Doctor Who_ Planet Of Fire Part 4

'Reminds me of Pompei,' said the Doctor as he surveyed the scene from the door of the TARDIS. There was an ominous rumble and both looked towards the distant volcano.

'Pompei,' observed Turlough, rather pertinently, 'was utterly destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius.'

But as usual the Doctor wasn't listening. He had wandered over to the corner of the ruin and was poking about the fallen columns and carved stones. Turlough ran across to join him. 'We shouldn't have left Kamelion.' He glanced nervously over to the TARDIS.

'Poor old Kamelion's virtually lobotomised.' grunted the Doctor as he pottered happily amongst the rubble.

Turlough said nothing. He had his own reasons for being afraid of the automaton, which he had no intention of discussing with the Doctor. The volcano grumbled like a sleeping giant with a touch of indigestion. 'That thing could erupt at any moment,' shouted Turlough, by way of encouraging a return to the TARDIS.

'Not according to the seismic scan,' replied the Doctor confidently and dropped to his knees. He fished the two halves of the casing from the beacon out of his pocket and peered at the carving on the side of one of the fallen pillars.

He pointed to the symbol on the metal sheath and then at the engraved stone.

Turlough leaned forward. 'The Misos Triangle!' he whispered.

'Someone or some thing thing must have computed the co-ordinates from the data core,' said the Doctor. must have computed the co-ordinates from the data core,' said the Doctor.

Turlough looked out across the miles of sterile black tufa, a nightmare landscape that had haunted his sleep every night in the cold dormitory at Brendon. So this was Sarn. He had tried so often to imagine what it might be like. When they read Dante with Mr Sellick he had thought only of this planet of fire. Abandon hope all ye that Abandon hope all ye that enter here enter here. The poet might well have been describing this grim prison. 'There are people from Trion here,' he said quietly.

'Trion?'

'My home planet.'

'Why didn't you say so before?' said the Doctor, wondering why Turlough hadn't identified the double triangle when he first saw it on the beacon.

Turlough didn't answer. He was curious why the beacon had led them to Sarn, and what Kamelion's part was in it.

At least there was no sign of the Custodians' s.h.i.+p. 'This is an old Trion colony,' he volunteered blandly.

'Very old and very deserted,' observed the Doctor, looking out at the empty horizon.

'Someone must still be here.'

The Doctor shook his head. 'That distress beacon could have been launched years ago.'

But Turlough was already running along the path that led from the ruin and out across the desert of ash and solidified lava.

Peri was trying to make her stepfather explain what had happened while she was asleep. She could see that her rescuer had taken her aboard a very remarkable s.h.i.+p. They had obviously been travelling. But away from the Earth?

Howard wasn't the least bit interested in Peri's questions as he perused the instruments on the control panel. 'The TARDIS is mine,' he muttered excitedly.

'Pardon?' said Peri.

'The TARDIS is mine,' said Howard more loudly. He operated a switch and the doors closed.

'Howard! What are you doing?' shouted Peri who knew quite well that her stepfather couldn't work a can-opener, let alone be trusted with machinery like this... 'Howard!'

But the man pressing b.u.t.tons on the control console chose to ignore her protests. Lights flashed and alarms sounded.

'Don't touch that!' yelled Peri.

She screamed. Howard's face was slowly dissolving. The features of another man began to form in the halo over what had been the professor's body. The new face was dark, unsmiling, saturnine. It spoke in a new voice. 'I have succeeded. Contact has been made.'

'Who are you?' said Peri, frightened out of her wits.

The man who had materialised in the place of her stepfather chuckled evilly. 'I am the Master. You will obey me.'

5.

A Very Uncivil Servant Kamelion had enjoyed being Professor Foster. There was order, logic and (as one would expect from the survivor of so many Faculty purges) a vein of pure ruthlessness in the persona extracted from Peri's aura, that suited his purposes admirably. With all loyalty to the Doctor suppressed, he had begun to understand the nature of the emergency. As soon as he gained control of the Doctor's TARDIS he had paralleled the navigation unit with that of the other TARDIS. He could soon feel the now boosted metamorphic projection, and knew that he obeyed the supreme control. He began to think and see, move and feel, plot and plan like the distant Time Lord until the morphic plasma reformed and Kamelion was was the Master. the Master.

