Doctor Who: The Doomsday Weapon (4 page)

'I'm afraid that's all we can offer,' Mary said. 'It's not very much, is it?'

Jo looked into the soup. It seemed to contain root vegetables. 'It looks very nice,' she said. Then she tried some. It had almost no taste. 'It's marvellous,' she lied.

'I'm glad you like it,' said Mary, and sat down beside Jo. She looked at Jo's clothes. 'Is that what they're wearing on Earth now?'

'More or less,' said Jo.

'Things change so quickly,' Mary sighed. 'It was all quite different when we left back in 'seventy-one.'

'You left Earth in nineteen seventy-one?' Jo asked. By 1971 only a handful of astronauts had travelled beyond Earth, and then only for very short spells on the Moon.

Mary laughed. 'You're a bit out with your time,' she said. 'Two thousand nine hundred and seventy-one - that's when we left, just a year ago.'

'You mean the date is now 2972?'

'That's right,' said Mary, 'of course it is.'

Jo realised that she had not only travelled through Space; she had also travelled through one thousand years of Time!

Jane Leeson trudged through the darkness by the side of her husband. The gun she carried weighed heavily in the crook of her arm, and she wondered if she would ever get used to having to carry it every time she left their dome.

'Who do you think those people really are?' she asked her husband.

'I don't know,' he said. 'Ashe will sort it out.' He walked a little faster, so that Jane had to hurry over the broken rocks to keep up. It was his way of showing that he didn't want to talk.

She thought back on the life they had had together on Earth. From the history books and the history films, she had learned of a time when there were open spaces on Earth, when both people and animals could roam free in great areas of grass and trees. But Earth hadn't been like that for hundreds of years. Every square kilometre of land had been built over, with roads and monorails over-running the great sprawling built-up areas. This area, which extended everywhere, was twenty to thirty storeys deep, with linking corridors and escalatorways so that people could go shopping and get to work - all under cover, with fresh air sucked in by huge ventilators from above. As a special treat, on nonwork days, you could pay to go up to the surface in an elevator and spend a few hours sitting on concrete in the sunshine. Another treat was to go for a Walk. This meant you paid to go into a special cubicle with a floor that rolled from one end of the cubicle to another. To stay in one place you had to keep walking. Meanwhile, all around you, there was a moving picture on the walls of passing grass and trees, and sometimes wild animals, films that came from the State Archives. To further the illusion they blew gusts of fresh air at you, sometimes with funny smells that were supposed to resemble those of animals and grass.

She met her husband during such a Walk. The roller had jerked suddenly, owing to a power failure, and she had fallen over. Leeson helped her to her feet, and so they met. By getting married they qualified for a room of their own. Previously she had had to share a room with her parents and three sisters. The marriage was conducted by a friendly computer that played music to them as well as announcing that their State records had been stapled together in the great Automatic State Personnel File, which meant they were then married. Then the computer gave them the key to their room, a cubicle just big enough fora double-bed, a shower, and a lavatory. They took one look at the room and decided they had to escape.

In the old days. between five hundred and a thousand years ago, people had escaped from the towns by going to the country. But there was no country now. Instead, groups of people clubbed together and bought up old spaceships and went to the planets. For the next six years Jane and her husband worked hard and saved their money. Not once did they go up in the lifts for a sunshine treat, or even for a Walk treat. At the end of this time they reckoned they had enough money put by and started to read advertisements from people getting together colonist groups. The advertisement they answered was from Ashe. He had already travelled in Space on one of Earth's astro-merchant-ships, and he knew of a planet not dissimilar from Earth which had been classified for colonisation. It was uninhabited, Ashe said, except fora few Primitives who, if handled properly would he no trouble. A meeting was held, and the Leesons met the other people who had answered Ashe's advertisment. They pooled their savings with the others, and then raided their local library for old books on what was known as farming. Meanwhile Ashe. found a fairly good secondhand spaceship, and organised the making of agricultural machinery based on pictures in old books about land farming. Eventually the great day arrived, and all the would-be colonists boarded the spaceship and they travelled to this awful planet.

