Doctor Who_ The Mark Of The Rani Part 3

In a bedlam of harking, almost demented, the animal repeatedly hurled itself against the gate. Silencing the brute was easy. A single burst from the TCE, a pathetic whine, and then one dog less in the Universe...

But succ.u.mbing to his callous impulse had brought the Master a further difficulty. Attracted by the din, emerging from the hut, Harry had witnessed the slaughter.

After ensuring there were na other observers, the Master levelled the TCE again. The petal-shaped segments of the bulbous nozzle separated and a searing white light homed in on its target.

Harry's luck had run out after all.

4.

Death Fall 'It's stopped!'

The Doctor, having vacated the office, was again using his tracking device to locate the power that had re-routed the TARDIS. Misinterpreting Peri's remark, he rapped the tracer. 'No, it's still functioning.'

'The dog! It's not barking!'

The Doctor paused, listening, suddenly very solemn. '

"There was silence deep as death".'

'That's morbid.'

'Possibly.'

The grim quotation merely vocalised the overwhelming foreboding of evil that plagued him; an evil so tangible, he felt the source must be close by.

Showing no remorse, the Master was again examining the gate padlock when the shattering of gla.s.s interrupted him.

Indiscriminately, Ward and his fellow aggressors were wreaking havoc upon the village street.Ever the opportunist, he decided to recruit them.

'You there!' His curt command halted them. 'You were in the lane, smas.h.i.+ng machinery.'

'Never mind machinery. What's tha' doing here?' Ward was in no mood to be treated as a subordinate.

'That's easy. He's one of brainy ones on't list. Arrived here early for this scurvy meeting.' For Rudge, the world was infested with enemies.

'Aye, come to rob us of us jobs!'

'Hold hard. I intend you no harm.'

'Talks funny, don't he?' Green mimicked the Master. '

"Hold hard".' He scooped up a stone. 'This hard enough?'

'Imbeciles! Are you incapable of using your brains?

What advantage will attacking me bring you?'

The stone was heavy in Green's fist. The urge to aim was strong.

'You let the man you should have destroyed go free!'

The Master's compelling personality as much as his rhetoric, inhibited even their uncontrollable aggression.

Ward, rubbing the crimson mark on his neck, took the accusation personally. 'I did? Let who go free? What's tha'

on about?'

'In the lane. He pretended to help you. Help! He's a crony of Stephenson's. An inventor, here to mechanise the mine.'

'Dust know what he's getting at, Jack?' Rudge certainly did not.

'Doing nowt but trying to save his skin!' Jack was ready to crack his knuckles on the stranger's superior chin!

'Ask him. Ask him why he's trying to take the bread from your mouths.' The Master's contempt for these ignorant mortals was barely disguised; but he needed them. He had worked out a plan and these morons were to be part of it. They were to be used to get rid of that scourge of the Universe, the Doctor.

'Us'll do more than ask! Where is he? Dost know?'

'He's just gone into the pit.'

Inflamed by his lies, the wiry Green battered the padlock.

'Let me.' The Master intervened; the pandemonium might bring opposition. He wanted their entrance to go unannounced.

s.h.i.+elding his actions from his dupes, he produced a pencil laser, talking all the while to divert them. 'You can't miss him.' A thin laser beam lanced the padlock.'Mean looking. Wearing yellow trousers, a multicoloured coat and a vulgar plaid waistcoat.' The description was for Rudge's and Green's benefit. Ward had already been subjected to the Doctor's sartorial splendour!

The padlock melted. He swung the gates wide and the three miners swarmed through.

'A word of warning. Go carefully. He's treacherous.'

'Careful, Peri! Careful!'

Keeping pace with the impatient Doctor, Peri had stumbled, knocking over a safety lamp as they skirted the pit shaft. 'A Davy lamp, isn't it?'

'No. A prototype. Stephenson's got a couple of years'

work to do on it yet.' The discourse came absently as he swept the tracking device in an arc. 'But you're correct.

Davy gets the credit. Controversial decision, I've always thought. Which reminds me where is Stephenson?'

'He could be anywhere in this place. Even underground!' Gulping, she peered over the rim of a shaft.

