Doctor Who: Planet of Fire (8 page)

Amyand turned to the Doctor. ‘This ship of yours...’

Turlough had not heard the Doctor’s tentative offer of transport and didn’t like the idea at all. ‘We can’t turn the TARDIS into an orbiting refugee camp,’ he whispered aggressively.

‘Oh, I see,’ said the Doctor angrily. ‘Trions we help, Sarns we abandon. Quite a little racialist at heart, aren’t you?’ He glared at the boy. As Tegan had never been slow to point out, Turlough could be a rather nasty piece of work.

Turlough groaned; the Doctor had entirely misunderstood hirn. But how could he explain to the Doctor that they must find his own people before the real holocaust began? ‘These are primitives, and we’ve nowhere to take them,’ he blundered on.

‘I suppose you prefer the final solution of the volcano!’

What was threatening to become the most serious argument the two of them had ever had was interrupted by the rattle of feet on the metal staircase from above. A young Sarn who had been keeping an eye on events in the city jumped the last four steps into the cave. ‘Timanov has left the city,’ he announced breathlessly. ‘They’re all crowding into the Flail of Fire. The Outsider is expected at any moment...’ He forgot what else he had to report as he caught sight of the two strangers.

There was much jeering from the Unbelievers at the idea of the old men going out on such a wild goose chase, but Amyand did not join in the laughter. He remembered how excited the Watchman had been when he arrived in the Hall of Fire. The man had obviously seen something.

He tried to remember the lookout’s words. ‘A shining light... The sound of a great wind...’

‘Sounds a bit like the TARDIS,’ said the Doctor obligingly.

‘The Watchman wasn’t lying,’ exclaimed Sorasta.

‘That old fox Timanov is going to have a hard time looking for the messenger of Logan’ Amyand laughed and pointed triumphantly at the Doctor. ‘Because
we
have the Outsider here!’

7

The six Elders of Sarn trudged wearily along the ridgeway path like a procession of Desert Fathers. ‘I could wish,’

said Timanov, sweltering under his ceremonial robes, ‘that the Outsider had contrived his arrival a little nearer the city.’

The Watchman led them straight to the lookout point from where he had spotted the blue box. As they approached the ruined belvedere, the old men suddenly stopped. They cried out with sudden joy and all fell to their knees. In front of them, between two broken columns of the pavilion, stood a man suffused with unearthly radiance.

The Master, trapped inside the buried TARDIS, was near despair. He had lost control of Kamelion who was stuck, halfway between his robotic and metamorphic state. He glared angrily at the shining image in the coherer glass. He could even feel the sense of confusion in the mind of his
alter ego
, but he was powerless to break the inhibition. It was all the fault of that girl. But she would live to regret her interference...

The Master’s hands moved swiftly to the controls of the metamorphosis projector. Something was happening to Karelion. ‘There is energy around you,’ he called to the stranded automaton. ‘Use it!’ He boosted the machine to the overload threshold and groaned as the power went out of himself. ‘Come, my slave!’ he cried. ‘Be at one with me!’

Kamelion, glittering like a Maltese tinfoil Saint at Festa time, turned slowly to the six old men prostrate in the dirt before him.

‘Welcome to our city, Outsider,’ said one of the old men in a trembling voice.

‘Who are you?’ asked the robot.

‘Timanov, Chief Elder of the Sarns.’ His outstretched arms shook. Tears filled his eyes. ‘I have struggled to keep the faith alive.’ He looked up at the seraphic figure. ‘I never thought I would live to see this day, but Logar is just...’

The Master laughed. ‘We shall use these superstitious fools.’ He gazed at the coherer which now gave back the true image of the renegade Time Lord.

The Elders gasped as the radiance died and revealed a stranger in a dark suit. A complete Outsider.

The Kamelion-Master, secure again in his identity, was more than willing to be escorted to the city, where he was sure to find the girl Peri and the Doctor, to whom she would have gone running with the comparator. His old enemy was in for a considerable surprise.

‘We have grown lax with our observances,’ said Timanov penitently as they walked back towards the city.

‘But all that will change. There will be regular burnings.’

The protestations of loyalty from the Elders delighted the Master and he smiled, for the prospect of burnings pleased him mightily. ‘You must root out the enemies of Logar,’ he exhorted the Chief Elder. turning to take hold of one of the old men’s staves. (He could only guess how laser guns had come into the hands of primitives but he would enjoy explaining their proper use.) ‘There is one supreme enemy...’ the Master chuckled. ‘He calls himself the Doctor.’

