‘Can Whitaker really do that?’ asked the Doctor.
‘I believe so. All the preliminary experiments have been successful.’ Yates smiled. ‘We shall find ourselves in the Golden Age.’
‘Mike, believe me,’ the Doctor implored, ‘there never was a Golden Age. It’s a myth, an illusion.’
‘Not this time,’ replied Yates. ‘We’re going to make it all come true.’
The Brigadier tapped his forehead. ‘I think you’ve gone potty, Captain. You’re out of your mind!’
‘I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Mike’s mind, Brigadier,’ said the Doctor. ‘In fact, I sympathise with him in many ways.’ He turned to Yates. ‘But this isn’t the way to change things, Mike. You have no right to obliterate the existence of generations of people.’
‘There’s no alternative,’ said the Captain.
‘Yes there is,’ replied the Doctor. ‘You can try to make something better of the world you’ve got. You humans can end the arms race, you can treat people with different coloured skins as equals, you can stop exploiting and cheating each other, and you can start using Earth’s resources in a rational and sensible way!’
Corporal Bryson entered the classroom carrying a tray of tea mugs. ‘I didn’t know you were back, Captain Yates. Care for a cup of tea, sir?’
Without thinking, the corporal had walked straight in front of Captain Yates’s revolver. He stared at the muzzle pointing at his stomach, and in fright dropped the tea tray. Sergeant Benton leapt at the Captain, knocking the gun from his hand, while the Doctor’s fingers slipped round the Captain’s throat in a Venusian karate hold. Captain Yates went unconscious instantly and the Doctor gently lowered him to the floor.
‘Sorry for interrupting, sir,’ said Corporal Bryson, overcome with embarrassment at having just smashed four Army mugs of tea. ‘I didn’t realise what I was doing.’
‘You did very well,’ said the Brigadier. ‘You’ve probably just saved the world from extinction.’
10
The Final Count Down
Mark and Adam helped the young woman down from the suspended-animation trolley. She was about twenty-five and dressed in the same style of blue denim as themselves. She swayed to and fro on unsteady legs once her feet had reached the ground.
‘Welcome to the people,’ said Adam. ‘Who are you?’
The young woman blinked and looked about herself. ‘We’re really on the space ship?’ She could remember nothing since she had sat in a chair and coloured lights had blinked on and off, hypnotising her.
‘Indeed we are,’ said Adam, ‘and about to arrive on New Earth. Some of your friends have already recovered from the long period of suspended animation. Look.’ He indicated five other people, men and women, all in blue tunics. They were sitting about the main area of the space ship, recovering from their long sleep. ‘What is your name?’
‘Polly,’ she said, ‘Polly Anderson. Can we see New Earth yet?’
‘If you go to that port hole,’ Adam pointed to one of the for’ard ports, ‘you can just see it as a disc in the depths of Space. It gets larger every day.’
The young woman staggered away from them towards the port hole. Ruth entered from one of the corridors, a worried look on her intelligent face. ‘That girl’s got out of the Reminder Room,’ she said.
‘Really?’ said Adam. ‘Well, she can’t have gone far. Would you like to welcome our friends who have just revived?’
Ruth shot a glance at the group. ‘I’ll speak to them later. You and I must search the ship for that girl. There’s no knowing what she’ll get up to. Come!’
Ruth swept out of the living area followed by Adam. Mark walked across to Polly Anderson who was having difficulty standing, and caught her arm. ‘Sit down and rest for a while. You’ll soon feel better.’
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Sarah signalling to him from the flight deck. Quickly glancing round to make sure no one was watching, Mark hurried across to the flight deck’s glass door and opened it.
‘I just got back,’ panted Sarah. ‘That door’—she indicated the hatch that supposedly opened into Space—‘it leads you straight into the corridor of a control centre under London.’
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘Then how do you think I’m alive?’ She went to the hatch and yanked back the lever. Mark peered out and saw a flight of wooden steps leading down into a corridor. ‘Do you believe me now?’
He looked away. Sarah saw that his eyes were glistening with tears. ‘I honestly believed we were travelling to a new world,’ he said simply. ‘We’ve all been tricked.’ He sniffed. ‘But why? What are the organisers doing this for?’
