by Jacqueline Rayner, Mike Tucker, Paul Magrs, et al (retail) (epub)
‘Yeah, yeah …’
Mum was distracted, dashing back and forth to the kitchen, getting things ready for Dad’s tea. The chip pan was sizzling. The kids’ teatime had been straight after school, as usual. Dad got home much later, after his factory shift and a pint or two at the club. He’d probably be in a stinking mood again tonight, and that was why Mum was distracted.
‘I hate you lot going round the streets in the dark,’ she said.
‘It’s okay,’ said Ange. ‘All the kids are out tonight.’
‘Just make sure you look after your brothers,’ said Mum.
Eventually the three of them were set loose on the streets, bearing their lantern carefully so as not to put out the candle. Ian’s eyes were wide with astonishment at being allowed out so late. Hallowe’en was like kids had taken over the world.
Of course, the Barnes kids weren’t doing the same thing as all the other kids; they had another plan. A secret one. They were going where their mother had strictly forbidden them to go. They were doing something even worse than knocking on doors. They were going down to the woods.
The woods were a scrubby, neglected copse by the stream that chugged round the edge of town. Decades ago the woods had been much wilder, but the council estates were growing larger each year and even now diggers and chainsaws were poised to rip up yet more of the remaining gnarled and ancient trees. Soon there mightn’t even be any more wilderness left in their town at all.
Ange warned her brothers to move quietly through the undergrowth. She was the vampiric mistress of the dark, leading the way under the swaying canopy of leaves. ‘Keep as quiet as you can. We don’t want Mum or anyone else knowing where we’re going.’
She had made the two of them swear solemnly to stay quiet as they slipped into the shadows. Terry nodded and Ian was mute with excitement. The tiny flame in the lantern guttered and blew out in the chill breeze. Ange turned on her torch and led them into the very heart of the dark woods. To the exact spot where their friend was waiting for them.
Starman.
Even though he wasn’t really a man, and he wouldn’t tell them exactly which star he had come from, that was their name for him.
The three children stood on the damp mulchy earth and Ange banged on the outer shell of the den.
There was a pause, then Starman summoned them inside.
The rank smell of battery acid made Ian wrinkle his nose as he entered the den. He had never been to see Starman before and all of this was new to him. He gripped his older brother’s hand, determined not to cry or say anything wrong. As his eyes adjusted to the dim light, Ian saw the metal monster his brother and sister called Starman. He was roughly conical in shape, made of machine parts, and with two thin arms protruding from his battered body. There was a large, jagged hole in his side and Ian could see something dark and wet glimmering inside.
On the way there, Terry had explained to Ian that many years ago Starman had built the small den for himself out of strange bits and pieces, and he was trapped inside it. The den looked like a pile of junk, really. Starman was old. He didn’t see so well and he found it hard to move around.
Starman seemed excited. His head swivelled about and his one eye lit up at the sight of them. He had news. ‘The sig-nal has been sent!’
His harsh, grating voice came as a shock to Ian. It didn’t sound like anyone he had ever heard before.
‘You got the transmitter working?’ Ange grinned. For weeks she had been bringing him bits and pieces from her dad’s toolbox and shed. She had even nicked one or two electrical parts from her technology class.
‘It is sent. This night. It will be heard!’ Starman said. ‘It must be!’
‘This is our younger brother,’ Terry told him, pushing Ian closer to the bumps on Starman’s shell that he had said were sensors. Terry was having second thoughts about having brought Ian along. He was only a little kid. What if he blabbed to Mum?
Ian stared and said, ‘It’s the monster! The monster in the woods!’
‘Ex-plain,’ demanded Starman.
‘It’s just a story,’ Ange added hurriedly. ‘That’s what some people say round here. Mum says we should stay away from the woods, because there’s a monster.’
Starman extended his electronic arms – one was a car aerial with a claw and the other was a sink plunger – and the children saw that he was making minute adjustments to an extraordinary machine in the corner of his den. Part of it was an old-fashioned radiogram that the children had found at the town dump. Its wires and circuitry had been yanked out and welded together in a bizarre new arrangement incorporating all sorts of household objects. Now it was blinking and humming and changing its tune slightly as Starman delicately turned dials.