It was a mistake, the Doctor decided, to have left Professor Foster in the TARDIS. He would have appreciated the archaeologist’s company walking in the ancient streets of Sarn, and he would have relished the connoisseur’s opinion of the faded grandeur of this desert metropolis. It reminded him (the professor would surely have agreed) of the old Roman city of Ephesus, with its crumbling stones and quake-toppled columns–the face of imperialism made acceptable in elegant decrepitude.

Turlough, who must have known something of the colonial history of his forebears, said nothing throughout the journey from the bunker to the Hall of Fire. The Unbelievers were also silent, nervous that any moment some zealous citizen might come forward to denounce them.

The Doctor and Turlough with Amyand and his group of dissidents halted in a side street just beyond the main entrance of the Hall. Amyand nodded to his men who drew swords and knives from under their clothes.

The Sarns assembled in the Hall of Fire thought for a moment that the Elders had returned. But none of those arthritic ayatollahs could have achieved the speed with which Amyand’s picked men dashed up the portico steps and into the Hall.

‘Don’t anyone move!’ shouted the rebel leader as each Unbeliever ran to his strategic corner, grabbed a citizen and held a knife at his throat. ‘Stay where you are and no one will get hurt.’

The guards raised their sabres, but dared not move for fear of causing injury to the hostages.

Amyand ran to the stone platform in front of the cave where the fire still raged. ‘You’re here to see the Outsider,’

he shouted, giving the crowd no time to recover from the shock of the invasion. ‘Well, you won’t be disappointed–

because we’ve found him for you.’ He gestured to the entrance as the Doctor arrived at the top step of the portico like a royal bride. ‘In fact, two of them!’ cried Amyand excitedly as Turlough joined the Doctor.

The citizens were overawed by the spectacle. Like the Unbelievers, they had never seen strangers before.

‘Doctor! Turlough!’ Amyand saluted the aliens who, escorted by the two armed Unbelievers, processed through the Hall, every eye upon them. ‘Do they look like messengers from Logar?’ shouted Amyand. ‘They’re men like us!’

It was a disconcerting experience for the Doctor and Turlough to walk from one end of the building to the other under such universal scrutiny. Turlough was so embarassed that he had no inclination to look round the Hall, and it was not until he reached the platform by the cave that he saw the units from the Trion ship. ‘That’s the navigational unit from a Trion space shuttle!’ exclaimed the boy. ‘And the concentrator from a propulsion unit!’ He pointed to another piece of hi-tech pseudo-sculpture that adorned the platform.

‘These people,’ continued Amyand, pointing to the Doctor and Turlough, ‘will tell you that Logar is dead–that Logar never existed.’

Turlough, however, was not interested in the idealogical problems of the Sarns; he wanted to know what they were doing with bits of a Trion space ship. But there was no chance to start asking questions as several of the more elderly Sarns had begun to protest at their treatment from Amyand’s gang of iconoclasts. One of the hostages had managed to free himself and several of the guards seemed on the point of a counter coup.

‘Stop!’ The voice that echoed through the hall was shrill and immature, hardly more than that of a child. Turlough felt a sudden sense of
déjà vu
, as if he and the boy, now entering with Sorasta, had met in some previous existence.

Malkon walked confidently to the platform, ‘There will be no fighting. I order you to put down your weapons.’

Reluctantly the guards obeyed. Malkon took the Doctor’s hand. ‘You are welcome to Sarn.’

The Doctor smiled. ‘Not a very hospitable planet at the moment.’

‘You will hear out this Doctor,’ said Malkon, feeling far happier with the friendly newcomers than with the bullying mullah, Timanov.

While the Doctor tried to explain to the Sarns the danger of the molten lava that would shortly erupt from the volcano, Turlough crept forward to get a closer look at the components from the ship. His expert eye easily identified the age and classification of the vessel. He also noticed, on the side of the navigation unit, the ominous but unmistakeable signs of burning. ‘Where did you find this?’ he unceremoniously challenged the boy that Sorasta had called their Chosen One. ‘Tell me, please!’

This was a question that Malkon had asked Timanov many times. Somewhat apologetically he now gave the same answer. ‘That is a gift of Logar.’

