Doctor Who_ The Power of the Daleks Part 9

As soon as the door was shut, Ben rounded on the Doctor and s.n.a.t.c.hed the apple angrily out of his hand. The Doctor looked puzzled for a second, as if he had no clue as to where the apple had vanished to. Then he grabbed the grapes and began shaking them, showering the tiny fruits all over the room.

'You know, it's little things like this,' Ben told him angrily, 'that make it hard for me to believe you're really the Doctor. The other one, I mean. The proper one.'

Unable to find the right words, he slammed the apple back into the bowl. 'Oh, nuts!'

'Plenty of nuts,' the impish little man said, s.n.a.t.c.hing up a selection. 'Want one?'

Ben stabbed a finger at the Doctor. 'You, my old china, are an out and out fraud!'

'China?' the Doctor asked, whipping out his 500 year diary. 'Went there once, I believe.' He began to flick through the pages, then stopped, pointing at the unintelligible script there. 'Told you! Met Marco Polo.'

'China!' Ben couldn't believe this idiot. 'It's rhyming slang china plate, mate. Friend.'

'Yes, I believe Marco Polo was a friend,' the Doctor agreed, returning to his examination of the fruit. Ben threw his hands up in disgust.

Polly moved over to the odd figure. 'Don't listen to him, Doctor. I believe you.'

To her surprise, this announcement didn't please him.

He looked alarmed and then held a finger to his lips.

Intrigued, Polly watched as he groped in his pocket.

Pulling out a penknife, he unsnapped the rather dull blade, and then used it to slice open one of the apples.

In the core was a small metal pill. With a fiendish grin, the Doctor dropped it on to the floor and jumped on it with both feet. Then he gave his companions a shooing gesture. Ben nodded and started looking around the small room. Polly followed his lead. A moment later, Ben gave a small snarl of triumph, and pulled another of the tiny devices from under the windowsill. As he broke it, the Doctor stuck up two fingers, then added a third.

One more to go 'This is like hunt the thimble,' Polly said. 'Why don't we give them something for their troubles?' Smiling at Ben, she said, 'You could give them one of your old sea shanties' Rather off-key, she started to sing: 'Blow the man down, bullies, blow the man down...'

Ben put his hands over his ears. 'Do you mind?'

Polly found the final bug, under the base of the table lamp. Ben stomped it to death.

'Blimey, they believe in making us at home, don't they,'

he commented.

'That'll be the last one,' the Doctor told him. 'One for the job, a back-up, and a backed-up back-up in case the back-up fails'

'You guessed they were there,' Ben accused him. 'That was why you were talking all that nonsense'

The Doctor looked hurt. 'I never talk nonsense,' he said.

Then, in a sudden fit of honesty, he felt compelled to add, 'Well, hardly ever.' Then he smiled. 'Yes, I knew they were there. I mean, why else deliver a bowl of fruit at two in the morning? They would have been afraid of waking me up.

So someone knew I wasn't here.'

I'll bet you Bragen did it,' Ben said.

Polly nodded. He was Head of Security, and had the equipment to do it. 'Do you think it was his own idea? Or was he doing it under orders?'

'The Governor?' Ben considered the matter. 'Dunno.

Both of them seem to be up to something, don't they?'

'Maybe I should ask Quinn,' Polly suggested. 'He seems like a nice man.'

'Get her!' Ben scoffed. 'You just want an excuse to chat him up! I caught you eyeing him over.'

Polly blushed; Quinn was rather good-looking. Ignoring Ben's gentle laugh, she went over to the Doctor. She was convinced now that he was who he claimed to be. It didn't make sense, perhaps, but what else about the Doctor ever had? Still, he did seem to have made enemies of Lesterson and Bragen. The pair of them were villains if she'd ever seen any, which meant that this man had to be one of the good guys, surely? He was studying the b.u.t.ton he'd been grasping when he was. .h.i.t in the swamp. 'What about that?'

she asked him.

'This is the only clue we've got to the murderer of the real Examiner,' he told her. 'I was just wondering about motives.'

Polly frowned. 'Who asked him to come, or who had reasons to kill him?'

'Both.'

Ben joined them, munching on the ruins of the apple the Doctor had mutilated. 'Lesterson's absolutely crackers about his capsule. Nothing else matters to him. He'd never have called in the Examiner, who might have got in his way.'

Polly said, 'But he might have had to kill the Examiner for exactly the same reason.' She sighed. 'Then what about the rebels? Bragen said the Governor's been having trouble with them.'

'Yeah.' Ben rubbed his chin. 'Funny that he should mention that so obviously, ain't it? Especially since it reflects so badly on himself, if you catch my drift. Anyway, I reckon you can rule the Governor out about calling the Examiner. He'd never have done that. It would have been just as good as admitting he couldn't run this place properly. No official would ever own up to that! I don't care what planet we're on or time we're in, politicians are all the same.'

'I think we should put a little pressure on Lesterson,'

the Doctor suggested. 'He's the weakest link. The more we lean on him, the more he'll tell us to try and get rid of us.'

'I don't know why we should bother,' Ben said. 'We should just let them all sink in their own muck and nip off back to the TARDIS.'

The Doctor shook his head. 'But what about the Daleks, Ben?'

'I still don't see what you're worried about,' Ben replied.

