Doctor Who: Planet of Fire (9 page)

We’ve a full scale exodus to organise.’

When Moses came down the mountain to find the Israelites dancing around a golden calf, he must have looked something like Timanov as he strode through the Hall of Fire towards the impious stranger who was desecrating the precious relics. ‘Seize the enemy of Logar!’

shouted the white-haired patriarch. ‘Arrest all Unbelievers!’

The Doctor got to his feet, beaming his cheery vicar’s smile. ‘Look, we’re here to help you. That volcano could erupt at any moment.’

Timanov glared at the supreme heretic. ‘You must be the Doctor,’ he hissed. ‘It is the Outsider’s wish that you go to the fire.’

The Doctor sighed. A lot of explaining would be needed to get these superstitious people onto the rescue ship.

‘There is no Outsider,’ he began patiently. But Timanov wasn’t interested. He nodded to the Elders. The old men pointed their staves at the enemy and the Doctor found himself staring down the muzzles of five deadly laser guns.

A young rebel, unimpressed by a mere rod held in the shaking hand of an elderly man, stepped forward to protect the ally of the Unbelievers.

‘No!’ shouted the Doctor.

But he was too late. A ray stabbed at the young man who fell lifeless to the ground. The crowd gasped at this terrible new power. The Doctor stared, horrified, at the body of his protector. Who could have explained to these unsophisticated old men the violent purpose of their regalia?

The crowds turned towards the entrance again: someone else had come into the Hall. It was a tall, sinister man in a black suit. The late arrival chuckled darkly.

‘Oh, no,’ said the Doctor quietly. ‘The Master!’

8

The ship had split, on impact, into three parts. Two sections had been so badly burned as to be unrecognisable, but the third was easily identified as the flight deck.

Turlough stared at the shattered instruments and twisted controls–it was amazing that anyone could have lived after such a crash. He walked across to the tail section where Malkon stood gazing at the charred, half-dissolved skeleton of the ship. Volcanic dust had collected in drifts against the distorted bulkheads, some alloy in the hull was slowly corroding in the sulphurous air and had bled a lurid green and yellow across the superstructure.

‘This was your sacred fire,’ said Turlough to the young boy. ‘A crashed ship.’

‘A ship,’ repeated Malkon thoughtfully. ‘Did I really travel from Trion in
this
?’

Turlough nodded. He had tried to explain to his companion as they hurried across the valley and over the ridge into the forbidden land, that the mark of Logar on his arm branded him a citizen of Trion. Turlough’s own home, not this planet of fire. ‘It must have been spectacular,’ he added grimly, thinking of the ship hurtling in from space, red hot with friction, engines screaming against the inevitable impact. He imagined the explosion and the massive conflagration from which a baby had crawled alive. A miracle indeed, but not quite as the superstitious Sarns had interpreted it.

‘Where are the others?’ said Malkon.

Turlough had been asking himself the same question. If Malkon had survived, why not the passengers or the crew?

Could they still be in hiding somewhere?

He moved to the clearing between the three hulks.

There was a circle of small stones, around which a few ragged flowers brightened the scorched earth. Malkon walked across to join the elder boy who was staring at the ground.

‘Turlough?’

Turlough turned roughly aside. He did not want his new friend to see him weeping.

Peri was hopelessly lost. ‘Doctor! Turlough! Anybody!’ she wailed, desperately scanning the vista of clinker and dust.

She was cut and and exhausted by her terrifying scramble down the side of the ravine, and hot from her trek through the sterile valley. She was thirsty, she ached all over, and she was very, very frightened. She held back another wave of blind hysteria and tried to work out the direction of the Doctor’s blue box.

There was something on the horizon that was not made of rock and lava. As she got closer, she could distinguish girders, struts, a hotly of metal and–she could have cried with relief–two human beings.

`Hey, Turlough!’

A dishevelled Peri staggered towards Malkon and Turlough as the two boys emerged from the shadow of the wreck.

‘What are you doing here?’ said Turlough as the girl collasped on the ground.

‘Thank goodness I’ve found you,’ she moaned. ‘I was beginning to think I was the last of the Mohicans.’ Sitting up, she caught sight of Malkon. ‘Who’s this?’

‘Malkon,’ said Turlough impatiently, wanting to know why Peri had left the TARDIS. ‘Another traveller,’ he explained to Malkon.

‘Hi,’ said Peri, hoping that Malkon was the ordinary, uncomplicated teenager he looked. She got to her feet. ‘Oh, boy. Have I seen everything today! A transgalactic payphone, a stepfather who turns into a robot...’

