Doctor Who: The Dominators (14 page)

The sparking robot immediately unfolded its probes and went to advance on the Doctor, but as it tried to take a step it overbalanced and its bulky body pitched forward into the sand.

At that same moment, Kully scampered out from behind the ruin and enveloped the Quark’s antennae in the plastic sheet, completely depriving it of its senses.

Blowing frantically on his throbbing hand, Jennie leaped up and, while Kully hurriedly shepherded the astonished prisoners safely into the ruin, he dragged a heavy beam from some nearby wreckage and heaved it on top of the struggling robot.

The disabled Quark started to emit a piercing distress signal which at first was inaudible against the howl of the drilling rig, but eventually Toba heard it.

Ordering operations to cease, Toba scanned the area in a frenzy. ‘A Quark has been attacked and the specimens have escaped...’ he screamed as the glare and the noise of the apparatus subsided. Striding towards the ruin, Toba hurled the beam aside and ripped the sheet off the stricken Quark, which began rolling about on its back like a mechanical beetle.

‘Quark, where are the specimens?’ Toba demanded.

‘Sensors temporarily inoperable. No data recorded,’

bleated the robot pathetically.

Toba swung round hysterically. ‘Quarks, search. Search and destroy...’ he shrieked, starting to clamber over the wreckage around the ruined museum, kicking and hurling debris in all directions.

‘Command cancelled!’ Rago’s voice sliced like a blade through the hot muggy air.

Toba lurched to a halt, his huge limbs jerking spasmodically.

‘Why has drilling been interrupted yet again?’ Rago demanded icily, approaching between the assembled Quarks.

Toba mumbled an explanation.

Rago surveyed the silent rig. ‘Probationer, if you cannot perform the tasks assigned to you here, you will never gain full Dominator status,’ he rasped. ‘Complete the bore.’

With as much dignity as he could muster, Toba clambered back onto the sand and strode back to the rig.

‘The primitives will not escape unpunished,’ Rago added with condescending generosity, as Toba ordered the Quarks by the rig to reconnect power. ‘Fleet Leader confirms that Dulcians are totally unsuitable for our projects. Therefore they will die with their planet.’

Toba’s eyes flashed with malignant satisfaction. ‘Then the sooner we complete operations the better.’

‘Exactly. I shall now supervise the positioning of the projectiles at the perimeter targets. Inform me when the centre bore is prepared for the seeding trigger.’ Rago commanded a detachment of Quarks to accompany him and then strode rapidly away across the dunes.

Jamie had only just had time to squeeze himself through the hatch before the frenzied Toba clambered onto the wreckage above the open trap-door. In the shelter below, the six fugitives had then waited in total silence, scarcely daring even to breathe until the two Dominators moved away. Then at last Jamie had carefully lowered the heavy trap and jumped down to on the others.

‘That was extremely rash of you, Jamie,’ the Doctor scolded him, smiling appreciatively, ‘those Quarks can be appallingly dangerous.’

‘Och, they’re nae so terrible,’ Jamie grinned, giving Zoe an affectionate hug.

Kulls turned from the periscope. ‘Where’s Balan?’ he asked.

Gently, Kando explained what had happened.

‘You did all you could, Kully,’ Teel murmured, nursing his bruised ribs. ‘Thanks to you and Jamie, the rest of us are safe.’

‘I’m not so sure about that,’ Jamie told him. ‘I just heard those Dominators saying that the Dulcians are no use to them.’

Kando smiled innocently. ‘Then they will leave us in peace now.’

Jamie glanced at the Doctor and Zoe in embarrassment.

Then he turned to the three Dulcians. ‘They said that you would all die... with your planet,’ he mumbled helplessly.

Kully peered back into the periscope. ‘They can’t destroy Dulkis...’ he protested indignantly.

Just then the shelter began to vibrate as Toba’s unit resumed drilling outside.

The Doctor coughed and cleared his throat. ‘I’m afraid they can. I believe they intend to use your planet as fuel for their fleet.’

There was a long, shocked silence. The Doctor shrugged, smiled bleakly and then examined his fingernails minutely. ‘I’m most terribly sorry.’

Then Zoe stuck her chin out. ‘But Doctor, you decided that their saucer uses atomic power,’ she objected.

‘There are no suitable radioactive minerals in this hemisphere,’ Kando reminded him.

The Doctor waved his arms impatiently. ‘No, no, no, there is no reactor in the saucer, only a radiation accumulator and converter system.’

