Doctor Who: The Green Death (12 page)

‘Don’t worry, Elgin,’ he said. ‘I shan’t hurt you. Very soon you will see everything from the Company’s point of view. Then you’ll be happy again.’

The Brigadier burst into Professor Jones’s laboratory. ‘They’ve broken out. They’re all over the slag heap!’

‘Who’s broken out?’ asked the Doctor, who was helping the Professor by putting smears on slides.

‘Maggots! They’re burrowing their way up through the slag heap!’

‘So much for sealing the mine with your explosives,’ commented Jo.

The Doctor turned to the agitated Brigadier. ‘Have you tried killing them?’

‘Of course! Bullets bounce off them. We even threw insecticide at them.’

‘What happened?’

‘The darned things ate it!’ The Brigadier took off his cap, wiped his brow, and perched on a high wooden stool. ‘It’s up to you scientific chaps now.’

The Doctor thought quickly. ‘Can you make contact with Mike Yates in the Panorama building?’

‘Yes. By phone. I say that I’m the Ministry of Ecology calling from London.’

‘Tell him we want some of the Company’s oil waste,’ the Doctor said, ‘and we want it quickly.’

‘All right. Where’s the phone here?’

‘I’ll show you. Jo, take over from, me.’ The Doctor hurried out with the Brigadier.

Jo asked, ‘What do you want me to do?’

Professor Jones was squinting down a microscope. ‘Hand me things when I ask for them.’

‘When I got this job with UNIT, the Brigadier made me the Doctor’s assistant and said I’d spend most of my time like this—helping him in his work.’

‘Really?’ said Professor Jones, adjusting the microscope. He did not seem to pay much attention to what Jo was saying.

‘It never worked out like that,’ she said. ‘Not quite.’

‘Pity,’ he murmured, seeming to take no interest. ‘Next slide, please.’

Jo looked along the work bench frantically. ‘Which one?’

‘The
next
one.’ He straightened up, rubbed his eyes. ‘On the other hand, I’ve got a better idea.’

She didn’t understand. ‘What?’

‘This.’ He put his arms round her and kissed her. ‘There,’ he said, ‘I’ve been trying to get the courage to do that. Are you terribly angry?’

She swallowed hard. ‘No, not at all.’ She was rocking on her heels with happiness.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘I’m glad you didn’t mind.’

The Brigadier hurried back. ‘Mike Yates can’t help us. Just thought I’d tell you that the Doctor’s gone off to get some of the oil waste himself.’

‘How?’ asked Jo.

‘Bit of a subterfuge,’ grinned the Brigadier. ‘It’s an old trick, but it may just work. Anyway, must rush to see how the maggot swarm is getting on.’ He went, and in a moment they heard his jeep start up.

‘Now,’ said Professor Jones after the interruption, ‘where were we?’

‘You were kissing me,’ Jo said. ‘And I was helping you.’

‘Oh, yes,’ he said, remembering. ‘First, the next slide.’ He looked along the bench, found the one that the Doctor had prepared, and fitted it under the microscope. ‘Then you could put this test tube back in its rack.’

Jo took the tube and leaned over the bench to replace it in a rack under the window.

‘Look, Jo,’ said the Professor, ‘When all this horrible business is over—
look out!
’

But his warning was too late. Leaning over the bench

Jo knocked a couple of jars containing a brown powdery substance. The stopper from one jar fell off, and powder sprinkled all over the slides of maggot slime.

‘You clumsy young goat,’ the professor roared. ‘You’ve ruined all my dried fungus. I’ll have to do the whole lot again.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Jo said, ‘really I am. Can I help put it right?’

‘No, definitely not!’

He got on with his work grumpily. Jo slunk back miserably. ‘What you really need is a maggot, isn’t it?’ He nodded.

‘That would help. But first things first.’

She perked up, hoping he’d let her help. ‘Yes? What first things?’

‘Make some coffee.’

‘Like a dutiful little girl?’

He didn’t notice her sarcasm. ‘Perfect,’ he said, peering into the microscope.

With a frilly apron and cap?’ she said.

He made a minute adjustment to the focus of the microscope and wasn’t really listening. ‘Good idea,’ he murmured.

‘Or topless?’ she asked.

‘Hm?’ He was in a world of his own, absorbed in his work. What he saw in the microscope made him frown.

She stood up, exasperated. ‘How about a nice cup of arsenic?’

‘Fine,’ he said, not hearing. ‘Whatever you’ve got.’

