Doctor Who: Planet of Fire (12 page)

Peri reached the door, and without so much as a glance back at her pursuer, ran into the control room. She had carefully memorised the switch for the doors and immediately pressed her hand to the lever, praying the Master hadn’t operated any override. The whir of the servo-mechanism that closed the doors in the face of the enraged robot was the most beautiful sound she had ever heard.

It was several moments before she became aware of the angry buzzing from the entrance. Was the creature operating some cut-out that would open up the TARDIS to him? Or was he in the process of breaking in by sheer force? To her dismay, the noise grew louder.

Peri caught sight of the cabinet on the floor beside the console–the robot’s control box. If only there was a way of immobilising the metal Master... That would serve the creature right. A puny mind, indeed. Well, she didn’t have to be Albert Einstein to find the off-switch. She grabbed the side of the cabinet and began to wrestle with the lid.

Nothing could have prepared Peri for the horror of the next few moments. The top of the box came off in her hands exposing the interior of a doll’s house TARDIS and a Tom Thumb man, dressed in black velvet. The lilliputian peered up into the light that flooded clown into his diminutive compartment. And Peri gazed at the ratsized face of the real Master.

The miniaturised Time Lord stared at Peri from his shrunken laboratory. ‘You escaped from my slave,’ he squealed at the terrified girl. ‘But you will obey me or die!’

10

The Doctor was in despair as he saw the Master’s TARDIS

dematerialise on his scanner screen. ‘We’ve lost him! he shouted.

And your friend Peri,’ said Amyand sadly.

‘And my temporal limiter,’ bemoaned the Doctor, in the certain knowledge that he could neither follow the American who had saved his life, nor, with the TARDIS

immobilised, save himself and Turlough from the doomed planet.

‘But where’s he gone?’ Amyand couldn’t take his eyes off the empty corner of the screen from which the yellow column had inexplicably vanished.

‘I don’t know!’

A flashing light in the corner of the console attracted the Time Lord to a little known control unit. ‘Someone’s been interfering with the TARDIS navigation system,’ he exclaimed. He peered at the setting which Kamelion had selected. ‘It’s been remote paralleled with the Master’s TARDIS!’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Amyand in a fairly massive understatement of the general culture shock he had experienced walking into the blue box.

‘Perfectly simple,’ said the Doctor, beginning to look more cheerful. ‘The two TARDISes are programmed to follow each other. We could follow the Master if he hadn’t removed my temporal limiter.’

‘You know where he is?’

‘Indeed I do.’ The Doctor double-checked the unlikely reading. ‘He’s still on Sarn.’

‘But why?’

‘There’s something the Master needs, here on this planet.’

The Doctor looked up at the screen where Turlough was arguing with the old men. It seemed as if his companion was going to need some help. He grinned as an idea came to him; with the help of the TARDIS, he could put the fear of god into these primitives. ‘What does Logar look like?’

he asked Amyand.

Although an Unbeliever, Amyand had as clear an idea of the Fire Lord of Sam as an Earthchild of the mythical unicorn. He had lived with the images and inscriptions and old people’s tales as long as he could remember.

‘Large, silver, like a man...’ he began.

The Doctor thought for a moment, then programmed the data bank. An awesome Greek bronze appeared on the screen. ‘One of Logar’s Earth equivalents,’ explained the Doctor. ‘Poseidon rising from the waves.’

Not quite right,’ said Amyand. ‘The Fire Lord of our legends is fatter, squarer-headed. Not so many features.’

The Doctor entered some corrections and the picture on the screen began to resemble the young Sarn’s description.

`That’s more like it.’

An alarm sounded in the seismic sensor and a deep vibration shook the TARDIS. ‘Must be another earthquake,’ said the Doctor, switching back the screen to a view of the ruin. As they watched the tumbling masonry, he breathed a sigh of relief that his police box had materialised at a safe distance from the toppling walls.

‘Where’s Turlough?’ cried Arnyand, seeing no sign either of the boy or the six Elders.

The Doctor pointed towards the door. ‘Prepare to receive visitors.’

One by one the old men filed in behind Turlough, peering round the control room in myopic amazement.

‘Sorry, Doctor,’ said Turlough. ‘There was nowhere else I could bring them.’