Turlough grabbed her arm. ‘What did you say?’

‘A robot who turns into some hoodlum...’

As Peri continued her tale of woe Turlough began to piece together what must have happened in the TARDIS.

It was so obvious. The real professor had never really left the island–it was Kamelion all the time.

‘That’s him,’ agreed Peri. ‘But I sure prefer the Tin Man to this Master.’

Turlough’s blood ran cold. ‘The Master?’ he cried.

‘Kamelion turned into the Master?’

Peri nodded, massaging her bruised shoulder.

The horrified Turlough couldn’t imagine what had made the Master usurp the robot and bring them all to this Trion colony. But he now realised he had left the Doctor in the most appalling danger.

It was a rare joy for the Master to see the dismay on the Doctor’s face as he entered the Hall of Fire. The pleasure was enhanced by the knowledge that the youthful Time Lord had been totally duped by his own robot. He soon found himself enjoying the adulation of the crowd.

Deification, he decided, was no more than his due. Nor would he disappoint his worshippers.

‘Wretched citizens of Sarn!’ he thundered at the congregation in the Hall like a hell-fire preacher. ‘You have turned your backs on the Lord of the Fire Mountain and listened...’ He pointed an accusing finger at the Doctor, ‘to his enemy!’

The Doctor struggled in vain to explain that this Outsider was no more than a traveller, for the crowd was enthralled by the evil automaton.

‘On your knees, miserable people,’ cried the Kamelion-Master. ‘Abase yourselves before the messenger of Logar.’

And his audience obediently fell to their knees and abased themselves.

‘The man’s an imposter!’ shouted the Doctor.

The Master’s surrogate laughed. ‘Save your breath, Doctor, to tell me where is the girl from your TARDIS.’

‘ Peri?’ said the Doctor, who had never doubted that his American passenger was safe with her stepfather in the time machine.

The Master was puzzled by the Doctor’s genuine surprise. ‘She has joined you here,’ he prompted, impatient to regain the vital TARDIS component. ‘Where is she?

Where is the comparator?’

The Doctor’s mind raced. What had been going on in the police box while he was exploring with Turlough?

Timanov bowed before the man in the dark suit. ‘Let us hurl the enemy in the flames, Outsider.’

‘Not yet.’ The Kamelion-Master smiled. The Doctor would surrender the comparator before he died.

Meanwhile, the rebels, befriended by his adversary could satisfy the bloodlust of the old men and perhaps encourage the Doctor to be more co-operative. ‘Burn the others first!’

He waved dismissively in the direction of Amyand, Roskal and Sorasta. The Elders raised their staves and the guards marched forward, grabbing the three Unbelievers.

‘No!’ shouted the Doctor, as the three Unbelievers were frogmarched to the cave where the fire still raged.

Once more they sought judgement of the Chosen One.

‘Malkon is not here,’ sneered the the Chief Elder. ‘It is the will of the Outsider that you all die. The messenger of Logar has supreme authority.’

The Doctor watched helplessly. The Master laughed and whispered in his ear: ‘The comparator, if you please.’

‘I don’t
have
the comparator,’ protested the Doctor.

‘Where is the girl?’ he pleaded. ‘What have you done with Professor Foster?’

‘The professor has been eliminated,’ announced the Kamelion-Master, learning at once, from the agonised look on the Doctor’s face, that Peri had not yet found the Time Lord to give her account of the robot’s activities–or to hand over the comparator. ‘Such an absurd capacity for distress.’ He mocked the Doctor’s concern for his passengers in the police box, though of course that inadequate machine was now inoperable without the comparator. But, no matter. Here was an army of slaves to evacuate his buried TARDIS.

‘Continue the burning!’ ordered Timanov from beside the cave. The guards dragged back the heavy iron grille from the entrance.

‘Help us, Doctor!’ screamed Roskal and Sorasta. But there was nothing the Doctor could do. Two young Unbelievers ran forward in an impulsive bid to aid their comrades, but even before the guards could grab them, the Elders raised their staves and the youths were felled by deadly rays. The Doctor lowered his head at the carnage.

‘You are quite powerless,’ jeered the Kamelion-Master,

‘and since you do not have the comparator, entirely dispensable. You may join your friends in the incinerator.’

He called once more to Timanov. ‘Continue with the burnings, Chief Elder. See that this Doctor burns slowly!’

The old man turned towards the mountain. ‘Great Logar!’ he cried. ‘Receive these mortals as an oblation from your faithful people.’

