Doctor Who: The Devil Goblins From Neptune (3 page)

The entire festival was in danger of becoming a farce.

Nick Blair blamed himself. Well, no, he blamed the expectations of an audience who'd seen Woodstock - The Movie and thought that was what Redborough '70 was going to be all about. But, unfortunately, these things cost money.

The bands who sang about peace, love, and freedom needed to support their country estates and heroin habits; the guys who'd built the stage were on union rates and the local council wanted a piece of the action just for allowing the thing to go ahead.

Nick, a veteran of two Isle of Wight’s, had been employed to bring Viscount Rose's vision to life. But even Rose's pockets had a bottom, and that had been reached long before Nick was anywhere near booking the Grateful Dead or Jimi Hendrix. The response from the Who's management team had been typical: the band would be halfway into a world tour and, incidentally, the fee's a flat quarter-of-a-million. The answer from Dylan's manager had been even more cutting: 'Where the hell is Redborough?'

So Nick had done the only thing he could: booked lots of second-division rock bands whose labels were keen to get them on to the prestigious festival circuit, a couple of folkie songwriters who wanted the exposure,
and,
of course, Glandring the Forehammer (It's from
The Lord of the Rings,
man'). Quite how he'd secured the services of the leaders of the flowering Northampton sci-fi commune scene was still the subject of much debate. In truth, Nick had simply promised more money than was actually available, got them to the site, and then told them that if they didn't go on, he would announce that they were a bunch of uptight breadheads who were refusing to play There was already a group of French anarchists going around trying to tear down the fences, so Glandring the Forehammer (It's from
The Lord of the Rings,
man') wisely decided to take the stage and perform an acoustic version of their concept triple-album
Lederhosen,
Restaurant, Benzedrine, Fusilier.

The helicopters continued wheeling overhead.

'We're into the progressive scene.' said Glandring's singer/lyricist Zak Wigmore. Zak was in the middle of a rant about how Glandring's music was a product of society, the war, and of his being thrashed by his nanny as a six-year-old after she caught him trying on her underwear.

He then introduced 'Gemini Descending', a free-form jazz workout in which saxophonist Mac played whatever he felt like and Zak bellowed incoherent poetry at the audience. It was the closest thing they had to a pop single. Then, just as Zak was getting to the bit about Venus being 'like a penis' (that always got a good reaction), he pointed to the sky. 'Far out!' he said loudly. For a split second the rest of the band thought it was just the industrial-strength acid sucking his brains out through a straw, like that time in Doncaster when he confidently stated that electricity comes from other planets. Then they looked at the sky too. And stopped playing.

Nick Blair saw the lights a second after Zak. The sky was awash with colour, a shimmering pyrotechnical display. Some time ago he had watched a large meteor shower over America, but this was different, more magical and otherworldly. He stared until the diffuse patterns began to hurt his eyes.

On stage, Zak had the microphone and was taking a message from the planet Freak-Out. 'What you are witnessing.'

he said, 'is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. It's in Revelation, people. They're coming. They're going to wipe the Earth clean. And we can all live in the sea like dolphins. Or crabs...'

Everyone was looking at the sky now, a cloth of gold daubed with blood and fire. A ball of flame crashed into the sea with a gushing hiss that brought an ecstatic moan from the onlookers. And then the lights in the sky faded. The festival watched in awe as a mist began to reach out to them from the water.

Nick glanced at the stage. Zak picked up a fallen microphone and asked the band if they knew the chords to

'Fly Me to the Moon'.

Close to the edge of the festival grounds, Becky and Ray were holding each other. They were from Norwich, and it had taken them four days to hitch-hike here. By the time they arrived, every decent vantage point was taken and they were at the back of a two-hundred-thousand-person queue for the toilets. So, they did what any sensible young couple would do in the circumstances they went down on to the deserted beach and made love during Glandring the Forehammer's set.

'Look at the sky.' said Becky, breathlessly.

'Yeah,' grunted a slightly underwhelmed Ray 'Awesome.'

'Let's go for a swim, and be in harmony with the ocean.'

continued Becky with a blissful look in her eyes.

