Nine: From the Depths
The Doctor pondered mutely whilst driving, trying to reach an understanding of what the garrison at Mersa Martuba had undergone.
An assault, certainly. But by Italian "infernal engines"? Ridiculous! The technology involved in creating those glass vehicles was at least several centuries beyond current human capability. Then there was the dreadful killing mechanism involved; he wasn't familiar with that, a method that reduced human beings to dessicated bundles of stringy waste. From what Roger said, a similar fate befell the workers at Mersa Martuba before war started, a fact which made the Doctor feel even less satisfied. Manipulation of time vectors could produce a similar end result, except he hadn't felt the slightest hint of interference in the fifth dimension.
No, there was an alien influence at work here, one that the Time Lords on Gallifrey deemed important enough to divert the TARDIS to intervene in.
'Nincompoops!' he muttered, to the empty air. Things would be so much simpler if they'd only given him a clue! 'Hands-off deniability!' he huffed.
The Chevrolet ploughed into the sands that marked the beginning of the dune sea, and the Doctor slowed the big truck, gradually bringing it to a halt facing back the way he'd come. You couldn't be too careful – getting back that way in a hurry might be important.
He brought his sonic screwdriver out of a pocket and trained it on the driver's-side door window, moving slowly up through the frequencies until the whole glass panel suddenly became opaque with a sharp ping, a fan of crystalline traceries spreading outwards across the pane. The whole window fell outwards in a shower of glass fragments, allowing hot desert air to flood into the cab.
'Forearmed, if not forewarned,' he muttered to the desert sands. The small arc of tents remained deserted, their fabric flapping in the breeze. No signs of life there. On the other hand, there were three trails leading from the excavation, tracks that ramped over the walls of the basin sheltering the dig, heading off towards the Forward Supply Depot. The three alien devices came from further within the site, then.
Slowly, listening carefully to whatever sounds the wind carried, the Doctor moved up along the track that led towards the dig.
Nothing. No sound of any movement or working at all. No sound of human voices, either, which worried him. If the expeditionary trio had survived, they'd be busily discussing their survival.
Arriving at the lip of the sand basin, he lay carefully on the sands and crawled forwards, until the excavated buildings of Makin Al-Jinni lay below his gaze. Once again, coming back after viewing endless vistas of sand or crude clay buildings or piled pyramids of military supplies, once again he felt struck by the other-worldliness of the complex
Still no movement, he realised. No movement, no sounds of work, no displays of recent activity. Those monstrous black glass vehicles might very well have killed all three of the workers here.
Dragging a small telescope from one of the capacious pockets of his coat, the Doctor scanned the whole site, quartering it twice over just to make sure.
'But screw your courage to the sticking-place, Doctor,' he told himself severely, standing up and striding along the well-trodden sand path, down into the basin and the excavation. Fortunately for him, the path came in from the north-west, and the bulk of The Temple and The Dias shielded him from any curious eyes.
Now, being closer to the buildings, he could hear a subdued, almost inaudible humming.
'Hmm. Non-nuclear, to judge by the timbre and frequency. Oh!'
A dusty hand, trembling and infirm, reached out to tug at his trouser cuff from beneath the sands. As he looked on in startled alarm, the sand rose, revealing a canvas fabric beneath, it's top the upper lip of the canvas tent used by the diggers to shelter from the worst of the sun.
'Get in!' hissed a frantic Albert. 'Quickly!' He raised the canvas higher, allowing the Doctor to slip beneath it. The second he was under, Albert dropped the canvas roof, creating a small pocket of dark, sweaty, smelly, claustrophobic safety and concealment.
'Albert! Did your companions survive?'
'Not Professor Borguebus. A big black glass – black – something evil, it – it killed him. Shrivelled him into nothing.'
Too late for one of the team. The Doctor lit up the interior of the refuge with his sonic screwdriver, casting a wan green light over Albert. Over in a corner, Templeman lurked, looking alternately sullen and dangerous. A camping stove lay on its side between them, a makeshift kettle abandoned alongside it. You couldn't really continue making tea here.