‘It’s very complicated,’ she explained. ‘We’ve got to explain to the others.’ She flung open the glass door, and went into the main living area. ‘I want everyone to listen to me,’ she announced, raising her voice. ‘This is all a trick. You’re not on a space ship, and you’re not going to another planet.’
The people who had just revived from suspended animation turned to look at Sarah in dazed disbelief. The young woman whom Mark and Adam had just revived didn’t understand at all. ‘I’m Polly Anderson,’ she smiled. ‘Who are you?’
‘It doesn’t matter who I am,’ said Sarah. ‘Please will you all pay attention to me. It’s a big trick. We are on Earth. This space ship is a fake.’
A middle-aged balding man was the first to grasp what she was saying. ‘I find that difficult to believe. They made promises to us. I went into everything very carefully. I resigned my position as bank manager and even sold my house!’
‘I’m afraid she is telling the truth,’ said Mark.
Ruth and Adam entered. They stopped in their tracks when they saw Sarah. ‘How did you escape from the Reminder Room?’ Ruth demanded.
‘It doesn’t matter. I’m trying to tell everyone you’ve all been tricked. I’ve escaped from this so-called space ship, and returned. We are deep under Central London. It’s all fake. I’m going to prove it to you all by opening the hatch inside the flight deck.’
Sarah turned to go back into the flight deck. Ruth grabbed her arm. ‘This poor girl is unbalanced. She should never have been selected. She’s already contaminated one of our number.’ She pointed an accusing finger at Mark.
‘Let me go,’ shouted Sarah. ‘I want to prove that you’re wrong!’
‘Never! Someone help me hold her. If she opens that hatch we’ll all be killed. You, girl, give me a hand!’
Polly Anderson obeyed the command by grabbing Sarah’s other arm. ‘I thought everything was going to be peaceful,’ she said, ‘not all this sort of thing.’
‘Two of you grab the boy,’ Ruth commanded. ‘They must be restrained until we have safely landed.’
The ex-bank manager and another man pinioned Mark’s arms behind his back. ‘Where to?’ asked the ex-bank manager.
‘Follow me,’ said Ruth, and with Polly’s help marched Sarah down the corridor leading to the Reminder Room.
Adam entered into the flight deck and studied the communications system. He pressed a button marked ‘Transmit,’ and spoke into a microphone. Would anyone hear him across the reaches of Space? ‘Hello? Hello? Can anyone hear me?’
Adam’s voice came clearly through a loudspeaker set in the wall close by the Timescoop. Sir Charles immediately strode up to the communications console. ‘How do I make this thing give static?’
Butler hastened to Grover’s side and adjusted some knobs. ‘This will make it sound as though you are talking by radio across Space.’
Grover spoke into a microphone that had the words SPACE SHIP written above it. ‘This is space ship number one. We are receiving you loud and clear.’
Adam’s voice came through the loudspeaker. ‘I must speak to Charles Grover. Something very strange has happened here. The girl Sarah claims we are not on a space ship.’
Grover shot a glance at Butler, then spoke into the microphone again. ‘This is Charles Grover spea
king. Where is the girl?’
‘We have just locked her in the Reminder Room.’
Butler listened for a moment, raced away towards the store-room in which he had locked Sarah. Grover spoke authoritatively into the microphone. ‘Please take no hasty action on your ship. As you know, I can reach you by shuttle in a few minutes. Over and out.’
Whitaker looked up from the Timescoop. ‘Well that’s a fine kettle of fish, I must say!’
‘Where’s the space-walking gear?’ asked Grover.
Whitaker pointed to the cupboard. ‘All in there. It’s a good thing we thought of that.’
Grover opened the cupboard. Inside hung a replica of an astronaut’s space-walk suit. He began to put it on.
Butler ran breathless into the room. ‘She’s gone! Went through the airvent. She’ll tell them everything.’
Grover was pulling on the heavy trousers over his expensive suit. ‘Twenty years in politics has taught me that people only believe what they want to believe.’ He paused to think. ‘I suppose that goes for us all in a way.’