‘Soon there will no lon-ger be a mon-ster in the woods,’ he said, grinding out the words. ‘You will fetch one more item. To en-sure the mes-sage re-peats and re-peats.’
‘If we can help, of course,’ said Ange. ‘We can come back tomorrow, perhaps. After school?’
‘Now! You will bring it now!’ Starman ordered angrily. His aerial arm lashed out and its claw grasped hold of Ian, who cried out in alarm. Starman dragged the small child towards him abruptly. ‘The in-fant will stay with me here until you do.’
‘Look, Jo, fond as I am of Miss Hawthorne and her fellow villagers at Devil’s End, I’m afraid I won’t be traipsing halfway across the country for a Hallowe’en shindig tonight.’
Jo Grant was already dressed up as a black cat, with whiskers, ears and a furry tail. She had brought the Doctor his tea in the UNIT laboratory, expecting to find him ready to race off in Bessie to enjoy the festivities. ‘Olive will be so disappointed,’ she said glumly. Jo had been looking forward to catching up with the friendly White Witch and reminiscing about their adventures.
The Doctor was deep in contemplation of a sophisticated lash-up that was presumably all to do with his endless efforts to get the TARDIS working again. ‘You humans really do have the silliest festivals,’ he said, staring intently at the machine.
‘What is that thing, anyway?’ Jo asked.
‘It’s what ensures that the temporal circuits never overheat when the TARDIS moves between dimensions. It’s like a very tiny –’
‘Time fridge?’
He pulled a face at her. ‘Oh, really, Jo.’ He blinked. ‘Why have you got cat ears and whiskers on?’
They were interrupted by an alarm bell from the TARDIS. Jo followed the Doctor into the cavernous, glowing interior, where the noise was ear-splitting.
‘It’s bound to be something annoyingly urgent.’ The Doctor sighed.
Jo covered her ears. ‘Switch it off!’
‘I set up this alarm to detect erroneous time technology,’ said the Doctor, his hands roving over the control panels. ‘In case anyone’s up to something they ought not to be, or using something I might find useful for my own experiments … Aha! It’s a kind of transmitter. It’s operating from a town not seventy miles from here … and it’s broadcasting straight into the Time Vortex.’ He looked up with a smile. ‘You were wanting a run out in the car, weren’t you?’
‘To a party.’ Jo tapped her cat’s tail wistfully against the console. ‘Not an investigation.’
But already the Doctor was dashing back into the lab and yanking his black velvet opera cloak off the hatstand. He grinned at her as they exited the TARDIS. ‘It’s a trip out, isn’t it?’
Ange and Terry made their way back home from the woods, emerging from the undergrowth dishevelled and worried. They wouldn’t admit it to one another, but they were terrified of what Starman would do to their little brother if they couldn’t find the object he needed.
How could we just leave him? Ange thought frantically. Even for a minute? He’s only just started infants’ school and we left him there in the woods with … with Starman.
She and Terry had tried to look as if they were just pretending and playing a game. Ian had been so brave, but the electronic arm that held him was
clearly nipping his skin. Ange had seen the tears welling up in his eyes. ‘We’ll be back as soon as we can,’ she had promised.
They took a shortcut through the building site, where rows of new houses stood half built, ringed with moats of deep, muddy puddles, and surrounded by machinery that looked like frozen prehistoric monsters.
‘He’ll be okay,’ Ange said, trying to reassure herself as much as Terry.
‘Mum is going to kill us …’ Terry whispered.
They slipped back into the quiet streets of their estate. By now, most of the kids had gone home for the night. The street lamps cast a sickly yellow glow over everything and the tarmac glistened.
‘Starman’s our friend,’ Ange continued. ‘He won’t hurt Ian.’
‘What do we really know about him, Ange?’ Terry replied angrily. ‘He’s a monster! Did you see the way he grabbed hold of him? Our Ian’s a … hostage.’
Ange gulped. Terry was right. ‘Then we just have to do exactly what he told us, don’t we?’
