by Konig, Artor
Maybe Ronald was there, feeling the stuffiness of the place. But normally the windows were not opened there. I glanced around once again, picking up odd details that I had not noticed about the castle before. There were dry leaves blowing about the yard, a small heap had already gathered in one corner close to the wall. There were three pegs on the line; one line of the fourteen strung across the yard. June misliked the lines on the near side of the yard because they were rather high and she had trouble reaching them.
Some bold seagulls, more ambitious than the common run of those birds, floated about over the castle walls, thin and high the wails with which they teased the wind. I heaved myself off the rail and trotted after those two who were already halfway up the stairs. They were deeply into whatever they were on about, sedate and slow in their ascent. I was right behind them when they stood on the balcony outside the kitchen door. The Doctor went in, the Master just behind him, his eyes glued on the Doctor’s hands which were describing some complex concept in simplified movements. They stood in the middle of the kitchen, the Master with his valise by his feet, the Doctor looking around him as if he had mislaid a valuable cup of tea.
“There doesn’t seem to be anybody attending to tea.” He concluded in a grave tone of voice, “Maybe you’d better see to it.” He told me helpfully.
“For how many, though?” I wondered aloud, “Sixteen; no, seventeen in all. Damn it all, I’d give anything to be able to make Andrew another cup of tea.” I turned to the urn that somebody had thoughtfully forgotten to fill. Myself probably; I was the one who was usually expected to do that job. I went over to the comlink and addressed myself to it firmly, “Anybody who wants tea please attend the meal in the kitchen at once. Give me a shout so I know how much to prepare.”
The comlink was silent. I looked at it, slightly worried. Even if the boys didn’t want tea, they usually gave some sort of an indication that they had heard. I turned to the Doctor, puzzlement showing on my face. As my eyes swept past the Master, I saw a quickly hidden glint of glee in his eyes, so slight that I could not be sure of it.
“Nobody’s responding, Doctor.” I told him briefly, turning away from the comlink and going to the larder. I hauled out a couple of cake tins and put them down on one of the counters. I took out a knife to cut the cakes with; a long, sharp knife, just in case.
“Let’s go and rouse them up. They’re probably asleep or some of them may be out on a mission.” The Doctor replied reasonably.
The Master was on his feet at once, leaping up from his chair as if propelled by one of his fiendish contraptions. I glanced around; the urn would take a while to boil and there was nothing that actually needed my attention. The thermostat would shut off the urn when it did boil so I could leave it. At once I placed myself in the van and trotted after the Doctor. I negated his suggestion that I start preparing tea, countering that with the reply that I would like to know just how much to prepare before I started.
The yard before the keep was innocent of people; the air was heavy with afternoon sun and the weighty scent of honeysuckle.
The main hall as well was deserted; there were scant signs that the place had ever known people. We barely glanced around the place. The Doctor addressed himself rather loudly to the comlink; to no avail. An empty feeling crept over me as I watched the Master standing behind the Doctor, both of them intent on the little talking box that for once was dumb. In silence they turned from the hall to the north-west tower, the silent and brooding height of the roundhouse. We walked swiftly past the empty flags, the towering walls shrouded in vines, the dry leaves here as well, sweeping and rustling about the yard although there wasn’t much of a breeze.
The door of the roundhouse was ajar, creaking slightly as it opened more. Within the hall, the lowest level of the roundhouse everything was dark. We hit the stairs up quickly, climbing swiftly through level after level, each one of them dark and silent. On the fifth level the Doctor went quickly down the passage, throwing open doors and glancing within. He came back quickly, his face set. Without a word he led the way up to the highest level, the upper control. That huge room that took up the entire area of that floor but for the stairwell was in marked contrast to the rest of the castle; it was humming with activity. The busy machines mapped, plotted, traced and kept tabs on, filing information and processing it, forming conclusions with almost human dexterity but far more accurately. For all the machines were busy there was a dearth of people. No Ronald; No Garreth; the two who were supposed to be there; nobody else, either. A sharp breeze blew in through one of the windows; the one I had seen from the courtyard; there was a mess of paper on the floor.