'I mean, all right, I'll buy it that those tin cans could be dangerous. They look like they mean aggro and all. But they're not up to much right now, are they?'

'Ala, but what would it take to reactivate them again?'

The Doctor pulled his recorder from his pocket and ran through a few bars of 'On Top Of Old Smokey'.

'Besides, what about that thing you and the Doctor saw in the capsule?' Polly asked.

'Well, I can't explain that,' Ben admitted.

'I can,' the Doctor replied gravely, but didn't. 'That's why we must must stay.' stay.'

11.

They'll be too Frightened to do

Anything Else Lesterson was competely absorbed in his work. The third Dalek now stood in the middle of his laboratory. He'd finished connecting the computer in the dome to his Cray mainframe, ready to monitor any changes. Now he was laying out the connections from a thick power cable that scrolled across the floor. He'd sharply refused Janley and Resno's offer of help. Both his a.s.sistants stood by the main bench, waiting for further instructions.

'Ugly-looking brutes, aren't they?' Resno grumbled, staring at the Dalek. 'What's he want to muck about with them for? Leave well enough alone, I say.'

Janley laughed scornfully. Even though it was the middle of the night, she looked gorgeous. Resno could think of better places to be with her than here.

Unfortunately, she'd made it perfectly clear in the past that she was definitely not interested in him. Or in anyone else that he'd ever noticed. He felt it was a terrible waste of such beauty.

'You're a fine one to be a research a.s.sistant,' she mocked him. ' "Leave well enough alone"! You'll be saying "there are things man wasn't meant to know" next. There'll be no progress on this planet with people like you around.'

'We're doing very well as we are,' Resno snapped back, stung by the venom in her voice. 'Or we were, until you lot came, stirring things up. You won't get anywhere, you know. The Governor knows all about you rebels. He'll smash the lot of you when he's ready.' His revelation that he knew she was in the rebel camp didn't seem to bother her in the least.

'The Governor?' she laughed. 'He couldn't smash '

'Be quiet!' Lesterson yelled. He was trying to concentrate on his connections. 'Where do you think you are? This is a scientific laboratory, for goodness sake!

Leave politics at the door. Resno, get on with checking the power output. It's got to be rock steady. We haven't got all night. We'll have the Examiner down on our backs again if we don't get this thing working.' He gestured. 'He's got some phobia about these... Daleks!' He bent back to his work, driven by his own scientific greed.

The Doctor was sitting cross-legged on his bed, staring at his diary. He was turning the pages at a furious rate. 'I know the Daleks,' he told Ben and Polly. 'I know the destruction they cause. The misery. I have to know what else I know!'

Polly was almost getting used to these odd references by now. 'Did the Daleks destroy your planet?' she asked.

The Doctor shook his head. 'I don't think so. But I did leave in the TARDIS. Susan and I.' He frowned, obviously concentrating hard. 'I wish I could remember what happened to Susan. It has something to do with the Daleks.'

'She gave you that Dalek key,' Polly said gently.

'There's more than that. I just can't quite recall.' He shook his head.

Ben was quite fed up with this conversation. 'What I don't get,' he told the Doctor, 'is what these Daleks are doing here? I mean, you said that they invaded the Earth once, but they could hardly have come here to take over this place, could they?'

'Not hardly, Ben,' the Doctor agreed. 'They arrived long before the humans did. It may have been an accident. Even the Daleks make mistakes.'

'Well, if they didn't mean to come here, wouldn't they just move on if they were revived?'

'Undoubtedly.' The Doctor favoured Ben with a very bleak look. 'But remember, they have an intractable hatred for all other living species. They would move on, all right

after they had sterilized the whole planet!' He could see from the shocked expression on his travelling companions'

faces that this had hit home. 'I wish I could remember my history!'

'History!' Ben's aggressiveness had resurfaced quickly.

'This is the future future!'

'All time is relative,' the Doctor told him. Before he could elaborate, there was a knock on the door and Bragen entered. 'Well?' the Doctor asked. 'Where's Hensell? What did he say?'

Bragen shrugged. 'He sends his regrets, but he can't see you now. He asks that you meet with him first thing in the morning.'

The Doctor remembered Lesterson's expression. He was not a man to wait about while his precious experiments were in danger. 'It won't wait till then!' he snapped.

'It must,' Bragen insisted.

'No' The Doctor uncoiled himself from the lotus position and leaped to his feet. His lithe actions were marred when he almost fell over as he stood on a trailing shoelace. 'Action must be taken immediately. I'll go and see him myself right now.'

Bragen stood in front of the door. The meaning of his action was clear enough. 'I'm afraid you can't do that. Once his door is closed, no one is allowed into his room.'

The Doctor wagged a finger under Bragen's nose. 'Then how did you talk to him, um?' For a second, Ben could almost see some of the old Doctor's fire in him. Maybe, just maybe, he was telling the truth.

'The Governor has been working non-stop recently,'

Bragen said coldly. 'He really is dog-tired.'

The Doctor knew he would get nowhere like his.

Bragen's officious little mind wasn't subject to alteration by mere reason 'Very well,' he sighed.

Giving them all a final curt nod, Bragen left.

'What will you do now?' Polly asked the Doctor. She doubted that he would simply give up.