'Is this some kind of trick?' Peri was stunned.

'Explanations are not necessary for you to help me with my work,' said the Master's metal familiar.

'Help you?' Peri began to feel angry. Like Alice at the bottom of the rabbit hole, she was about to pick herself up, dust herself down, and deal with life in the mad world on its own terms. 'I never asked to join this crazy outfit in the first place,' she protested.

The robotic Master continued to work at the console.

Peri looked up at the screen and, to her dismay, saw Turlough and the Doctorher only link with reality disappearing into some desert. She tried to remember the lever Howard had used to work the doors. She edged forward...

But the Master had eyes in the back of Kamelion's head.

Peri winced with pain as the black suited figure s.n.a.t.c.hed her arm in his own steely hand. 'No, young lady, the doors will remain closed.'

'Don't touch me!' yelled Peri.

'You will remain in the TARDIS.'

Peri, who was unaccustomed to taking orders from strangers, aimed a sharp kick at the Master's s.h.i.+ns that would have repulsed a Globetrotter. There was a howl of painfrom Peri. The man was made of t.i.tanium!

The Kamelion-Master transferred his hand to Peri's shoulder. As the hard sharp fingers sunk into her flesh, Peri screamed with pain and fear. The strength of her emotion was not lost on the robot. The same energy that had triggered his metamorphosis into Howard Foster began to inhibit the Master's own projection.

Peri instantly noticed the look of discomfort on the man's face. She screamed againand louder. Feeling his grip relax, she screamed some more. The Master's features blurred, his body glistened...

'Now what's happening?' Peri looked hopefully for the devil she knew to reappear. But there was nothing of Howard in the bald puppet that materialised in front of her.

'Who are you?' She stared at the authentic Kamelion.

' What What are you?' are you?'

The arms of the silver marionette jerked. A finger stabbed at the console. 'Help me,' said a little tin voice.

Only a genius of the Master's rank could have controlled the functions of his TARDIS entirely from the workbench of the laboratory, deep inside the time-machine. (Or so the Master told himself as he scanned the hastily a.s.sembled remote control units that operated the equipment in the console room.) The renegade Time Lord allowed himself a moment of relaxation. There had been a time when he feared Kamelion did not fully understand what was required of him. The metamorphosis projector. with which he now controlled the slave, had been an inspired invention, its design and constructionwith materials available in the workrooman achievement of epic proportions.

The Master observed with great satisfaction that his co-ordinates had been aligned with the Doctor's TARDIS, and turned to align his own head with the antennae of the new machine. He peered at the coherer with which he monitored the robot's morphic state. He snarled with rage.

The round gla.s.s screen should have reflected his own image, but now he stared at the silver mask of the undisguised robot. Some interferencethat girl!had encouraged the creature to rea.s.sume its own ident.i.ty. He increased the power of the projector, yet still Kamelion resisted. A robot that was not for him was against him.

'You will resist the girl!' he called. 'Her mind is strong, but you will obey only the Master.'

The Time Lord increased the radiation by a factor of ten, until the machine howled with the power surging through it, and the Master himself groaned with the pressure on his own brain. 'Kamelion! Kamelion!' he screamed. 'You will be the blind slave of my will!'

But the image in the coherer remained that of an unco-operative automaton. Kamelion must be transfusing with the Doctor's computer, the Master decided as he reduced power. There was no choice but to wait until he could use the projector at close range.

Kamelion felt himself grow stronger. He must be loyal to the Doctor, help the Doctor's friendand quickly! Not for long could he resist the demands of his other master.

'What's happened to Howard? Who was the other man?

What's going on?' Peri plied the seemingly friendly robot with questions.

'Howard is safe on Earth,' Kamelion rea.s.sured her in a friendly voice. 'His appearance was a projection of your own energy which overwhelmed my personality circuits.'

'Circuits?' repeated the confused American. 'You really are some kind of robot?'

'I am Kamelion,' said the aristocrat of automata proudly. 'Was Kamelion,' he added in a sad voice, scanning his own neuronic damage. 'But I must help you...'