He decided not to tell the Doctor how much he had enjoyed playing the little nabob. He had given the Elders a right castigation for shooting his brother, called them all the names in the book and threatened them with their own fire. Finally, the mere mention of creating rival Elders from among the common citizens had brought the quaking Timanov to his knees in a fulsome protestation of loyalty.

Turlough was rather disappointed when the earthquake made them seek shelter in the police box.

‘Welcome, gentlemen,’ said the Doctor, smiling.

His worthy guests looked curiously at their young host.

‘This is the Doctor,’ announced Turlough. ‘He is not an enemy of Logar, but an Elder of the city of Gallifrey.’

‘Do any of you recognise this?’ asked the Doctor, casually pressing a key on the desk. There was a mighty roar, overlaid with a fanfare of synthesised trumpets and a dazzling icon of the Fire Lord appeared on the screen. All the Elders fell reverently to their knees. ‘The image of Logar!’ cried Timanov reverently.

‘You see,’ hectored Turlough. ‘He appears at the Doctor’s command.’

‘Why does he not strike clown the heretic?’ The Chief Elder pointed to Amyand.

‘Logar is the friend of all people,’ catechized their new Chosen One. ‘He is only angry when the citizens fight among themselves.’

The old men shuffled closer to the scanner to marvel at the likeness on the screen. The Doctor, too, was wondering, as he gazed at the silver figure, whether the beast on the scanner was as mythical as he had previously supposed. ‘Does that image remind you of anything?’ he whispered to his companion.

Turlough examined the computer-generated picture for a moment. ‘A man in a thermal suit?’

The Doctor nodded. ‘Timanov,’ he addressed the Chief Elder. Have you ever seen Logar?’

‘Yes,’ replied the old man, humbly. ‘When I was a boy.’

‘Where?’

Timanov was silent for a moment before he replied.

‘Near the summit of the Fire Mountain.’ There was angry murmuring from the other men and a surprised cry from Amyand. The Chief Elder had climbed the forbidden slopes!

Timanov smiled gravely at the Unbeliever. ‘You see, I too was once young and hot-headed. But the Fire Lord appeared to me. He was merciful, and I was born again.’

The Doctor looked at Turlough. They both had a pretty good idea what lay behind the Chief Elder’s Damascus Road conversion. ‘A vulcanologist!’ exclaimed the Doctor.

‘We know the old Trion colonists used volcanic power in the city. They must have another control centre right inside the volcano.’

There was a bleeping from the console; the seismic scanner had been activated again. ‘Not an earthquake.’ said Turlough, peering at the unit.

‘That’s odd,’ said the Doctor. ‘Something must be happening inside the volcano itself.’ He rushed to the door.

The smoke had cleared from the top of the volcano. A pale blue fire burned above the crater. ‘It’s an eruption!’

shouted ‘Furlough.

‘I don’t think so,’ said the Doctor.

The Elders, who had followed them out of the TARDIS, viewed the shimmering phosphorescence around the mountain top with wild enthusiasm. ‘The blue fire has not been seen for many generations,’ said Timanov, trembling.

‘What does it mean?’

‘It is a sign of great favour,’ replied the Chief Elder.

‘Logar shows his mercy to the sick and injured.’

The Doctor was thinking back to another blue flame, guarded by the Sisterhood of Karn, whose power had helped many a Time Lord to regenerate. If the same force was available in the mountain it might explain why the Master had lingered on Sarn.

‘We must return to the Hall of Fire,’ cried Timanov.

‘There will be a great gathering.’

Amyand sighed. ‘More superstitious ritual.’

The Doctor didn’t agree. There was nothing superstitious about the Trion colonists who built the Hall of Fire and installed the gas control system–presumably to utilise some volcanic potency. ‘Come on!’ he yelled, starting to run after the Elders who were already hurrying back along the ridge path towards the city.

‘Where are we going?’

‘The Hall of Fire. I want to analyse the deposit on the wall of the cave.’ He paused. ‘Unless, of course, you can
tell
me what it is?’

‘How should I know?’ said Turlough. ‘That cave’s part of a colonial civilisation that ended ages ago.’ He moved to follow Amyand along the path, but the Doctor chugged him back. The Time Lord wanted a few words in private with this young man who knew a great deal more about Sarn than he liked to let on.