Because, in Jane's troubled mind, this planet
was
awful. Certainly there was room to move, and for the first few days the weary travellers from Earth did nothing but walk around in huge circles, shout, and literally fling their arms about. The main dome, brought in sections in the spaceship's vast hold, was put up first, it provided temporary quarters for all of them, plus a permanent meeting-place, and a home for John Ashe and his daughter. Then they all helped each other to put up the small single-family domes, all some distance from the main dome in the centre of the land which now belonged to the various couples and families. After that they had to sow the seed they had brought, and then live on iron-rations until the seed grew. But the seed did not grow. If it grew at all, it quickly withered and died. Ashe, who had made himself expert in book-learnt agriculture, spent day and night analysing soil samples and trying to work out which fertilisers should be used where. But nothing made any difference.

Meanwhile, there came the news about the big mineralogical combines from Earth gutting other planets, some of them with colonists already there. Earth's mineral resources had been used up hundreds of years ago, forcing Man to seek his needs on other planets. The big mining companies had built great fleets of spaceships, manned by ruthless mercenaries who were quite capable of plundering a planet already successfully colonised by farmers, ruining the land, killing and maiming people who tried to stand up for their rights. If Earth Goventmcnt took any action at all, it was almost always too late.

Now, on top of all their other fears and hardships, these other colonists, the Martins, had been attacked by monsters. One thing Ashe had promised about the planet was that it contained no hostile life forms. Jane had heard of some of the terrifying creatures spaces travellers had found over the centuries - Monoids, Drahvins, some small metallic creatures called Daleks, and even from the bowels of Earth there had emerged once a race of reptile men.This planet was big, as large as Earth itself, and it was foolish of them to believe Ashe when he had said that there were no hostile life forms. How could one man know what lay over the horizon, perhaps hundreds or thousands of kilometres away? - something that had now become attracted to the humans' colony?

As they neared the single dome, Jane spoke her mind. 'I want to go back to Earth.'

Her husband kept on walking. 'How?'

It was a sensible question. The spaceship belonged to all of them; it couldn't be used by one couple who wanted to return to Earth. She said, 'We should have a meeting, and see how many others feel like me. Those who want to stay can do so. Those who want to go have a right to take the spaceship.'

Now they had reached their dome and were going inside. 'We'll talk about it in the morning,' said Leeson.

'I want to talk about it now,' she said. 'We should never have come here.'

Leeson took her gun, hung it in its place on the wall. 'On Earth we had one room. Here we own land.'

'Land that grows nothing,' she exclaimed bitterly. 'Ashe knows we're beaten, and so do you. You just won't admit it.'

But Leeson wasn't listening to her. He was standing in the middle of their room, listening intently to something outside. He put his fingers to his lips to tell Jane to be quiet. From somewhere she could hear a low growling sound.

'You get on the radio,' ordered Leeson. 'I'm going outside.'

'No, please,' his wife implored. 'Stay here!'

There was another growl, this time much louder and closer.

'I might be able to frighten it off,' said Lemon. 'Now do as you're told!' Without another word Leeson walked back into the night outside. Almost instantly there was a roar from the darkness beyond, the sort of sound Jane had only ever heard before from the films during a Walk on Earth when you saw non-existent animals called elephants and lions.

Jane went to the radio-telephone, put on the earphones, took up the microphone and pressed the transmitting button. 'Hello, main dome. Can you hear me? Can you hear me?'

Within a few moments Mary Ashe's voice came through the earphones. 'This is main dome. Please identify.'

'This is Jane Leeson. Our dome's being attacked! Please you must send help...'

Jane stopped as she heard from outside a human scream rend the air, unmistakably that of her husband. She dropped the earphones and rushed to the door to go out. But the door was already filled with something infinitely more terrifying than she had ever imagined in her wildest dreams.

Jane retreated backwards into the room. 'No,' she whispered, finding it almost impossible to speak. 'Do you understand what I say? Please don't touch me. I'll do anything... We'll go away... We'll leave the planet - all of us! But
please
don't kill me!'

Then she fainted.