The Doctor ignored it after giving it a sharp glance.
He walked over to one of the system monitors, flicking in his code quickly. At once the screen came alive; he pressed in the flight sequence, reading the screen. Even from where I stood close to the door I could see the response; three emergency missions, crew of four, five and five. Everybody was out of the castle, doing who knew what somewhere on the face of the earth. The Doctor punched in the seeker sequence; there was no response.
The listing gave the proposed flight plans but there was no indication that they had been followed. The boys had become rather slack about setting their radio-tracers before a trip so the flight could be monitored; none of them had even thought about it this time, it seemed like. The Doctor turned to look at me, “We’ll go down to the nest; I want to activate their locators by the remote system. It looks as if there will only be the three of us for tea; could you attend to that, while we get through to the others?” He asked politely.
I decided that it was time to give my scared Cassandra impersonation; I had no intention of leaving the Doctor and the Master alone together, or of being alone with the Master myself, “Oh, Doctor, it’s simply a matter of pouring out the water and cutting the cakes; it won’t take three minutes; can’t I come with you? I really don’t want to be by myself.”
I was asking the Doctor but watching the Master to see what his reaction was. It was the one gambit that I knew to which there was no fair answer and I saw my confirmation in the look of annoyance that the Master flashed at me. That momentary lapse of his concentration probably helped matters a little as well; the Doctor, who had been hard-faced and determined, allowed his expression to soften at this candid admission of frailty on my part. He smiled; the second genuine smile that I had seen, the second time it had been directed at me. He placed his hand on my shoulder and nodded, “Come on then.”
We turned from the busy machines, back to the staircase. Once again I lagged behind, trying to be small and obscure. The two got back into whatever they were talking about though the Doctor no longer had his heart in it.
We crossed the desolate yard, the sun high on the wall of the keep, getting ready to abandon the yard as everybody else had done. We crossed the hall to the stairs going down, walking swiftly and with purpose. I was torn between going into the kitchen for my carving knife and my fear of leaving the Doctor alone with the Master for even a minute. Fear won, as it had so many times before.
I slipped quietly down the stairs, now keeping my eyes and mind alert for my chance to act. It now came to me with some force that there was nobody I could spill my fears to and that there was very little time in which to do anything. The Doctor and I were the only people left between the Master and final control of Black Crag, with its machines well capable of making that destroyer network the Master wanted.
I realised then that if the Crag was left unmanned there would be nobody; nobody at all; to stop the aliens when they came and mounted their treacherous attack. The Master had heard enough from the Doctor to use the machines; it would not be impossible, in his opinion, to master one of the Wrens; that’s what I felt he was thinking. He would not be in a hurry to make his move, however; that I saw and grasped as another small advantage; he had only to wait till we were both asleep; we would never awaken. And the Wrens with their crew; I suddenly knew that
they would not be coming back. The Master would not expect any form of aggression from us; he was easy in his mind as far as that was concerned. I decided that I would wait until the Doctor had located the Wrens before I dug up a suitable response. After all, I could yet be wrong.
There were only two Wrens on the concrete floor of the nest; Number One and Number Three. The Nest had that same air of waste and desolation; the silence, the quiet craft seeming asleep as they crouched in their places, the cold breeze that blew around us as we stood at the foot of the stairs. The Master looked at the Wrens, his expression gloating, his eyes hard. He turned to follow after the Doctor, already on his way to the larger system that made up lower control. Upper control had a larger bank of telescope, radar and radio screening apparatus; lower control had the aircraft monitors and the duplicate flight controls.
The Doctor sat himself down at the main locator console; I stood next to him. The Master turned back to the larger cavern and stood in the doorway, looking at the two remaining craft. I kept my eye on him though I paid dutiful attention to the information that the screen brought up. The black despair that I had felt that morning came back to me. It was sicker and huger and more terribly unreal as the information was finally brought to light, dug out of the flight recorders of the three Wrens.