As they let themselves into their garden, Ange was thinking about the first time they’d found Starman, weeks ago, down in that wooded dell. They’d seen ice-blue lights flickering through the trees and had steeled themselves to approach. They found him in his den, where he had lived secretly for so many years. Tinkering with his machines. Repairing his own body. Talking about escape.
He’d been frightening, but friendly enough. He talked a bit funny and shouted sometimes, but Ange and Terry had been entranced by him. ‘A talking robot!’ Terry had gasped.
That hadn’t pleased Starman at all. ‘I am not a ro-bot!’ he’d shrieked. ‘I am a su-per-i-or be-ing!’
When they finally got home, they could hear their parents rowing before they even opened the door.
‘They’re at it again,’ said Terry with a sigh.
Judging by the broken crockery and smeared food on the kitchen lino, their parents must have started fighting shortly after Dad had got home. The ruckus now blared from the living room, louder than the telly.
‘Look at it this way,’ Ange said. ‘They won’t notice us creeping in and out again.’ Her heart was beating like crazy. What if they came face-to-face with Mum? How would they explain that a robot was holding Ian prisoner?
But the adults were too absorbed in their fighting to notice.
‘Come on,’ Terry said, heading upstairs. ‘It’s in my room.’
They had come to fetch the old 1960s tape recorder Granny Barnes had given them. It had spools of magnetic tape the size of dinner plates – just the thing Starman needed for looping and repeating his message to outer space. It was in a leatherette carry-case. A family heirloom. The kids were loath to hand it over, as the tape held recordings of long-gone family members, aunts, Granny Barnes herself, and even Dad when he was little, singing at Christmas. All these recordings would be lost if they took the recorder into the woods.
‘We have to,’ insisted Ange, seeing a moment of doubt flicker across Terry’s face. ‘He’s got Ian. We must do exactly as he says.’
‘I wish we’d never met Starman,’ Terry said.
The Doctor’s mouth was set in a determined line as he gripped the steering wheel of his vintage yellow roadster, Bessie.
‘You’ve hardly said a word all the way down the motorway,’ Jo shouted over the shrieking of the wind.
Glancing at her, the Doctor’s expression softened. ‘I’m sorry, Jo. It’s just that for a moment I was alarmed by the energy signature of that transmission. It could be the most ghastly news.’
‘Oh,’ she said, trying to look confident. ‘Well, I’m sure we’ll be able to deal with it, whatever it is.’
She had absolute faith in the Doctor and her smile cheered him up as he veered abruptly off the motorway at the turn-off for New Alverton, a modern and obscure little town that appeared to be the epicentre of the cosmic transmission.
‘It’s such an ordinary place,’ Jo said minutes later, as they surveyed the housing estates and rows of identical, boxy houses. But by now she knew – after a couple of years with UNIT and the Doctor – that looks could be deceiving and there was no such thing as a completely ordinary place.
The Doctor produced a sophisticated-looking homing device that pulsed with green light. ‘We’re very close.’
The kids knew it was much too late for them to be out, but what could they do? Starman kept a tight grip on Ian as he worked on the tape recorder. He displayed little gratitude and hardly said a word as he picked apart the device, tugging the shiny tape from its spools.
Eventually Ange spoke up. ‘Can we take our little brother home, please? Mum will be frantic.’
Starman wheezed mechanically as he went about his work.
‘It’ll be worse for you,’ Terry said bravely, ‘if she phones the police and everyone comes looking for us. They’ll search everywhere, especially the woods. They’ll find you.’
‘I will de-fend my-self as I have done be-fore.’
Neither Ange nor Terry knew what that meant, but there were many horrible tales of people disappearing forever in these woods. Hence the local legend to do with the monster.
Now the machine was rattling and hissing as the tape ran round. Starman was speaking in an unknown tongue, repeating phrases. The children imagined his message spiralling into the stars.
‘Will they come to get you?’ asked Ange.
‘I do not know.’
‘Don’t you have family?’ Terry said. ‘Others like you who’ll be worried about you? Who’ll want to see you again?’