'We hid in here when it killed Borguebus,' said the Professor.
'Are they some kind of Axis secret weapon?' whispered Albert.
'No. They were here long before the Axis arose, Albert. I believe they were left here by the creatures who built this complex.'
Templeman pounced on this use of language.
' "Creatures"? What do you mean? And this religious complex has been here for five thousand years, Doctor Smith. That means those machines cannot have been left here. Not by anyone, least of all "creatures". '
The Time Lord looked witheringly at Templeman.
'Lieutenant Llewellyn described how you suffered losses of workers here the last time. They encountered these machines, Professor.'
'Nonsense!' blustered Templeman, not sounding quite as convinced of his own correctness now. 'Rogues ran off with temple artefacts, that's all.'
'A species of guard device, is my conjecture,' said the Doctor, thinking aloud. 'Triggered by proximity. Any traveller of several millenia in the past who ventured too close to Makin Al Jinni was detected and killed by these machines, including your site workers.'
'You saw Borguebus,' said Albert, a firmer note entering his speech. 'Nothing left of him but rags. Even his clothes fell apart. If that happened to one of your Arab workers, the wind would get rid of the remains in minutes.'
'Creatures,' continued the Doctor. 'Creatures bigger then humans, which accounts for the scale of these structures. Creatures that constructed this site for a utilitarian purpose, thus accounting for the absence of decoration. Creatures that are not human, and probably not native to this world.'
Professor Templeman, proving he had more flexibility in his intellect than others might suspect, went over the evidence and found that Doctor John Smith's hypothesis covered the salient facts.
'I have news that you might welcome,' added the Doctor. 'The three machines made their way to Mersa Martuba and attacked the garrison there. They killed a lot of soldiers, British and Italian, but were destroyed themselves.'
Both the others perked up visibly at this news.
'Why attack the soldiers?' asked Albert. 'They're armed. They can defend themselves.'
'Yes. Why would a machine that functions as a sentinel abandon it's post?' added Templeman.
'Not all of them were armed. The Italians were prisoners. Oh – I wonder, Albert, I wonder.'Sudden inspiration struck the Doctor. 'The Italians were the key! Don't you see?'
Barely visible in the sweaty gloom, Albert and Templeman shook their heads.
'Thirty-eight prisoners, plus J Force – at least another thirty soldiers, and the garrison – say another twenty men. Nearly ninety people, all concentrated in one space.'
'Must be a while since there's been that many people round here,' joked Albert.'Not much in the way of tourist attractions.'
'Exactly! My point precisely – a population density of such magnitude that it caused the machines here to detect it and move to intercept it.'
'Well, let's get out of this fug,' grumbled Templeman. 'I'm nearly choking, here.'
Cautiously and slowly, they raised the canvas cover and peered from underneath it. No signs of killer machinery greeted their eyes.
'Ah. Fresh air,' said Albert, revelling in the dry heat.
'Be careful,' warned the Doctor. 'I believe those killer machines were transmitting energy back to this location, reason unknown.'
He briefly sketched in his theory about The Dais being a trans-mat platform, to the incredulity of both audience members.
'Geo-thermal power?' queried Templeman. 'Preposterous! No such thing exists!'
'Not in your technology, no,' replied the Doctor, drily. 'In fact the leap between current energy production and geo-thermal utilities is about the same as the gap between windmills and hydro-electric power.'
Templeman and Albert exchanged glances, not quite sure if Doctor Smith was making fun of them or being accurate and truthful.
Taking the role of leader by unspoken agreement, the Doctor led them up the wooden steps to The Temple's interior, slightly cooler in the shade than the baking sand basin. They slunk between pillars, casting watchful eyes over the rest of the site.
Nothing seemed obviously different. No movement anywhere, only the thin sound made by the hot desert breeze as it rushed around the pillars, the dust it carried tickling the nose and eyes. The whole place might have been undisturbed for centuries, such was the air of dereliction.
A slight disturbance in the sands to their north caught the eye of Albert, who tugged at the Doctor's coat and pointed. All three moved back behind the cover of pillars, just in case.