The flames burned even more brightly and the Elders raised their lasers to drive the Doctor and the Unbelievers into the cave.

‘Journey’s end, Doctor,’ said the Master. ‘I’m sorry your cremation will deprive me of our periodic encounters.’ The words of valediction over, he gestured to the guards.

‘Quickly, my time is short.’

‘No!’ shouted the Doctor as he was manhandled towards the fire. ‘You know the laws,’ he cried in a desperate effort to gain time. ‘A burning cannot take place without Malkon’s consent.’

‘I overule the Chosen One,’ said the would-be Outsider dismissively. ‘Do not delay!’ he barked at the Elders.

The crowd were so enthralled by the spectacle at the cave that the arrival of Turlough, Malkon and Peri at the entrance of the Hall went entirely unnoticed. Turlough peered from behind a pillar towards the martyrs’ cave, where the Doctor was on the point of execution. ‘What are you waiting for?’ he hissed at Malkon. ‘Get in there and stop them!’

‘But I’m a Trion, not a Chosen One,’ protested the confused child.

‘They don’t know that,’ shouted Turlough, and pushed Malkon out into the crowd. He grabbed Peri by the hand.

‘Quickly,’ he whispered, dragging her back to the portico.

‘We can’t leave the Doctor,’ complained the girl as she stumbled down the steps into the street.

‘I think I know how to stop the fire,’ cried Turlough, running as fast as he could in the direction of the bunker.

‘Stop!’ Malkon marched bravely through the crowd.

‘There will be no sacrifice.’

All heads in the crowd turned while the Elders and the guards froze–to the fury of the Master. ‘What are you waiting for?’ he shouted. ‘Continue the burnings!’

Still no one moved.

‘That man is an imposter!’ Malkon pointed to the metal Master.

‘Who is this boy?’ raged the false Outsider, furious at the delay.

The Doctor, making the most of Malkon’s timely interruption, pushed aside the guards and turned to his enemy. ‘Don’t you know?’ He gestured towards the young man. ‘Allow me to introduce Malkon, Chosen One of the Sarns.’ Giving the Master no time to reply, the Doctor moved to the Elders. ‘You see,’ he continued, anxious to discredit the Time Lord, ‘this so-called Outsider doesn’t even recognise your leader. And he doesn’t understand the laws of the city.’

The old men mumbled uneasily amongst themselves, each one reluctant openly to defy the Chosen One. They looked towards their Outsider for some sort of lead.

The metal Master, inadequately briefed, blustered like an actor unsure of his lines. ‘Obey me, or there will be no gifts!’ He raised his arm towards the mountain. ‘I will call down the wrath of Logar on you all!’

The Elders looked at Timanov. ‘The boy is overruled,’

he announced arbitrarily. ‘Continue the burnings.’

‘No!’ Malkon stepped forward to protect the Doctor.

One of the old men raised his laser, the ray darted like a snake’s tongue, and the boy fell senseless beside the flames.

The Doctor groaned, the crowd gasped and the Elders stared in horror at the Sarn who had dared to take the life of a Chosen One. Only the Master was unmoved. ‘Never mind the boy. He has sided with my enemies. It is Logar’s will that he should die.’ He pointed impatiently to the cave. ‘To the fire with the Unbelievers!’

The fire promply went out.

There was an awful silence, broken finally by the voice of Timanov. ‘Logar refuses the sacrifice.’ He turned accusingly to the assassin. ‘He is angry that his Chosen One was struck down!’

Turlough and Peri ran as fast as they could down the narrow streets, praying that they would not lose their way in the half-ruined city.

‘That kid won’t hold them off for long,’ said Peri, who had no idea what the Doctor’s companion was up to.

‘There!’ Turlough had spotted the derelict building and dashed forward into the open courtyard where he stared tugging at the stone. ‘Help me!’ he called to the girl.

‘Looks like Houston Control,’ exclaimed the American as they descended the metal stairway to the bunker.

‘Older, but hardly as crude,’ said Turlough, ever contemptuous of Earth technology. He hurried to the control panel of the machine. ‘It’s part of an ancient flow system,’ he explained as he scanned the knobs and dials he had scrutinised earlier. ‘If I hit the right circuit...’ His fingers hovered over the green button on one of the side decks. ‘...I can cut the gas supply to the cave.’ He stabbed hopefully at the regulator. As he withdrew his hand from the switches, Peri noticed his fingers were crossed. ‘Let’s have a look.’ Turlough transferred his attention to the surveillance unit. A view of the Hall of Fire appeared on the screen where Roskal had first spotted the explorers from the TARDIS.