“Wing wrack failure; inertialess lapse at critical point; the rotors ripped off; the craft destroyed. How can that be?” The Doctor’s voice was strange, muffled, his words full of pain and puzzlement. His head was shaking as he went over the details of the three wrecked craft, “How could they all suffer exactly the same fault at almost exactly the same time; all at once? I don’t understand it.”
I heard the quiet tread of the Master as he turned away from the portal and came towards us over the empty floor. I knew then that I would never get another chance. In my left hand I snatched a spare magazine, in my right I scooped up the heavy pistol from where the Doctor had laid it before he sat down. I took three swift paces away from the Doctor so he couldn’t intervene, and pointed the weapon straight at the Master. “Who are you?” I asked coldly, my eyes steady along the sights.
The transition from man to spider was unbelievably fast; its attack stunning; the huge creature leapt at me from its position almost twenty yards away. But I was standing with the pistol in my hands already aimed and cocked and the core of my skill was the speed of my reactions and the steadiness of my eye. The pistol barked once, twice, thrice; the fourth slug launched when the monstrous creature was less than two yards away. I leapt aside, the soles of my track shoes squeaking on the polished floor but not slipping. I wrenched out the first magazine, slammed in the next while the Doctor stood bemused behind me. The beast was tumbling on the floor, trying to regroup itself, to turn when its grip was not yet sure. I aimed carefully, deliberately launching each hollow-point slug at where the monstrous brain was trying to co-ordinate its attack. There was another magazine in the Doctor’s hand when this one was emptied and another after that. I left the Master as a twitching pulp, unable to move, hammered and shredded by those deadly shells. At last I lay the heavy pistol aside, staring at the horrible grey mess which was all that was left of the Master.
I turned to look at the Doctor, weaving on my feet, the blackness surging up all around me. He was looking at the huge creature, his expression sick and his face white. I looked again, my eyes trying to focus on the fathom-long body, the long black legs, the grey slime; but I could feel my control slipping. I turned to the Doctor, feeling the faintness being replaced by tears.
“You seem to be in the habit of saving my life.” He told me gently, “I cannot hope to repay what you have done for me today.”
He looked back at the dead alien, shaking his head as the weight of the whole event slowly sank in, the sense of loss as he stood in-amongst the wreckage of his project, shaking the last webs from his mind, freeing himself from the dead creature’s cunning.
He shut down the radio locator angrily, tucked his pistol back in his belt, putting the spent magazines into his pocket. I had sagged down into the chair he had been sitting in, but my eyes were still on his face.
“Doctor?” I asked softly.
“Yes Cassandra?” He responded, looking down at me.
“We must find that fault at once and repair it.” I told him, “The other spiders are still on their way, after all.”
“You’re right.” He said quietly, “Right again; we must work on that immediately, we must stop this peril at once. Thank you, Cassandra.”
The tears are still hot; the dreadful cold still running its fingers down my back; I can still see those evil, faded blue eyes as the Master’s face refuses to be purged from my memory. It is as if he was still here, watching me intently from the black windows of his haunted keep.
16. Rebuilding
Nevertheless we did not do anything else towards remedying the ruin of the base that day. The Doctor was too depressed, I was simply too tired. What we did do; the only thing we managed to force ourselves to do, was to load the horrible mess that had been the Master onto one of the trolleys in the Nest and cast it out over the cliff.
This took a good couple of hours to do; the remains were heavy and the corpse broke up when we were handling it. It was fair enough to leave dead spiders around in passages that we were not ever likely to use again, but here, right by the control panels of lower control, that stench and mess would be more than my mind at least could cope with. The Doctor felt much the same; or at least he conveyed that impression. I could not be sure. The shocks I had endured that day made me unwilling to place my trust in appearances.
