DOCTOR WHO.

THE RESCUE.

by IAN MARTER.

Prologue.

The huge curved navigation console hummed and its multicoloured displays flashed their tireless sequences of vectors and coordinates, endlessly mottling with garish lights the pale faces which hung disembodied in the semi-darkness of the smooth metal.

Someone sn.i.g.g.e.red. An elbow clad in glossy white plastic shot out and gouged invisible ribs. 'Hear that, Oliphant? Sixty-nine!'

Young Trainee Navigator Oliphant turned his head, wincing in the sudden flare of the axion radar scanner. 'All right, so we have sixty-nine hours to Dido orbit.'

There was a pause.

'Sixty-nine,' growled an American voice out of the pulsing gloom.

Oliphant turned back to the reddish ghostly cube of his three-dimensional crossword puzzle shimmering at the focus of its portable hologram plate, and frowned in frustration. 'Too many letters,' he snapped defensively, touching a sequence of keys.

There was a laugh from around the curve of the console behind him. Plastic-suited figures nodded and grinned at one another.

Oliphant stared defiantly at the new letters appearing in the appropriate little boxes of the laser grid. 'I've got it.

The answer's stranded stranded. It fits every angle.'

'Does it, Oliphant? You lucky boy,' drawled the rich ba.s.s American voice.

An older man with a shock of grey hair stood up and leaned over Oliphant's shoulder to study the puzzle.

' Stranded Stranded... It is oddly appropriate,' he said quietly.

'How long have they been on that G.o.d-forsaken planet anyhow?' demanded a gruff voice from the shadows.

The tall grey-haired man zipped up the top of his gleaming white tunic. 'Approximately three months, I think,' he said.

'Exactly thirteen terrestrial weeks, Commander Smith,'

Oliphant informed him smartly.

'Thank you, Einstein!' scoffed the gruff voice.

The distinguished older man held up his hand for attention. 'We are about to enter the zone of turbulence reported by Astra Nine Astra Nine before the accident,' he reminded them. 'I want extra vigilance in here from now until orbit is established.' before the accident,' he reminded them. 'I want extra vigilance in here from now until orbit is established.'

He turned to the big sprawling American seated at the pilot position in the centre of the crescent-shaped console.

'Mr Weinberger, keep a close watch on the systems please.

We do not want to find ourselves being thrown out of curvature at the last minute, like those poor devils in Astra Astra Nine Nine.'

The sandy-haired American nodded and gave a lazy half-salute. 'Sure thing, Commander. You can leave it to me,' he drawled, chewing energetically and grinning red and blue and yellow in the lights of the guidance display as it flashed up a new sequence of vectors in front of him.

Smith glanced briefly around the navigation module and then strode to the wall and pa.s.sed his hand across a sensor pad. A panel slid noiselessly aside. 'Wake me at once if there is any problem,' he ordered. He left the module and the panel slid shut behind him.

Weinberger swung his padded seat around and punched unnecessarily at several keys on the navigation computer.

'h.e.l.l, this has got to be the most boring a.s.signment I've landed yet,' he muttered, staring morosely at the maze of graphics that instantly appeared. He unzipped a pocket on his tunic and took out a fresh sachet of gum. 'Seems one h.e.l.l of a way to come just to salvage a couple of emigrants-even if one of them is is a dame!' a dame!'

Suddenly Trainee Oliphant leaned forward and frowned at a ma.s.s of numbers in one corner of a display.

'Something is wrong here, Mr Weinberger,' he exclaimed, his scarcely broken voice cracking hoa.r.s.ely.

'You stick to your G.o.ddam puzzles,' snapped the pilot with a contemptuous sneer, chewing the fresh wadge of gum with exaggerated contortions of his thick lips as he punched more keys.

'There is is something here, Chief...' warned the gruff voice in the shadows at one end of the console. something here, Chief...' warned the gruff voice in the shadows at one end of the console.

