Doctor Who: The Enemy of the World
Read Doctor Who: The Enemy of the World Online
Authors: Ian Marter
Tags: #Science-Fiction:Doctor Who
In the year 2030 only one man seems to
know what action to take when the world is
hit by a series of terrible natural disasters.
Salamander’s success in handling these
monumental problems has brought him
enormous power.
From the moment the Doctor, Jamie and
Victoria land on an Australian beach, they
are caught up in a struggle for world
domination - a struggle in which the
Doctor’s startling resemblance to
Among the many Doctor Who books available are
the following recently published titles:
Doctor Who and the Power of Kroll
Doctor Who and the Armageddon Factor
Doctor Who and the Curse of Peladon
Doctor Who and the Keys of Marinus
Doctor Who and the Nightmare of Eden
Doctor Who and the Horns of Nimon
Doctor Who and the Monster of Peladon
Doctor Who and the Creature from the Pit
UK: £1·25 *Australia: $3·95
Malta: £M1·30c
*Recommended Price
Children/Fiction ISBN 0 426 20126 4
DOCTOR WHO
AND THE ENEMY
OF THE WORLD
Based on the BBC television serial by David Whitaker by arrangement with the British Broadcasting Corporation
IAN MARTER
published by
The Paperback Division of
W. H. Allen & Co. Ltd
A Target Book
Published in 1981
by the Paperback Division of W. H. Allen & Co. Ltd.
A Howard & Wyndham Company
44 Hill Street, London W1X 8LB
Novelisation copyright © Ian Marter 1981
Original script copyright © David Whitaker 1968
‘Doctor Who’ series copyright © British Broadcasting Corporation 1968, 1981
Printed in Great Britain by
The Anchor Press Ltd, Tiptree, Essex
ISBN 0426 20126 4
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
1
The hot January sun beat out of the cloudless blue sky and a warm northeast wind blew the Coral Sea into a roaring froth over the Great Barrier Reef. The Australian summer was at its height. Between the tangle of thick vegetation covering the dunes and the crashing cascades of breaking waves, a broad beach of fine white sand wobbled in the relentless heat. There was no sign of life except for something moving swiftly over the clear water about two kilometres from the shore, enveloped in a curtain of shimmering spray. On land the only movement was the ceaseless rustling of dense tropical foliage and the zigzagging swarms of huge sandflies buzzing angrily over the sparkling sand in search of prey.
Suddenly, above the distant thundering of the reef, there came an unearthly grinding and howling sound—as if ancient and rusted machinery were being forced back into life. Up near the dunes a small section of beach about two metres square suddenly sank slightly, as if under the weight of some invisible object. The shriek of tortured machinery grew to a shrill climax and a faint yellow light began to blink above the rectangular hollow. Then, as abruptly as it had begun, the hideous noise ceased, the yellow light went out and the sand settled. When the air had cleared, a scruffy blue police box stood listing drunkenly on the sloping beach. Finally, with a sharp crack, it lurched back onto an even keel and there was silence.
Then a babble of excited voices erupted inside. The door swung open and a stocky young lad with straight dark hair and rugged features stepped warily out, blinking in the fierce sunlight. His keen eyes rapidly scanned the vast expanse of shimmering sand.
‘And where have you landed us this time Doctor?’ he called, relaxing a little.
‘We’re at the seaside of course, stupid!’ retorted a rather cultured female voice. A pale, pretty young lady wearing a faded Victorian dress emerged from the police box behind him, shading her large blue eyes from the glare.
‘Aye I ken that right enough, Miss Victoria, but
where
?’
the sturdy young Highlander replied with a scowl.
‘How on earth should I know, Jamie?’ she said. ‘Where
are
we, Doctor?’ she cried, peering into the darkened doorway.
Seconds later a dapper figure clad in a worn, black velvet jacket and baggy check trousers darted out into the sunlight.
‘Oh, do stop fussing you two. Go and find some buckets and spades in the TARDIS and let’s enjoy ourselves,’ the little man urged them, looking expectantly around him. He strode eagerly off towards the sea, loosening his spotted necktie and then waving his arms about as he took deep lungfuls of fresh air.
The young Scot stared after him. ‘Buckets and spades!
Is he after digging for worms?’ he muttered.
Victoria had reached into the police box and was putting on a wide-brimmed straw hat. ‘Don’t be silly, Jamie. He wants us to help him build a sandcastle,’ she giggled, skipping after the Doctor.
James Robert McCrimmon looked incredulously around him. ‘Sandcastles...’ he muttered. His scowling face glistening with sweat, he marched down the beach to join the Doctor and Victoria at the water’s edge.
Having removed his shoes and socks and rolled up his trousers, the Doctor was splashing his feet in the shallows and chuckling with delight. ‘This is marvellous, marvellous,’ he cried, starting to dance a sort of jig. ‘You two don’t know what you’re missing.’
Jamie stood motionless and open-mouthed, staring out to sea. ‘Whatever’s the matter, Jamie?’ Victoria asked, following his gaze.
