Doctor Who_ The Dominators Part 8

'That's a Quark! One of the robots,' the Doctor exclaimed.

'A Quark... and you let Zoe go back there!' Jamie yelled at the dumbstruck Council. He grabbed the Doctor's arm and started to drag him away. 'We must go back, Doctor!

We canna waste any more rime!'

The Doctor held back a moment, staring intently at the screens. They all watched fascinated as the Quark suddenly seemed to notice the scanner. Its antennae sparked even more ferociously and its manic bleating to a frenzied climax as it approached, growing larger and larger on the screens. Its glowing probes reached out towards the speechless watchers. Then the screens fizzled and went blank.

The Doctor glanced around the stunned and silent a.s.sembly. 'Now will you believe us?' he whispered hoa.r.s.ely. Then he and Jamie dashed out of the Chamber.

Jamie was soon sitting glumly in the rear seat of a transit capsule while in front the Doctor desperately tried to remember how to operate the machine.

'I suppose you know what you're doing,' Jamie muttered apprehensively.

'Oh yes. It's just a matter of the correct sequence of switches,' the Doctor rea.s.sured him.

Jamie leaned forward. 'No, no. I mean this contraption's heading back to the survey s.h.i.+p, right?'

'Well, I certainly hope it is Jamie. Why?'

'Och nothing,' Jamie shrugged. 'Just that there's an angry Quark waiting there to meet us...'

'Oh dear,' the Doctor muttered. 'So there is.'

Toba and the Quarks had escorted Zoe and Kully across the weltering dunes to the ruined museum. Ragged and exhausted, the two prisoners now stood in the blistering heat of the Dulcian noon, awaiting their fate with as much courage as they could muster. For some time Zoe had been stealing glances at their Quark guardians.

'Any idea how they're powered?' she whispered to Kully. 'If we knew, we might be able to sabotage them.'

'Wouldn't stand a chance,' Kully muttered, 'they're deadly.'

'They're only robots,' Zoe murmured, suddenly remembering the laser gun and the other weapons inside the ruin. 'Kully, I think we stand a chance...' she breathed hopefully. The nearest Quark emitted a threatening buzz.

'Attack them? Are you out of your mind, Zoe?' Kully retorted through clenched teeth.

At that moment, Rago and Toha came striding over the sandhills followed by Teel, Kando and Balan with a Quark escort. The prisoners were all herded together and the Dominators surveyed the small band of slaves.

'Work potential and stamina to be recorded for a.n.a.lysis; Rago commanded.

'Affirmative,' Toba responded eagerly. 'But if any try to escape...'

'No action. Report to me,' Rago insisted.

The prisoners watched as the two huge figures faced each other breathing heavily, manoeuvring for supremacy.

'Toba!'

'Command accepted,' Toba conceded alter a long pause.

Rago threw him a cold emerald glare and then marched off, followed by all but two of the Quarks.

Toba slowly circled round the huddled captives, a hideous smile warping his leathern face. Then he addressed them in a hushed voice almost choked with excitement. 'If the tests prove favourable, you may be chosen to serve the Dominators,' he breathed.

'Dominators? Who on earth are they?' piped up Zoe innocently.

Toba swung round and bore down on her. 'Do not ever interrupt me again,' he whispered hoa.r.s.ely, his warm acid breath making Zoe flinch in disgust. Toba resumed his circling. 'We are the Masters of the Ten Galaxies.'

'And we're the Dulcians,' Kully blurted out, 'and we don't serve anybody.'

The huge creaking figure towered over the plump little Dulcian. 'You will clear and prepare this site for drilling,'

Toba rasped, gesturing at the rubble-strewn ground surrounding the star-shaped target.

'And if we don't?' Zoe challenged.

'You will be destroyed,' Toba hissed with obvious delight. 'So remember you are working for your lives.'

'Well, I'm certainly not working for you,' Zoe snapped defiantly.

'Quarks!' Toba screamed. A s.h.i.+ver whipped up Zoe's spine as she heard the demented giggling and saw the ominous sparking emitted by the two robots as they stomped forward. Toba watched with a s.a.d.i.s.tic smile as the Quarks drove the five prisoners towards the scattered debris and forced them to form a short chain-gang.

Exhausted and cowed, Balan reluctantly stooped, picked up a small lump of concrete and pa.s.sed it along the chain.

At the other end, Teel heaved the block as far as he could away into the sand. Then the futile action was repeated, over and er again. For a while Toba gloated over their struggles with heavy slabs and twisted girders, and then marched away towards the distant saucer.

As they sweated and strained in the heat and the soft s.h.i.+fting sand, under the impa.s.sive, unblinking gaze of the Quarks, Zoe desperately tried to think. 'There are only two of these tin soldiers, but there are five of us,' she eventually murmured to the others. 'We've got to get away.'

'Where would we go?' Kando asked. 'We cannot leave the Island.'

'Perhaps the Capitol will send help,' Teel suggested.

Kully staggered under an awkwardly twisted beam.

'What... what can they do?' he panted. 'We've got to get ourselves out of this mess.'

'Exactly what I intend to do,' Zoe agreed. 'How fast can these clockwork soldiers move, Kully?'

Balan stopped work and leaned on Zoe's shoulder. 'I cannot allow you to incite my students to rebellion,' he protested weakly, 'it will only lead to violence.'

'And submission will only lead to slavery' Zoe retorted.

'What do you say, Kully?'

Kully nodded eagerly and turned to Kando.

'No, Balan is right,' gasped the tall Dulcian girl, trying to lift the slab Balan had just dropped. 'Violence breeds violence.'

