he began to put a more optimistic interpretation on recent events. Perhaps it was no more than a coincidence that they had picked up the distress call of a Trion ship. Maybe Kamelion had merely navigated the TARDIS to the ideal holiday island.

Turlough slipped off his shoes and was soon hopping around like a scalded cat on the red-hot sand. He rushed to the water and paddled along in the shallows. The Doctor strode more purposefully along the beach, the detector in his hand, ready to pinpoint the source of any further transmission. Turlough wished heartily that the Trion ship, wherever it was, would maintain radio silence.

It wasn’t long before they reached the tiny fishing village. A lorry was parked on the harbour wall, half loaded with wooden crates and boxes, and a number of large baskets were being hauled on a rope from a boat tied up to the quay. An odd time, thought the Doctor, to be landing a catch of fish. And the men, snuggling with the ropes in their designer jeans, dark glasses and baseball caps made pretty odd fishermen.

It was Turlough who first noticed the boxes of barnacled amphorae. ‘They’re archaeologists,’ he exclaimed.

The Doctor hurried forward to examine the contents of the truck. His attention was immediately drawn to the marble statue of a young boy, lying in one of the crates. ‘A kouros,’ he explained to Turlough. ‘Late classical period.

Really rather fine.’ Then for pure swank, he added: ‘I would hazard a guess it’s by a pupil of Praxiteles.’

‘That’s a remarkably well informed guess, sir,’ came an American voice behind him. The Doctor turned and found his hand being grasped by the tall, bronzed man who had spoken. ‘Professor Howard Foster.’ the archaeologist introduced himself.

The Doctor congratulated the professor on his discovery. ‘Pity about the erosion, though.’ He indicated where the once finely chiselled lines of the artist had been blurred by centuries under water. ‘But the effect is not unattractive. Like the Marine Venus on Rhodes.’ A sudden idea came to him. ‘Have you been working on the sea bed?’

Professor Foster nodded. ‘The wreck out in the bay.

She’s a real mixed bag, like your English
Mary Rose
.’

The Doctor looked thoughtfully out to sea.

‘Been nice talking to you.’ The professor rushed away to supervise the lifting of the final crate from the launch.

The Doctor walked with Turlough towards the far end of the harbour wall. ‘Suppose one of the divers disturbed something...’ He gazed out to where the expedition boat rode at anchor over the wreck. Suddenly he began to squeak like an old lady who has turned her hearing aid up too high.

‘Oh, no!’ thought Turlough as the Doctor pulled the detector from his pocket. ‘That signal again!’

‘Just as I thought,’ muttered the Doctor, squinting in the bright sunlight to get a reading from the device in his hand.

‘It’s coming from out in the bay. I wonder if we could prevail on one of the professor’s divers...’

‘That bearing’s not accurate enough,’ interrupted Turlough.

But the Doctor would not be discouraged. ‘When the next transmission comes, well take one bearing from here and a second from the TARDIS. The convergence will give us the exact source.’ He pointed to a small waterside café on the other side of the harbour. ‘That will make an excellent base for the first radial.’

The Doctor hurried across the sleepy square, looking forward to a cool beer and a rest in the shade. ‘Toss you for the TARDIS,’ he offered, rather half-heartedly, to his companion.

‘I’ll go,’ said Turlough, anxious to sabotage the Doctor’s experiment. ‘The heat is making me feel sick.’

Not even Ariadne, abandoned on Naxos, could have been so downright mad as Peri, marooned on her stepfather’s boat. For a solid half hour she had walked backwards and forwards across the deck in a blind fury. Then, having nothing better to do, she curled up in the corner and fell asleep.

She woke up cramped, burned and hungry. After a fruitless search of the cabin for food, she felt all her anger returning. Howard had crossed her before, but never in such a humiliating way–in front of the entire unit! She looked at her watch. Her mother would still be on the other side of the island, her stepfather tied up at the museum for the rest of the day. If she could only reach the shore she could pack her rucksack in the hotel and meet Trevor and Kevin in time for the ferry.

If only she had been a strong swimmer. Yet it was a mere half-mile to the nearest beach. The water was warm, and she could take it slowly. No problem.

Her mind made up, Peri stripped down to her swimsuit and stuffed her shirt and shorts into one of Doc Corfield’s patent plastic bags he had conveniently left on the side of the labelling table. She was about to close the zipper when she noticed something smooth and gun-metal grey protruding from one of the boxes. It was the unidentified cylinder she had inspected earlier, cast aside and forgotten by the archaeologists. She picked it up. Hardly likely to be platinum, but the casing might be worth something as scrap. Finders keepers, thought Peri, and dropped it in the bag.

Sealing the waterproof satchel, she moved to the side of the boat, lowered herself into the water and struck out for the shore.

Nothing could have suited Kamelion’s purpose better than to he left alone in the TARDIS. He waited patiently in his cubicle until the Doctor and Turlough had had time to get well clear of the time-machine. then, mobilising himself, he glided clown the corridor and into the empty control room. He went straight to the console and patched his own circuits into the communications section where he began an extensive search of all the available frequencies. ‘
Contact
rnust be made
...’ He still did not fully understand the problem, but he knew that his assistance was required urgently.

‘Kamelion!’

The robot’s head panned towards the intruder. How inconvenient of Turlough to return so soon. ‘Contact must be made! Important to obey!’ He shouted defiantly at the boy.

`No!’ cried Turlough, rushing to pull Kamelion away from the console.