After Jo had been taken to supper by Mary Ashe, and the Lessons had gone back to their dome, the Doctor spent some time with Ashe discussing the colonists' basic problem - how to make their crops grow. Ashe, a reasonable man, accepted the Doctor's story that he and Jo were simply travellers in space, and had nothing to do with the mining combines that the colonists feared so much.

'What convinced you,' asked the Doctor, 'that crops would grow on this planet?'

'I visited this planet when I was a member of the crew of an astro-merchant-ship,' said Ashe. 'It has atmosphere that humans can breathe, and a temperature that humans can tolerate with comfort. The soil was exhausted, but I decided it could be reclaimed.'

'How?'

'Plant a cover crop,' Ashe said, 'plough it in, and repeat the process. That way we should have had a subsistence crop within a year. But even the cover crop refuses to grow.'

'What exhausted the soil originally?' asked the Doctor.

Ashe shrugged. 'The Primitives, I suppose. Before they
were
Primitives.'

The Doctor asked Ashe to tell him about the people called 'the Primitives'. Ashe explained that they were a simple people, similar to humans except for their six-fingered hands 'They don't wear any clothes at all,' said Ashe, 'which shocked some of our lady colonists a bit at first. Instead, they paint their bodies all over with dyes that they make somehow from the rocks.'

The Doctor asked, 'What do they live on?'

'The shrubs,' replied Ashe. 'I think they're half-starved most of the time. They're just clinging to existence. But they're not a people struggling to develop. They're going backwards.'

The Doctor found this intriguing. 'What makes you say that?'

'Wait till you see them,' said Ashe. 'Oh, don't worry, they carry spears but they're pretty harmless if you treat them gently. At least, that's how I've found them. Now about going backwards... Although they don't wear clothes, they wear belts and necklaces, sometimes arm bands, and these are always decorated with bits of machinery.'

'What sort of machinery?'

'Shaped bits of metal,' said Ashe, 'that must have come from something. Maybe nuts, or bolts, or springs, or - just shaped bits of metal.'

The Doctor asked where the Primitives lived. Ashe explained that, so far as he knew, they lived in caves. 'You're fairly safe with them,' Ashe said reassuringly, 'so long as you don't go near their caves. That's when they get nasty. Then, and if ever they see a child's doll.'

'Dolls make them nasty?' asked the Doctor, even more intrigued.

'One of them was in here one day,' said Ashe, 'scrounging food, and my daughter happened to bring a little doll - one she'd had since she was a child - front her belongings. The Primitive almost went mad...'

And it was at this point that Mary Ashe came rushing back, accompanied by Jo, with the news of Jane Lesson's radio message. 'All she said was, “Our dome's being attacked. Please you must send help.” Then she cut off.'

'Did she say what was attacking them?' asked the Doctor.

'No,' said Mary, near to tears. 'But I could hear by her voice - it was something awful.'

'I'll get my gun,' said Ashe, and started to move off to one of the corridors.

'Don't you need to go with other men?' Jo asked.

Ashe paused. 'We've sent the outer men to the Martin's place. That's the other end of the colony. You all stay here.' With, that, Ashe hurried away.

The Doctor turned to Mary Ashe. 'Could this be Primitives attacking?'

Mary shook her head. 'No, I don't think so. We get on with the Primitives quite well.'

'Except,' said the Doctor, 'when one of them saw a doll of yours.'

Mary had to think back. 'Oh, that was ages ago. Yes, he got very excited and wanted to take it from use. I let him. That seemed to make him happy.'

'What did he do with it?' the Doctor asked.

'Held it to himself,' Mary said, 'as if to protect it from of all people. Then he ran away with it.'

Ashe returned carrying one of the futuristic-looking shotguns 'I'll go to the Leesons' place as fast as I can,' he told Mary. 'You get on the radio and see if you can get anyone else to go over there - armed.'

'I shall go with you,' said the Doctor.

'No, Doctor,' said Jo. 'It may be dangerous.'

'A very good reason for going,' the Doctor said. He turned to Ashe. 'Are you ready?'

Ashe thought for a moment. 'All right. But at your own risk, mind. Now Mary, get on that radio!'