Weinberger swung his chair and squinted through his tinted gla.s.ses. His craggy face immediately folded in concern. 'Must be a fluctuation surge,' he said with a nervous laugh. 'We've had them before on this trip.'

Oliphant shook his head. 'This is not not spurious, Mr Weinberger.' He pointed to the ominously changing numbers on the screen. 'We have an intense monopole field somewhere nearby. It is increasing every second.' spurious, Mr Weinberger.' He pointed to the ominously changing numbers on the screen. 'We have an intense monopole field somewhere nearby. It is increasing every second.'

'Check it!' Weinberger rapped, clearly rattled.

Oliphant touched a rapid sequence of keys on the navigation panel. The display flashed CHECK RUN CHECK RUN and the, numbers disappeared for a moment. When they reappeared they were even more alarming. and the, numbers disappeared for a moment. When they reappeared they were even more alarming.

'The kid's right,' said the gruff voice as the other personnel peered over Oliphant's head. 'We have a powerful magnetic monopole field and it is closing in around us fast.'

Oliphant swallowed and his prominent Adam's apple jumped in a spasm of nerves. 'Perhaps this is what happened to Astra Nine Astra Nine,' he croaked, his scared face bluish in the light from the screens.

Next moment the displays went berserk in brilliant multicoloured flashes of random graphics and number sequences all over the complex curved console. Then they all blanked out.

No one spoke for a moment. The gaping personnel felt their mouths dry as sand-paper. Their hair p.r.i.c.kled and stood on end and their skins felt brittle and crackly as they stared at the dead instruments.

Suddenly Oliphant sprang out of his seat as a livid blue spark spat between his fingers and the computer keyboard.

'Good G.o.d! What was that?' Weinberger gasped, jumping up and moving away from the console.

The module flooded with an intense blue light and a hollow bellowing and sc.r.a.ping noise resounded throughout.

'And what is that that?' Oliphant screamed, pointing wildly into the s.p.a.ce above the silent console.

The incredulous crew stared at the blurred and hazy oblong shape which was gradually forming in the shimmering air. They covered their ears as the noise rose to an unbearable intensity. After a few seconds, the blinding glare forced them to shut their eyes and turn away, their unprotected hands and faces burning in the dry electric atmosphere.

Suddenly it was silent. The glare vanished. The air felt cold and clammy. Slowly the crew opened their eyes and turned towards the console. The mysterious blue shape had gone and the systems were once again flickering and humming to themselves.

Oliphant gingerly wiped his glistening face and shivered. 'It... It was.... It was like...' he stammered, pressing himself against the cold wall. Inside his plastic tunic he was soaked in perspiration.

'I saw something like it once...' Weinberger croaked, blinking and shaking his head at the empty s.p.a.ce above the console. Pulling himself together, he moved to his seat and checked the instruments.

'All systems checking out normal,' he reported in an artificially calm voice. 'No indications of magnetic anomaly. Routine cross-check.'

Gradually the others resumed their seats, still numb with shock.

'We establish Dido orbit in sixty-eight point nine hours,' Weinberger announced, chewing hard.

Once the systems had all been cross-checked, the personnel relaxed a little but hardly spoke. They kept their attention on the quietly functioning instruments, intently watching for any indication of hidden effects from the terrifying upheaval they had just experienced.

After a long time, Trainee Oliphant happened to glance across at his hologram puzzle. He laughed nervously.

'Whatever it was, it scrambled all the letters...' he said.

1.

The sudden twists of wind seemed to erupt out of nowhere, drawing up the hot sand in fierce corkscrews of stinging grains which funnelled high into the air before abruptly collapsing in gentle sprinkles as the wind dropped as mysteriously as it had risen.

The air was hot and bone dry. The tawny murk of the sky held no clouds, its monotonous haze broken only by the dull ochre patch where the reddish eye of the planet's nearer sun managed to pierce the dusty atmosphere. And the air was charged with electricity, as if a raging thunderstorm could break out at any moment.