Kully turned earnestly to Teel who was struggling to pull a thick steel rod out of the sand. Teel paused, glancing uncomfortably at Balan and Kando. 'I understand your arguments but meek submission is humiliating,' he muttered resolutely. 'I am with Zoe and Kully.'

A spectacular discharge of sparks burst among the Quarks' antennae and they lumbered nearer, bleating suspiciously...

As the Capsule hurtled through the Dulcian sky, Jamie craned over the Doctor's shoulder, his face frozen with horror. The Doctor had removed the instrument panel in front of him and was poking about in the tangle of wires.

'Have ye gone daft or something?' Jamie shouted above the harsh whining and buffeting of the craft.

'No, no, Jamie, all I've got to do is to... oh dear...' cried the Doctor in dismay, swapping a few connections over.

'But ye canna just take this contraption to bits in mid air; Jamie protested.

The Doctor pressed a switch, then another and shook his head. 'But we don't want to land in the middle of all those Quark things as you yourself pointed out,' he shouted, changing the wires over again. 'Don't worry Jamie, all I have to do is over-ride the autopilot.'

At that moment the capsule started looping in a terrifying corkscrew pattern. Jame held on to his stomach and closed his eyes. 'But... are there no any ordinary controls?' he yelled in anguish as they spiralled round and round.

The Doctor handed Jamie a spaghetti-like bundle of wires over has shoulder. 'Here, hold this, there's a good chap,' he cried.

Jamie grabbed the tangle and the Doctor immediately dived off his seat and began wriggling his way forward into the nose cone. At once the capsule started bucking and rearing like a fairground machine. Jamie felt decidedly sick as he watched the Doctor's legs waving around every time the craft took a sudden dizzy plunge. 'What are ye doing in there?' he shouted anxiously.

There was an incomprehensible series of m.u.f.fled comments as the Doctor twisted this way and that. 'Think I've got it!' he eventually declared, shuffling backwards into the c.o.c.kpit clutching several printed circuits and even more tangles of wire. 'Anyway there won't be time for a second try,' he cried cheerfully manoeuvring himself hack into his seat. 'Now I'm going to attempt to steer this thing.'

The Doctor fiddled with the circuits for a few seconds.

All at once the capsule gave a bone-numbing lurch and then steadied itself again.

'We'll be down in no time at all, Jamie.'

'Aye, but in one piece?'

'Hang on!' the Doctor yelled as the craft tipped almost vertically and accelerated downwards at a phenomenal rate.

'We'll soon find out.'

The capsule fell for what seemed an eternity. Then very gradually the nose came up and it levelled out. Soon they were skidding along in the sand with a deafening roaring and sc.r.a.ping.

'Yippee!' cried the Doctor, still fiddling with the circuitry.

Finally the capsule crunched to a halt underneath the cliffs. Opening the canopy, the Doctor leaped out nimbly.

'Look, no Quarks!' he cried triumphantly. 'I think we've done rather well so far.' He sniffed the air a few times.

'This way, I think,' he declared, starting to scramble up the face of the cliff.

After an arduous, sticky climb they followed the crumbling ridge for a few hundred metres and then suddenly found themselves looking down on the ruined museum. The Doctor drew a bent and battered telescope out of his pocket and peered through it.

'What can ye see?' Jamie demanded impatiently, s.n.a.t.c.hing the instrument 'It's Zoe and Kully and the others!' he exclaimed, overjoyed. 'Let's go, Doctor.'

'Wait!' the Doctor commanded sternly, taking the telescope and quickly scanning the area. 'We'll split up and work our way round separately from behind them, just in case. I'll follow the ridge for a bit first. You go down that way...'

Under the cliff, the five prisoners had resumed their task.

Although Balan and Kando could hardly manage to s.h.i.+ft anything at all, Zoe Kully and Teel put on a convincing show while secretly whispering among themselves.

'Have you got any ideas?' Kully asked. 'We must be quick or the others will be too exhausted to move.'

'There's a laser gun in that museum place. We've got to get hold of it somehow,' Zoc murmured.

Teel bent down beside them. There is only one Quark now,' he said.

Cautiously they looked up. One of the robots had moved over to the drilling target to take soundings and measurements.

With a m.u.f.fled gasp, Balan suddenly fell to his knees. 'I am... I am sorry,' he panted pitifully.

Their Quark sentry tramped over to examine the fallen Dulcian. 'Is this specimen broken?' it bleated harshly.

'Move it aside and resume working.'

Zoe winked significantly at Kully and Teel, then she and Kando helped Balan over to the shadowed area by the remains of the museum entrance and propped him up against the wall.

Meanwhile the Quark transmitted a terse report to its masters. 'Initial a.s.sessment: o specimen broken. Three others showing signs of unserviceabilitv. Only one still performing at high efficiency.' it screeched.

'That will be one of the males,' Rago's voice observed through the Quark's audio circuit.

'Correction. A female,' retorted the robot.

'The name's Zoe...' Zoe muttered to herself as she knelt beside Balan, keeping her eyes glued on the chattering Quark.

'Work the specimens to exhaustion,' Rago ordered brutally. 'Record the times of collapse.'

Kully had been watching Zoe's movements like a hawk.

Now he positioned himself so that he blocked the Quark's view of the museum entrance. Nearby, Teel redoubled his efforts dislodging the steel rods to distract the machine's attention.

Very slowly Zoe stood up and started to back into the gaping doorway. The Quark was still preoccupied observing Teel's valiant struggles... a few more backward steps and she would be within reach of the laser gun.

Suddenly Kully realised that he could only see one Quark, the one he was blocking. He glanced fearfully round, the Quark by the target had disappeared. He tried to call out a warning to Zoe, but his throat felt like sandpaper and no sound came.

Zoe took three more paces and then her heart froze as she heard an unearthly giggling and sparking behind her.