‘These things came from a Trion spaceship!’ shouted Turlough accusingly. ‘Where did it land? Where are the crew?’

The Doctor, who had joined him beside the components, seemed particularly interested in a large module in the navigation section. ‘Whoever the benefactor, he’s provided you with a transceiver unit,’ he observed.

‘What is a transceiver unit?’ asked Roskal curiously.

‘A way of communicating with other people,’ replied the Doctor, wondering if there was a way of avoiding so many refugees in the TARDIS. ‘People who can take you away from the city before it is destroyed.’ He turned to Turlough. ‘If we can get a message through to Trion, they can send a rescue ship...’

‘No!’ screamed the boy, pulling the Doctor’s hand away from the transmitter. ‘Contact Trion and you’ll ruin everything!’

The Doctor was rapidly losing patience with his companion’s eccentricity. ‘Are your compatriots so inhospitable?’ he demanded.

How Turlough now wished he had swallowed his pride and explained his predicament to the Doctor the moment he had heard that first transmission from the ship’s distress beacon. ‘The Custodians will move in,’ he stammered. ‘Escape will be impossible.’

‘What are you talking about?’

Turlough did not hear the Doctor’s question. He was staring, mesmerised, at a silver pendant on Malkon’s neck.

‘Where did you get that?’ His finger pointed accusingly at the object.

‘It is nothing,’ answered the young man, startled at such intense interest. ‘A Chosen One has many gifts.’

‘There are more like this?’ cried Turlough.

‘Of course.’

‘Show me!’

Exasperated as he was with his companion’s behaviour, the Doctor was dismayed to see him leaving the Hall, together with the nominal leader of the Sarns. He didn’t fancy organising the embarkation of the entire citizenry single-handed. ‘Turlough!’ he shouted after the retreating boy. ‘I need your help.’

Turlough gave a guilty look back at the Doctor, but did not stop. ‘You don’t understand,’ he shouted. ‘My father was on that ship!’

Malkon took Turlough straight to his apartments in the pagoda where the Doctor’s companion instantly recognised the burnished metal case in which were kept the gaudy items that the Elders had presented to their Chosen One.

‘A bonded flight box!’ he shouted, forcing open the lid of the container to reveal a jackdaw’s nest of stolen pieces.

‘All these objects are from a Trion ship,’ exclaimed Turlough as he dipped into the gimcrack treasure chest and selected three tear-shaped drops of platinum, each on a thin wire chain. ‘The identity tabs of a shuttle crew!’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Malkon, perplexed.

‘Where did they come from?’

Malkon shrugged. ‘I have had them since I was a child.’

A wild suspicion inplanted itself in Turlough’s mind.

‘Malkon, where do
you
come from?’ he asked the boy.

‘I come from the fire,’ answered Malkon simply.

Turlough’s suspicion grew stronger. ‘Why do they call you the Chosen One?’

‘I carry the mark of Logar.’

‘Show me.’

As Malkon pulled back the sleeve of his tunic Turlough gave a small cry. ‘The Misos Triangle!’ On the younger boy’s arm was branded the motif from the cylinder and Turlough now knew where he had seen Malkon before.

‘Take me to to the fire where you were found!’ he shouted.

Malkon was appalled. ‘Impossible. That is forbidden land. Trespassers are sent for burning.’

‘I order you,’ said Turlough defiantly.

Malkon scowled. ‘No one can order a Chosen One.’

Turlough rolled up the sleeve of his shirt to reveal the same double triangle, seared on his upper arm. ‘Except another Chosen One!’ he whispered to the startled child.

There was great excitment in the Hall of Fire when the Doctor switched on the transceiver he had found in the ornamental wreckage. The Doctor, however, was less enchanted than the childlike Sarns by the babbling atmospherics that came from the communications unit.

‘We need more power,’ he muttered, wishing Turlough was there to lend a hand with repairs.

Sorasta, who had been keeping an anxious vigil at the entrance steps, pushed her way through the curious crowd towards the stranger in the frock coat. ‘Doctor!’ she called nervously. ‘The Elders are coming.’ There was a buzz of excitment from the citizens who couldn’t wait to see what the old men thought of this self-confident alien.

‘Good,’ said the Doctor, hardly bothering to look up from the dismantled components. ‘I need to talk to them.