A giant stegosaurus was standing peacefully outside Westminster Underground Station contemplating the Houses of Parliament. It thought that the great grey buildings were other monsters; if it stayed very still perhaps they would leave it alone. Then a small and very mobile monster came hurtling round the corner making a lot of noise and smell. It stopped with a screech. An even smaller creature jumped out of it and threw something. There was a loud bang and a flash of fire that disturbed the stegosaurus’s peace of mind.
‘It’s doing you no harm, Brigadier,’ shouted the Doctor. ‘Leave the poor thing alone.’
The Brigadier, about to hurl another hand grenade, paused. ‘All right. Let’s go into the station.’
They grabbed their supply of dynamite, and hurried into the station and down the steps.
‘I never thought I’d find myself blowing up a London underground station,’ said the Brigadier. ‘If you’re wrong, Doctor, I’m going to have a difficult job explaining all this to London Transport.’
‘…The conveyor-belt system of mass production brings drudgery to the workers. Their natural creative drive is stifled. They are slaves to the machines. Working in continuous noise, unable to speak to their fellow workers, they are brutalised…’
Sarah put her hands over her ears. ‘Can’t we turn that film off?’
Mark shouted above the sound of the running commentary which filled the Reminder Room. ‘It comes on automatically whenever the door is closed and someone is in here.’
Suddenly it stopped and the door opened. Sir Charles Grover, dressed in his spaceman’s suit and carrying a heavy helmet, stepped into the room. He left the door slightly ajar for fear of restarting the film.
‘You really are a terrible problem to me, Miss Smith,’ he said.
She looked at him in astonishment. ‘Why are you dressed up like that?’
Grover lowered his voice confidentially. ‘You and I know this is a fake space ship, but the people outside still believe in it. So I had to pretend to arrive by shuttle and come through the airlock. They think I’ve been space-walking.’
Mark’s anger burst. ‘You’ve cheated us! Why didn’t you tell us all the truth in the first place?’
‘He didn’t dare tell you,’ said Sarah heatedly. ‘Don’t you understand, Mark? Millions of people are going to be wiped out.’ She swung round to Grover. ‘That’s true, isn’t it?’
He nodded slowly. ‘I’m afraid it is. But it will be quite painless. They will never have existed. You see, I had to tell a story that would be acceptable to good people like Adam and Ruth and Mark, the kind of people that I wanted to recruit.’
Sarah said, ‘You mean decent people who might object to the destruction of generations of other human beings?’
‘I am only deceiving them about the means, not the end. They will have their New Earth, but it will be this Earth returned to an earlier, happier time.’
‘The end can never justify the means,’ protested Mark. ‘You’ve implicated us all in a terrible crime against humanity!’
Grover appealed to Mark. ‘Will you, for the sake of the others, accept the situation?’
‘No. Never!’
‘Then my only hope,’ confessed Grover, as he moved back to the door, ‘is that once this great project is complete, you will adjust to life in the Golden Age. I’m deeply sorry about this. I hope that in time to come we will be friends again.’ He closed the door. Almost at once moving pictures of squalid over-crowded blocks of flats appeared on the screen.
‘… the brutalisation of millions of people extends from the factories to the buildings in which they live. To accommodate an ever increasing population vast tenement blocks are thrown up in our cities, providing no sense of community for the unfortunates who dwell in them. Gone is the concept of the village…’
Sarah banged on the door. ‘Mark, we’ve got to get out of here!’
‘I don’t think there’s an escape route.’
Sarah looked around desperately: there was no airvent in here, nothing. ‘I think you’re right.’ She leant against the wall in exhaustion. ‘Do you know, I think I’m going to cry.’
‘If you do,’ he said, ‘try my shoulder. It’s broad enough.’
‘Thanks. I may take you up on that—’
The door opened and Adam slipped in quietly from the corridor. ‘Are you two all right?’
‘We’re O.K.,’ said Mark, thankful that the film and its running commentary had stopped when the door opened. ‘But you’ve got to help us.’
‘I know. You see, I listened at the door when Grover was talking to you. Do you realise the man is a raving lunatic?’
