Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion (2 page)

From mad scientists to alien invasions, from revived prehistoric civilisations to dinosaurs rampaging through London, UNIT has its work cut out.

Doctor Elizabeth Shaw has an important research programme going ahead at Cambridge when she is invited to join UNIT. Before he encounters the Doctor again, the Brigadier has decided he needs a scientific adviser and Liz Shaw is an expert in meteorites, with degrees in ‘medicine, physics, and a dozen other subjects'.

Liz is initially sceptical of the Brigadier's stories about ‘little blue men with three heads…' telling him that she deals with facts, not science fiction ideas. But after meeting the Doctor – and experiencing an attempted alien invasion at first hand, she is more willing to accept the unexpected.

In the High Court of the Time Lords a trial was coming to its end. The accused, a renegade Time Lord known as the Doctor, had already been found guilty. Now it was time for the sentence.

The Doctor looked very out of place standing amongst the dignified Time Lords in their long white robes. To begin with, he was quite a small man. He wore an ancient black coat and a pair of check trousers. He had a gentle, rather comical face and a shock of untidy black hair. But there was strength in that face, too, and keen intelligence in the blue eyes.

A hush fell as the President of the Court rose, and began to speak. ‘Doctor, you have been found guilty of two serious offences against our laws. First, you stole a TARDIS and used it to roam through Time and Space as you pleased.'

‘Nonsense,' said the Doctor indignantly. ‘I didn't steal it. Just borrowed it for a while.'

The President ignored the interruption. ‘More important, you have repeatedly broken our most important law: interference in the affairs of other planets is a serious crime.'

Again the Doctor interrupted: ‘I not only admit my interference, I am proud of it!
You
just observe the evil in the galaxies. I fight against it.'

‘We have accepted your plea, Doctor, that there is evil in the Universe which must be fought. You still have a part to play in that great struggle.'

At once the Doctor began to look hopeful. ‘You mean you're going to let me go?'

‘Not entirely. We have noted your interest in the planet Earth. You have visited it many times. You must have special knowledge of that world and its problems.'

‘I suppose I have,' agreed the Doctor.

‘You will be sent to Earth in the Twentieth Century Time Zone. You will remain there for as long as we think proper. And for that time the secret of the TARDIS will be taken from you.'

The Doctor was indignant. ‘You can't condemn me to exile on one primitive planet, in one particular time.'

The President's voice was cold. ‘We can, and we do. That is the verdict of this Court.'

A new thought struck the Doctor. ‘Besides, I'm known on Earth already. It could be most embarrassing for me.'

‘Your appearance has changed before. It will change again. That is part of your sentence.'

The Doctor continued to protest. ‘You can't just change what I look like without asking me!'

‘You will have an opportunity to choose your new appearance,' said the President patiently. ‘Look!'

As if by magic, a huge screen appeared on one wall of the Court. Upon it the Doctor saw a wide variety of faces and forms. At once the Doctor started to make trouble. He rejected each one with the utmost scorn. ‘Too thin. Too fat. Too young. Too old. No, I certainly don't want to look like that, I can tell you.'

The President of the Court sighed. They were letting the
fellow off lightly. He ought to be humble and grateful, not kick up all this fuss. ‘You are wasting time, Doctor,' said the President. ‘Since you refuse to take the decision, we shall take it for you.'

The Doctor made no secret of his indignation.

‘Well, I've got a right to decide what I'm going to look like,' he grumbled. ‘They attach a great deal of importance to these things on Earth. I mean, it's not my fault if this is the best you can do, is it? I've never seen such a terrible looking bunch!'

Ignoring the Doctor's protests and complaints, the President sent a thought-impulse to a fellow Time Lord who sat at a nearby control panel. The Time Lord's fingers moved swiftly over the rows of buttons.

Immediately the Doctor was held in the grip of a force-field. Unable to move, he felt the entire courtroom dissolve round him into a sort of spinning blackness.

Sam Seeley moved through Oxley Woods like a rather tubby ghost. Sam was the most expert poacher for miles around, and proud of it. Many a time he'd slipped by within inches of a watching gamekeeper. Soundlessly he moved through the woods, stopping from time to time to check his rabbit traps.

He mopped the sweat from his brow as he moved along. No business to be as hot as this, not in October. Worse than a midsummer night it was. Seeley blamed it on those atom bombs. Suddenly a fierce whizzing and hissing filled the air around him. Terrified, Seeley dropped to the ground, muffling his head in his poacher's sack. The terrifying noise continued. He heard soft thumping sounds, as if heavy objects were burying themselves in the forest earth around
him. At last there came silence.

Sam looked up cautiously. Within a few feet of his head the ground was smoking gently. Cautiously Sam reached for a stick and started to scrape away the earth. Within minutes he uncovered the top half of a buried sphere, roughly the size of a football. The sphere was smooth, almost transparent. It pulsed and glowed with an angry green light. It seemed somehow alive. Sam reached out to touch it, then pulled back his hand. The thing was red hot.

Hurriedly, Sam replaced the earth over his find and moved away. He'd come back again when it had cooled down, in daylight. He set off for home.

But Sam Seeley was in for an even more terrifying experience as he crossed the dark woods. Just as he came to a moonlit clearing, a strange wheezing and groaning filled
the air. Sam slipped behind a tree and froze as still as any rabbit.

Before his unbelieving gaze an old blue police box was appearing out of thin air. It took shape, becoming solid as he watched. The weird groaning sound died away and the box just stood there, looking sad and lost in the moonlit clearing. Slowly, the door started to open.

Not daring to move, Sam watched as a man came out of the police box. A tall thin man, with a deeply lined face and untidy white hair. Terrified as he was, Sam noticed that the man's old black coat and check trousers were both far too small for him.