‘That volcanic control system has been used in living memory. Just what sort of interest have your people got in the stability of an abandoned planet?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I think you do. When you arrived you expected to find Trions here. And what about the ship? What was your father doing here? And your brother? And just what are you afraid of, Turlough?’ The Doctor fired question after question at his evasive companion.

The boy blushed and stammered. ‘Please, Doctor. Not now. I’ll explain later.’

The Doctor wondered how far he could give him the benefit of the doubt. ‘Just one thing, Turlough.’ He turned the boy roughly towards him. ‘If you’re withholding any information that is going to help the Master, then our friendship is at an end!’

The Master was not a man used to making mistakes, and he had cursed himself repeatedly for the positively schoolboy error that had all but cost him his life. He had long wanted to improve the Tissue Compression Eliminator, and his inspired modifications would have increased its range and power a hundredfold, to make it the most sophisticated and deadly weapon of its kind in the whole universe. The first experiments had been entirely successful, and it was not until he powered the prototype on his laboratory work bench that the misphasing of the proton accelerator became apparent.

Although he had experienced a somewhat alarming sensation–fatal to anyone but a Time Lord–he was not immediately aware of the scale of the disaster, as the laboratory itself was reduced proportionately. It was only as he tried to leave the workroom that he realised he was but a fraction of his former self, trapped and impotent in a giant TARDIS. But his mind was unimpaired, and, indeed, he had quite redeemed his carelessness with the ingenuity of his system for remote-controlling the time-machine, and the expertise with which he had constructed the metamorphosis projector.

Across time and space he had called to his slave, and, from the very TARDIS of the unsuspecting Doctor, Kamelion had come to his rescue. His familiar had even brought him to this planet, and the undreamed of power of numismaton.

No machine would be needed to counter the disastrous effect of the Tissue Compression Eliminator. The blue flame would not only restore him to his former stature, but would infinitely extend his fourteenth incarnation. Out of failure had come success, from calamity he had snatched the supreme triumph of his career... Until that wretched girl interfered!

The roof of his laboratory had been ripped off, blinding the Master with the arctic glare of the control room light.

He peered upwards as the massive moonface of the girl rose over the grey, roundeled wall. She stared down into the tiny box, like a rich, spoiled child wondering which doll’s house inhabitant to lift out and torment. The one helpless inmate of the workroom grabbed the fatal prototype of the Tissue Compression Eliminator and brandished it at the giant Peri.

‘You will obey me or die!’ he repeated at the top of his little voice.

Peri recoiled at the sight of the soft-suited homunculus in the box. She was sickened and revolted at the spectacle of a perfectly formed human reduced to the size of a half-grown hamster. She dropped the lid and pushed herself backwards from the cabinet. So sharp was the movement that the box toppled over onto the floor of the control room.

The unexpected reversal of his little house caught the diminutive Master unaware, and he was ejected from the container like a human cannon ball. He lay for a moment stunned on the hard, grey plain of the floor. As he recovered his senses, the midget Time Lord could see, to his right, a great, white horizon of wall that stretched upwards to infinity, and to his left an unassailable, basalt cliff of console, while in the foreground loomed the mighty crag of one of Peri’s shoes.

The Master got to his tiny feet and looked round for shelter. About a hundred yards away was the mouth of an enormous cave, where the lid of the box lay against the side of the console. The Master sprinted across the open ground and into the protecting darkness.

Peri looked down at the scuttling creature on the floor and began to feel her courage return. She took off her shoe; not the most sophisticated weapon, but against this little noddy-man it was the equal of the Tissue Compression Eliminator. She snatched away the lid and the wretched Master was exposed like an earwig beneath a stone. He scurried once more across a floor the size of a football pitch to where, in grander days, he had piled some cable against the TARDIS wall. He reached the safety of the huge coils just as the hammer heel of Peri’s shoe crashed to the floor inches behind him. He lay panting amidst the strands and hawsers which stretched round him like the chains of some nightmare suspension bridge. But there was no time to rest. He got up and raced along the narrow canyon between the cable and the TARDIS wall before Peri could expose him yet again.