Doctor Who (15 page)

‘The Daleks?’ Hogoosta seemed almost amused.

‘Oh, don’t tell me!’ sighed the Doctor. ‘You think they’re a force for good, for progress … the Sunlight Worlds etcetera, etcetera … Am I right?’

‘Well …’ Hogoosta shrugged again, his strange
interlocking arm bones moving in sequence, creating a sort of wave effect.

‘Oh come off it, Hogoosta,’ said the Doctor. ‘You’re an archaeologist. You know about the past. Surely you’ve heard about the Daleks and what they’ve done.’

‘I have,’ confessed the Klektid. ‘But that was long ago. And their more recent works speak for themselves.’

‘Oh do they? Do they indeed?’ said the Doctor, rolling his eyes in frustration and starting to lose his temper a little. ‘It’s the Daleks who tried to get Alyst and Terrin to give up their secret. They threatened to board their ship. They were very insistent. So insistent that poor Alyst and Terrin felt the only way to preserve their secret was to …’

He stopped short, flicking a look to the children.

Hogoosta seemed to understand. ‘I see …’ he clicked, slowly, through only one mouth. ‘I see …’ His head shuddered again, indicating, the Doctor felt sure, that he was moved by the thought of this.

‘So,’ continued the Doctor, more stridently now. ‘I have to find out what this Cradle of the Gods actually does and make sure the Daleks don’t get hold of it. Actually, on second thoughts … I’ve mostly just got to make sure the Daleks don’t get hold of it. Finding out what it does would just be the icing on the cake. So, Hogoosta, you’d better get us there, now.’

‘I can’t,’ said Hogoosta.

‘What do you mean, you can’t?’ asked the Doctor, a little petulantly. Then he moved in closer to Hogoosta and whispered, ‘No such word as can’t.’

‘The Enforcers won’t let us go back to the dig site.’

‘Then we’ll just have to go there without their permission!’ said the Doctor standing up to make his fearless pronouncement, accidentally knocking the chair down behind him. ‘Sorry …’ he muttered, picking the chair back up again and setting it right. ‘So, let’s go!’

The darkness of the night sky on Gethria was just showing the first tinges of lightening up for morning as the Doctor, Hogoosta, Sabel, Jenibeth and Ollus made their dash across the desert towards the Cradle of the Gods. Hogoosta was leading, all seven legs powering as fast as they could go.

It was difficult for the Doctor to keep up. He was impressed by Hogoosta’s strength, especially since Sabel and Jenibeth were holding on tight to the Klektid’s bony torso. Ollus had insisted on sitting upon the Doctor’s shoulders, which was largely
why
the Doctor was finding it difficult to keep up.

Right next to his ear, the Doctor could hear the irritating buzzing and bleeping of Ollus’s toy spaceship.

‘Don’t you ever stop playing with that thing?’ asked the Doctor sharply, twisting his neck momentarily to squint back at Ollus.

‘It was my Daddy’s,’ said Ollus, concentrating on the spaceship.

The Doctor said no more. This was all the poor boy had left of his father. Let him play with it whenever he liked.

The Doctor glanced back over his other shoulder and was somewhat dismayed by what he saw.

‘We’ve got trouble!’ he called across to Hogoosta.

Hogoosta’s head spun round 360 degrees. ‘They were bound to miss us soon enough,’ he said. ‘I told you.’

Behind them, the Doctor could see the rising dust of what must have been the Klektid Enforcers pursuing them.

‘We’ll never make it there before they catch us up,’ said Hogoosta.

‘Then we’d better make a diversion,’ replied the Doctor.

As they carried on running, the Doctor checked his sonic screwdriver. He felt Ollus’s legs clamp more firmly around his neck, trying to stop himself from falling off.

The screwdriver bleeped as the Doctor set it into homing mode. He immediately detected which way they had to head to get to the TARDIS. Luckily, it wasn’t much of a deviation in their route, and it was fairly close by.

‘Come on! This way!’ called the Doctor, bearing left a little and pulling ahead.

Hogoosta and his cargo of Sabel and Jenibeth followed. As they pounded on across the sand and the morning light crept further into the sky, the Doctor could hear his hearts thudding with exhaustion and feel perspiration trickling down his face. Slowing down was not an option, though. Every time he glanced back over his shoulder, the dust trail of the approaching Klektid Enforcers was larger and closer.

Suddenly, something bright and hot shot through the air to their right. It hit the ground and sent up a burst of fire and a shower of burning hot sand.

