Doctor Who_ Loving The Alien Part 15

'G.o.dd.a.m.n it!' shouted Crawhammer and stamped from the room.

The other white masks followed in slow procession.

The Doctor waited. The corridors beyond the doors became quiet.

He was practically asleep.

'Are you awake?'

He felt a pair of hands shaking his shoulders, and forced his eyes open.

Someone was unstrapping his restraints. He was being sat upright.

'Drink this.'

A cup of something hot was pressed into his hands and guided to his 79 mouth.

'Black coffee, very strong.'

The Doctor gulped it down.

'Best I could do, I'm afraid. I guess one of the medics could find something among this lot to perk you up...'

An American...

'You want another? There's not much time.'

Major Collins.

'How did you stop them?'

'I got a bogus message through to Hark, the surgeon' He grinned.

'Told him his wife and kids had been killed in a car crash.'

'Very inventive.' The Doctor tried unsteadily to sit up. 'You should go into counter-intelligence.'

'They're the ones who got us into this mess. Ours, theirs, yours...'

'Mine?'

'The Brits.'

'I'm from Gallifrey.'

'You're French?'

'No never mind... '

The Doctor shook his head to clear it and got to his feet from the operating table.

'I've got to get out of here...'

He scanned the room, wis.h.i.+ng he was more awake.

'There!'

He pointed to a row of narrow windows under the ceiling in one of the cellar walls.

'You'll never squeeze through those!'

'Oh, you'd be surprised what I can squeeze through when I've got a demented general and his pet surgeon at my back. Would you give me a leg up please?'

The cold, wet November afternoon hit the Doctor like a bucket of water as he slithered through the narrow gap onto overlong, sodden gra.s.s. His operation gown was soaked. Major Collins bundled his clothes after him.

'I'll stay put till I hear Crawhammer coming back, then I'll have to sound the alarm,' the Major said. 'Keep low, move fast and head for the trees on your left. The wall's just beyond them.'

'Thank you,' said the Doctor. He set off in the direction the major had indicated, waited a moment and doubled back. He had no intention of leaving without seeing the rocket.

He knew Major Collins would never tell him where it was, but 80 Drakefell might. The man was at the end of his tether and desperate to unburden himself.

The Doctor scurried up a low rise and lay flat on the top. Below him lay the house, half a ruin, and beyond it he could just make out the ranks of red-brick outhouses with corrugated tin roofs. Laboratories, workshops, probably dormitories, the Doctor surmised.

He saw no chance of getting back to Drakefell's office. He'd have to wait until he came out.

The sound of the alarm put paid to that idea. Suddenly there were troops swarming out of the house, out of the barrack blocks. He retreated down the rise, backwards on his belly, away from the house.

There was little cover. He strained to glimpse the trees Major Collins had advised him to make for. He could no longer see them.

He was desperately tired. He struggled to keep his vision in focus.

Human chemical preparations rarely agreed with him most were positively dangerous.

Running along the bottom of the slope was a high, thick, well-groomed hedge, with what seemed to be a break in it presumably a gate. He decided to make a run for it.

Gathering up his clothes, he sprinted erratically towards the gate actually just an abrupt, straight gap in the hedge and hurled himself through it.

He crashed into another, equally high hedge and sank to the ground.

He was in a narrow, dead straight canyon.

No there were further gaps in the inner wall.

'He went into the maze, Sarge!'

A maze! He was in a maze!

The Doctor hauled himself to his feet, smiling. If only he could remember...

He darted to the end of the path, where it turned ninety degrees to the left, and waited.

'Well, get in there after him.'

The soldiers filed in.

'There he is!'

The Doctor hared up the path to the third opening and waited for them to round the corner.

'There he is! Stop or we'll shoot!'

But he was off again, counting, waiting. The first thing he had to do was get an overall impression of the shape of the maze. He hoped it was a cla.s.sical maze properly symmetrical or he was in trouble.

He was leading them in. He sprinted off again as they rounded the latest bend.

81.'Right,' someone shouted. 'Cooper, you stay here! The rest of you, come on.'