Starman said, ‘I have no fam-i-ly. If it proves ad-van-tage-ous to them, the Da-leks will come here. Per-haps.’ His eyestalk flashed cobalt blue. ‘And if they come they will conquer this –’ he stopped abruptly. His machine was emitting a high-pitched noise. ‘My mes-sage has been in-ter-cept-ed.’
A green light was blinking busily.
‘By your kind?’ Terry asked.
Starman swivelled round to shout at the children. ‘No! By our enemy. He is app-roach-ing! You must bring him here to me! At once!’
‘W-who?’ asked Ange. ‘Who must we bring?’
‘The one they call Doc-tor!” shrieked Starman. ‘At once!’
Jo and the Doctor had spent almost an hour wandering the labyrinthine streets of the estate. Jo was becoming uneasy about what they were supposed to be on the look-out for. When they reached a small playground she sat on a swing and asked him straight out.
The Doctor rubbed the back of his neck and told her.
‘There’s a Dalek ship somewhere in this town?’ she gasped.
‘A small one. Clearly lost and out of phase. Probably it was travelling back from the twenty-second century and all the mischief they caused there …’
‘I remember,’ said Jo, reflecting that she’d hardly describe the mayhem she’d witnessed in the future as simple mischief. ‘Look, shouldn’t we have told the brig straight away?’
The Doctor pulled a face. ‘I’m not having the brigadier swarming down here mob-handed with tanks and helicopters. I want to see what’s going on first.’
At that moment Jo became aware of a movement in the mist at the other side of the playground. Two figures came to stand underneath the yellow lamp. ‘Look!’ she said, pointing at them.
The Doctor’s head jerked round. ‘Who is that?’ he asked sharply.
Jo got to her feet. ‘They’re only children, Doctor. Don’t scare them.’
She hurried past the slide and came face-to-face with Ange and Terry. Straight away she could tell there was something terribly wrong. ‘It’s nearly midnight. What are you doing out so late?’
‘H-he’s got our kid brother, miss,’ Terry burst out. ‘And he won’t let him go.’
‘Who has? Who’s got your brother?’
‘He has,’ Ange said. ‘The monster. He’s been getting us to help with his machine and it’s been okay, but tonight he’s finished it and the thing’s working and he’s gone nasty and taken our kid brother.�
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‘Where is this person?’ Jo asked.
The Doctor crossed the playground in two strides, his cloak billowing behind him. His white hair glowed in the harsh streetlight and the two children shrank back. ‘You’d better tell us at once. If I’m right, we’re all in the most terrible danger.’
‘We can take you to him,’ said Terry, reaching out to grab Jo’s hand.
Over the years there had been other children – and some adults – who had strayed into the woods and made the monster’s acquaintance. Some had been almost as useful as the Barnes children. Starman remembered one child in particular, perhaps as many as twenty Earth years ago, who had brought him a box full of lead soldiers when the Dalek had demanded a supply of metal. The little boy had brought his most treasured possessions quite willingly and watched as the Dalek had heated them up and melted them into a brilliant, shining soup, which he then used to fix the shielding around his interior shell. Almost too late, for the cracks in his interior caused by the crash-landing had partly exposed his vulnerable innermost self to the noxious pollutants of the Terran atmosphere – but the molten soldiers had done their work and saved him. Yes, that boy twenty years ago had saved his life. It had almost been a pity when the time had come to exterminate him.
Pity? The Dalek checked himself. Why was that word even in his vocabulary? Let alone in his thoughts and memories. He was more polluted than he had realised. If only his laser weapon still worked as it had sixty years ago.
‘Please,’ the human creature they called Ian was whimpering. ‘What if they can’t find this man? What will you do, Starman?’
The Dalek ignored him. He was feeling annoyed by this present generation of helpers. He noticed that the green light was flashing more frenetically. ‘They have lo-ca-ted him. They have brought him in-to the woods.’
‘Who is it?’ Ian asked.
‘He is our great-est –’
They were interrupted by a great burst of laughter. ‘You’re hardly the scourge of the galaxy, are you?’ came a voice that sounded both young and old, loud and soft, confident and yet filled with wonder.