She watched something skimming rapidly across the surface between the reef and the shore, throwing up great showers of rainbow spray. Then her ears picked up a high-pitched whining above the crashing surf. Suddenly afraid, she clutched the Doctor’s arm. ‘Look, Doctor,’ she murmured, ‘whatever is it?’
Aboard the hovercraft a thickset gray-haired man was examining the three distant figures on the beach through powerful binoculars. He snapped an order to the muscular young man beside him at the controls. ‘Hey, Rod, pull ‘er up a second.’
‘What’s up then, Tony?’
‘There’s some crazy nutter dancing a jig out there,’ the older man growled in a thick Australian accent. ‘I don’t believe it. It can’t be. No way...’
‘What the hell’s eating you?’ Rod exclaimed, grabbing the binoculars and peering at the tiny figure hopping about on the shore. ‘Jeez...’ he gasped a moment later: What’s
he
doing here?’ He padded across the deck and thrust the binoculars into the hands of a tall thin man wearing a crumpled suit, who was sitting reading a tattered magazine.
‘Just take a look at this, Tibor,’ he said, grabbing the man by the lapels and yanking him bodily to his feet. ‘Over there in the water.’
The thin man trained the glasses on the shore in the middle of the bay. ‘It is not possible, Tony,’ he said in a harsh Teutonic accent, without looking round. ‘It’s quite impossible,’ he told them, lowering the glasses and turning to face them. ‘But there is no doubt at all. It is Salamander himself.’
There was a stunned silence.
‘So. What we gonna do then, Tony?’ Rod blurted out at last.
The gray-haired man whipped a small walkie-talkie out of his belt. ‘What do ya think, dumbo?’ he drawled with a scornful grin, and he pressed the switch.
About ten kilometres inland in a town called Melville on a hill overlooking the ocean, a tall attractive woman of thirty was standing in front of a large wall map hanging in a spacious office, situated in a deserted concrete and glass building. A small radio clipped to her belt suddenly gave a shrill bleep. With an impatient toss of her head she unclipped it and snapped the switch without taking her eyes from the map. ‘Astrid,’ she said coldly.
‘This is Tony,’ crackled the receiver, ‘we’re between Cape Melville and Heath Point. We’ve caught the Big One.’
For a moment the young woman said nothing. She stared at the map, her mind racing. ‘That’s impossible,’ she retorted at last, ‘he’s just gone off to the Central European Zone. You must be mistaken.’
Out on the hovercraft Tony thumped the chart table impatiently. ‘I tell you it’s Salamander. Not a shadow of a doubt,’ he shouted into his radio. ‘The three of us have all had a good look at him.’
There was a long pause. Eventually Astrid replied. ‘All right, Tony. If you are quite certain, I will inform Giles and...’
Tony snatched up the binoculars with his free hand and swept the horizon. ‘No way. We’ll handle this by ourselves,’ he said savagely.
Astrid’s voice crackled urgently from the receiver. ‘You will wait for instructions from Giles,’ she cried. ‘There must be no mistakes.’
But no one aboard the hovercraft was listening any longer. Tony flung down the radio and punched Rod’s enormous arm. ‘Let’s move, Rod,’ he snapped.
While Tony kept watch on the distant figures of the Doctor and his two companions, Tibor took down from a rack three high-velocity rifles equipped with telescopic sights and laid them on the chart table. His hands shaking with excitement, he checked each weapon with expert thoroughness, his thin lips curled in a vicious smile.
In Giles Kent’s office Astrid was talking intensely to a man facing her from the small screen of a videophone installed on top of the stainless-steel desk.
‘Giles, they’re convinced that it’s Salamander and they intend to kill him,’ she explained.
Giles Kent leaned forward, knotted veins standing out on his bony temples. ‘They’re just a bunch of cowboys,’ he snorted. ‘We can’t afford any mistakes now, Astrid, you understand? You must stop them,’ he said icily. ‘Get out there at once and stop them.’ The screen went blank.
Meanwhile, on the beach, the Doctor was attempting to explain the principle of the hovercraft to his two young friends.
‘It’s like some kind of sea monster,’ Victoria murmured, unable to take her eyes from the swiftly approaching craft.
The Doctor chuckled indulgently. ‘Well, my dear, it looks as if you’ll be able to examine it at close quarters in a minute.’
At that moment something zipped through the air.
Victoria’s straw hat was whipped off her head and sent spinning across the sand.
Jamie stared at the startled girl. ‘What the divil...’ His voice died as something whined into the sand by the Doctor’s foot.
For a moment no one moved. ‘Run!’ the Doctor yelled, suddenly wheeling round and scampering off up the beach bent almost double.
They heard the hovercraft’s engines shrieking closer and closer behind them as it approached land and bullets tore relentlessly into the sand all around them. They flung themselves into a hollow in the dunes, gasping for breath and soaked in sweat.
‘We must try to reach the TARDIS,’ the Doctor shouted. But the hovercraft was already slithering up onto the beach, its huge propellors whipping the sand into the air. In a few seconds it would be between them and the police box. ‘It’s no good. We’ll have to get round through the trees,’ the Doctor cried, plunging into the dense undergrowth. As Jamie and Victoria fought their way after him they heard the engines fading as the hovercraft settled on the sand and the three men jumped down and spread out in pursuit.