by Mark Gatiss
Just as he was thrusting the key back into place a tremendous roar, louder even than the deafening cacophony of the light-column burst upon them and both he and the Doctor looked up. A great dark shape was powering down from the sky. Dive-bombing.
‘No! No!’ snarled the Master as the Spitfire entered the blue light and spiralled round and round towards them. The ninth key slipped back into its socket without a sound.
The Doctor stepped out of the column as though hopping off a bus. In seconds, the intensity of the light increased again. He could see the Master as though through a sheet of ice.
Their eyes met for a long, long moment. Two Time Lords. So similar in so many ways. Yet separated by a gulf as wide as the Universe itself. Two Time Lords. One safe. One doomed.
The Master held up his hand but the gesture was unclear.
Then, with a tortured whine, the Spitfire crashed into the centre of the column.
The Doctor threw himself to one side, rolling over and over until he deemed it safe to look back.
The column of light lit up with a new and fiery radiance as the aeroplane exploded into flames within it. There was a colossal boom and then a horrible, tortured, wretched scream blasted through the night. It echoed across the aerodrome and out over the wide, flat fields.
Within the column, the Gaderene shimmered and began to diminish, stretched into fibrous shapes as they were sucked backwards into the heavens. Light seethed over them, splitting them into tiny pixels of flesh, blood and bone, as the nine keys disintegrated in the firestorm and the aliens were dragged back along their dimensional pathway.
The Doctor peered ahead, struggling to make out the Master, but there was no sign of him.
He got to his feet and ran back towards the column. There was a final juddering scream, then it was all gone. The column of light. The roar of its energy.
Suddenly there was nothing but a devastating silence.
The Doctor sank back on his haunches.
Release… It felt her passing and it mourned. Every fibre of its hideously mutated flesh cried out in agony. But now it could let go. The struggle was over…
Sergeant Benton had his rifle trained on the worm, ready for one last desperate assault, when the creature suddenly and inexplicably crashed to the ground, quite dead. Benton looked up, not quite daring to believe his eyes.
Its flesh was steaming, like overcooked meat. The Brigadier came over and gave the worm’s carcass an experimental kick. It didn’t move.
Around them, dazed villagers were slowly coming round, expelled Gaderene embryos hanging from their mouths like ectoplasm.
The Brigadier looked over towards the airstrip where he had seen the Spitfire crash. There was absolutely no sign of it.
And now the searing column of light streams back along the path it followed, rippling like a ribbon, crazed, unfettered, out of control. Blazing through the poisonous atmosphere of the planet, it thunders into the steel palace, vapourising the entire structure, along with the Apothecaries who have laboured so long and so hard.
But the destruction of the palace is lost in the global catastrophe as the planet ends its days. Tectonic plates crumple into one another, great volcanic masses vomit fiery lava into the black, black sky.
The ground rolls and splits and engulfs itself.
And the last of the Gaderene are no more…
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
PEACE-TIME
Max Bishop was more surprised than he could adequately express to find himself lying in a wet field with his brother by his side.
He looked up at the sky, which was just showing the first streaks of dawn, and blinked repeatedly. There was a very nasty taste in his mouth.
Glancing down, he could just make out a small, almost formless thing, lying in the corn to his right. It was rather like a crab, or some kind of worm, but its flesh was blackened, twisted and dead. There was another one lying by Ted who was slowly coming round.
Max sat up and shook his head. His clothes were filthy and wet. His favourite bow tie was torn and hanging over one shoulder. But he was all right.
He glanced across at his brother and tried to smile. It hurt to do so. Max settled instead for a touch on his brother’s hand.
‘Hello Ted,’ he said quietly.
Mrs Toovey was already moving between the confused villagers who had woken to find themselves in a ring outside the aerodrome. She fussed over them, wishing fervently that there was a tea urn close by.
She recognised many of her friends. Miss Arbus, Mrs Garrick, even Commander Tyrell who looked most confused of all. He gazed through the fence at his beloved aerodrome and then down at the disgusting crab-like creature that was curled up on his chest.
Mrs Toovey frowned as she saw something unpleasant nearby. A skinny boy – Graham, she thought he was called – was standing over another boy she didn’t recognise. Graham was kicking the boy repeatedly in the ribs.
Mrs Toovey raced up to Graham and pulled him away.
‘Really!’ she admonished. ‘I don’t think that’s very nice at all, is it?’
Anthony Ayre looked up from his prone position on the ground and then over to Graham Allinson. The bully remembered what had happened at the bottom of the garden and he felt suddenly cold and sick.
Graham smiled a natural but nicely smug smile. Somehow he didn’t think he’d be having much trouble from Anthony again.
It was Noah who saw the parachute first.
As his father ran up to embrace him, Noah glanced over Ted’s shoulder and saw the old-fashioned silk canopy as it floated gently to the ground. Wing Commander Whistler landed expertly and was gathering the ’chute behind him as the Brigadier ran up.
‘Alec, old man. Well done!’ he enthused, pumping Whistler’s hand.
Whistler waved away his praise and together they walked towards the airstrip. The old man paused by the great carcass of the Gaderene worm, its scales glittering in the dawn light.
The UNIT troops gave Whistler a hero’s welcome and Jo gave him a peck on the cheek.
‘Nice to meet you at last,’ she said.
Whistler smiled. ‘Charmed, Miss… er…?’
‘This is Miss Josephine Grant,’ said the Brigadier.
Whistler looked around. ‘Where’s this Doctor chap, then?’
Jo glanced across the airstrip.
The Doctor was standing where the column of light had been. There was nothing there now but a wide circle of scorched grass. His hands were thrust deep into his pockets as he gazed ahead.
Jo took Whistler over to meet him and the Doctor shook the old man’s hand. But he didn’t smile and soon detached himself from the little group. Jo followed and fell into step with him.
‘Are you all right?’
The Doctor gave a small, sad smile. ‘Yes. Yes, of course, Jo. We’ve won. The Earth is safe. The Gaderene have been defeated.’
Jo nodded. ‘And wiped out.’
The Doctor nodded. ‘I wish there’d been another way. In the end, they just wanted a home.’
Jo sighed. ‘And the Master? What happened out there on the airstrip?’
The Doctor looked into the middle distance. ‘He’s gone.’
‘For ever?’
The Doctor didn’t answer. He walked ahead, his head sunk low on his chest.
Jo walked slowly back towards the Brigadier.
Whistler was looking down at the scorched earth. He could just make out the remains of his lucky charm, projecting from the blackened soil just as it had all those years before.
He thought briefly of the girl again but pushed the memory aside. Time to move on.
He sniffed. ‘I say. Who was that chap I saw? He was down here when I made one of my passes. Dark-looking chap. With a beard. Assumed he was one of Bliss’s lot.’
‘Not exactly,’ said the Brigadier.
Whistler shrugged. ‘Oh. Friend of the Doctor’s?’
Jo and the Brigadier exchanged glances.
Jo watched as the Doct
or walked slowly back towards his car, a tall figure against the rising sun, his cloak flapping in the fresh wind.
‘Just someone he went to school with,’ she said.
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First published in 2000 by BBC Worldwide Ltd.
This edition published in 2013 by BBC Books, an imprint of Ebury Publishing.
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Copyright © Mark Gatiss 2000, 2013
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