Ray shrugged impassively. 'OK.' he said. They ran naked into the cool, frothing water, surging through the surf up to their thighs, then their chests. Becky giggled. Ray was cross, but curiously excited.

They touched in the moonlight, the gentle waves lapping around them, their skin like marble in the blue-white light.

Becky's face was porcelain, with dark wet hair swept back out of her eyes. Ray felt a surge of sexual energy. He wanted her, here and now.

'Ow!' Her stifled cry shattered the moment. She looked down into the water, her face almost touching the rippling surface. 'I've just stood on a stone, or...' Her voice trailed away as she saw the water change colour around her. 'Ray.'

she said, her voice trembling, 'there's something in the water

-' She stopped again. Ray was gone, with hardly a sound - a small splash, no more.

'Ray!' she screamed. There was a sudden shooting pain down the side of one leg, as if numerous razorlike teeth were ripping at her flesh. The water rushed upward to cover her face. Her arms pinwheeled, thrashing at the sea, but the only replying sound - muffled and booming through the suffocating water - was that of a fully blooded Glandring the Forehammer ('it's from The Lord of the Rings, man') starting Journey to the Centre of the Sun', all eighteen minutes of it. Long before the first guitar solo, Becky was swallowed by the blackness that was all around her.

Sergeant Benton and some of the men had a running joke about the Doctor's laboratory. Whenever anyone turned up at UNIT HQ to see Liz Shaw or the Doctor himself, they were pointed in the general direction of the lab and then advised to follow their senses. Almost without exception there would be a pungent odour to follow, or an explosion would rattle the building's foundations, or a creeping glow would advance down the corridor. At the very least one could normally hear the Doctor cursing in Venusian as another experiment went wrong.

But today the corridor that led to the Doctor's room was eerily quiet. The door was half closed, but Benton thought he'd better knock anyway. 'Doctor, are you in here?'

There was no reply. Benton knocked again, pushed open the door, and stepped gingerly inside.

As usual the room was packed to overflowing with oscilloscopes, flasks, soldering irons and Bunsen burners.

It was quite impossible to tell exactly what the Doctor was working on. On a bench close to the door a spherical glass ball bubbled and pulsed, as if the Doctor's current interest was biological, but towards the back of the room Benton noticed a complex rigging of microphones, portable power generators, and a Marshall amplifier. Perhaps the Doctor was working on a countermeasure against sonic attack.

In the centre of the room was the old police box that housed much of the Doctor's equipment. He had stated on many occasions that this device - his TARDIS - could travel through time and space, and Benton had no reason to disbelieve him. Although much of what the Doctor claimed seemed to be impossible, he was almost always proved correct in the end. A strange bloke, then, but certainly someone to trust when an alien invasion force was heaving into view.

For some time now Benton had made sure that he was first in line for any assignment that involved UNIT's mysterious scientific adviser. Hero worship wasn't something that Sergeant John Benton, DSO, could really claim to understand, but he knew that he would have to wait a very long time to meet someone as remarkable as the Doctor again.

'Doctor?' Benton walked around the TARDIS to the doors on the far side. Both were open, and the Doctor's velvet trousers and sturdy shoes projected through the doorway at floor level. He looked to all the world like a mechanic under a Cortina.

'Are you flanging the whatsit on the glonthometer again, Doctor?'

'I'm fine, thank you, Sergeant,' came the muffled reply. It was as if he was in a different room. 'I'm a bit busy, you know -

unless you want to help, of course. Liz is off somewhere, and there's only so much one pair of hands can do. You could start by passing me that perigosto stick on the bench over there'

'Sorry, Doctor, bit pushed for time myself. The Brigadier told me to hand you this.' Benton looked down at the sheet of paper.

'What's "this"?'

'A report from the UNIT radar station in Sussex.'

'What does it say?'

Benton sighed. 'It
says
they picked up a large mass approaching the Earth, but it fragmented somewhere in the ionosphere.'

'Burnt up you mean?'

'No, not exactly.' Benton scanned the report again. "Despite fragmentation, there was no measurable reduction in mass."

