Doctor Who: The Enemy of the World (12 page)

‘Yes? What is it Benik?’ the Doctor rapped, in his Salamander voice.

‘Supply requisitions, Leader,’ Benik replied. ‘Your approval and signature, please.’

The Doctor calmly took the documents and the pen from Benik and ran his eye over the requisitions. While he studied them, Benik informed him that there seemed to be a fault with the doors to the Sanctum.

‘Get Maintenance to deal with it,’ the Doctor snapped, without looking up.

‘They are completely jammed, Leader. Maintenance will require your personal electrokey,’ Benik persisted.

Bruce could not stop himself glancing anxiously round.

The Doctor said nothing for a moment. Then he patted his tunic distractedly, still studying the documents Benik had handed him.

‘Madness!’ the Doctor exclaimed. ‘I must have left the electrokey in the Sanctum. Tell Maintenance to do their best,’ he ordered, ‘and don’t wait for these schedules now.’

Benik hesitated, then without another word, he turned and walked quickly out of the laboratory.

As soon as the door had shut, Jamie gave a low whistle.

‘That was a wee bit close for comfort, Doctor,’ he muttered.

‘Benik may be on to us,’ Donald Bruce warned them. ‘I know that shrewd little worm only too well.’

The Doctor seemed not to hear them. He was scrutinising the sheaf of papers with intense concentration, muttering under his breath and shaking his head.

‘Come and look at these statistics, Bruce!’ he eventually cried. ‘This is a real prize! Just look at these monthly provisions figures,’ the Doctor pointed out. ‘Enough for a community of at least a hundred people. How many personnel are there in this place?’

Bruce considered for a moment. ‘I’d reckon around fifty all told. But many of them live outside the Centre.’ With a puzzled frown, Bruce looked more closely at the figures.

The Doctor flicked through the pages. ‘And these equipment orders,’ he mused, his hands trembling with excitement. ‘Sonar flux intensifiers, magnetic field filtering prisms—nothing to do with any solar-collecting systems
I’ve
ever come across, Bruce. But a very useful set of spares for some kind of apparatus designed to cause highly selective and localised earth tremors and assorted geophysical firework displays.’

‘Earthquakes and volcanoes,’ Bruce murmured after a lengthy pause.

The Doctor nodded vigorously, thrusting the papers into Bruce’s large, fleshy hands. ‘Hang on to these, Bruce.

They are the best evidence we have so far,’ he said earnestly. ‘I am now going to get into the
Sanctum
Sanctorum
,’ the Doctor announced, seizing the telephone.

Bruce looked up in alarm. But before he could protest, the Doctor had assumed his Salamander voice and was giving orders for an escort to be sent to the Behaviour Analysis Unit. ‘I am releasing the two young prisoners from custody. They are to be conducted out of the Centre and freed immediately,’ he rapped into the intercom.

Jamie and Victoria began to protest at having to desert their friend just as the real action was about to begin. But the Doctor was adamant.

Realising that it was too late to argue, Bruce stirred himself into action. ‘Don’t worry, McCrimmon, you still have a vital part to play,’ he assured the angry young Scot,

‘you and Miss Waterfield. Once you’re out of here, get to a public telephone in Kanowa. Dial 007 and ask for Forester—he’s my deputy. Tell him where I am and then just say
Redhead
. You understand?
Redhead
. It’s our emergency codeword,’ he explained.

The Doctor clicked his tongue impatiently. ‘Bruce, you must go with Jamie and Victoria to ensure that they get out safely. Find them some transport to Melville.’

‘What are
you
going to do?’ Bruce demanded.

Pretending not to have heard, the Doctor fussed over his two young friends. ‘You find your way back to the TARDIS and I’ll meet you there. Jamie started to protest again. ‘Just wait there until I come,’ the Doctor ordered firmly.

At that moment the intercom buzzed. Forestalling Bruce, the Doctor seized it and answered in his Salamander voice. He listened in silent concentration for several seconds while the others looked on uneasily. ‘No.

Let him think he is undetected,’ he snapped at last. ‘I want to discover exactly what he is up to. Do not intercept him until I order it.’ The Doctor replaced the receiver and turned to Donald Bruce. ‘We have a visitor Bruce,’ he announced dramatically. ‘Time for you all to be going!’