‘I don’t think he is,’ said Sarah. ‘He knows exactly what he’s doing.’
‘Maybe.’ Adam tugged thoughtfully at his beard. ‘The question is—what do we do?’
‘Stride into the flight deck,’ said Sarah, ‘open that hatch and show everybody the truth.’
Adam said, ‘Ruth won’t like that.’
‘People like Ruth never do like the truth, but this time she’s got to face up to it. Now let’s go and open that hatch.’
Adam and Mark followed Sarah out of the Reminder Room.
On the platform at Westminster Underground Station the Doctor and the Brigadier were poised to blast their way into the lift shaft that led to the control centre. Using a battery-driven drill, the Doctor bored holes into the floor of the broom cupboard.
‘You’re absolutely sure,’ asked the Brigadier, who was preparing the sticks of dynamite to go into the holes, ‘that this is the right broom cupboard?’
‘No doubt about it,’ said the Doctor. ‘They’ve concreted the floor. Once we blast that away, we shall be into the lift shaft.’
A sudden roar abruptly stopped their conversation. The Brigadier swung his torch round. Filling one end of the tubular platform area was a triceratops—nine tons of horned dinosaur with a mouth like a beak.
‘Good grief,’ exclaimed the Brigadier, ‘that must be the ugliest one of the lot!’
The Doctor turned round to look. ‘The neck-frilled variety,’ he commented. ‘They used to roam in great herds across North America, and could charge at up to thirty miles an hour, impaling their prey on those horns.’
‘Most interesting,’ said the Brigadier sarcastically. ‘But what’s it doing down here?’
‘They must know we’re trying to break in, so they’ve materialised that to distract us.’ The Doctor started drilling again and shouted over the noise. ‘It’s stupid really, because charging animals are always at a disadvantage in a confined place.’
‘Perhaps it doesn’t know it’s at a disadvantage, Doctor,’ replied the Brigadier, ‘because it’s coming towards us.’
‘Keep it away somehow,’ said the Doctor, concentrating on his work.
‘Certainly,’ said the Brigadier. ‘I’ll go and say “boo” to it.’ He desperately scrabbled in the bag of equipment he
had brought down from the jeep. To his delight he found a set of flares for use as distress signals. He picked one up, lit it, and walked a few feet towards the triceratops. The monster opened its beaked mouth in fury, roared, and backed up the platform.
‘I think you’ve all three gone mad,’ said Ruth, as she faced Adam, Mark and Sarah in the main living area of the space ship.
‘You could at least listen to us,’ Adam pleaded.
The ex-bank manager stepped forward. ‘That sounds reasonable enough—to listen.’
‘All right,’ Ruth said, ‘what have you to tell me?’ She sounded just like a headmistress addressing naughty children.
‘It’s perhaps best if you watch.’ Sarah crossed to the flight deck and opened the glass door. ‘I’m going to open that hatch.’
‘You’ll only kill yourself,’ said Ruth, ‘and kill us at the same time.’
‘No, I’ll close this glass door first. Then I’ll only kill myself. Now watch!’
Sarah closed the glass door. The whole group, including the reluctant Ruth, moved to the door to watch. Sarah went up to the hatch and yanked the lever. The door opened. Sarah stood at the open doorway and breathed in and out, letting them see her chest rise and fall.
Adam turned to Ruth. ‘Are you convinced now?’
Ruth pulled open the glass door. ‘Where do you say that door leads to, girl?’
‘To the people who have cheated you. I’ll show you the way.’
‘All set,’ shouted the Doctor. He had just finished attaching terminals to the sticks of dynamite set in the floor of the broom cupboard.
‘Just as well,’ said the Brigadier. ‘I’m running out of flares.’
The Doctor ran along the platform towards the steps, uncoiling wire all the way. The Brigadier threw his final flare at the monster and then followed him. Halfway up the steps the Doctor stopped. He attached the wires to a detonator. ‘Here goes, Brigadier!’ He rammed down the plunger. From the platform they heard a huge explosion.
‘Where’s the rope ladder?’
Doctor Who and the Dinosaur Invasion Page 12