Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion (9 page)

Not far away, an Auton came to life. It spun round in an arc, spun back again, getting a fix on the signals from the sphere. Lurching forward the Auton began its march towards the unsuspecting soldiers.

When Munro arrived in the clearing the sphere, now pulsing strongly and regularly, had been completely dug up. It was resting on sacking in the bottom of an ammunition-box.

Munro looked at the sphere with curiosity. ‘Well done, Corporal Forbes, jolly well done. Carry it up to the jeep, will you?'

The two soldiers picked up the ammunition-box by its rope handles. With Munro and Forbes in the lead, the little group headed for the road.

‘The Brigadier will want this in the lab at H.Q., right away,' said Munro.

‘Going to drive it up yourself, sir?' asked Forbes. Munro considered; the idea was tempting. But other patrols were still searching. He was needed on the spot to co-ordinate their efforts. Anyway, thought Munro, fair's fair. Forbes had done well to find the meteorite. He deserved to be the one to hand it over.

‘I think that honour should be yours, Corporal,' said Munro as they reached the jeep. ‘I'll let the Brigadier know you're on your way.'

Two soldiers lowered the ammunition-box carefully into the back of the jeep. They lashed the box into place to make it secure. Forbes got into the driving seat.

‘Quick as you can, Corporal,' said Munro. ‘But no accidents!'

Forbes grinned. He was a very experienced driver. He'd never had an accident in his life. At a nod from Munro, he started the jeep rolling and disappeared down the country lane, with a roar of exhaust.

‘Lucky blighter,' said one of the soldiers enviously. ‘He'll be down the pub tonight, while we're camping out in the wild, wet woods.'

Briskly, Munro turned to them. ‘Let's not rest on our laurels, eh? Quite a number of those things came down. So far we've turned up one broken one and one whole one. Got to do better than that, haven't we?'

With an inward sigh, the soldiers shouldered their detection gear and returned to the search.

Once the sphere was in the jeep, the Auton realised that pursuit was hopeless. The energy unit was moving away too fast. The Auton stopped, apparently baffled. But the tiny fragment of intelligence that animated the Auton was also a part of the supreme brain of the Nestenes. Part of it, and in constant communication with it. That particular Auton became motionless. The problem no longer concerned it. Fresh orders had been transmitted to one of its fellows, better placed for immediate action.

Corporal Forbes was whistling cheerfully as he drove through the woods. Decent of young Munro to let him deliver the meteorite to H.Q. Some officers would have hogged that job themselves. Taken all the credit, too. Might be a spot of leave in this, with any luck. Maybe even another stripe.

These happy thoughts were suddenly interrupted. A figure stepped from the woods ahead of his jeep. Big chap, wearing overalls. He just stood there in the middle of the road, waiting. Hitch-hiker probably, thought Forbes. Some
hopes, this trip.

He made a negative wave of his hand and moved the wheel to drive round the obstruction. But the figure dodged suddenly in front of the jeep, and Forbes had to jam on the brakes to avoid hitting it. The jeep skidded to a halt, its nose in the roadside ditch. Forbes jumped out, shaken and furious.

‘You stupid great oaf,' he yelled. ‘Might have got killed. Why don't you…'

His voice tailed away as, for the first time, he got a clear look at the giant figure bearing remorselessly down on him. The bloke was enormous, he thought. A giant. And the face! Blank and lumpy and shapeless, like a waxwork left in the sun.

Forbes became aware that the giant was ignoring him and making straight for the ammunition-box lashed to the back of the wrecked jeep. From the corner of his eye, he saw that the lid of the box had flown open. The sphere was flashing rapidly with a kind of furious brightness. Forbes ran to the back of the jeep and grabbed his rifle. Training it on the advancing figure, he stood guard over the box.

‘Now listen, mate,' said Forbes, his voice showing none of the panic he was beginning to feel. ‘This is government business, see, so just you clear off! I don't want to open fire, but just you believe me, if I've got to, I will.'

His words had absolutely no effect on the advancing figure, now coming very close. Forbes, realising that his enemy wasn't even human, opened fire without the slightest hesitation. He emptied a full clip of bullets into the massive chest. The giant was by now so close that Forbes plainly saw the line of holes appear across the breast of the dark coveralls. But there was no blood, thought Forbes frantically.
No blood, and the thing just kept on coming.