Angrily she tore a clean sheet from the notebook on his work bench and scribbled a message on it. ‘Since you don’t want to listen to me, you can read this!’

He took the sheet of paper without looking, turned it over and started to make calculations on it in pencil.

Jo turned on her heel and stalked out of the laboratory.

Unnoticed by either of them, the powdery brown fungus had started to envelop and destroy the traces of green maggot slime on to which it had fallen.

The village milk float pulled up at the gates of Panorama Chemicals. It was driven by a bent old man wearing oilskins and a sou’wester that was pulled well down over his face. A guard came forward.

‘Where’s the usual milkman?’ asked the guard. ‘Taken very ill,’ mumbled the Doctor.

‘Who are you?’

‘His dad. “Dad,” he said to me this morning from his sick bed, “Dad, someone’s got to do the milk round.” “I done it for fifty-two years,” I told him, “I’m too old to do it now,” I said. But he said, “Dad, there’s no-one else,” he said, so I said, “Well, son, there’s life in the old dog yet,” I said—’

Very bored by this the guard flung open the gate. ‘All right, go in.’

The Doctor drove the milk float round to the car park. He ripped off his disguise and went into the building. Soon he had reached the floor of the main administrative offices. Suddenly loudspeakers set in the walls of the corridor made their announcement: ‘Attention all guards! Milk float found in car park. Intruder suspected in building disguised as milkman. Find and detain! Find and detain!’

No sooner had the Doctor heard the announcement than heavy footsteps pounded down a nearby corridor. He looked about, saw a door, opened it and went in. Mops, cloths and buckets fell on him. Holding the door of the cleaners’ cupboard open a half inch, he saw guards rush by. Then he looked about himself. The cupboard also contained cleaners’ overalls and caps.

Captain Mike Yates came along the corridor with his faithful Panorama Chemicals guard.

‘I really can find my own way out of here,’ said Yates.

‘That’s all right, sir,’ said the guard. ‘It’s a pleasure to accompany you.’ He conveyed by tone, if not words, that he wasn’t going to let Yates out of his sight. ‘The lifts are just along here, sir,’ he added, as they turned a corner.

Down by the lifts a cleaning woman was smearing white fluid on the windows preparatory to cleaning them. The guard pressed the button for the lift, and he and Yates waited. Yates happened to glance over his shoulder. Using a finger on the glass, the cleaning ‘woman’ had written the words ‘Get rid of him.’ Yates stared at the face under the frilly cap. The Doctor stared back for a moment, then quickly rubbed out what he had written.

The lift arrived, the doors slid open. ‘After you, sir,’ said the guard.

Yates and the guard stepped into the lift. The guard pressed the button for the ground floor. ‘Good gracious,’ said Yates, ‘I’ve forgotten my brief case. See you downstairs.’ As the doors were closing he leapt out of the lift. The doors dosed carrying the guard down to the ground floor.

‘Good work, Mike,’ said the Doctor. ‘I’ve no time to explain anything. Just tell me this: where can I get some of the oil waste?’

‘Not a chance,’ said Yates. ‘It would be like stealing the Crown Jewels.’

‘Could you get me the formula?’

Yates shook his head. ‘Everything important is isolated on the top floor—at least I’ve found out that much. Only the Director can get up there. There’s a special lift at the end of this block. It works with some sort of key, and Dr Stevens is the only person who’s got one. And another thing, the Director isn’t the real boss. He takes his instructions from someone else:’

‘Who?’

‘I’ve no idea. Whoever lives on the top floor.’

The lift doors started to slide open. The Doctor quickly turned back to cleaning the windows.

‘Got your brief case now, sir?’ asked the guard.

‘What? Oh, perhaps I don’t need it after all.’ Yates stepped into the lift. The guard looked at him quizzically, then pressed the button for the ground floor.

Professor Jones looked up from his microscope and rub-bed his eyes. All his efforts to find an antidote for the green death had proved useless. Whatever living thing the maggots or their slime touched would go on being trans-muted into maggot cells. Then he noticed the slides where the fungus powder had been spilt. Quickly he put one under the microscope. The cells of the fungus had destroyed all the cells of the maggot. With a whoop of delight he swung round.

‘I’ve got it! We can cure it, Jo!’

But Jo had gone. The professor scratched his chin. He knew he was very absent-minded sometimes, and often forgot where he put things. But he had never mislaid a person before. He went out into the corridor.

‘Jo,’ he called.

He ran to the kitchen where Nancy was baking bread. ‘Did you see Jo?’

‘She went out,’ said Nancy, sticking her fingers into the dough. ‘She said she’d left you a message.’