A dimple appeared in the un-excavated sands a hundred yards from The Temple, growing larger by the second, until a big funnel-shaped depression thirty feet across existed. With little noise, a big black glassy machine drove up out of the sand funnel, pushing a small wall of sand ahead of it in front of a glassy dozer blade.
Albert and Templeman froze in fear, getting ready to flee. The Doctor stood still, carefully noting the difference between this machine and the ones he'd seen at the Depot.
'Stay still!' he hissed at the other two men. 'That one's not dangerous.'
Instead of the flailing, energy-draining arms, this machine mounted only a big dozer blade on the front, and there were no circular aerials ringing the central "drum". The machine began to scrape tons of sand away from the area near the funnel, shoving it into the area between The Temple and where it had emerged. The funnel lip became shallower, allowing another identical vehicle to appear and begin to shift more sand. This process was repeated every five minutes, until over a dozen identical vehicles were moving around the complex.
'What are they doing?' asked Albert.
'Excavating,' answered Templeman. 'Completing the work we started. Which proves that there is a structure under there to be excavated.' He turned slightly to face the Doctor whilst still watching the synchronised ballet of the excavators. 'We probed the sand with poles, and there is an unyielding object at that location. It was too level and regular to be a natural rock formation.'
More activity at the brink of the sand basin attracted their attention. The Doctor's telescope resolved another black object, a cylindrical tube, the end projecting well beyond the lip of the sand basin, and running back into the sands within. It was supported clear of the sands by a pair of transverse rollers and the muzzle began to spout a steady stream of sand, throwing it beyond the brink. Very slowly, the rollers moved the tube along the crest.
'Sub-surface sand removal,' explained the Doctor to a puzzled Albert. 'That pipe extends all the way back into this complex and is moving sand from around the buildings at the very bottom.' Similar in function to the piping and pumping equipment used to help bring Titanic back to the surface, in fact – or was that in the next century?
The appearance of these modified machines bespoke a responsive intelligence, able to react to the long shrouding of the site with sand. An intelligence, moreover, that had only recently become aware. Or else why had the whole site been left to abandonment?
'I think we ought to leave,' said Albert, visibly nervous.
'Tch!' scorned the Doctor. 'I judge the mean speed of those machines to be twenty miles per hour over loose sand. How fast can you travel? Three miles per hour? Six? You wouldn't even get to the rim before they ran you down.'
Albert stared back accusingly.
'You said they weren't dangerous!'
The Doctor nodded.
'Certainly. As long as we remain here. A vehicle only six feet tall cannot surmount an eight foot perpendicular step.'
Albert acknowledged the truth of this by looking embarassed. Professor Templeman continued to look at the excavation taking place beyond their refuge.
'Remarkable!' he murmured. 'Look at that. The work of months done in hours.'
The diligent machines slowly cleared sand from a collection of structures, moving it to half a dozen different locations around the complex, from where it was carried by pipe and ejected over the wall of the sand basin. Gradually the building the black glass vehicles came from emerged into daylight, a long structure tha curved round in a semi-circle with one end open to the elements. Periodically one of the machines would return there, only to re-emerge a few minutes later. To the east of that structure, directly north of The Dais, a squat cuboidal building sat. Diametrically opposite, on the other side of The Dais to the south, a row of three smaller cuboids were slowly exposed to view. At the eastern cardinal point of the compass, if The Dais was viewed as central to the complex, a jagged black cylindrical stump ten feet high showed where a damaged building had stood. When the excavation neared it's end, the remains of the missing part could be seen: a two hundred yard-long needle that lay shattered in pieces, pointing to the south-east like a stuck compass.
This toppled monolith had smashed open a domed building when it fell, but two more similar domes lay to the north and south of the smashed one, still intact.
'Do you know what these buildings are for, Doctor Smith?' asked Templeman, humbly, probably the first time in his life he'd ever been so abject.
'As I said, The Dais is a gigantic trans-mat platform. My guess is that curved building the machines keep popping back into is a combined factory and energy station.'
Neither man quite followed this explanation.