'Really?' For the first time the Doctor's muffled voice sounded a little interested. 'That does sound most peculiar.

Oh, well, put the report over there' - a finger emerged from gloom of the TARDIS doorway and pointed in the general direction of one of the benches - 'and I'll read it later.'

Benton cleared his throat. 'Actually, Doctor, the Brigadier was hoping that you could go over and investigate immediately.'

'Why? Nothing's landed, has it?'

'Not that we know of.'

'Then surely it
can
wait, Sergeant?'

'Well, you see, the Brigadier is more interested in you giving the radar station the once over.' Benton stared up at the ceiling, knowing what would come next. 'No one else picked up this meteor, and ... The station is using special equipment that you designed after the Auton incident. The Brigadier thinks your radar must be up the creek.'

'"Up the creek"?' The Doctor suddenly appeared in the doorway, having jumped to his feet. 'I'll have you know that that station is now the most advanced on Earth! If it detected something, then there was something there to detect.'

'I'm sure you're right, said Benton. 'But it's what the Brigadier ordered.'

The Doctor reached for the cape that hung behind the door. 'Come on, we'd better drive down there. But in future, do get straight to the point, eh?' He hurried towards the door. 'I can't stand people who dither.'

Dr Elizabeth Shaw glanced down at the scrap of paper in her hand for the hundredth time, checked it against the number of the terraced house, and rang the bell. The air was still and silent, and the noise of the buzzer seemed to echo some distance inside.

Footsteps thumped down the stairs, and then the door flew open.

'Mark!' Liz blurted out; it was all she could say before her mouth went dry.

The man was in his late twenties, tall, to the point of almost brushing the door frame with his hair, and well built. A fading bruise around one eye - doubtless from intervarsity rugger -contrasted with small pebble glasses and the sort of cardigan that only students are ever seen in. 'Liz! Great to see you. Please, come in.'

The moment the door was closed he gave her an embarrassed but genuine hug, then led her towards the kitchen. It was narrow, and made dark by the shadow of the next house. Mark flicked on a strip light, and then filled the kettle.

Liz dropped her suitcase on to the floor and massaged her tingling hands. 'You've not changed,' she said at last.

'What?'

'The light.' Liz indicated the other neon tube, left off despite the gloom. 'Always Mr Frugal.'

'Mr Almost Zero Income, more like,' said Mark. 'It's all right for some people, swanning around the place with the UN picking up the tab, but the rest of us are still living in the real world There was laughter in his voice, but Liz knew it concealed a real criticism.

'But then some of us could have worked on one of the cheap electricity research schemes, rather than selling our soul to British Rocket Group.' Liz couldn't believe it: she'd barely said hello and already they were arguing in that coded way of theirs.

Mark smiled, and leant back against the cooker. 'You forget, my dear - I have no soul!'

Liz shook her head, blinking against the memories. 'I never believed that for a moment.'

'You always see the best in people. Sometimes that can he as blinding as prejudice.'

'You're always too eager to do yourself down.' Liz scanned the room: the fridge festooned with postcards from around the world; the shelves carrying exotic Chinese ingredients, doubtless bought as part of a short-lived attempt to enjoy a cuisine beyond scrambled egg and beans on toast; the general air of grime and cheerful neglect. Her eyes latched on to a girlie calendar in the little hallway that led to the downstairs toilet.

'Not mine, I hasten to add.' said Mark.

'Of course,' said Liz.

Mark handed her a cup of tea, and she began spooning in the

sugar.

'You never used to take sugar.' he observed.

'Army tea - it's unique. After thirteen months I'm starting to acquire a taste for it'

'And army life in general?'

'It's not like I've been conscripted or anything,' explained Liz. 'I can leave whenever I want.'

'Really? That's not the impression I get.'

'No, it's true. I'm always on the verge of leaving.'

'Then why don't you?' Mark came over, and for one awful moment Liz thought he was going to hold her hand or something. But he stopped short, and beamed his most disarming smile. 'You gave up your ground-breaking research to go off with some mad foreign professor who sees a UFO in every abduction and a primeval force behind every crop circle. Why do you stay with them, Liz? You said you hated it at first.'