Doctor Who_ Planet Of Fire Part 6

As the earth storm rumbled, the great machine appeared to have a life of its own. Roskal stood fascinated by the lights and sounds issuing from the weird contraption. He was sure this thing had been made by men like them. If only they could regain the lost knowledgeforbidden knowledge as it was nowthey might yet learn to control the power of the mountain, as it was rumoured men had controlled it before.

After a while the trembling and rumbling began to die away. 'The storm is subsiding,' said Sorasta.

'Let's have a look outside,' said Amyand, joining Roskal by the machine.

There was one magical function of the mechanism that, by pure trial and error, Roskal had learned to control. He turned a switch and a view of the valley beyond the city miraculously appeared on a screen in front of him.

'Show us the Fire Mountain.'

Roskal obliged by moving another lever. The scanner began to pan across the dark surface of the land.

'Stop!' shouted Sorasta suddenly, pointing to the centre of the screen. The other Unbelievers crowded forward.

Two men could be seen walking across the lava slope.

'Strangers.' exclaimed Sorasta.

'Impossible,' protested Amyand. 'They must must be Sarns.' be Sarns.'

There was agreement from the others, for it was known that all the other cities had been destroyed by the earth storms and the fires. It was the one area of history where they agreed with the Elders. There was Sarn and only Sarn in the whole wide world. There were no strangers, for all men alive were fellow citizens. Malkon peered closer at the screen. 'Look at their clothes!' Both men were dressed as no Sarn had ever dressed.'

'Could they really be Outsiders?' suggested one of the younger Unbelievers nervously, to be answered by a noisy protest from his fellows at the hated word.

'No,' said Amyand. 'No one just appears by courtesy of Logar. They must be survivors from one of the dead cities.'

'We must talk to them!' cried Sorasta.

'You'll never get out of the city.'

But Amyand already had a plan. 'They're about to pa.s.s through the western col. We'll use the tunnel and cut them off.'

The Doctor did not like being so far from the TARDIS on such a treacherous and unstable planet. Urged on by Turlough, they had wandered further and further across the infernal landscape: white figures under a dark sky, trudging through black pumice drifts, like a negative snow scene.

The Doctor glanced anxiously at the volcano. ' "What if the breath that kindled those grim fires/Awakened should blow them into seven-fold rage/And plunge us in the flames?"' he quoted.

'What did you say, Doctor?' asked Turlough, expecting at any moment, to be ordered back to the TARDIS.

'Milton,' said the Doctor. 'Didn't they teach you anything at that school?'

Turlough made a face.

' Paradise Lost Paradise Lost,' continued the Doctor. 'I was thinking of our holiday island,' he added ruefully, gazing across a terrain that made the centre of Birmingham look habitable.

Turlough grinned. The Doctor didn't seem too worried after all. Yet the boy felt guilty at encouraging his friend to explore so far. And he felt ashamed, now, of his cruelty to Kamelion. The robot was not involved in any plot, but had been instinctively following a distress call. And Turlough was grateful, because somewhere here...

'We ought to go back to Peri and the professor,'

announced the Doctor.

'Please, Doctor, just a little further,' begged Turlough.

But there's no one alive on this planet!'

Turlough pretended not to hear the Doctor and started to walk faster.

'You're in some kind of trouble aren't you, Turlough?'

said the Doctor catching up with the boy.

'Of course not,' answered Turlough defiantly.

The Doctor looked his companion straight in the face.

It was time for an explanation of the young man's strange behaviour.

'Hey!' In that desolate land the voice seemed, at first, to sound in their own heads. 'You there!' The Doctor and Turlough turned to the blackened hillside. Halfway up the slope, two human figures, dressed like Bedouins against the dust, were waving at them.

'We've found them!' shouted Turlough, rus.h.i.+ng to the slope. He scrambled up the steep clinker like a crazed animal, scattering pumice and cinders in all directions and sending up a great cloud of dust. The Doctor waited for the shock waves to die down and followed in a more dignified manner.

Amyand stood in the entrance of the narrow hillside tunnel watching the boy's approach. Both the boy and the man who followed him were indeed strangers to Sarn, the first unknown faces the two natives of the city had ever seen. Amyand leaned over the edge and hauled Turlough onto the hard floor of the tunnel. Turlough was breathless and choking from the lava dust. The Sarn looked at the young man with intense curiosity. He was just like himself.

'You're safe,' gasped Turlough. 'We found your beacon,'

he added, still helplessly out of breath.