'I mean, the machines are manufactured there. The factory uses geo-thermal energy to create them and power them – notice that they return there, probably for re-charging, every half-hour.'
Which begged another question, realised the Time Lord. If the complex here used geo-thermal energy – and there was no question that it did – then what did those repellent destructive machines at Mersa Martuba drain biomorphic energy for?
Perhaps that fallen spire would have used the energy in some fashion. Long-destroyed, perhaps it now rendered the alien technology's operation redundant.
'Gosh – look at that!' whispered Albert, urgently. 'Those domes!'
He referred to the two intact domes, which had slowly shed their smothering blanket of sand. Suddenly, any dust left on the glossy black curves shot into the air uniformly, drifting down to ground level without settling back on the curved surfaces.
Remembering his earlier quote from Macbeth, the Doctor felt his skin crawl with apprehension, and possibly premonition; his erratic and wilful parapsychological talents at work, maybe. What was the quote again?
'Something wicked this way comes.'
Farmer Imgelissa had come up on the Overseer's rota to take supplies of bottled algae to the great, grey-granite pile of the Northern Littoral Research Site. He had four hundred bottles to take, carried on the special sled with static-friction runners, and need of a colleague to help tow or push on hard stretches.
He chose Farmer Nurbonissa, the short yet stocky newcomer from the Inland Lakes region. Nurbonissa wasn't big, so didn't need lots of algae to keep himself going, but he was strong, and young and willing.
The gaggle of Overseers approved of Imgelissa's choice without quibbling.
Most unusual! he thought. Avoid a chance to point up their superiority in the caste ladder? They seemed to be discussing secrets amongst themselves, rather than paying attention to normal, humiliating ritual.
Nurbonissa was pleased and flattered to be chosen as an assistant.
'Don't be too happy, young one,' warned Imgelissa, drily. 'We have merely one per cent of the cargo to use ourselves – four bottles.'
'Four bottles we wouldn't get otherwise, Farmer,' replied Nurbonissa. Imgelissa tutted in amusement. Youngsters!
'Okay, I'll pull the sled for the first stretch. You can take over after one thousand paces.'
The big sled stood underneath the blank windows of the accomodation block, harness neatly draped over the cargo boxes. Imgelissa picked up the harness links, took up the slack and dragged the sled away to the north.
Part of the reason he chose Nurbonissa was to have a new topic of conversation during the dull and tiring chore.
'Now, young one, I've never been to the Inland Lakes. Others tell me they're a paradise compared to our life here on the beaches. Is that true?'
Nurbonissa laughed a short, barking laugh.
'Paradise? Paradise! Nothing like, Farmer. No, it is not true. The Overseers regularly apportion five per cent of the population to be consumed, to placate the Warriors.'
Farmer Imgelissa almost turned in the traces, at hearing the figure of five per cent. Here on the beach community the worst ever amounted to two per cent.
'Five per cent! No wonder you moved!'
Nurbonissa made the reflexive double-wave that implied a shrug.
'Not much point in staying. The Overseers and Warriors had fallen to about half their normal population level, algae production was down, strange mineral salts had poisoned some of our stock.'
Definitely not paradise, then. Imgelissa informed his youthful charge of the facts about life on the beach community. Long, hard hours of work. The chance of being caught out by some newly introduced rule that meant your life energies got Eviscerated up by a Warrior. Constant, incessant bullying by the Overseers. Chores like this one – delivering supplies to the Research Site.
"Long Hard chores", Imgelissa might have added. They got to the NLRS after half a day's march, only to be almost ignored. The Overseers and Technicians there were running around with excitement, more gleeful than Imgelissa had ever seen them. The humble Farmer managed to gain access to one of the scientific monitor stations, all flashing display panels and glowing lights, before being chased away.
'This is very unusual,' he told Nurbonissa on the way back to barracks. 'I've never seen them so worried and anxious.'
Ten: The Sleepers AwakeWhile the Doctor and his two highly-reluctant companions watched, the dome furthest from them began to emit a grating, squealing racket as the curved surface began to roll back, revealing the interior.