‘They’re shooting at us!’ shouted Ollus, right into the Doctor’s ear.

‘I know!’ the Doctor shouted back. He squinted through the clearing clouds of the explosion and to his relief, he could see the TARDIS up ahead.

‘They’ve got our range,’ cried out Hogoosta. ‘They won’t hesitate to kill us.’

‘Then they’re lousy shots,’ the Doctor cried.

Another flash. Another explosion hit the ground just ahead of them again.

‘Nah!’ shouted the Doctor. ‘I don’t think they’re trying to kill us. Just trying to frighten us.’

More flashes and three more explosions ripped into the desert floor around them.

‘
I’m
frightened!’ shouted Sabel.

The Doctor still did not slacken his pace and Hogoosta was easily matching his speed, starting to overtake him. They were getting ever closer to the TARDIS, but when the Doctor turned again, he could actually see the detail of the Klektid Enforcers themselves. They were clearly much fitter specimens than Hogoosta; trained for combat and not carrying small children.

‘What is that thing?’ called Hogoosta, pointing to the TARDIS.

‘It’s mine,’ replied the Doctor. ‘And it’s a safe place for us to hide.’

‘Hide?’ queried Hogoosta.

‘It’s huge inside,’ cried out Jenibeth. ‘And it flies!’

Another four flashes, and the Doctor could feel the explosive heat much closer now. He could also hear the sound of sand showering against the surface of the
TARDIS’s outer shell. They were nearly there.

‘Look out!’ screamed Sabel. The Doctor could see her pointing off to the right, ahead of them.

There was a blur of movement. But as the Doctor squinted at it, he could clearly see several Klektid Enforcers moving off ahead of them, circling around to approach the TARDIS from the rear. Were they being surrounded? Sure enough, more Klektids raced round from the left, heading towards their flank.

At last they arrived, colliding with the locked TARDIS doors. Hogoosta came to a halt at almost exactly the same instant.

‘This thing doesn’t look like enough protection to—’

The Klektid’s words were cut off by another explosion followed by a shower of more burning sand. The smell was peculiarly unpleasant and the hot granules danced off the Doctor’s exposed skin like vicious bee stings.

‘Argh!’ he gasped, and dropped the TARDIS key, just as he was about to insert it into the lock.

Another explosion, and the shower of sand quickly buried the key. As the Doctor bent down to find it, Ollus leapt off his back and started to dig in the sand. Sabel and Jenibeth climbed down from Hogoosta and joined in the search.

‘The Doctor must not be allowed to escape in his TARDIS!’

The Doctor twitched round at this shrill Klektid command. A squad of about forty of them was moving in towards them now. But how did they know his name? And how did they know about the TARDIS?

‘Here!’ shouted Ollus, over the painful din of another
salvo of explosions.

The little boy was holding the key up to him, hand outstretched. Ollus’s face had a questioning look on it. A reaction to the Doctor’s own face, which must have been a picture of suspicion and dread, he realised.

‘Key! Yes!’ the Doctor shouted, coming back to his senses. Now, he could hear the footsteps of the Klektids as they approached. He looked around. They were surrounded by an ever-tightening circle of Enforcers.

Without another thought, the Doctor grabbed the key, opened the TARDIS’s doors and shoved everyone inside.

He slammed the doors shut behind them all and headed straight up the steps to the TARDIS control console.

‘You explain it to him,’ the Doctor called back to the children, gesturing to the TARDIS’s vast interior, as he busied himself with some adjustments.

‘We don’t understand it either,’ the Doctor heard Sabel saying. ‘But isn’t it marvellous?’

‘It’s like magic,’ squeaked Jenibeth.

‘No, just clever science,’ argued Ollus.

The Doctor glanced over and saw Hogoosta’s head revolving in confusion. The Klektid was shuddering again.

Ollus ran up the steps towards the Doctor.

‘Are we leaving? Are we flying off to another planet in another time?’ the little boy asked, miming the trajectory of escaping with his little spaceship and impersonating the TARDIS’s engines by making a rhythmic, grating, gurgling sound in his mouth.

‘Another time?’ asked Hogoosta, mounting the stairs and heading, clattering, towards the Doctor too. His head came to a rest.

‘Daren’t risk it,’ explained the Doctor. ‘There’s something out there in the Vortex which keeps interfering. So …’

He busied himself with the controls, then grabbed at them, shunting several levers into place with a resolute clunk. The TARDIS made a slight, truncated groaning sound and the entire control room shuddered somewhat, then fell still.