Swinging his empty rifle as a club, Forbes landed a tremendous blow on the huge, smooth head. The giant staggered, then smashed the rifle from his grasp, casually, as if swatting a fly. The last thing Forbes saw, as another blow struck him to the ground, was that blank, expressionless face looming over him.

The Auton lifted the body of Corporal Forbes in one hand and tossed it into the ditch. Then moving to the back of the jeep, it took hold of the ammunition-box. The tough manilla ropes snapped like cotton. The Auton lifted the box clear of the jeep, and carrying its flashing, pulsating burden almost reverently, disappeared amongst the trees.

In the restricted zone of the plastics factory, strange alien machinery whirred and hummed and glowed. There came a soft glugging sound as the plastic mix flowed through the pipes. In the centre of the area stood a vast opaque container, shaped very like a coffin. Thick pipes coiled around it, feeding in nutrients. Channing stood watching with quiet satisfaction as deep inside the container something moved and stirred, and grew. Along the walls stood a motionless line of Autons. They seemed to be watching the thing in the tank, waiting eagerly for something to happen.

A buzzer sounded from the doorway. Channing did not move. ‘Yes?'

A nervous voice said, ‘It's me. Hibbert.'

Channing touched a control button and the door slid open. Hibbert entered cautiously. He hated coming to this place. ‘General Scobie has arrived.'

Channing nodded. ‘I have almost finished.' He turned his burning eyes on Hibbert. ‘I shall need more carbon
disulphide tomorrow.' The creature in the tank needed constant nourishment if it was to grow and live. Hibbert glanced curiously at the coffin-shaped tank. He hadn't been told what was in there. He didn't like to think about it.

Channing watched him. ‘It would be better if you did not come to this section again. We are approaching a critical point. It could be dangerous for you.'

Hibbert looked at the motionless Autons lining the wall.

‘I thought you had control over them. You said they were just walking weapons.'

Channing said softly: ‘I have
some
control over them. But they also have a life of their own. Their over-riding function is to kill. You will appear to them as just another target.'

Hibbert shuddered, and thankfully followed Channing from the room. The thing in the tank continued to move and grow. The line of Autons watched and waited. At the feet of one of them was an ammunition-box. But now it was empty.

Angrily the Brigadier snapped into the 'phone: ‘For heaven's sake, man, what happened?'

Munro's voice was apologetic. ‘We just don't know, sir. The jeep was in the ditch. So was Corporal Forbes, with his neck broken. No sign of the ammo-box or the meteorite.'

‘Could it have been an accident?'

Munro sounded dubious. ‘It could, sir. But Forbes was an expert driver. He
could
have driven into a ditch and broken his neck in the fall. The box with the meteorite
could
have broken loose in the crash. But in that case where is it? We've searched the entire area.'

‘Well, keep searching! I'll try to send you down some more men. Let me know as soon as there's news.'

The Brigadier went to see Liz Shaw and told her the bad news. ‘It seems as if somebody, or something, doesn't want us to get hold of one of those meteorites,' he concluded gloomily. The internal 'phone on the wall buzzed and he sighed in exasperation as he grabbed the receiver.

‘Yes, now what?'

‘Main gate security here, sir. Someone insists on seeing you.'

‘Didn't you give him the usual cover-story?'

‘Yessir. Told him this building was a branch of the Pensions Department, and we'd never heard of you. He said
nonsense, it was UNIT H.Q., and he insisted on seeing Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. Er, he said you'd pinched some of his property, sir,' finished the voice apologetically.

‘What does he look like?'

‘Tall thin bloke, sir, old-fashioned clothes. Driving an old-fashioned car, come to that.'

The Brigadier was jubilant. ‘Whatever you do, don't let him get away.'

‘He doesn't
want
to get away, sir,' said the voice. ‘He wants to come in and see you. Most insistent he is.'

‘Then don't stand there dithering, man,' said the Brigadier rather unfairly. ‘Send him in at once.'

He turned to Liz, almost spluttering with excitement. ‘It's him. That chap. He's actually had the cheek to turn up here. How the blazes did he find this place?'