Anyway the Doctor struck me as being profoundly changed. His eyes were faraway, his manner much more thoughtful and preoccupied than before. It was as if his encounter with the spiders and their Master had changed his approach to the project he had set himself with the creation of the Wrens.
The Master’s devilish idea of a satellite network and a system whereby all war could gradually be replaced with a single, stern planetary government seemed to have taken root in his mind.
We struggled with the trolley; it was hard enough for me to find the strength to move it across the flat floor of the nest; how we would cope when we came to the rough path up the tunnel leading out I didn’t like to think. I had no reserves, no stamina left; it came as a shock to me, one more battering on my torn nerves, when we stood at the cliff edge at last. The Doctor took over the trolley entirely; he seemed to think about the matter for a few minutes before he pushed the whole messy bundle, rags and cloths and bits used to clean up the mess on the floor, violently over the cliff. It was as if he had thought about saving the trolley but had decided that cleaning it up afterwards, especially after it started smelling, would be more of a problem than the trolley was worth. He stood staring at the forgiving grey sea for a good few minutes before turning away. He sighed, for the moment seeming small and sad like a child who has just lost his favourite toy rather than a brilliant scientist facing ruin and hideous death.
“Teatime?” He asked me hopefully.
“Teatime.” I confirmed, “Let’s have a spot of supper at the same time and call it a day.” I continued thoughtfully, looking out of the cave at the darkening world beyond. At least the violent storm had passed; both of them. There would be further storms, that I didn’t doubt, “It’s been a rather long day after all.” He took the main discs from both the Wrens and the recording tapped from the flight recorders of the three wrecks, slipping them into a safety cover and putting that vast store of information into his breast pocket. We made our way up the stair; not exactly quickly but not as slowly as we had come down. We had found some slight reserve of energy, or at least I had. The Doctor went on to the roundhouse while I adjourned to the kitchen; the one place where I could still trust my judgement and strength.
I left the tins of cake out for us to nibble on after our lonely meal. I spent a good hour getting the meal on; largely because I wanted it to cheer the Doctor up a little,
but also because I was having a lot of trouble concentrating through my fatigue. At last the meal was ready to serve but still the Doctor had not appeared; I felt a sudden surge of panic and was all set to go scurrying up to the roundhouse when I remembered the comlink. I addressed it in a tone of voice designed to wake up somebody who’d just dropped off to sleep. The Doctor replied at once, “Oh, good; thank you Cassandra; I’ll be right down. I think I’ve found out what caused those accidents but I’ll have to confirm it in the Nest tomorrow.”
I at once set out the meal, knowing that he would not take more than a couple of minutes to get to the kitchen. I had just finished stirring his tea when he came in, seeming more sprightly and lively than before.
“Ah, good; this looks splendid.” He told me, taking his seat at once. “It’s a shocking business.” He mused, “I know you probably won’t follow the finer details of the craft’s malfunction but let me throw a few ideas at you, Cassandra; it’ll make them clearer for me.”
“Sort of like bouncing your ideas on the wall?” I asked in a small voice. He nodded, munching his way through the plate of food.
“The bottom line is sabotage by old spider-face.” He told me, “After you went berserk and blew him away and after the shock of seeing three Wrens failing in exactly the same way at nearly the same time, I had a look for any tampering in the original flight sequencing in the craft. It’s there alright, but it was very cunningly done. He programmed an additional branch on the wing wrack programme; one that caused the rotors to cup the wind a bit more steeply than they should after the wing wrack went into phase and during the slowing down preparatory phase; weakening the hub each time the programme was used. His plan had one feature which made it obvious once I knew the flaw was deliberate; the rotors were made to cup the wind at a deeper angle the denser the atmosphere was, therefore when the boys went through at over eight pounds per square inch the hub simply was ripped off and the craft destroyed. He must have had a jolly good bit of a snoop around late at night or whenever there was nobody around; he’d have to know the entry code, the Wren unlocking code, the personal identity number of either Roger or myself and a damned good idea of how the whole system worked. Whatever else he was, he was a very good spy.”
