Doctor Who: Planet of Fire (2 page)

‘Point of contact... point of contact will be made...!’

The Doctor leaned forward, trying to make some sense of the rattling that came from the robot’s throat.

‘I am... obey... contact... me...’

‘Contact who?’ said the Doctor. ‘What’s happening?’

Turlough was about to leave the control room and rejoin the Doctor and Kamelion when the signal came through on the communications unit–an urgent repeating modulation. ‘Doctor, we’re picking up a distress...’ He stopped in mid-sentence, recognising something ominously familiar about the sounds from the console. He was sure he had heard it before–on a Trion ship.

Turlough’s heart began to pound; the Custodians must have come searching for him. He listened again. It was a Trion ship alright... Perhaps in genuine distress? No, more likely a trick, he decided as he tried to detune the signal, for, if the Doctor heard it, he would be bound to track it down, playing right into the hands of his persecutors.

But the call sign repeated and repeated, obviously a broad-bandwidth transmission. Turlough glanced nervously at the open door of the control room. The Doctor could so easily walk in... Why wouldn’t the signal stop! He grabbed the entire receiver module in both hands and forcibly dragged it from its housing.

The unit was silent; and so was Turlough, as he anxiously wondered where the transmission had come from.

The object of Professor Foster’s curiosity lay in the box of pottery fragments that the divers had just brought up from the muddy sea bed. He had not immediately noticed the dumpy cylinder with its mushroom-shaped head, electing to sift through several large pieces of terracotta vase. These had been the first finds of the day from the ancient Greek merchant ship that lay five fathoms below the expedition boat moored in the hay.

Howard Foster was not in a hurry. The store room of the tiny island museum, like the boat itself, was already full of wine jars, jewellery, cooking pots, coins and pieces of sculpted marble waiting to be transported to Athens.

Soon he himself would have to return to America and write up the report of his work for the university. All the more reason to enjoy, while he still could, the sun on his back and the dappling of the morning light off the amazingly blue sea. It gave him the chance to recover from the irritations of a more than usually fractious family breakfast at the hotel.

He lifted the curious artifact out of the box. It was made of some hard, bright alloy unknown to the professor. ‘Hey, Karl, come and have a look at this!’

His assistant turned from where he was labelling some shards on the other side of the deck. Joining the professor, he took the cylinder in his hand. ‘Sure isn’t Greek’. He traced, with his finger, the outline of two triangles, one half-laid over the other, that was engraved just below the bulbous head. ‘Some sort of logo?’

Howard shook his head. ‘Remember the Russian satellite that broke up last year?’

‘You think this is from outer space?’

Howard shrugged his shoulders. ‘Give it to the police when we go ashore.’ Already he was losing interest.

Whatever its provenance, the object was of no archaeological value. He could already see the launch from the harbour coming towards them; it was time to take the latest finds ashore.

Howard felt a sudden stab of annoyance. Beside a pile of oxygen cylinders in the centre of the approaching boat, and holding an animated conversation with one of the crew, was a young girl. What did Peri want now? He groaned quietly. It was not that he didn’t like his stepdaughter–she was amusing, attractive, intelligent even. But try as he might to be friendly and pleasant, they always ended up arguing.

‘Hi!’ As the launch nudged up against the expedition boat. Peri jumped over the rail, a friendly grin on her sunburned face.

‘What are you doing here?’ It was not exactly a fatherly welcome. ‘I thought you were off sightseeing with your mother?’ As if he couldn’t guess! Divide and rule had always been the policy of Miss Perpugilliam Brown, and doubtless, while her mother was out of the way, she wanted to sell him yet another hairbrained scheme.

‘Mom’s taken up with that Mrs Van Gysegham from the hotel.’ Peri smiled innocently. ‘And I’m not spending the day exploring a prehistoric cemetery with some octogenarian from Miami Beach.’ She knelt on the deck and started sifting through the fragments in one of the boxes as carelessly as if it had been a pile of records in Bloomingdale’s music department. ‘That woman talks of nothing but the state of her large intestine. You did say come out anytime.’

Howard stifled his irritation at such a cavalier treatment of his as yet unclassified discoveries.

‘Hey, what’s this?’ Peri lifted up the cylinder.

‘I don’t know.’