The man looked around as if in a daze. He looked straight at Sam, yet didn't seem to see him. Frowning with concentration, the man produced a key and carefully looked the door of the police box behind him. Then he took a couple of wobbly steps and collapsed.

At this Sam Seeley's nerve finally broke. He crashed off through the woods, running for home like a man chased by demons.

Elizabeth Shaw was very angry indeed. It didn't help a bit that the tall army officer sitting on the other side of his desk seemed to find her anger mildly amusing.

‘Now see here, General,' she began angrily.

‘Just “Brigadier”, Miss Shaw. Brigadier Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart, at your service.'

‘Since you seem to be in charge of this silly James Bond outfit—'

Again the Brigadier interrupted, this time sounding rather hurt. ‘I take it you're referring to UNIT – the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce?'

‘I don't care what you call yourselves. I'm just trying to make it clear to you that I'm not interested in playing secret agents with you. I happen to have a very important research programme under way at Cambridge.'

The Brigadier looked through a file on the desk in front of him. ‘I'm well aware of your scientific qualifications, Miss Shaw. An expert in meteorites, degrees in physics, medicine and a dozen other subjects. Just the sort of all-rounder I've been looking for!' The Brigadier sat back, stroking his clipped moustache with an infuriatingly self-satisfied air.

Liz Shaw took a deep breath, and made a tremendous effort to control herself. ‘You scoop me up from my laboratories in Cambridge, whizz me down here in a fast
car, and expect me to join some ridiculous spy outfit, just like that! Why me, for Heaven's sake?'

The Brigadier said, ‘We need your help, Miss Shaw. You'll find the laboratory facilities here are really first class.'

‘And what am I supposed to do with them? Invent a better kind of invisible ink?'

‘I think you have rather a mistaken idea of our work here at UNIT. We're not exactly spies, you know. If I could explain?'

Liz realised that, in spite of her anger, she was really rather curious about what was going on. ‘All right,' she said. ‘Just what do you do – exactly?'

The Brigadier paused for a moment, obviously choosing his words with great care. ‘We deal with the odd – the unexplained. We're prepared to tackle anything on Earth. Or even from beyond the Earth, if necessary.'

Liz looked at him in amazement. To her astonishment he seemed quite serious. ‘You mean alien invaders?' she said incredulously. ‘Little blue men from Mars with three heads?'

‘Early this morning,' said the Brigadier, ‘a shower of about fifty meteorites landed in Essex.'

Liz's scientific curiosity was aroused at once. ‘Landed? Most meteorites don't even reach the Earth's surface. They burn up in the atmosphere.'

The Brigadier nodded. ‘Exactly. But these didn't.'

‘Were they exceptionally large?'

‘Rather small if anything. And they came down through a funnel of thin, super-heated air twenty miles in diameter – for which no one has been able to provide an explanation.'

Liz frowned. ‘Some kind of freak heat-wave?'

‘Perhaps. But the temperature in that area was over
twenty-eight Centigrade. A few miles away there was ground-frost.'

‘There must
be
an explanation,' said Liz thoughtfully. ‘A natural one, I mean.' She didn't sound very convincing, even to herself.

‘I hope there is. I've cordoned off the area and I've got men searching now. But we didn't find anything last time.'

Liz looked up sharply. ‘Last time?'

Grimly the Brigadier nodded. ‘Six months ago, a smaller shower of meteorites, five or six of them, landed in the same area.'

‘That's impossible!' said Liz. ‘The odds against two lots of meteorites landing in the same place must be enormous.'

With some satisfaction the Brigadier looked at the girl in front of his desk. At last she was beginning to realise the true seriousness of the situation.

Liz went on: ‘In fact the odds are so high as to be scientifically unacceptable.' She stood up and paced about the office, thinking aloud. ‘So if we rule out coincidence, there can be only one other explanation. Those meteorites – both showers – must have been…' Her voice tailed off as she couldn't bring herself to say the final words.

The Brigadier finished the sentence for her. ‘That's right. The meteorite swarms must have been directed. Deliberately aimed at this planet.'

In the reception hall of Ashbridge Cottage Hospital Captain Munro, of UNIT, was arguing with an irate casualty officer. Fortunately, Munro, a dark-haired, smoothly handsome young man, was something of a diplomat. He was used to smoothing down awkward civilians, and he answered all Doctor Henderson's objections with infuriating politeness.

In the background, two soldiers, Regular Army men on attachment to UNIT, waited patiently, carrying between them a stretcher on which lay a still, blanket-covered form.

‘Dammit man,' said Doctor Henderson crossly, ‘why didn't you take him to a military hospital?'

Munro sighed. ‘For one thing, sir, there isn't one in the area. And for another…' Munro turned to the stretcher and pulled back the blanket. ‘As you can see, the chap's obviously a civilian.'

Henderson looked in amazement at the tall, thin figure on the stretcher. Coat and trousers were both far too small, leaving bony wrists and ankles stretching out in a scarecrow fashion. ‘Not a very military figure, I agree,' admitted Doctor Henderson. ‘All right, I suppose I'd better take a look at him.' He turned to the soldiers carrying the stretcher. ‘Take him through into Casualty, will you? The porter will show you the way.' At a nod from Munro, the soldiers carried the stretcher through the swing-doors into the casualty ward.

‘You've no idea who he is, I suppose?' asked Henderson. Munro shook his head. ‘Haven't a clue, sir. There's no identification on him, I'm afraid.'

Henderson heaved a sigh. ‘You don't realise the amount of paperwork these cases involve,' he said wearily. ‘Reports to the police, memos to the Hospital Committee. All in triplicate.'