Rows and rows of black glassy boxes, arrayed in patterns on a flat black floor. The Doctor counted twenty seven, wondering what they were.
This mystery was revealed when the boxes began to slide open, one wall merging seamlessly into the body of each structure. From the newly-created doorway in each case strode a creature definitely not from planet Earth.
'Good God!' gasped the normally firmly-atheistic Professor Templeman. Albert gulped in silent, eloquent testimony. The Doctor looked keenly on, using his telescope.
The creatures stood about eight feet tall, their torso consisting of a massive pillar that bifurcated into powerful legs, ending in webbed feet. There didn't appear to be any visible neck, and their arms were long, powerfully-muscled limbs that emerged from the torso at eye level. Two big, dark eyes sat in the torso, two thirds of the way up, above a thin, wide slash of a mouth. A snaking, weaving proboscis easily as long as the creature's arms lay beneath and between the eyes. Their skin seemed leathery and dull, in varying shades of red, shading into brown and purple.
Once there were twenty seven creatures out in the open, they began to perform exercises in unison, standing alongside their recent cells.
'Monsters!' gurgled Albert. 'Monsters!'
'Nonsense!' chided the Doctor. 'Aliens.'
'What are they doing? It looks like the warm-up before a rugby match,' commented Templeman, fascinated despite himself. He mentally noted that the Doctor's bizarre, not to say impossible, hypothesis, had been proved absolutely correct.
'I think you're partly correct, Professor. Those creatures have been in – let us say hibernation – for several millenia. Being inert for that long must mean a few muscle kinks to work out.'
Various clues were falling into place for the Doctor. To be really certain, he'd need to get up close to one of those aliens.
'What are they? And how did they get here?' asked Albert, his tongue finally unsticking.
The Doctor screwed up his eyes and thought, hard.
'Their physiology denotes an amphibian evolution, Albert. I would guess that their body-shape descends from a form designed to move easily in water. Two eyes, close together, positioned at the front of the body indicates a predatory history. No large talons or visible fangs, however. And they got here via the trans-mat.'
The assembled creatures carried out their gymnastic exercise for nearly an hour, before stopping in ones and twos. A section of the dome wall sank away into the interior and a long, inclined walkway emerged, forming an angled ramp that the creatures walked down. One party split off and headed for the shattered dome, checking over the sand and rubble-strewn interior. Finding nothing worth rescuing or reviving, they then made their way to the first dome, which began to grate and squeal as it, too, opened up.
The second party of aliens made their way to a cuboidal structure north of The Dais. One whole wall concertinaed inwards, allowing the creatures to enter. They spent a long time inside,emerging into daylight only when they had acquired their equivalent of combined clothing and armour. Most of them now wore great padded jackets, replete with rings, pockets, belts, straps and clips, from which dangled unguessable alien technology. A quarter of them wore cylindrical helmets, and most had padded armour covering their arms and legs.
Uncomfortable things to wear in a desert, realised the Doctor. Formal militaristic equipment. Probably a bonding and rank-establishing ritual. This did not bode well!
Several of the helmet-clad aliens stood around the shattered pylon, pointing at it and discussing amongst themselves.
By the time the intact second dome's population had emerged from their little black boxes, the sun had sunk low in the sky.
'Can you do something for me?' asked the Doctor of Albert and Professor Templeman. They nodded. 'I want you to go back to your camp and take the truck you'll find there. Drive it to the garrison at Mersa Martuba and tell them what's happened here.' He dangled the keys for the truck from his hand, tempting them.
There were few protests at this declaration.
'What are you going to do?' asked Templeman.
'Well, naturally, I'm going to go and have a closer look at our new companions!' beamed the Doctor, blandly.
His erstwhile companions stole away silently, not convinced that their ally was being sensible. The Doctor watched both them and the aliens alternately, worried in case the latter detected the former whilst crossing the lip of the sand basin. Fortunately the shadows of dusk camouflaged the pair, and they presented no more than a fleeting shadow to any onlookers.
Adopting a suitably martial pose, hands on torso, Detachment Leader Sorbusa pivoted to look over the Infiltration Complex and his technical complement.
