The Doctor had defeated the Cybermen before.
Suddenly he zoomed in on a lonely silver figure. It was guarding a rocky pass against enemies who had long ago ceased to exist.
'Of course,' whispered Ryoth. 'You would have survived, if anything did.
The perfect weapon...'
Feverishly he began a series of complex calculations. Once they were completed he started to manipulate the Timescoop controls. He looked up in anticipation and waited for a fraction of a second. A smile started to form across his face as the silver figure vanished from the screen.
***
It had been in one place for a very long time and now it was in another place. No doubt this was all part of its Makers' plan. It was not programmed to speculate. Only to kill the Enemy.
It began to survey its new domain. It was on a hill-top -that was good. All around a peaceful pastoral landscape stretched away into the hazy distance, but that was irrelevant. It had no eye for beauty.
Close by were the ruins of an ancient structure - some kind of fortress.
They were; a useful source of strategic cover.
Satisfied that the place was defensible, it moved into concealment behind a ruined wall and stood immobile, waiting.
The Enemy would come. It always did.
The Enemy, of course, was anyone who came.
***
The centre column of theTARDIS console slowed in its rise and fall and then came to a halt.
The Fifth Doctor beamed. 'Well, here we are. back in the good old Eye of Orion. The most -'
'I know,' said Tegan. "The most tranquil place in the universe.'
'There's nothing much to do here,' grumbled Turlough.
'Then that's what we'll do,' said the Doctor happily. 'Lots and lots of nothing!'
He opened a wall locker and produced a battered cricket bat and a set of stumps. He put some bails in one blazer pocket, a ball in the other and looked hopefully at his companions.
'Of course, we could always have a game of cricket! I'll bat, Turlough can bowl...'
'And I'll be fielding all day,' grumbled Tegan.
'Oh, come on,' said the Doctor. 'Just a few overs...'
He opened theTARDIS doors and they went outside.
The Doctor stood for a moment breathing in the tranquil air.
'Nothing like the air of the Eye of Orion. It's because of -'
'- the high bombardment of positive ions in the atmosphere,' chorused Tegan and Turlough.
'Oh, have I mentioned that before?'
'Once or twice,' said Turlough.
The Doctor looked at the massive old ruined building. What had it been? A church? A fortress? He wondered about its builders. What had become of them? The Eye of Orion was deserted now. That was part of its charm.
'Now then, where shall we mark out the pitch?' he said happily.
They passed through a massive stone archway and found a flat stretch of ground beside a ruined tower.
'Bit of a bumpy wicket,' said the
Doctor. 'Still, it'll do.'
He set up the stumps at one end, carefully laying the bails across the top.
Then he paced down the wicket and set more up at the other end. He offered Tegan the bat.
'Want to open the batting for Australia, Tegan?'
'And face the bowling on a pitch like that? Far too dangerous. That ball's hard, you know.'
The Doctor turned toTurlough. 'You or me, then.'
Turlough fished in his pocket and produced a coin.
'Let's toss for it, shall we?'
'Still got your two-headed Trion ten-credit piece, I see,' said the Doctor amiably. 'We'll use my English half-crown. Heads or tails?'
Turlough chose heads, the Doctor tossed the coin and Turlough won. He took up his position at the wicket and the Doctor walked back behind the bowler's stump. 'Ready Turlough?'
Turlough tapped the crease with his bat and nodded determinedly. 'Do your worst, Doctor!'
The Doctor started his run up and suddenly checked, staring aghast overTurlough's shoulder.
'What's up?' called Turlough, turning to see what the Doctor was staring at with such horrified astonishment.
Some distance away stood a motionless manshaped silver figure. It seemed to be watching them.
'Keep still,' roared the Doctor. 'Keep absolutely still!'
Ignoring the advice, Turlough leaped for the shelter of the ruined tower.
The silver figure swung its arm and a silver javelin flashed past Turlough's body, missing him by inches. He dived into cover and then peered out. The Doctor was standing motionless, his arm still drawn back. Tegan began running towards him.
'No!' yelled the Doctor. 'Don't move!'
The silver figure swung round towards Tegan. As its arm flashed down, the Doctor bowled the fastest ball of his life.
The cricket ball thudded into the silver figure's chest. Although not enough to harm it, the impact was enough to spoil its aim. The second javelin flashed past Tegan as she completed her run and dashed into the tower beside Turlough.
The Doctor joined them with a flying leap.
'Keep down!' he shouted. 'And don't move!'
A hail of silver javelins flashed towards them, whizzing over their heads or striking sparks from the sheltering stone.
The Doctor looked round. They were in a low, circular stone chamber at the base of the tower. Thick walls protected them on all sides. The only gap in their defences was the broken door through which they'd entered.