The words made no sense to Amyand who helped Sorasta to haul the second stranger up into the entrance of the pa.s.sage. Neither of the two Sarns had any experience of talking to people they did not know. 'You are welcome, strangers,' said Sorasta haltingly.

Turlough got to his feet. 'Are there any more of you?' he asked anxiously.

Amyand nodded. 'Our group is sheltering in the bunker.'

'Why didn't they send a rescue s.h.i.+p from Trion?' asked Turlough indignantly.

'Trion?' said Sorasta uncomprehendingly.

'The home planet,' said Turlough impatiently. 'You are are from Trion?' from Trion?'

Amyand and Sorasta looked blankly at the boy. 'We are from Sarn' said Amyand, suddenly finding the obvious amazingly difficult to explain.

Turlough looked at the two inhabitants of the hostile place in acute dismay. Who were they if not his own people? And where were the Trions? The man had spoken of a group. Perhaps they would know something of his fellow country-men. 'There must be Trions here somewhere somewhere,' he protested.

The only answer came from the volcano which rumbled ominously in the background. The Doctor was starting to get worried. He wanted to get well clear of the place before the inevitable cataclysm. But there were people here who faced certain extinction if they were not helped. Why did he always have to get involved, he wondered for the second time that day.

They hurried through the dark cracks of the hillside like rodents navigating the secret byways of the skirting board.

The underground tunnel was damp and smelt faintly of rotten eggs. As they walked, Amyand and Sorasta tried to give an account of life on Sarn. 'The Elders manipulate Malkon,' explained Amyand.

'He's our Chosen One,' added Sorasta.

'Free thinkers are persecuted, contact with machines is forbidden.'

Turlough shook his head, unable to understand what these primitive people were doing in the old Trion colony.

'Timanov and his friends live off their t.i.thes without an honest day's work in the fields,' continued Amyand.

'Logar pays well,' said Sorasta bitterly.

The Doctor was sorry, now, that he had left Professor Foster in the TARDIS. This would be right up the archaeologist's street: the power of the mountain turned into a fire G.o.d, human sacrifices... The ground trembled very slightly and the Doctor turned his attention to the more immediate problem. 'Unfortunately,' he explained to their guides, no amount of burnings are going to prevent the destruction of your city.' He looked around the tunnel and whispered to Turlough: 'Of course you realise we're actually walking in one of the vents of the volcano.'

There was a light ahead of them and in a few moments the Doctor and Turlough stepped from the narrow fissure into the cave which sheltered the other dissidents. The new arrivals, shading their eyes from the sudden glare of the torches, were instantly surrounded by the Sarns, like missionaries amongst a group of South Sea Islanders.

The excited Unbelievers first stared, then touched, and, as they lost their shyness, fired salvo after salvo of questions at their unexpected guests. The Doctor tried to explain to the awestruck Sarns that there were worlds beyond their known world, civilisations beyond the city of Sarn, a whole universe of other people other people.

There was a sense of exultation amongst the Unbelievers. Their doubts, their speculations, their intuition, their inchoate struggling towards the truth had been validated by the testimony of this Doctor. The stranger also shared their fears of the volcano, but not unfortunately their choice of hiding place.

'When that volcano blows,' said the Doctor, looking round the cave and wis.h.i.+ng he had taken a more accurate reading of the TARDIS seismic scan, 'molten lava will pour in here and burn you alive.' There was consternation among the Sarns. 'I have a s.h.i.+p...' said the Doctor rather hesitantly, wondering how many more Sarns there were above ground who would need to be evacuated in the TARDIS. He needed Turlough's help.

The Doctor's companion, who had ignored the previous conversations, looked up from his examination of the machinery in the corner of the cave. 'A seismic energy converter,' said the boy. 'For powering the city.'

The Doctor was very impressed. 'Built by your people?'

Turlough nodded.

'Very old,' observed the Doctor, examining the controls.

'Your fellow Trions have long since abandoned the city.'

Turlough said nothing.

Amyand turned to the Doctor. 'This s.h.i.+p of yours...'

Turlough had not heard the Doctor's tentative offer of transport and didn't like the idea at all. 'We can't turn the TARDIS into an orbiting refugee camp,' he whispered aggressively.

'Oh, I see,' said the Doctor angrily. 'Trions we help, Sarns we abandon. Quite a little racialist at heart, aren't you?' He glared at the boy. As Tegan had never been slow to point out, Turlough could be a rather nasty piece of work.