‘That’s never...
platinum?
’ Peri scratched at the metal casing with her thumbnail. She turned the flat-ended tube round in her hands with far more excitement than she had shown over the broken pots. Ancient Greek remains she could see any day, but here was something alien and unknown!

Kamelion had entirely recovered. ‘I apologise for that hysterical display. Doctor,’ he announced. ‘For a moment there was... confusion.’

‘Are you all right now?’

‘Of course.’ The metal creature articulated normally, with the bland, almost insolent, indifference of a speak-your-weight machine. ‘Allow me to recompose myself, then I will try to explain the reaction I experienced.’ Needless to say, Kamelion had no intention of doing any such thing, but being an automaton felt no twinge of conscience at the lie. He could not possibly discuss the crisis with the Doctor of all people! He must wait, listening for the signal... But what signal? He felt confused.
Any
signal! His memory circuits reiterated the distant summons... ‘
Contact
must be made
...’

The Doctor returned to the control room trying to puzzle out what could have caused the robot’s extraordinary seizure. ‘Spasming’s stopped and Kamelion’s fully conscious,’ he explained to Turlough. ‘But I wish I knew...’

The Doctor picked up the communications module that was still lying on the console. Several of the connector lugs had been bent in its rough removal from the housing.

‘Turlough! What have you done?’

Turlough had been so desperate to silence the Trion SOS that he hadn’t thought how to explain the damage when the Doctor found out. ‘It was picking up some random emission,’ he remarked casually, trying to think of a convincing reason for his vandalism. ‘I thought it might be causing interference with Kamelion’s circuits,’ he added with a sudden flash of inspiration.

To Turlough’s surprise and relief, the Doctor took his suggestion quite seriously. In fact he had frequently doubted the wisdom of allowing the automaton to transfuse so freely with the TARDIS intelligence systems.

But the Doctor had still to discover the full extent of Kamelion’s interference. ‘Why have you reset the co-ordinates?’ he demanded, rather sharply, of his companion.

‘I haven’t,’ protested Turlough.

‘Well, someone has.’

‘ Kamelion!’

‘He must have computerised the signal you heard.’

In which case, thought Turlough, the TARDIS is programmed for a one-way trip to disaster. If the Custodians were still in the transmission area... ‘At this rate Kamelion will have us chasing every random emission in the galaxy,’ he blustered.

‘Not quite,’ replied the Doctor. ‘Those co-ordinates are set for here on Earth.’ He referred the configuration to the TARDIS data bank, then turned with a smile to his companion. ‘You wanted a holiday, Turlough. We’re now heading for your paradise island!’

The Doctor activated the rotor control. The central column began its slow rise and fall. Turlough felt doomed.

The blue box appeared amongst the shrub and rock of the deserted headland. as if to police some outpost of the Empire. But the arrival of the TARDIS on the distant point went unnoticed amongst the archaeologists on the boat in the bay, who were busy loading their precious treasures onto the harbour launch.

‘Looks like Elton John,’ said Peri, staring at the marble features of a young boy, who lay in one of the crates.

‘Eros, if you really want to know,’ replied Howard acidly, rather cross that the girl should be so facetious about his prize discovery.

‘God of love and fertility,’ declared Peri, just to remind her pedantic stepfather that she wasn’t a complete

ignoramus.

‘Absolutely right,’ said the professor, switching to his seminar voice. ‘A personification of natural forces in an anthropomorphic deity...’

Peri’s eyes glazed over.

‘In the same pantheon, Hephaestos represents fire, Poseidon the sea and earthquakes...’

Peri held up her hand to be excused the rest of the lecture. ‘Howard, do you have to talk to me like I was the Albuquerque Women’s League or something?’

Howard stiffened. ‘If you are not interested...’

Peri wanted to scream. Why did the man have to be such a prima donna!

‘I’ve got rather a lot of work to do,’ muttered the archaeologist stuffily.

‘Howard...’ Peri gave her stepfather one of those looks.

‘Or was there something else?’ As if he needed to ask.

The wretched child would hardly have come out just to make a nuisance of herself.

‘No, no. You just get on with your work.’ Peri flashed one of her Shirley Temple smiles. ‘I only came to say hello...’ She paused. ‘And goodbye.’

‘Goodbye? What are you talking about?’

‘This island, Howard. I’m bored out of my mind.’

‘How can you be bored for heaven’s sake!’