‘Wait and ask him,' suggested Liz practically. A few minutes later the Doctor was shown into the room.

He strode across to the astonished Brigadier and shook him warmly by the hand. ‘Lethbridge-Stewart, my dear fellow!' He looked at the TARDIS and patted it affectionately. ‘And here she is, all safe and sound. How kind of you to look after her!'

From behind her laboratory bench, Liz watched the Doctor with interest. This was a very different figure from the deathly-still form she'd seen stretched out on the hospital bed. It was obvious that the Doctor, if that was who he was, was now fully recovered. He was tall and elegant in the old-fashioned clothes that seemed to suit him so well. And he positively crackled with life and energy, completely overwhelming the somewhat stunned Brigadier.

‘Now then, old chap,' the Doctor went on briskly, ‘there's just the little matter of the key. Don't happen to have it, do
you?'

‘As a matter of fact I do,' said the Brigadier. ‘But it doesn't seem to work.'

‘Ah, but it will for me,' said the Doctor, with a charming smile. ‘It's personally coded, you see, keyed to my molecular structure.' And he held out his hand.

But the Brigadier didn't respond. ‘Not so fast. I've got one or two questions to ask you.'

‘Questions? My dear chap, it's not a bit of use asking me questions. I've lost my memory, you see.'

The Brigadier was sceptical. ‘Have you now? That's very convenient.'

‘Not so much lost it exactly,' explained the Doctor, ‘as had it taken away. Not all of it, of course. I mean I remember you quite clearly. But quite a lot of other things are a bit cloudy. Things will probably come back to me in time.' He smiled, as if everything had been made perfectly clear.

‘I see. So you claim to be suffering from some kind of partial amnesia?'

The Doctor looked distressed. ‘You do like to spell things out, don't you?'

‘And you also claim to be the man I once knew as “the Doctor”?'

‘That's it, old chap, you're getting there,' said the Doctor encouragingly. Liz suppressed a smile.

‘And yet,' said the Brigadier triumphantly, ‘your whole appearance is totally different. How do I know you're not an impostor?'

The Doctor seemed delighted. ‘Ah, but you don't, old chap, you don't! Only I know that.' He noticed a mirror and immediately began pulling faces into it. ‘How do you like my new face, by the way? I wasn't too sure about it myself at
first, but it's beginning to grow on me. And it's flexible, you know, very flexible.' To prove his point, the Doctor began to pull a variety of extraordinary faces.

The Brigadier took a deep breath and sank rather groggily onto a laboratory stool. ‘All right, Doctor, all right! Say I accept this rigmarole, there are still quite a few things to be explained.'

Liz, deciding she'd been ignored long enough, cleared her throat meaningfully. The Brigadier waved a distracted hand towards her. ‘This is Miss Shaw, our new Scientific Adviser.' The Doctor was waggling his eyebrows into the mirror.

‘Did you know that on the planet Delphon they communicate only with their eyebrows?' He waggled his eyebrows ferociously at Liz. ‘That's Delphon for how do you do.' He grinned infectiously and Liz couldn't help smiling back. There was something very engaging about this colourful madman. ‘How do you do,' she said. ‘What are you a Doctor of, by the way?'

He waved his hand airily. ‘Practically everything, my dear, practically everything.'

The Brigadier harrumphed. ‘You arrived last night slap in the middle of a shower of very unusual meteorites.'

The Doctor said: ‘Did I really now? How fascinating.'

Briefly the Brigadier summarised recent events. The meteorite shower, the finding of the Doctor, the attempted kidnapping and the disappearance of the one whole meteorite that had been found. The Doctor listened with an air of deep interest.

‘So you see,' said the Brigadier, ‘I can't possibly let you leave until I'm sure there's no connection—'

The Doctor interrupted: ‘That's most unfair. I've no
recollection of last night. Even that kidnapping business seems just a sort of nightmare…' Suddenly his attention was attracted by the fragments on the lab bench. ‘What are these?'

Liz said: ‘Those are fragments of something the Brigadier thought was a meteorite.'

The Doctor looked at her. ‘And you don't?' He began to finger the fragments, turning them over and over. ‘Plastic!' he said in a surprised tone. ‘Surely this is some form of plastic?'