Everyone looked blank.

‘Negative mass flux absorption,’ the Doctor cried, glancing triumphantly around him.

‘What?’ Jamie gasped.

‘They suck up the radiation, store it and then convert it into propulsion?’ Zoe speculated.

The Doctor beamed at her. ‘Precisely, Zoe.’ He turned to the Dulcians. ‘Remember how all the radioactivity disappeared from the Island as soon as the saucer arrived?’

Kando and Teel nodded and a glimmer of understanding flickered between them.

Jam s speechless for a moment. ‘So, why are they doing all that drilling out there?’ he suddenly blurted out, in a burst of frustrated desperation.

‘Can’t imagine why no one’s asked me that before!’ the Doctor cried, fumbling in his pockets and unearthing a broken stick of chalk. Then he rushed over to the wall and started drawing feverishly. ‘Four deep holes...’ he said, marking out the corners of a square with little crosses.

‘Another deep hole – the one outside here –’ he announced, putting a small star at the centre of the square.

The Doctor glanced over his shoulder at the semicircle of puzzled faces staring intently at his sketch. ‘Now, a rocket is fired down each of the four corner holes which all meet at a point far below the surface...’ Turning back to the wall, the Doctor quickly drew a side view, showing the four angled shafts intersecting exactly below the fifth one. Once again the Doctor glanced round at his audience. ‘My guess is that they intend to drop that seeding device - the thing we saw the saucer, Zoe – down the fifth hole... Simple really, isn’t it!’

Jame nodded. ‘Aye,’ he mumbled.

‘Well, don’t you see?’ cried the Doctor. ‘They’re going to fire the rockets through the planet’s crust – which is very thin just here on the Island – and into the magma.’

‘But that could cause a volcano,’ Zoe interrupted.

‘Exactly, Zoe.’

‘And if they explode the seed device in the middle of it...’

‘... then the planet will become a vast mass of molten radioactive material,’ the Doctor concluded. ‘If their calculations are correct, a vast fuel source at exactly the right particle density and energy flux.’

Turning back to the wall, the Doctor added the trajectories of the rockets and the seeding trigger and then with violent swirls of chalk drew a colossal explosion. He stared at his handiwork in silence for a moment. When he turned round again, the otters were looking at him as if expecting some word of comfort or advice. He smiled bleakly, shrugged, sighed, and srarecl at his fingernails.

‘Aye, well we’ll just have to stop them, won’t we?’ Jamie said at last.

The Doctor agreed. There was another long silence, broken only by the sickening vibration caused by the throbbing rig outside. Zoe began to imagine she could almost feel the planet shuddering in horror at its approaching fate.

The Doctor realised that everyone was waiting for him.

‘Yes, well, that’s easier said than done, Jamie...’ he flustered. ‘Perhaps if we could somehow get hold of that seeding trigger.. ‘ He sat on a bunk and stared at his diagrams, hunched with concentration.

Suddenly Jane jumped up. ‘Hey, Doctor...’

‘Please, Jame, I am trying to think.’

‘Aye, but I think I know how...’

‘Jamie!’ Zoe snapped irritably.

The impetuous young Sent grabbed Kully’s arm.

‘Listen, I know how can get hold of this atomic seed thing.’

‘Oh really, Jamie?’ exclaimed Zoe with a sarcastic smile.

Jamie rounded on her. ‘The Doctor said they were going to drop it down that hole outside...’

‘Indeed I did,’ agreed the Doctor absently.

‘Aye, well, it’s simple. We dig a tunnel from here out to their shaft and catch the wee thing on its way down!’

Zoe turned eagerly to the Doctor. He remained staring silently into space, and still, like a Buddha.

‘Och well, it was just a thought...’ Jamie trailed glumly into silence.

All at once the Doctor sprang to his feet. ‘Just a thought.

And so simple, Jamie, only you could have thought it!’ He seized Jamie’s hand and pumped it enthusiastically up and down.

Jamie grinned sheepishly, as if uncertain whether to regard this as a compliment.

‘We could use the periscope,’ Zoe suggested. ‘Just line it up on the drill and that’s the direction...’

The Doctor held up his hand. ‘There’s one little snag.

Our tunnel will have to be quite a few metres long and we haven’t much time.’

‘But the sandstone should be reasonably soft,’ Zoe pointed out.

‘And Kully and I can slow those Dominators down a wee bit,’ Jamie laughed, flinging his arm round the Dulcian’s shoulders.