Damn but it was still hot here! Not that he could or would ever admit it, not in front of the staff, since that would be displaying weakness. After undergoing centuries of perfectly-balanced metabolic equilibrium, emerging into the harsh and relentless daylight of this world had been a real trial-by-fire.
He looked ruefully at the collapsed Telemetry Tower, shattered apart. That meant resorting to a slow and laborious trawl amongst the electromagnetic wavelengths of this world's native species, even presuming that the primitives were able to broadcast by now.
Nor was that all the bad news. No, in it's ruin the Tower had fallen across Survival Dome Two, shattering it, smashing the cryo-cubes of the warriors inside. Twenty seven sleepers down already.
A shout from one of the patrolling scouts called him over to the Headquarters building.
Sorbusa looked in surprise and astonishment at the bizarre material structure erected over the steps of the Headquarters, designed to make access more difficult, it seemed.
Sub-Leader Emdoko came up behind him, appraising what the patrol had found.
'The excavators didn't build this, Detachment Leader,' said the Sub-Leader, with just the right amount of deference.
'Obviously not,' retorted Sorbusa. 'Which makes it all the more important we discover what has been happening during our hibernation.'
A team of technicians were in one of the Science Support buildings, situated to the south of the Trans-Mat platform, with that aim in mind. Sorbusa rounded on Emdoko.
'Sub-Leader! I want the excavators recycled into Combat Cars, as soon as possible. It ought to have been done already!'
Emdoko quailed in justified fear. Failure to anticipate, failure to predict, failure in any sense was liable to lead to Evisceration.
'I will see to it personally, Detachment Leader!' he shrilled, departing at a rapid jog.
Sorbusa headed to Science Support One, needing to duck to enter – the excavation hadn't removed quite enough sand from the doorway and surrounding area.
'Detachment Leader!' barked one of the technicians, jumping up in salute.
'Enough of that,' complained Sorbusa. 'What progress?'
The Lead Technician covered his proboscis with both hands, a gesture of nervousness.
'Detachment Leader, from our quartz chronometer, we determine that our hibernation has been – has been for approximately – ah – five thousand years.'
Sorbusa felt as if he'd been hit with the first stage of Evisceration.
'Five – thousand years?' he whispered.
The Lead Technician bowed in silent acknowledgement.
Sorbusa looked at the newly-activated ranks of equipment panels, the flickering displays, the sequences of lights; looked and did not see.
Five thousand years!
The longest his race managed to survive, given unlimited access to sources of life-energy, was two hundred years. This Detachment had been in deep sleep for twenty-five generations. All his relatives, and offspring, and their offspring, and their's too, were all long since dust.
For all he knew, their homeworld was dust, too.
'I do have some good news,' ventured the Lead Technician. Sorbusa waved a hand to continue. 'The Trans-Mat link is still active. Our activation of the Infiltration Complex will be notified back home.'
'So home still exists?' asked Sorbusa. More "demanded" than asked, really.
'Oh, yes,' agreed the Lead Technician. 'The signal is a reciprocal process. A Trans-Mat complex must exist back there for us to get an acknowledgement. For an acknowledgement to arrive means their Trans-Mat is still active and powered.'
The Detachment Leader felt massively relieved, but of course could not show this.
One of the Sub-Technicians raised a hand to be acknowledged. Sorbusa waved a hand back.
'Detachment Leader, we have been able to monitor various wavelengths utilised by this planet's native species.'
'Go on.'
'They appear to be involved in an inter-species war. This area of the continent is part of the battlefield, and the Infiltration Complex is on the periphery of a recent battle.'
Good, thought the Detachment Leader. The more natives there were nearby, the better the bio-energy harvest would be.
Sorbusa waved an arm for silence, wanting to think in quiet.
So, the Sentinel Cars on guard duty must have come across an array of the local natives, and transferred their bio-energy to the Survival Domes, allowing his Detachment to revive. That blessed input of energy wouldn't last long, however. They needed more, and those local natives would supply it.