Seemingly stretching to infinity, the bottom could not be seen. The giddy drop induced her to sway, experience vertigo, feel as though she were about to he plucked into its inky depths...

A hand clutched her shoulder.

'Peri, you have an extraordinary capacity for seeking out danger.' The Doctor's words were lost on Peri. She was staring beyond him to where the miners were advancing.

'Doctor!'

Imperturbably, he lectured on. 'You must learn to avoid getting into situations '

' Doctor Doctor!'

Too late. A lump of coal came whistling past his ear.

Intuitively, he bundled Peri behind a truck. A random missile? Or was it meant for him? The introspective debate was rudely terminated. With arrogant ease, the brawny Ward sent the truck trundling along the track and the three vengeful aggressors closed in.

'Peri! Get away from here!'

'But '

'Don't argue! Go!' His concern for Peri made him unwary. His toe stubbed against a rail causing him to stagger. A smart punch from Green jerked the tracer from his grip, lobbing it over the edge of the shaft. After what appeared to be an eternity, there came a faint thud.

'Now you really have gone too far! The effort that went into constructing '

A man of deeds rather than chitchat, Rudge lunged at the Doctor. A crash barrier might have averted disaster.

But this was the nineteenth century and there was none.

Briefly, they tottered on the brink... then fell...

The Doctor grabbed for the lift rope.

So did Rudge.

The Doctor succeeded. Not so Rudge.

His protracted, diminis.h.i.+ng scream underscored the sickening drop to the bottom.

Incensed by the fate of his companion, Green s.n.a.t.c.hed up a pit prop and, with frenetic fury, stabbed at the Doctor, trying to force him to lose his tenuous hold on the rope.

Releasing one hand, the Doctor reached for the edge of the shaft to steady his dangling body. A spade, wielded by Ward, chopped at the straining fingers... missing by a hair's breadth as the Doctor s.n.a.t.c.hed them away.

He clung desperately onto the rope. But his weight and the constant blows were beginning to tell. Resourcefulness was basic to his nature, yet even that had deserted him.

Could it be that escape was impossible? Ridiculous though it seemed, he wondered if falling to one's death was the same as drowning. Would all his previous lives flash before him? The drop was long enough!

'Get away from him!' Peri had not capitulated. 'Leave him alone!'

She pelted chunks of coal at Ward and Green. A hit and miss affair. Some found their targets, some found the beleagured Doctor.

'Help! Please help! They're crazy! They'll kill him!'

If her aim was erratic, her predictions were perilously near to being accurate; the Doctor's stamina was fast ebbing away.

Spurred on by his weakening grasp, the antagonists thrust with increasing fervour.

Bang!

A burst of gunfire!

'Stop that or I'll blast you to Kingdom come!'

There was no disputing that the warning was genuine.

Nor was there any doubting the authority in the voice. The attackers scarpered.

The man behind the blunderbuss had not finished giving orders. 'Quickly! Haul that fellow to safety!'

The guard who had accompanied Peri and the Doctor to the office sprang to carry out the command. It had come from his boss, Lord Ravensworth, the mine owner.

Restored to terra firma, the Doctor could not resist a quip. 'Almost at the end of my tether, eh?'

'It's no joke, Doctor!'

An opinion shared by Lord Ravensworth as he rejected the Doctor's expressions of grat.i.tude. 'Perhaps you'll tell me who you are. And I don't want any flummery about VIPs. I'm Lord Ravensworth, the owner. I issued personally the invitations to the meeting. And your face is not one I recall!' Nor was this bombast; his lords.h.i.+p was plainly not to be trifled with. 'VIP's indeed!' A peremptory gesture. 'My office!'

Reaching the office, a chastened Doctor was apologetic.

'We shouldn't have deceived the guard. But how else could we have got into the mine?'

'Spare me the dubious pragmatism. Came to see George Stephenson, you say?'

'I'm a great admirer.'

Ravensworth was sceptical. 'Must be if you're prepared to resort to trickery! How do I know you're not in league with these machinery wreckers? These wretched Luddites?'

'Luddites' was the name given to groups of artisans who were rioting and smas.h.i.+ng machinery throughout the industrial centres of England; workers who feared the new-fangled contraptions were going to deprive them of their livelihoods.