'Quick,' said the Doctor. 'Grab some of this masonry and barricade the doorway.'
They dragged the chunks of stone that littered the floor across to the doorway and built a hasty barrier.
'All right, that will do,' said the Doctor.
'Now lie down and lie still! Its sensors detect any movement.'
'What is that thing, Doctor?' whispered Tegan.
'A Raston Warrior Robot - the most perfect killing machine ever devised.'
'Can we make it back to theTARDIS?' asked Turlough.
'Back through the archway and across the grass? I doubt it. The Raston Robot moves like lightning. I'm afraid it's got us pinned down.'
Chapter 15
Buridan's Ass
'Is it safe to talk, Doctor?' whispered Tegan after a moment.
'I think so, if we keep our voices low. And if you have to move, move slowly.
Sudden movement will certainly attract its attention.'
Slowly and carefully, the three captives raised their heads to peer above the barricade.
The robot was standing motionless on a nearby hillock, quite close to them, surveying the surrounding countryside. Its field of view included the TARDIS, just visible through the stone archway, the ruined tower in which they were hiding and all of the route between the two.
Tegan and furlough studied the robot with fascination. It was extraordinary only in its simplicity. It was manshaped, not particularly large, with a body surface of smooth silvery metal. The head was blank, a featureless metal oval. As far as they could see it was unarmed.
'Where does it keep those javelin things it was chucking at us?' asked Tegan.
'Maybe it's run out!' suggestedTurlough hopefully.
The Doctor shook his head. 'It extrudes the javelins from its body.
Its weapons are all built-in.'
'What is that thing anyway?' asked Turlough. 'What did you call it?'
'A Raston Warrior Robot,' said the Doctor.
'Well, what's it doing here?' whispered Tegan indignantly.
'It wasn't here before.'
'I think someone must have sent it after us. What you might call a particularly nasty practical joke!'
Turlough studied the silver figure in fascination.
'Sent it from where, Doctor?'
'From the Death Zone. Sarah and I encountered it on the way to the Dark Tower.'
'You weren't with Sarah,' began
Tegan, and then broke off.
'I wa
s in several places at once, remember.'
'So how did - you and Sarah deal with it?'
The Doctor cast his mind back, struggling to recall the memories of his other self. When a number of his incarnations came together and acted independently, their memories were shared. But to each Doctor, the memories of the others were shadowy, a little dreamlike.
'We didn't. We were pinned down, just as we are now, when a squad of Cybermen turned up.'
'And the Cybermen scuppered the Raston Robot?'
'On the contrary, it was the Cybermen who got scuppered. We managed to slip past during the battle.'
'Are you telling me that thing fought off an entire squad of Cybermen?'
demanded Turlough incredulously.
'It didn't just fight them off, Turlough. It massacred them.'
The Doctor closed his eyes, recalling the slaughter. Cybermen staggering back and collapsing, their chest-units exploding as they were pierced by the Robot's javelins. Cybermen with arms and legs and heads sliced off by the sword that suddenly grew from the robot's hand.
'Believe me, they didn't stand a chance,' he concluded.
'Then neither do we,' said Turlough grimly. 'We've got no food, no water...
We can't stay hiding here forever. But if we move that thing will kill us.'
'Never say die,' said the Doctor. 'We can't out-fight it, but perhaps we can out-think it.'
'Where does it come from - originally, I mean?' asked Tegan. 'Who made it?'
'Nobody knows. According to legend, it was created by a race that was old when the Time Lords were young. A race that devoted all its great powers to war and the creation of super-weapons. They vanished without trace -
probably destroyed themselves.
Unfortunately, they left a few of their weapons behind - like this one!'
'It must have some weak point,' she said.
'It's hard to think of one. It feeds on the atomic radiation in the atmosphere, so it never runs down. It can convert energy into matter. And it moves like lightning. Watch!'
Cautiously the Doctor reached out for a chunk of broken masonry. Leaping up he threw it, not at the robot but at a nearby pile of rubble, and dropped down again.
As the rock clattered on the nibble, the robot instantly fired a javelin at the sound. It stood poised for a moment, then blurred and vanished, reappearing immediately on top of the pile of rubble.It scanned the area for a moment until it was satisfied there was no danger. Then it vanished again, reappearing on top of its original hillock.
There was a moment of horrified silence as the Doctor's companions absorbed what they'd just seen.
'Look, it must know we're here,' said Tegan quietly. 'Why doesn't it just flash over and turn us into pin-cushions?'
'Because we're no threat to it,' said the Doctor. 'It was designed as a guard robot and it's got fixed behaviour patterns. It chooses a patch of territory and defends it -and it interprets all movement as being hostile.'