Kully nodded eagerly. ‘We are experts at sabotaging Quarks,’ he reminded them.

The Doctor looked serious. ‘You’ve both been very lucky so far,’ he warned them. ‘Now if we could only devise some kind of weapon for you...’

‘Weapon?’ Kully echoed, glancing at Kando and Teel.

They smiled and nodded encouragement. ‘There’s nothing down here except out-of-date rations and medical kits.’

‘Medical kits!’ cried the Doctor. ‘The very thing. It’s surprising what one can achieve with a few simple chemicals. See what you can find, Kully.’

While Kully searched through the lockers beneath the bunks, the Doctor led Zoe and Jamie over to the periscope.

‘We must establish the direction for our tunnel very accurately,’ he advised, as Zoe raised the tube and peered into the smoked-glass binocular, sighting it as best she could on the incandescent glare of the flashing rig.

‘That’s the bearing...’ she said at last, blinking and massaging her watering eyes.

‘Righto, Zoe.’ The Doctor squinted at right angles to the alignment of the periscope’s handles and then marked a point n the wall of the shelter with his chalk. ‘We’ll have to move this bunk first though.’

As soon as they had cleared the space, the Doctor carefully drew a large circle around his chalk mark. Jamie could hardly wait to start chipping away at the concrete with his dirk, but for all his enthusiasm, the sharp blade screeched and skidded uselessly across the hard surface.

‘I think perhaps I had better start you off...’ the Doctor chuckled, groping in his pockets and finally producing a strange object like a slim torch with a bulbous end and with various itches along its casing.

Jamie snorted scornfully: ‘Och, how are ye going to dig a tunnel wi’a screwdriver?’ he demanded.

The Doctor looked indignant. ‘This not merely a sonic screwdriver, Jamie...’ he retorted, adjusting several switches and then pointing the device at the wall at arm’s length. ‘Now... watch...’

Everyone looked on astonishment as the Doctor’s gadget emitted a powerful warbling sound. All at once, in the centre of the chalk circle, the solid concrete seemed to soften and then melt and finally to evaporate before their eyes.

In no time at all the Doctor bored a large hole right through the shelter wall to the sandstone beyond. Then he left the others to take over the tunnelling and turned his attention to the contents of the medical kits which Kully had unearthed in the lockers.

While Jamie, Kully, Kando and even Teel worked like beavers digging into the softish ground, Zoe helped the Doctor to measure and mix various combinations of chemicals in a number of small phials. Some of the mixtures frothed violently, changed colour threateningly and gave off clouds of evil-smelling vapour. But the Doctor seemed oblivious of any hazards, hunched over his task and muttering to himself like some mediaeval alchemist in his den.

Eventually Jamie grew impatient. ‘Doctor, I don’t think we can wait any longer...’ he said, crawing backwards out of the growing hole and brushing the sand our of his hair.

‘Hang on, Jamie,’ the Doctor muttered, carefully pouring a little of each mixture into a test-tube. He shook the foul liquid until it suddenly went colourless. like water.

‘If this works, you’ll not only be able to distract the Quarks, you’ll most likely blow them to smithereens. Let’s try it out shall we?’

‘In here?’ Zoe exclaimed in alarm_

The Doctor grinned reassuringly. ‘Just a tiny quantity.’

He took a little silver pill from a bottle and held it poised over the mouth of the test-tube. ‘Now, Jamie, just add one of these pills to the mixture before you throw it. Like this...’

The Doctor popped the pill into the tube and stuck a small cork in the end. ‘Don’t forget Jamie, you must throw it before ten seconds have elapsed, otherwise...’

‘Six... seven... eight... Doctor!’ Zoe shrieked.

With a start the Doctor flung the phial over his shoulder. There was a blue flash and a brief roar as it exploded under of the bunks behind them. The Doctor grinned as everybody jumped in fright.

‘It works!’ he cried, hugging Zoe ecstatically.

‘Och, ye could have blown us all tae bits,’ Jamie gasped, pale as milk.

The Doctor shook his head. ‘That was nothing. With ten times as much in each tube you’ll have quite an effective armoury...’

All of a sudden there was total silence. Everybody listened. Then they all turned to the Doctor. He was looking suddenly haggard. The drilling had stopped.

It seemed that their last chance was to be denied them after all.

10

Jamie and Kully were soon edging their way out of the back of the ruin and scrambling up the cliff between two bluffs which afforded some cover from the drilling site.