After an exhausting trek from the drilling site, the Doctor and Zoe together with Balan, Kando and Teel, were herded into the control centre in the saucer. As soon as the Quarks had delivered their reports to Rago, the atmosphere became electric as Probationer Toba faced his superior defiantly.

'You deliberately disobeyed my instructions.' Rago fumed. 'You asked power destroying the structure and the specimen Kully.'

'And possibly my young friend Jamie!' the Doctor shouted, his face contorted with rage and sorrow.

Zoe gazed at the Doctor in horror.

Toba's eyes clouded with cunning. 'My life was threatened and a Quark was destroyed.'

'The result of your own negligence,' Rago retorted.

Toba smiled a nightmare smile. 'Does the Navigator suggest that I should have allowed the specimen to escape?'

'This is an Island. The specimens cannot escape,' Rago sneered. He turned to the Quark escort. 'Take the specimens to the central bore and prepare the target for drilling. The inferior specimens will remain here,' he added, indicating Zoe and the Doctor.

The dusty haggard figures of Balan, Kando and Teel were driven roughly out of the control centre by the two Quarks. Zoe and the Doctor lingered apprehensively under the glinting gaze of another robot. Zoe was almost frantic with concern for Jamie, but as soon as she tried to question the Doctor he put his finger to his lips and nodded warningly towards Rago and Toba.

The two Dominators had moved across the chamber to the Quark control unit on the far side. A vivid red symbol representing the robot destroyed by Jamie was pulsing among row upon row of green symbols denoting serviceable Quarks. 'Probationer Toba, I begin to question whether you possess the qualities of intelligence and detachment vital in a Dominator,' Rago rapped out with exaggerated disdain. 'You have repeatedly destroyed the creatures and installations of this planet, and squandered vital Quark resources to no useful purpose, merely to gratify your l.u.s.t for destruction.'

Toba gestured defiantly at the huge navigation charts glowing on the panels behind them. 'Was it by weakness and indecision that the Dominators mastered the Ten Galaxies?' he demanded.

Rago stiffened. 'It was by rational ruthlessness,' he retorted, his eyes ablaze with fanatical certainty. 'What threatens us, we destroy. What can serve us, we exploit.

Everything else, we ignore.'

'Well, at least we're honest,' murmured the Doctor wryly, listening intently.

'But the primitives have disobeyed us. They have attacked and we do not know what the superior aliens may be planning elsewhere on the planet,' Toba protested.

'I alone am competent to a.s.sess such matters,' Rago thundered. 'I shall report your conduct to Fleet Leader.'

'And I shall protest at yours,' Tuba shouted 'You have jeopardised our mission by weakness. You have humiliated me before interior creatures...'

Rago thrust his creaking, leathery face close to Toba's.

'It is not unknown for mutinous subordinates to be executed,' he hissed.

'Nor is it unknown for an incompetent superior to be replaced,' Toba ranted unflinchingly.

'Quark!' Rago rasped. 'Place Probationer Toba under restraint.'

The Quark guarding the Doctor and Zoe advanced on Toba, its probes whirring ominously.

'Quark!' Toba countered, his malevolent eyes fixed on Rago. 'Secure the prisoners.'

The robot lurched to a halt. Its antennae glowed and its probes stabbed the air as its legs jerked it round to face the Doctor and Zoe, and then back round to face Toba again.

The two captives watched from the shadows, fascinated by the robot's paralysing confusion.

'Quark, I am the Senior Dominator. You obey me,' Rago thundered.

The Quark emitted an agonised bleating and then tramped resolutely towards Toba. The Probationer licked his mean lips and backed away a few paces.

'Will you submit or shall I order molecular adhesion?'

Rago demanded coldly.

Toba lowered his huge head and his body slumped in defeat. 'I submit...' he whispered hoa.r.s.ely.