It is a painful business rugger-tackling a robot, as Turlough discovered when the silver mannikin hurled him effortlessly to the floor. ‘Do not interfere!’ screamed the automaton monotonously. ‘TARDIS will be taken to point of contact!’

Turlough didn’t argue but crawled round the console out of sight of Kamelion. He could just reach the panel where he had previously programmed his electronic sedative. This time he selected a wave form that would do nothing for Kamelion’s peace of mind or body.

The robot shrieked as Turlough switched on. High energy pulses flowed directly into his circuitry, blotting out all coherent thought and organised locomotion. His arms jerked and girated, smoke began to pour from his joints. With a final scream he twisted his body away from the console in a vain attempt to detach himself from the source of such crippling energy, and collapsed with an enormous crash to the floor.

Turlough leaned over the tormented automaton. ‘You’re not taking the TARDIS anywhere,’ he boasted vindictively. ‘And you won’t be listening to any more messages. You’re finished!’ Slowly he dragged the the immobilised torso through the inner door, up the corridor, and clumped it, like a pile of scrap, in its own room.

Kamelion lay jangling on the floor, every system and circuit of his body in turmoil. Turlough rested against the wall while he got his breath back, then went out, slammed the door and walked back to the control room.

It did not take him long to remove all evidence of his attack on the robot, and he began to plan his stategy for the next Trion broadcast. He soon realised he need only falsify the reading and the Doctor would never get an accurate bearing on the radiation.

Turlough gave a casual glance up to the scanner. There was something in the water... He zoomed the picture in.

Just a girl swimming and waving at somebody on the shore. He zoomed tighter on the frantic semaphore...

The girl was drowning.

It was dead easy, thought Peri, as she paddled herself confidently to the shore, towing the buoyant plastic bag behind her.

She was about half way to the beach when she felt the first stab of cramp in her left leg. Suddenly the water was colder, deeper, the shore more desperately far away than it had been when she left the boat. ‘Don’t panic! Don’t panic!’ she said to herself.

The convulsive pain shot to her thigh, twisting and unbalancing her whole body. She gasped, and sucked in a mouthful of seawater. She retched and spluttered, frantically trying to raise her head. She tried to wave, but there was no one to see her. She breathed in more salt water and choked helplessly. Her arms thrashed and splashed, her head went under and she could see white foam, a cold refracted sun. Air for a blissful second as she broke the surface, then down. down...

Peri had no memory of Turlough’s rescue. She just remembered the moment when she stopped struggling.

The sudden peace. Was that what death was like?

‘I think I’m going to die,’ moaned Peri.

‘No you’re not,’ said Turlough as he helped the half-conscious girl onto the bed in Tegan’s old room.

The American lay back, exhausted, and closed her eyes.

Turlough picked up her plastic bag from the floor. It looked as if there were some dry clothes inside. As he opened the fastener and fished out a pair of shorts and a shirt, a small cylinder rolled onto the bedclothes. Turlough grabbed it, and gazed at the object, his mouth dry. his heart thudding. It was a Trion data beacon. ‘Where did you get this?’ he shouted at the girl.

Peri’s eyes flickered. ‘Howard was such a pig... I needed the money.’

So that was where the transmission had come from–a beacon despatched from some stricken spaceship. Inside the cylinder would be the data core with all the details of the Trion vessel’s location. It would have to be destroyed before the Doctor returned.

Turlough traced with his finger the engraved trefoil on the side of the cylinder. He rolled up his sleeve. There, on the inside of his arm, was branded the same overlapping shapes of the Misos Triangle. He stared at it bitterly. It was his stigma; the sign of humiliation and disgrace.

The detector on the café table began to whistle again. The Doctor picked it up and started to read off the bearing.

Turlough had had ample time to reach the TARDIS and would now be computing the second radial which would enable them to tell within an inch of two where in the water...

‘How odd!’ The Doctor checked the reading. ‘How very odd indeed!’ He stood up, flung some coins on the table, and ran across the harbour square. He stopped at the corner and looked at the machine again. Them was no doubt about it. The source of the signal had moved hom the sea and was now very near the TARDIS.

Turlough was still struggling to unscrew the mushroom head of the cylinder when he heard the Doctor’s footseps.

He quickly hid the beacon in the towel with which he had made a perfunctory effort to dry himself.

‘The point of emission moved,’ exclaimed the Doctor as he joined his companion by the console. ‘Good heavens!

You’re soaking wet.’ He stared at the boy who was still dripping all over the TARDIS floor.

‘Please, Doctor. Go and see Kamelion. He’s had another fit,’ said Turlough with as much urgency as he could muster. The Doctor said no more to his companion, but walked straight out into the corridor.

As soon as the Doctor was out of sight, Turlough gripped the bulbous head of the cylinder once more. At last the end began to turn and the thin wafer, protected by the tube, was soon in his hand.

‘A data core!’ said a voice behind him. The Doctor had returned from an all too brief examination of Kamelion and stood watching Turlough from the open door. ‘You’re right, Karnelion’s in a bad way,’ he said, without taking his eyes off the slither of silicon in the boy’s hand. Moving to the console, he picked up the two pieces of outer casing from where Turlough had dropped them. ‘A beacon,’ he observed. ‘Sent across space like a shipwrecked sailor’s bottle...’ He extracted the core from between Turlough’s fingers. ‘With a message in it. Who from, I wonder? And where?’