The parched landscape looked as if it would welcome a torrent of rain falling for years and years. Scattered across the wilderness, which was gouged by deep ravines and scarred with crusted lake beds, tall spiny-leaved plants seemed to signal in almost human desperation towards the dimly glowering sun, and wicked th.o.r.n.y shrubs and cacti lurked among the boulders and the jagged flinty scree.

A low ridge of craggy mountains rose abruptly out of the desert plain, its cliffs pockmarked with caves and crevices.

At the foot of the ridge, a series of shattered terraces was just distinguishable under the fallen rock and mounds of choking dust. The broken remains of stone buildings with gaping holes for entrances and windows lay like rows of skulls, half-buried in the white sand. Occasionally, a sudden gust of wind dislodged a loose slab or block and it clattered down in a flurry of thick dust, as if the giant skulls were coming to life again and stirring to speak of the terrible catastrophe they had suffered long ago.

Near the ruins at the base of the steep cliffs lay the wreckage of a colossal black and silver metallic structure. It had been broken into three separate sections which lay roughly in alignment. The huge spherical head and the tail complex of cl.u.s.tered cylinders had originally been connected to opposite ends of the tubular central stem. The spherical head section, which was about fifty metres in diameter, had rolled some distance from the rest of the wreck, ending up with its connecting stump pointing almost vertically. A jagged hole appeared to have been cut in the underside of the sphere close to the ground. The vast tail a.s.sembly lay only a few metres from the rear end of the central section. Half-submerged in the sand, with its vast cylinders directed up at an angle, it had obviously driven itself into the ground with enormous power. Several of the cylinders had broken off and stood leaning like silver totems from a religion not yet born.

The central tube itself lay almost horizontal and was split open, just as if it had been trodden on and kicked aside by some giant foot. From the snapped open angle a huge knot of tangled struts, cables and pipes spewed out in all directions like the guts of a gigantic robot. Now and again, a swirl of wind tugged at the mechanical entrails and made them creak and squeal and thrash the air. Along the tailward end of the tube a large hatch panel stuck out, twisted at right angles to the scorched and pitted hull. On the outside face of the panel was painted a symbol showing a planet in orbit around a star and a s.p.a.cecraft in orbit around the planet. Nearby on the hull in huge half-obliterated letters was the name ASTRA NINE ASTRA NINE. The dark, empty hatchway looked like the forgotten entrance to a long abandoned tomb.

But among the cracked gla.s.sy boulders littered around the wreck there were fresh foot prints in the baking sand, especially near the hatchway. Most of the prints were clearly human. However, others resembled the claw prints of a gigantic bird of prey.

Suddenly a high-pitched noise issued from inside the wreck. It was an urgent pulsing signal, shrill and staccato.

It could almost have been the shriek of some pterodactyl-like creature swooping on its prey. It persisted for several minutes before there was a sudden slithering and sliding sound from the steep scree and a slight, ragged figure came stumbling down from the terraces above the wreck and dived through the hatch, breathless and sweating.

Inside the tubular section, the small figure ran up the gentle sloping floor that had originally formed the wall of the hull and knelt in front of a battered radar console that had obviously been removed from its proper position and installed there by means of a crude tangle of cables and connections. With feverish fingers and tiny gasps of excited antic.i.p.ation, the young girl adjusted the tuning controls and stared wide-eyed at a sharp pinpoint of light pulsing in one corner of the dusty screen.

The target spot lay behind the fainter outline of the nearby ridge which crossed the screen from one corner to the other. Frowning with concentration, the girl overlaid the range and angular distance vectors.

'It's impossible...' she breathed, brushing the dust out of her eyes. 'It just can't be... I would have heard something.'

Her pale, almost fragile face began to crumple with desolate disappointment. She had huge eyes with fine eyebrows arched high at the outer corners giving her an air of alert surprise. Her short cropped hair, oval face and small mouth suggested Joan of Arc, and her nose was definitely Norman. Her simple short-sleeved dress and her dirty bare feet made her look even more like the Maid of Orleans.