Rago watched as the Quark continued to advance on Toba with inexorable purpose. Then, when the humiliated probationer looked up in naked terror and let out a macabre whimper, Rago smiled and casually instructed the robot to return to the prisoners. 'You are fortunate that Fleet still requires your services, Toba,' he sneered. 'You will now return to supervise final drilling operations. And allow nothing to distract you.'

Again Toba bowed his head. 'Command accepted,' he whispered and marched out.

Rago strode across to the Doctor and Zoe. 'I require information about your planet,' he rapped, looming over them.

'What plan...' Zoe began.

The Doctor silenced her with a sharp nudge and a pantomime cough. Then he gazed innocently up at Rago, nodding and smilingly meekly.

'Your responses had better be satisfactory; Rago hissed, 'for your own sakes.'

7.

Buried Alive Balan, Kandu and Teel were appalled to see the devastation from the Quark attack on the museum.

Wreckage was strewn all over the drilling site which they had sweated so hard to clear earlier. The Quarks forced them back to work with brutal shoves and harsh metallic threats. After only a few minutes, Balan began to gasp and tremble with the strain while Teel and Kando struggled bravely among the smouldering debris.

'Kully must be dead. No one could have survived in there...' Kando murmured.

'The attempt was sheer madness; Balan whispered faintly. 'It is useless to resist.'

Teel blinked the stinging seat our of his eyes and stared hard at a tangle of beams heaped in the centre of the ruin.

For a fleeting moment he thought he saw something moving. He tried to attract Kando's attention, but a Quark whirred warningly behind him and he reluctantly resumed his back-breaking task.

Only thirty metres away, the tip of a slim metal shaft was twisting and turning under the beams trying to force its way upwards, but the heavy girders held it fast. Time after time the shaft was withdrawn a few centimetres and then thrust sharply upwards again only to become fouled in the tangled wreckage.

Teel strained to see out of the corner of his eye but eventually gave up, blaming the heat and his exhaustion for deceiving his senses.

At the other end of the vertical shaft, several metres beneath the specially reinforced floor of the ruin, Jamie and Kully were struggling in the stuffy and dusty gloom to force the periscope up into the open. But try as they would, the shaft only moved to far and then jammed solid.

The atomic shelter was a featureless, boxlike room containing four bunks, an air-filtering unit and two dimly glowing fluorescent lighting strips. A steel ladder led up one wall to a square hatchway in the ceiling. The hatch was tightly shut.

Finally, worn out with their frantic efforts, Jamie and Kully collapsed onto the bunks.

'It's no good. The whole building most be piled on top of it,' Jamie panted.

'We'll just have to wait until someone digs us out,'

Kully shrugged.

Jamie snorted and attempted to take a few deep breaths in the close, stale atmosphere. 'Meantime we'd better stop breathing,' he muttered sarcastically.

Kully glanced at the ventilator unit. 'The batteries are too low to run that thing,' he said hopelessly. 'They won't power the lights much longer either.'

Wearily Jamie hauled himself to his feet. 'Look, Kully, we've got to get that trap door open again' he insisted. He dragged himself up the ladder and started heaving against the unyielding steel hatch with his shoulder.

Kully glanced with grudging admiration at the brawny Highlander's bulging calves as he strained upwards. 'Even if you get it open you'll probably find the Quarks waiting for you,' he objected gloomily.

'That's a risk we'll have to take,' snapped Jamie, resting for a few seconds and swallowing great gulps of stale air.

Kully frowned. 'Don't you see, Jamie? It's suicide either was. The harder we work the sooner we use up the air.'

'Sitting there moaning's no better,' Jamie retorted angrily, puzzled that all the fight seemed to have gone out of Kully suddenly.

'The Dulcians believe it is undignified to struggle against one's fate,' Kully said staring vacantly into s.p.a.ce, as if talking to himself.

Jamie twisted round and glared contemptuously down at the forlorn little figure. 'Och come on, Kully... I thought ye were different. Ye sound like those auld fossils in the Council. I thought ye'd fight!' he taunted, putting his shoulder to the immovable hatch again.