'Determine the location of the nearest natives. We will move against them. Also, brief and equip one technician for despatch back home via the Trans-mat. He will carry news of what we know to our superiors.'
Fumbling slightly with the keys for the Chevrolet, Albert started up and drove straight away from Makin Al-Jinni, not looking backwards. He half-regretted leaving the Webley with the Doctor, especially since the man had looked at the revolver as if it would turn in his hands and bite.
Professor Templeman sighed heavily, looking in the mirror and holding his head in both hands.
'One of the greatest discoveries of the age, Albert, and we have to abandon it. Living proof of creatures from other worlds! Alien technology, alien equipment, aliens walking around, and we have to leave it all behind.'
'We're alive, Professor. If we'd stayed behind we wouldn't be. I've no idea how Doctor Smith is going to get closer to those monsters, nor what he's going to do when he does.'
Albert dropped a gear to drive up an inclined bank of sandstone.
'I don't know what the soldiers at Martuba are going to say. Captain Dobie isn't very fond of us in the first place.'
The Professor's face expressed craftiness.
'Ah, but we will approach Roger first! Lieutenant Llewellyn.'
The Doctor remained in The Temple, watching aliens below stump around inspecting different buildings, aliens with helmets directing aliens without helmets, aliens re-opening buildings, aliens shoo-ing the excavating robots back into the building they had emerged from.
At one point a pair of aliens came to puzzle over the wooden staircase that led up to the Temple's interior, making the Time Lord worry about having to hide behind a pillar. In the end he didn't have to resort to anything so undignified, since the aliens went off in different directions.
He tried to extrapolate from what behaviour he'd seen so far. These aliens were awakening from a considerable period in cryogenic suspension, then having to make sense of the world around them. How long had they been "asleep"?
'Several thousand years, at least,' he muttered to himself. During which time enormous changes had taken place on planet Earth. These aliens would need to acclimatise themselves in terms of arrival into the twentieth century, when they had arrived hereabouts around the Year Zero, and even that was giving them the benefit of at least a thousand years.
He caught sight of a small commotion taking place at the curved factory building. An alien with helmet – in fact the one that seemed to be in command – was gesturing at another. Their voices were raised, and got louder.
The Doctor grinned with a degree of malicious glee. Even world-spanning aliens could get it wrong!
What happened next made the grin vanish instantly. The commanding alien, with a purple and tan body colouring, lashed out with it's proboscis at the other alien, which instantly went rigid. As the Doctor looked on, the victim began to shrivel and waste away, collapsing inwards until all that remained were the jacket and fitments, and the empty helmet sat upon them all.
Instantly, the Doctor knew what those robots had been doing. Harvesting the energy from living beings, which was transmitted back to this site, allowing the alien garrison to emerge again after millenia asleep.
Then, that made these aliens bio-vores, able to live only by draining the life-force from other living organisms.
Alien bio-vores with trans-mat capability. This, this above all was what the Time Lords had diverted him and Sarah to investigate and prevent.
'Hah! Prevent!' he snorted. There were over fifty of the aliens out there on the site, with their robot excavators. What chance did he have of preventing anything? True, there was the venerable Webley revolver, which he had no intention of using to kill anyone or anything with. It was safer with him than with the rather panicky Albert, though.
A sudden stroke of inspiration struck the Doctor. He had an idea of what to do – risky, but worthwhile if it worked.
Detachment Leader Sorbusa adopted his familiar martial stance, one footweb braced on the shrivelled remnants of Sub Leader Emdoko.
The Sub Leader definitely deserved to be Eviscerated, in that he'd not ordered the factory brain to produce a series of Transport Cars. Sorbusa himself hadn't ordered that, either. However, he did want to instil a feeling of respectful fear and awe amongst the Detachment.
Sub Leader Pakmiro now stood to attention in front of Sorbusa.
'Sub Leader, order the factory to produce three Transport Cars, carrying capacity ten persons. Mount a heavy cannon upon each.'
Pakmiro bowed smartly, then scurried off to perform his task, propelled by the proper degree of fear. Sorbusa felt happier about that; properly awed minions were less likely to challenge and kill him.