9

Only minutes after leaving Swann lying in the cave, Astrid came across the capsule still parked in the shaft a few hundred metres down the tunnel. Once she had discovered the electronic key, carelessly left in its socket by Salamander, it only took her a few seconds to learn how to operate the capsule. When it whispered to a halt at the bottom of the shaft, she stepped out into the soft greenish glow of the underground Control Suite. She gazed down in astonishment at the scene in the cavernous laboratory. The white-overalled technicians were sitting hunched over plastic trays, eating and drinking from polythene food packs. They ate mechanically, without speaking or looking up. Astrid was appalled at the waxy pallor of their skin.

Fascinated, she moved over to the heavy shutter set into the end wall of the chamber and operated the touch-buttons. It slid smoothly aside and Astrid stepped out onto the metal landing at the top of the staircase in the corner of the laboratory. Suddenly someone spotted her. The technicians instantly vanished among the equipment like insects. Puzzled, she stood there, staring down at the humming, flickering instruments and the silently spinning computer discs.

‘I have come to help you... I have come to free you all...

to take you back to the surface,’ she cried, spreading her arms out towards the invisible throng.

There was a brief silence. Then a plastic tray sliced through the air past Astrid’s head and bounced clattering down the steps. She ventured down a step or two, her heart thudding and her mouth suddenly dry. ‘Please don’t be afraid. I want to help you,’ she called out in a wavering voice. Immediately a hail of trays, cutlery and beakers came at her from all directions and she retreated back up the stairs again.

Colin Redmayne stood up in the centre of the cavern.

‘Fools. You fools,’ he cried, starting to walk towards the steps. ‘It’s a girl... a human being... from up there.’

Mary Smith appeared from behind her computer console. ‘Colin, the radiation,’ she warned him. But he walked on regardless.

A thick wooden batten from a packing case hurtled across the laboratory and struck Astrid viciously on the forehead. She stumbled and fell to the bottom of the stairs where she lay motionless. ‘Please help me,’ she gasped, her eyes glazed and her speech slurred.

‘You are contaminated,’ Colin said helplessly. Astrid stared up at him. ‘You are from the surface,’ he went on,

‘therefore we must decontaminate you.’

The stranger shook her head slowly and pulled herself to her feet. She lurched a few steps towards Colin and he backed away from her.

Mary had moved hesitantly to Colin’s side. ‘Did you meet Salamander and Swann?’ she asked nervously.

Astrid stared through her, searching her memory and fighting the blinding pain in her head. ‘I think it was Swann,’ she murmured, her voice seeming to come from a great distance. ‘He sent me here. Swann is dead.’

A gasp of horror rose from the huddled technicians. It was followed by wave upon wave of helpless whispers.

In a faltering voice Astrid tried to explain that there was no lethal radiation on the surface, that Salamander had killed Swann and that he had been keeping them all prisoner underground for years. ‘Salamander has been using you as slaves... to carry out his plans for world domination...’

There was a stunned silence.

‘It’s a lie. It can’t be true! All this time down here, for
nothing
!’ Colin Redmayne yelled, his eyes staring into empty space, as if he were in a trance. Some of the shelterers burst into tears, others stood motionless as if turned to stone.

Astrid clung to the stair rail fighting to stay conscious.

‘Please, you must believe me,’ she gasped.

Scurrying nimbly from doorway to doorway along the anonymous corridor, Giles Kent approached the Sanctum doors at the far end. He could scarcely believe his luck at having penetrated so far into the Research Centre without being challenged. His once smart clothes were now covered in dust and were ripped in several places as a result of his struggle to get through the labyrinth of narrow tunnels leading from the ravine into the disused buildings on the edge of the Centre compound.

Kent glanced cautiously around before moving across to the panel beside the heavy sealed doors of the Sanctum.

For a moment he thought he detected a movement in one of the doorways. Rubbing his smarting eyes, he drew a small electronic key out of his shoe and with mounting excitement inserted it into the socket set in the panel. After a few seconds the Sanctum doors slid noiselessly open.

He approached the console in the centre of the Sanctum like a monarch returning to his throne. He did not see the small, neat figure slip through the doors behind him just an instant before they whispered shut, and when he turned to survey the room he seemed to be alone.

Like a child with some elaborate new toy, Kent sat himself in the plush swivel chair and became engrossed in trying out various combinations of touch-buttons on the console. Eventually the words Locks Engaged flashed up on the display in front of him.