Peri wondered how a few short words could explain that her stepfather’s precious island, whatever it had been in days gone by, was now the plughole of western civilisation.

‘For a start, there’s no one here, under 65, speaks English...’

‘There’s Doc Corfield.’

‘Doc Corfield’s middle-aged!’ (She would have added, had she been confident the gentleman was out of earshot, that Doc Corfield wore a hairpiece; and that was one of the first rules in the book of Miss P. Brown: never trust a man with a toupee!!)

‘Doc Corfield is
my
age,’ her stepfather protested.

Peri grinned evilly, for Howard had exposed his Achilles heel.

‘Forty-one next birthday!’ She put in the knife. And twisted it... ‘Don’t kid yourself you’ve found the secret of eternal youth with Levi cut-offs and a pair of sneakers.’

Howard could have killed her. ‘So what do you want, Peri? Go to summer camp with a bunch of High School kids?’

‘I want to travel.’

‘Travel?’ Now the girl was being ridiculous. ‘You’ve been travelling all your life!’

‘Sure I’ve been to the Athens Hilton, the Cairo Hilton.

the London Hilton, the Ankara Hilton...’ Peri decided she must stop her teasing before they both got involved in a full scale row. ‘I’ve met a couple of really nice English guys and I’m going with them to Morocco.’

‘Morocco?’ So this was what it had all been leading up to. ‘You’re due back at college in the Fall.’

‘That’s three months, Howard.’

But Professor Foster had already decided how his ward’s vaction should be spent. ‘You’ve got your ecology project.

your reading schedule, your exam revision... Come on, Peri, no way are you going to North Africa.’

‘You can’t stop me.’

‘Okay. So what are you going to use for money?’

‘Some of what dad left me.’

‘That’s in trust till you’re twenty-one.’

‘That’s why I already sold my airline ticket.’

Howard was beginning to shout. ‘How do you expect to get back to New York?’

‘I’ll get a job.’

‘Don’t make me laugh!’

‘Please don’t let’s argue. I’ve made up my mind and that’s the end of it.’

‘Professor Foster!’ Karl was waving from the launch which was ready to return to the harbour. Howard walked to the rail, wondering how best to nip his stepdaughter’s irresponsible project in the bud. He noticed how low in the water was the smaller boat with its valuable cargo. ‘Let’s go Spiros!’ He jumped across to join his colleagues amidst the crates and boxes and the launch eased away from the side of the expedition boat.

Peri, who had not expected such treachery, rushed to the side. ‘Howard!’

‘Sorry, Peri. You’ll have to wait for the next trip.’

‘But that won’t be for hours!’ Already there was fifty yards between them.

‘Mustn’t be overloaded.’

‘Get one of the crew to stay behind. There’s a ferry at six...’

‘Sorry, honey.’

‘You’re doing this deliberately!’

Howard was smiling. ‘I didn’t ask you to come aboard.’

Peri was furious. How could he do this to her... How could she
let
him do it?

‘I will not be treated like this!’ she wailed.

Howard gave a cheery wave from the disappearing launch.

‘Of all the lowdown, cheap, rotten, sneaky tricks!’ she screamed. ‘You won’t stop me Howard. You hear me!’

The view from the TARDIS scanner was positively idyllic: blue sky, blue sea, a sandy beach... No evidence of any Trion activity. Turlough began to feel more confident. His hopes were dashed as the insistent, reiterating signal sounded again from the repaired communications unit.

‘Is that the emission you heard before?’ asked the Doctor.

‘It... might have been,’ prevaricated his cornpanton.

‘That isn’t random!’

Turlough grew more depressed. There was no chance of stopping the Doctor once his curiosity was aroused.

‘Sounds more like an SOS.’ He hurried to the inner door. ‘Get a fix on it while I have a word with Kamelion.’

The Doctor ran clown the corridor and into Kamelion’s room. ‘Well, Kamelion. What do you make of it?’

‘Doctor?’ The robot cocked his head politely.

‘The signal!’

‘I hear no signal,’ said the silver creature.

‘You must do!’ protested the Doctor, observing the cable that led from Kamelion to the connecting block on the wall.

‘I am not capable of inexactitude,’ lied his factotum.

‘What about the other time? When you had your...

confusion
?’ said the Doctor, hoping for an explanation of the earlier occurrence.