'Marvellous,' said Turlough bitterly. 'If we attack it'll kill us, if we run away it'll kill us - but we're perfectly at liberty to sit here and die in our own time.'
'That's about it.' The Doctor was thinking hard. 'What we need is a distraction.'
'Like a squad of Cybermen?' suggested Tegan.
'Anything,' said the Doctor. 'Anything at all.'
***
In his secret vault, Ryoth was staring impatiently at the Doctor's tempograph. The short red line that represented the Eighth Doctor's still-brief life span was now in close proximity to the line that represented the Fifth. If they had not yet met, they very soon would.
But the red line was still blinking brightly. Ryoth frowned. Why hadn't the Raston Warrior Robot killed him yet?
It didn't take Ryoth long to come up with a possible answer. The robot was reactive. Even if he was trapped, the Doctor would live as long as he could keep still.
Such a situation couldn't go on forever. But pleasant as it was to think of the Doctor suffering a long, lingering death from hunger and thirst, Ryoth just didn't have the patience for it. He needed some other, more aggressively intelligent lifeform. Something that would take the initiative.
Turning to the box of scrolls, Ryoth began studying the long list of the Doctor's enemies.
***
A strange wheezing groaning sound filled the Eye of Orion. The distraction the Fifth Doctor so desperately needed had arrived - in a form he could never have imagined.
The TARDIS blurred and for one awful moment the Doctor thought it was taking off without him. Then the door opened and a tall young man stepped out, looking interestedly about him.
***
The Doctor stepped out of the TARDIS surveying the picturesque scene around him. He had barely registered the silver figure posed on its hillock when a young man in a cricket blazer jumped up from behind a wall and shouted, 'Go back!'
Their eyes met and time froze.
The remaining memories of his fourth incarnation and the memories to date of his fifth flooded into the Doctor's mind. The gaps were filling fast now -
he was almost himself again. As always, the process was over in moments.
He then strode towards the Fifth Doctor, who was emerging from the base of a ruined tower and running towards him.
'How nice to meet you at last!'
'You've chosen a very inconvenient moment - as usual,' said the Fifth Doctor. 'That thing up there is a Raston Warrior Robot and it's got us trapped. As soon as this time bubble breaks you'll be trapped too. I'd advise you to get back in yourTARDIS.'
'And leave you all in the lurch? Never!' said the Doctor.
Disregarding the Fifth Doctor's protests, he went over to the ruined tower, where Tegan andTurlough crouched like statues behind the barricade.
'I don't suppose we could get them over to theTARDIS?'
'In a state of temporal stasis? Never!'
'Then I'd better join you.'
The air blurred and shimmered and both Doctors ducked behind the barricade as time resumed its normal flow.
A javelin streaked above their heads, striking the tower wall. Everyone froze, and the robot resumed its motionless vigil.
To Tegan and Turlough, it was as though the Doctor had simply appeared from nowhere. They looked at him unbelievingly.
Forestalling the hail of questions the Fifth Doctor said hurriedly, 'Tegan, Turlough, this is an old - no, a very new - friend of mine. He's called the Doctor too, as it happens and he's come to help us.'
'How?' asked Turlough bluntly.
'I'm sure we can think of something,' said the Doctor. 'After all, two heads are better than one.'
'Even when they're the same head?' said the Fifth Doctor sceptically.
Tegan and Turlough watched as the two Doctors sat staring intently at each other, their minds in telepathic communion.
'Well, I suppose it might work,' said the Doctor dubiously.
'Let's try it then.'
'Buridan's Ass?' said the Doctor.
The Fifth Doctor nodded. 'Buridan's Ass!'
'Risky?'
'Undoubtedly. But it's our only chance.'
To the horror of their companions, the two Doctors rose and began to walk towards the Raston Warrior Robot.
'Equidistant now, mind,' called the Doctor warningty.
'Absolutely! Any divergence and it'll go for the nearer.'
Tegan realised that they were pacing themselves so that they stayed the same distance from each other, and also from the robot. As they got nearer to the robot, they moved nearer to each other, their paths maintaining, what was it called -
Tegan racked her brains to recall long-ago geometry lessons - maintaining the shape of a perfect isosceles triangle.
Astonishingly, the robot did not attack either of them.
It swung from one to the other as if about to fire, but never did.
As the Doctors approached nearer and nearer, the robot froze into immobility. Then, clasping its hands to its head in a
curiously human gesture, it toppled over, rolling down the hillock to land at the Doctors' feet.
They looked down at it.
'Well, it worked; said the Doctor.
Doctor Who: The Eight Doctors Page 16