‘I am accustomed to visitors knocking before they enter, Mr Kent.’ Salamander’s acid voice cut through the humming stillness so unexpectedly that Kent froze for a moment, his hands raised over the console like an immobilised puppet’s.

The Doctor emerged from behind a computer cabinet, his hand held out in greeting. ‘A pleasure indeed, Mr Kent, but how did you get in here?’ he asked, with a quizzical smile.

Giles rose slowly to his feet, trying desperately hard to master his astonishment. ‘Oh, I still have a key,’ he shrugged, attempting as sly grin. ‘You forgot to take it away from me when I became a bad boy. I’ve been looking forward to this meeting, Salamander. It’s been a long time.’

Try as he would to be cool and impassive, Giles could not stop himself from betraying his tense excitement. ‘I’m not alone this time, Salamander. I have some people in here with me and between us we’re going to put an end to your Napoleonic fantasy,’ he cried.

‘You always were a tiresome little man, Kent,’ the Doctor replied languidly, turning and walking away. Stung by this typical insult, Giles moved round the console with a mean glint in his eyes. ‘And I’m going to be more tiresome than ever now,’ he spat. ‘Your biggest mistake was not killing me when you had the chance.’

The Doctor whipped round, stopping Kent in his tracks. ‘So. Now you intend to kill
me
!’ he retorted, his lips curling back and exposing his perfect teeth. ‘And how do you imagine you will all manage without me? You seem to forget that my genius has given the world expectations of a new and glorious future,’ he proclaimed. ‘They must be fulfilled. And now the world is beginning to recognise its true Leader!’

Kent gave a scornful laugh. ‘Well, the world’s going to do without you from now on,’ he cried. ‘Who needs you now? The Sunstore operates by itself. Everything’s automated. Everything’s on tape.’ He gestured at the racks of cassettes and data discs lining the Sanctum. ‘You’ve been a bit too much of a genius Salamander; you’ve made yourself redundant, sport.’

As soon as he had escorted Jamie and Victoria safely out of the Research Centre, Donald Bruce had made straight for the Sanctum. He was now standing in the corridor outside the firmly sealed doors, watching the pale and tight-lipped Theodore Benik supervising a maintenance crew attempting to free the electrolocks. The panel beside the heavy doors had been opened and a thick bundle of tangled circuitry was hanging out of the wall.

Benik had been deep in thought. ‘The locks appear to be still secured from inside. It doesn’t make sense,’ he muttered at last.

The chief technician looked up from the micro-circuit wafer he had been examining. ‘I can’t trace any fault at all, sir,’ he told Benik. ‘There’s no way of by-passing the system. If you want to get in there, we’ll have to burn our way in.’

One of the maintenance crew finished wiring an audio speaker into a section of the bundle of wires hanging out of the panel. When it was connected, the man looked inquiringly at the Deputy Director. Benik hesitated for several seconds. He knew that he was about to break one of the most sacred regulations of Salamander’s organisation.

Finally he gave a curt nod. The technician pressed a switch and the small speaker buzzed into life:

‘... and even that crazy earthquake machine down there can be worked by those poor blind robots of yours,’ Giles Kent could be heard sneering. ‘All they need is feeding and watering.’

Benik jerked round to stare incredulously at Bruce.

‘That’s Giles Kent’s voice!’ he exclaimed. ‘Kent’s in there with the Leader. Giles Kent’s in the Sanctum.’ He snatched the speaker and put it to his ear, trying to distinguish the words of Salamander’s murmured reply.

Donald Bruce did not need to hear any more. He ordered the chief technician to fetch a laser torch and to start cutting into the Sanctum doors.

As the technician ran off, Benik turned to Bruce with a dangerous laugh. ‘You’ll never cut through there!’ he cried.

‘It’s an alloy: Salamandrium. It’s impenetrable.’

‘Well, you aren’t!’ Bruce snapped, reaching into Benik’s tunic with a sudden deft movement and seizing the small pistol concealed there. He thrust the short barrel brutally into Benik’s scrawny ribcage. ‘So let’s just wait and see, shall we?’

They heard Salamander’s voice purring with triumph.

‘So you see, Mr Kent, you are trapped. I have you completely at my mercy.’

Kent gave a weird, manic laugh which echoed eerily down the long corridor. ‘You forget, Salamander. I know the back door, don’t I?’