‘What did you do?’ asked Ollus.

Hogoosta’s head started rocking from side to side.

‘I cheated a bit,’ said the Doctor.

Hogoosta’s head stopped rocking. ‘Cheated?’ he asked.

‘Couldn’t risk fully entering the Vortex,’ explained the Doctor.

‘The … Vortex?’ asked Hogoosta, his arms flicking around agitatedly.

‘So I just did a bit of instantaneous travel,’ beamed the Doctor. ‘Should give us a slight advantage over your Klektid friends.’

‘They are not
my
friends,’ said Hogoosta, somewhat indignantly.

‘No, no they’re not, are they?’ agreed the Doctor as he descended the steps. ‘But whose friends are they? Eh? That’s the question. Anyway …’

And with that, he flung the TARDIS doors open.

The Doctor led them out into what he was sure must
be an underground chamber. It had a cold clamminess about it and no natural light, just half a dozen electric lamps on stands. His sincerest hope was that it was in fact a chamber beneath the so-called Cradle of the Gods. He immediately turned to Hogoosta and asked for confirmation.

‘Yes … yes … We are here. The inner chamber,’ the Klektid confirmed. ‘Amazing. So your … TARDIS? Your TARDIS is a teleportation device.’

The Doctor looked a little indignant and was about to take issue with this slight on his precious ship, but then he remembered how little time they had before the Enforcers would guess this was where they were. He focused his attention on the hieroglyphics, clearly engraved on the walls of this chamber many centuries ago.

‘Bit more complicated than that, Hogoosta, old fella,’ he muttered absently as he moved his face ever closer to the wall. His nose made contact. He sniffed hard. ‘Hmmm … this is ancient. Far too ancient for me to be able to translate.’

He pulled out his sonic screwdriver and whizzed it around, getting a reading.

‘Yup. Definitely more ancient than ancient.’

He turned to look at the children and Hogoosta, who were standing with the TARDIS at their back. They were all starting to look around in dumbstruck wonder. Instinctively, he followed their gaze. On first sight, this chamber had looked rather dull to him as he had exited the TARDIS. What was having such an effect on them? And why was Hogoosta looking so incredibly awestruck,
considering he had been looking at this chamber for many years?

Then the Doctor noticed.

Light had started to play all around them, growing in intensity. A kind of whirling, surging light that brought with it a tangible vibration in the air.

‘Well, well, well,’ breathed the Doctor, looking up at the ceiling. Every single indentation between the impossibly old building blocks of this chamber was tingling with a multicoloured fizz of energy. A fizz that was slowing transmuting into a glow. Then a rumbling started.

‘Power …’ said the Doctor. He spun round, opening his arms wide. He could feel some sort of energy growing in this space. It felt like it was vibrating his very veins. It was sizzling, burrowing into his mind. Every molecule of matter and air seemed to be alive with it.

‘Can’t you feel it?’ he asked the others. He turned back to look at them all again. He knew they were feeling something, but it looked very much like whatever it was had robbed them of their ability to speak.

Ollus managed to break the spell first. ‘Wow …’ he murmured in a tiny, breathy voice, still clutching his little spaceship.

Jenibeth rubbed her head. ‘Feels funny,’ she said in a way that suggested she couldn’t decide whether it was funny ‘good’ or funny ‘bad’.

‘And this has never happened before, Hogoosta?’ the Doctor asked.

‘No … never,’ said Hogoosta, his mouths starting to click a little out of sync, rendering his speech a touch
imprecise. All this was clearly having a deeply felt effect on him. ‘I have … have no idea what’s … what’s going on.’

All of a sudden, the Doctor had an idea.

‘Then it’s to do with one of us,’ he said. ‘Not you, Hogoosta. One of us. All of us? Some of us? I’m not sure. Let’s take a look upstairs. Hogoosta?’

The Doctor gestured quickly in several possible directions at several possible exits. He hoped Hogoosta would get the hint. Luckily, he did.

‘Ah, this way,’ said Hogoosta, scuttling through a triangular archway.

The Doctor ushered Ollus, Sabel and Jenibeth after him, all the while his mind racing.

Hogoosta led them all up a wide, spiralling staircase. Spurred on by the Doctor, they ran as fast as they could go, the children once again holding on to adults for support. Ollus clambered up the Doctor again and Sabel and Jenibeth returned to their seated positions on Hogoosta, although it looked like a far more bumpy ride going upstairs.