Turlough groaned; the Doctor had entirely misunderstood hirn. But how could he explain to the Doctor that they must find his own people before the real holocaust began? 'These are primitives, and we've nowhere to take them,' he blundered on.

'I suppose you prefer the final solution of the volcano!'

What was threatening to become the most serious argument the two of them had ever had was interrupted by the rattle of feet on the metal staircase from above. A young Sarn who had been keeping an eye on events in the city jumped the last four steps into the cave. 'Timanov has left the city,' he announced breathlessly. 'They're all crowding into the Flail of Fire. The Outsider is expected at any moment...' He forgot what else he had to report as he caught sight of the two strangers.

There was much jeering from the Unbelievers at the idea of the old men going out on such a wild goose chase, but Amyand did not join in the laughter. He remembered how excited the Watchman had been when he arrived in the Hall of Fire. The man had obviously seen something.

He tried to remember the lookout's words. 'A s.h.i.+ning light... The sound of a great wind...'

'Sounds a bit like the TARDIS,' said the Doctor obligingly.

'The Watchman wasn't lying,' exclaimed Sorasta.

'That old fox Timanov is going to have a hard time looking for the messenger of Logan' Amyand laughed and pointed triumphantly at the Doctor. 'Because we we have the Outsider here!' have the Outsider here!'

7.

The Misos Triangle The six Elders of Sarn trudged wearily along the ridgeway path like a procession of Desert Fathers. 'I could wish,'

said Timanov, sweltering under his ceremonial robes, 'that the Outsider had contrived his arrival a little nearer the city.'

The Watchman led them straight to the lookout point from where he had spotted the blue box. As they approached the ruined belvedere, the old men suddenly stopped. They cried out with sudden joy and all fell to their knees. In front of them, between two broken columns of the pavilion, stood a man suffused with unearthly radiance.

The Master, trapped inside the buried TARDIS, was near despair. He had lost control of Kamelion who was stuck, halfway between his robotic and metamorphic state. He glared angrily at the s.h.i.+ning image in the coherer gla.s.s. He could even feel the sense of confusion in the mind of his alter ego alter ego, but he was powerless to break the inhibition. It was all the fault of that girl. But she would live to regret her interference...

The Master's hands moved swiftly to the controls of the metamorphosis projector. Something was happening to Karelion. 'There is energy around you,' he called to the stranded automaton. 'Use it!' He boosted the machine to the overload threshold and groaned as the power went out of himself. 'Come, my slave!' he cried. 'Be at one with me!'

Kamelion, glittering like a Maltese tinfoil Saint at Festa time, turned slowly to the six old men prostrate in the dirt before him.

'Welcome to our city, Outsider,' said one of the old men in a trembling voice.

'Who are you?' asked the robot.

'Timanov, Chief Elder of the Sarns.' His outstretched arms shook. Tears filled his eyes. 'I have struggled to keep the faith alive.' He looked up at the seraphic figure. 'I never thought I would live to see this day, but Logar is just...'

The Master laughed. 'We shall use these superst.i.tious fools.' He gazed at the coherer which now gave back the true image of the renegade Time Lord.

The Elders gasped as the radiance died and revealed a stranger in a dark suit. A complete Outsider.

The Kamelion-Master, secure again in his ident.i.ty, was more than willing to be escorted to the city, where he was sure to find the girl Peri and the Doctor, to whom she would have gone running with the comparator. His old enemy was in for a considerable surprise.

'We have grown lax with our observances,' said Timanov penitently as they walked back towards the city.

'But all that will change. There will be regular burnings.'

The protestations of loyalty from the Elders delighted the Master and he smiled, for the prospect of burnings pleased him mightily. 'You must root out the enemies of Logar,' he exhorted the Chief Elder. turning to take hold of one of the old men's staves. (He could only guess how laser guns had come into the hands of primitives but he would enjoy explaining their proper use.) 'There is one supreme enemy...' the Master chuckled. 'He calls himself the Doctor.'

It was a mistake, the Doctor decided, to have left Professor Foster in the TARDIS. He would have appreciated the archaeologist's company walking in the ancient streets of Sarn, and he would have relished the connoisseur's opinion of the faded grandeur of this desert metropolis. It reminded him (the professor would surely have agreed) of the old Roman city of Ephesus, with its crumbling stones and quake-toppled columnsthe face of imperialism made acceptable in elegant decrepitude.

Turlough, who must have known something of the colonial history of his forebears, said nothing throughout the journey from the bunker to the Hall of Fire. The Unbelievers were also silent, nervous that any moment some zealous citizen might come forward to denounce them.