The Doctor rubbed his hands. They were splitting up even better.

For ten minutes he led the brave troop into utter confusion. He admired the sergeant's untiring resourcefulness as he deployed men at various junctions, thinning out his troop until he was alone. The Doctor then simply danced through the maze, luring the sentinels from their posts and losing them anew.

The old Gallifreyan Labyrinth Game. It had been centuries...

Of course, the object wasn't just to get your opponents lost, but to control their movements thereafter. By positioning them carefully, and getting them accustomed to making certain turns, it was possible to send them anywhere in the maze. The probabilities could hold up for a remarkably long time. He had the whole platoon on an outward spiral, dancing past one another, unseen around a single bend or behind a single hedge, with almost balletic precision. They were heading inevitably for the exit.

Their shouts to one another were becoming increasingly pointless.

At last the sergeant shouted 'Every man for himself! Just try and find Your way out, boys. We've lost him!'

The Doctor smiled. Sign of a misspent youth. At one time there had been a labyrinth on every street corner, even in the Panopticon.

He was desperately tired. His vision was beginning to swim. The game had taken reserves of concentration he didn't have.

He made for the centre of the maze. They wouldn't reach him there.

He was about to enter the neat circle of gra.s.s when he heard a voice.

'What can I do?'

It was Drakefell. He sitting on the bench at the centre of the little round lawn at the heart of the maze. He was pale and shaking. His knees were drawn up to his chin his feet off the floor and he was hugging them to himself and rocking slightly back and forth. A young woman was sitting next to him.

'They've brought the rocket here. Two days ago. Now they want me to inspect it. I can't. I know what I'm going to find there...'

He lit a trembling cigarette.

'It's all been for nothing, Sarah. What have I done?'

A sudden sob wrenched through his body.

The Doctor remained motionless, still largely concealed by the maze wall, watching and listening. Drakefell was facing half-away from him.

'I've destroyed everything. We're about to blow ourselves to pieces... I've got to tell someone. I can't carry this anymore. It wasn't the Russians who blew up the satellite it was me.'

82.

Chapter Nine.

'It started a long time ago... during the war. I worked for a chemical company - just an ordinary young industrial chemist making synthetic rubber. I confess I couldn't have fought even if my job hadn't kept me out. The war terrified me. I was in London during the Blitz.

'Like everyone else, when the bombing started I went down into the tube station. Chancery Lane. You could still hear the thump of bombs above. Sometimes they'd be loud and the platform would shake. Dust would fall from the ceiling.'

Drakefell laughed bitterly.

'The Blitz spirit never did much for me. There was never a moment when I wasn't terrified... And then, one night ' he drew a ragged breath, ' one night there was something else. Something came out of the tunnels. Giant men in silver armour hideously strong. They ordered us into the tunnels - marched us for miles. Those who resisted were shot with weapons I'd never seen the like of. In the end they...'

He swallowed hard.

'They herded us into a room full of machines, and they... started to put people in them... Started to... operate on them. Change them. One old man... an air warden, bit of a busybody... I'll never forget...'

He suddenly flinched.

'And a baby! Oh, G.o.d...'

He was breathing rapidly, hyperventilating, almost. The woman placed a comforting hand on his shoulder.

'I hid... crawled back into the tunnels in the confusion that followed.

They found me there the next day. I was nearly hit by a train. I had nightmares for two years.

'I was on sick leave until after the war. I was put on lithium, and... I suppose I managed to pretty much convince myself that it had all been a dream although I haven't been down a tube station since.

'Then there was this story. Two men a policeman and an American started making a lot of noise about giant silver men left inactive in the sewers during the war. No one took much notice except me. I was petrified, but I had to know. I asked around scientists are terrible gossips listened to every rumour, and eventually heard what I 83 dreaded to hear. They'd found the giant men, and they'd started some hush-hush military research programme into them. They called it the Augmentation Programme.'

He suddenly laughed.

'Codenamed Operation Tinman, after the Wizard of Oz.'

He laughed again.

' We're off to see the wizard We're off to see the wizard...' he sang tunelessly.

He sniffed and wiped his nose with his sleeve.