Neither of them saw, on the scanner, another pillara yellow, fluted Corinthian columnappear in the ruined colonnade outside the TARDIS. The Master had arrived.

A howl like an air raid siren came from Kamelion's mouth as he felt the increased radiation. He began to smudge.

'No!' shouted Peri. 'Please don't disappear.'

Kamelion struggled to hold on to a vestige of his own personality. 'An enemy of the Doctor is near,' he moaned.

'He invades me.'

'No, Kamelion! You're the only one who can help me.'

The girl's panic gave Kamelion the energy for a further moment of resistance. 'Leave the TARDIS at once. Find the Doctor...' He pivoted over the console and removed a small jagged wafer of printed circuit. 'Give him this. Warn him that the Master...' His words became an indecipherable ululation.

'The Master? Who is the Master?' Seeing that Kamelion could help her no more, Peri turned to the controls and fumbled with the door lever. Behind her someone chuckled. She looked back over her shoulder and saw, in place of Kamelion, the evil man in the black suit.

'My dear Peri,' the robotic Time Lord smiled. 'Do not be confused by my s.h.i.+fting appearance. The transfer has now stabilised. I am immutably the Master.'

In his adjacent TARDIS the real Master gazed into the coherer gla.s.s and saw his own image, as in a mirror.

'Excellent Kamelion. Now quickly. To my TARDIS.

Release me.'

Obediently his doppelganger doppelganger opened the doors of the Doctor's time-machine and took hold again of Peri's arm. opened the doors of the Doctor's time-machine and took hold again of Peri's arm.

'I'm waiting here for the Doctor!' shouted Peri, kicking and struggling.

'You will come with me,' hissed her tormentor, tightening his grip till Peri screamed, 'or you will remain in the TARDIS...' he gave another chuckle... 'dead!'

As they emerged into the ruined building where the blue police box had materialised, Peri momentarily forgot all her fears and discomfort at the sight of the s.h.i.+p's exterior. 'That's all I need,' she groaned. 'A flying closet!'

Her captor was about to add some observations of his own on the Doctor's substandard TARDIS, when the earth started to shake.

'Now what?' cried Peri.

'Merely the death throes of this blighted planet,'

observed the Kamelion-Master, as he dragged his victim across the creeping ground.

'It's now or never,' thought Peri as she followed her leader for a few more deceptive paces, then, taking her cue from a further convulsion of the earth, sprung sideways.

But the metal Master followed her every movement, tightening his grip on her arm until Peri begged for mercy.

The large stone which fell from the wall onto the creature's head missed the girl by inches. The Master's surrogate toppled like a ninepin and Peri was away, pausing only to dodge around a yellow, fluted Corinthian column which the earthquake was rocking alarmingly.

In the pitching laboratory, the Master struggled to steady his precious machine, but, as his TARDIS finally keeled over, both Time Lord and metamorphosis projector, with the whole paraphernalia of the workroom, tumbled like dice.

Outside, a second column crashed onto the fallen TARDIS, and a third amidst a shower of loose stones. Pediment and entablature from the derelict colonnade thudded into the growing pile of masonry.

The Master's TARDIS was well and truly buried.

The Master opened his eyes to find himself lying in the corner of his laboratory under a huge pile of equipment, his head aching vicariously from the blow to Kamelion. He got to his feet and looked round at the damage. The metamorphosis projector rested on its side in the centre of the wall which had now become the floor of the laboratory.

The Master righted the machine, which was his lifeline with his slave. He breathed a sigh of relief for there was no sign of malfunction. A few adjustments to the controls and Kamelion appeared in the coherer gla.s.s in the image of the evil Time Lord. 'Excellent,' he whispered as he increased the power. 'Come, my Kamelion, revive!'

Kamelion clawed his way out of the mound of loose stones and mortar. He staggered to his feet and surveyed the general dilapidation. The Doctor's police box, he observed ruefully, was unscathed, while blocks of carved stone, columns, capitals, the lintel of a door were piled above and around the toppled, yellow, time-machine. The robot struggled for a while with the enormous chunks of masonry, but, for all his amazing powers, he was not Superman.