'I always wanted adventure...' Kully agreed, sniffing glumly. Then his plumpish face brightened a little. 'I enjoyed exploding that Quark. That was tremendous fun!'

he cried, more cheerfully.

Shaking the sweat out of his eyes, Jamie rested again. 'If we can get out of here, maybe we can explode some more,'

he suggested temptingly, 'so get your fat carca.s.s up here and push, will ye?'

Reluctantly Kully clambered up and squeezed himself breathlessly next to Jamie. Nose to nose they each clung to the rungs with one hand and shoved against the steel hatch with their opposite shoulder.

'Now... heave!' Jamie commanded.

Time and again they heaved, pausing briefly to gulp a few breaths of sour, dusty air. The blood hammered in their ears like gunfire and their tight, aching chests were crushed in an invisible vice.

But the hatch did not budge a millimetre...

Outside, so near and yet so far away, Balan, Kando and Teel were on the brink of total collapse. For the second time they had almost cleared the area immediately surrounding the drilling target. Two Quarks were now positioned face to face over the star-shaped marking and Dominator Toba had arrived with the drilling rig itself.

With a s.a.d.i.s.tic smile, Toba ordered Balan to carry the heavy awkward device over to the target The rig consisted of a bulky cylindrical head, with fluted vanes running vertically around the side and a tapering barrel projecting downwards. A tripod support, slightly longer than the barrel, splayed out from the lower rim of the cylinder.

Balan tottered over the undulating sand and dumped the rig between the waiting Quarks' extended probes.

Choking with the effort, he managed to lever it upright.

'Centre it!' Toba rasped, cuffing him viciously.

Staggering feebly in the shifting sand, Balan threw all his weight against the drill and eventually managed to manoeuvre the mouth of the barrel exactly over the centre of the star. Then he stumbled back, out of the way.

Toba ordered the Quarks to engage power. With eager whinnyings, they inserted their probes into sockets in the cylindrical head of the rig, while their antennae glowed blood-red.

Teel and Kando had cautiously approached and now supported Balan's sagging body between them, while staring in apprehensive fascination at the drilling operation.

'Angular bore parameters locked,' Toba rapped out.

'Affirmative,' chorused the Quarks.

'Initial depth parameter locked.'

'Affirmative.'

'First stage: commence.'

At first nothing happened. Then the ground shook as a low whining noise rose from the rig, steadily increasing to a higher and higher pitch. All at once an intense beam of light shot from the tip of the barrel a few centimetres above the target. After a few seconds, a clean black hole about ten centimetres across appeared in the centre of the star as the sand parted, melted and then fused around the energy beam.

The three Dulcians reeled backwards, averting their faces from the searing glare and covering their ears against the unbearably rapid throbbing of the machine. However, Toba seemed totally unaffected his green, red-rimmed eyes resembled two miniature lasers as they reflected the ma.s.sively concentrated power of the drill.

After a while the incandescent beam vanished, the sickening noise subsided, and the red glow faded from the Quarks' antennae. Toba peered into the crackling borehole and nodded approvingly, almost savouring the oily smoke which curled up into his fare.

Shivering in his pupils' arms, Balan opened his eyes wide with terror and contusion. 'What do they want here?'

he gasped faintly. 'What are they doing to our planet?'

Toba stepped back. 'Second stage,' he rapped.

'Commence.'

Under Rago's intensive interrogation, the Doctor had been trying to discover more about the Dominators' intentions while giving away as little as he could, but his persistent hesitations had finally exasperated the looming Navigator.

'Senex, your leader.. he is in the Capitol?' Rago repeated, at the end of his patience.

The Doctor scratched his head, coughed, shrugged, blew his nose and then frowned. 'Well, that's difficult to say... I'm not absolutely sure,' he bl.u.s.tered.

Rago swung round on Zoe. 'Quark. Molecular adhesion!' he snapped.