One of the Lead Technicians came up to Sorbusa, cringing appropriately.
'Detachment Leader, we have prepared a technician to go through the trans-mat. He awaits your orders.'
Sorbusa made his way to the Trans-Mat Platform, where a warrior stood waiting. In his hand was a scroll of wafer-thin glass, inscribed with details of what the Detachment knew about the world they had emerged into. Not much, really. Still, they hadn't been awake for even a whole day yet.
'You know what your duty is?' asked the Detachment Leader.
'Yes, Leader. I am to present myself to the highest authority beyond the trans-mat and report our situation to them, including the possibility of many sources of bio-morphic energy existing on this planet.'
Sorbusa made the chopping hand gesture that signified approval. He stalked off the platform and over to Science Support One, giving the Lead Technician permission to operate the trans-mat.
The warning siren went three times, and the twin pylons on the platform flashed a dull red three times. The waiting bio-vore vanished instantly, without any sound or light display.
Technician Andoletri, the one chosen to go through the trans-mat, experienced a brief feeling of nausea and vertigo, whilst his surroundings changed from the dusky, dry, hot, dusty desert basin of the Infiltration Complex to the brilliant sunlight of Homeworld, less harsh under the twin red suns, and with a tang that he remembered from decades – actually millenia – ago, before he was sent to Target World Seventeen via trans-mat.
Warning sirens sounded nearby, as Andoletri turned to take in the vista. A huge grey building stood behind the trans-mat platform, which hadn't been there when he'd departed. To north, west and south the familiar barren landscapes rolled away, except that they seemed to lack even the emergency plantations that were being harvested when he was here. To the east lay the sea – and a peculiar-looking sea, at that, choked with weed for miles and miles. Were those objects out there actual live people?
A squad of bio-vores marched onto the platform at the double, having run up the access ramp at the side after being alerted by the sirens.
'I come from the Seventeeth Target World,' began Andoletri, the speech having been rehearsed several times already. 'I bring important news. Take me to the most senior paramilitary officer.'
'Silence!' rasped one of the guards. Andoletri suddenly realised, with surprise, that they were all considerably smaller than he was, and their probosces were all carried in a pouch, instead of hanging free. He also realised, with an unpleasant foreboding, that they were pointing shard-throwers at him. Weapons designed to kill immediately.
'But I have vital information - ' he began.
'Silence, heretic!' snapped the guard. 'Remove all your equipment. Deposit it into the disposal box.' Another guard produced a black glass bin.
Andoletri put his clothing, equipment and weapons into the bin, only pausing with the scroll.
'This is information about the Seventeenth Target World,' he explained, laying the scroll carefully on the platform.
'You were warned, heretic!' shouted the guard leader, raising his shard-thrower. All twelve of the guard detail opened fire, their flechettes slashing into the hapless arrivee, killing him in an instant. The guard leader stamped maliciously on the scroll, shattering it into a mass of glass fragments.
'Remove this carcass,' ordered the guard leader. He watched the body of Andoletri being dragged and thrown unceremoniously from the platform.
'Inform Lord Excellency Sur that as per instructions the heretic is dead. Also, we are ready to send our own unsullied warriors to the Target World.'
Lord Excellency Sur arrived soon after in his personal transport, a friction-sled drawn by ten warriors on punishment detail. He left them in their traces and solemnly walked up the access ramp to the platform.
'Guard Leader Skatachino, sir,' grovelled the leader of the squad that had killed Andoletri, ready to hear praises of his name and promotion, perhaps even a ritual Shortening Of The Name.
Lord Excellency Sur had brought his own Lead Technician with him, and the latter quickly ran through a series of checks and reported back to Sur.
'Skatachino, come here,' boomed Sur. The eager squad leader ran across the trans-mat platform. He stood in front of Sur, which made it easier for the Commander to shoot out his proboscis and Eviscerate the squad leader.
'The trans-mat is no longer working! Take that with you, you blundering incompetent!' bellowed Sur, to the rapidly-shrivelling bundle of fibre that had been Guard Leader Skatachino.