No matter what adjustments her nervously fluttering fingers made at the keyboard, the signal persisted and the range and direction indicator located the target somewhere on the ridge.

Excitement and hope revived in the girl's intense eyes as she watched the ring of the radar trace expand from the centre out to the edge of the screen over and over again like the waves from a stone dropped into a pool. With each pulse, the target blip flashed and bleeped.

She leaned across the chaotic tangle of communications equipment lashed up around the radar scanner and s.n.a.t.c.hed up a microphone headset. She was about to switch on and tune the radio transmitter when she glanced across at the internal hatch set in what had been the ceiling of the chamber. Through the half-open shutter, she could see the light filtering through the maze of debris which spilt out between the broken halves of the hull. She hesitated, as if torn between alternatives, and a shadow of fear momentarily pa.s.sed over her face. Then she dropped the headset, sprang to her feet and scrambled through the internal hatchway.

She pushed her way through the jungle of wreckage cluttering the intermediate chamber towards one of a number of internal hatches in what had originally been the floor of the upper or forward section of the hull. The hatch was closed. She hammered on the hollow-sounding shutter with her fists.

'Bennett... Bennett!' she called in a small, tremulous voice. 'Bennett, the rescue craft has arrived already!' There was no reply.

The girl tried to squeeze her thin fingers between the edge of the shutter and its buckled frame. 'Bennett, please let me in!' she shouted, her voice suddenly breaking with hysteria. 'Let me in, the Seeker Seeker has landed!' has landed!'

There was a pause and then a sharp click and the hatch slid aside a few centimetres. Seizing the edge, the girl leaned on it with all her strength. Slowly the shutter opened and she slipped warily through.

She entered a small compartment which had been made into makeshift living quarters squeezed in amidst a ma.s.s of complex control and guidance equipment. In a corner there was a simple metal bunk furnished with a cellular mattress and a blanket, and on the curved floor beside it sat a plastic beaker and jug containing discoloured water.

Fitted to what had once been the compartment ceiling at the end of the bunk, a domed object emitted a feeble fluorescent light. On the bunk lay a large man. His long black hair reached almost to his shoulders and he wore a beard trimmed in the Spanish style. His piercing eyes were dark beneath thick prominent brows and his sallow, pockmarked face had high cheekbones and a strong chin.

His nose looked as if it had been broken. His bulky frame was crammed into a round-necked tunic and trousers made of a synthetic material. The trousers were tucked into rugged, unfastened boots.

As the girl tentatively approached the bunk, the man heaved himself into a half-sitting position. 'What is the problem?' he demanded, his hoa.r.s.e voice remote with exhaustion. Before she could respond the man jerked his head towards the plastic jug. 'Give me a drink.'

The girl handed him the beaker. 'The Seeker Seeker has landed. has landed.

It's on the radar,' she said breathlessly. 'It's here at last, Bennett. Isn't that wonderful? We can go home now.'

Bennett almost choked on the brackish, oily liquid.

'Impossible. It cannot be the Seeker Seeker,' he snapped brutally, staring at the sand at the bottom of the beaker. 'You are dreaming again.'

The girl seized his arm in a frenzy. 'Listen, you can hear it on the radar!' she insisted, kneeling almost in supplication.

Bennett frowned as he heard the persistent bleep from the equipment in the main compartment. The girl did not notice the sudden fear veiled in his dark eyes. He shook his head. 'It is a fault. It has to be a fault,' he told her. 'Did you establish radio contact?'

The girl shook her head. 'I was just going to... but I wanted to come and tell you first.' Her face looked trusting and innocent. 'Bennett, I thought you would be so pleased.'

Bennett thrust the empty beaker at her. 'Did you see it?'

he demanded. 'Did you hear it land?'