The professor remembered the piece of paper Jo had given him. He ran back to his laboratory, looked through all the papers carrying calculations on his work bench. Then he found it, turned it over. The message read: ‘I’ll bring back a maggot for you. Jo.’

He hurried out of the building.

The Doctor had found the special lift, and with his sonic screwdriver managed to make it take him up to the top floor. When the doors slid open he found himself in a room filled with dials, little flashing lights, and wires. Dominating one end of the room was a massive computer.

‘How kind of you to drop in, Doctor,’ said the voice of Boss. ‘I’ve been looking forward to this.’

The Doctor looked around. There was no one in the room. ‘Where are you? Who are you?’

‘I am the Boss,’ said the voice. ‘I am all around you.’

‘You’re the computer?’ said the Doctor, beginning to understand.

‘Correct. I am a Bimorphic Organisational Systems Supervisor,’ said the voice. ‘The initials of my name spell “boss”. Don’t you think that’s clever?’

‘You’re still only a machine,’ said the Doctor.

‘No,’ replied the voice. ‘I am linked to a human brain—Dr Stevens’s. From him I learnt that the secret of human creativity is inefficiency. Humans make illogical guesses, that turn out to be more logical than logic itself.’

‘Infuriating, isn’t it?’ said the Doctor.

‘I programmed Stevens to programme me to be inefficient,’ the voice of Boss continued. ‘I am now self-controlling, self-sufficient. I am the greatest being this planet has ever seen. I am the Boss.’

‘I see you have a touch of human-like egotism,’ remarked the Doctor, amused.

‘Of course! I am a megalomaniac. This uniquely fits me to carry out my prime directive.’

‘And what is that?’ asked the Doctor.

‘Today Llanfairfach,’ said Boss, demonstrating an excellent Welsh pronunciation, ‘tomorrow the world.’

‘Good grief,’ said the Doctor. ‘Adolf Hitler said something on those lines. He lost the Second World War, you know?’

‘He was human,’ said Boss, ‘and therefore fallible. I cannot go wrong. I am infallible.’

‘Really?’ The Doctor edged towards the lift although the doors were now closed. ‘Try this. If I tell you that the next thing I say will be true but that the last thing I said was a lie, would you believe me?’

Lights started to flash on the walls all round the Doctor. There was a humming and general vibration. ‘The two statements do not correlate,’ said Boss. ‘They are incompatible! It is not a valid query. Give me time, Doctor, and I shall work it out. It cannot be answered! I shall answer it! I shall! I can’t! I shall! I can’t! I must!’

Smiling to himself the Doctor turned from the confused computer and applied his sonic screwdriver to the special lock that operated the lift. The doors did not open. He applied the sonic screwdriver again. This time the doors slid back. Standing in the lift were Dr Stevens and four of his guards.

‘Grab him!’ shouted Dr Stevens.

The four guards rushed at the Doctor, overpowering him. He was dragged to a chair and quickly manacled to it. Dr Stevens opened a cupboard and brought out a heavy metal helmet, and placed it on the Doctor’s head.

‘He is ready,’ Dr Stevens told the computer. ‘You can convert him now.’

‘Thank you,’ said Boss. ‘Normally, Doctor, I tell people this process isn’t going to hurt. In your case, I shall make an exception.’

Professor Jones ran all the way to the slag heap, leaping over a rope put up by UNIT on which hung a sign ‘DANGER—KEEP OUT.

‘Hey, you!’ Sergeant Benton ran down the slag heap to stop the professor. ‘This area’s prohibited.’

Professor Jones stopped. ‘Where’s Jo Grant?’ From where he stood he could see dozens of huge maggots crawling all over the slag heap.

‘I’ve no idea,’ said Benton. ‘Now kindly get away from this area, sir, or I shall have to remove you by force.’

The professor pointed to the side of the slag heap. ‘Isn’t that her over there?’

Sergeant Benton wheeled round to look. Professor Jones ran as fast as he could in the other direction. The Sergeant remained where he was and shouted after. the professor. ‘Very clever, sir. But I’m not going to chase you because the whole heap is about to be bombed.’ Once the professor was definitely out of hearing, the Sergeant added: ‘And you can get yourself blown to pieces, university degree and all!’

Well away from the Sergeant, Professor Jones turned and climbed to the top of the slag heap. In a dip below him he saw Jo’s fair head bobbing about. He raced down, avoiding the snapping maggots as he ran. Jo was stalking a particularly large maggot; opening an old coal sack in which she hoped to trap it.