Reuben said nothing. His face twisted in a horrible parody of a grin as he lurched slowly forward, arms reaching out.
Alarmed, Vince started to back away. 'Reuben, what's wrong? No, Reuben... No...'
Reuben lunged forward with terrifying speed, and grabbed Vince's shoulders. Immediately Vince went rigid, and blue sparks arced around his body.
Working at frantic speed, the Doctor shovelled in all the coal the boiler would hold. 'Don't want the lights failing now, do we?' He closed the boiler doors, and checked the pressure gauges.
'This alien has great powers, Doctor. To change its shape at will...'
'Yes, it has... though first it needed to analyse the human life pattern.'
'That is why it stole the body of the engineer?'
'That's right. After that it was simply a matter of organic restructuring. Elementary biology for Time Lords.'
'But if the creature is a Time Lord, there is nothing we can do.'
'I didn't mean it was a Time Lord,' explained the Doctor patiently. 'Certainly not! But elementary biology for us is something a lesser species might master—after a few thousand centuries or so.'
Leela swung from despair to total confidence. 'Then we have nothing to worry about.'
'We don't? That's nice to hear.'
'You will easily dispose of this primitive creature.'
'I will?'
'Of course. After all, you are a Time Lord!'
'I admire your confidence,' said the Doctor ruefully. 'You know, it must have taken Reuben's form for a reason.'
'So that it could kill us stealthily, one by one! Doctor, suppose we pretend that we think Reuben is still Reuben and not the alien... could we not get close to it and kill it?'
'No, no, Leela. If we get close to it, then it gets close to us. Once it gets within touching distance, we're dead. It packs too many volts.' The Doctor was prowling thoughtfully around the generator. Suddenly he dropped to the ground, and reached under the machine. 'Aha, I thought so!'
'What is it?'
The Doctor got up and held out a complicated-looking metallic spiral of strange and alien design. 'It's a power relay!'
'It was placed there by the alien?'
'Of course! Rule One, on surviving a crash landing, send up some kind of distress beacon. Its ship was damaged so it needed another power-source.' The Doctor tapped the generator. 'That's why it came here. There must be a signal modulator as well, probably somewhere higher up the tower. That will be transmitting the actual message. I've got to find it... Leela, you take the others up to the lamp room.'
'Why there?'
'It's the easiest place to defend.'
'Then we look for this... mognal sigulator?'
'I'll do the looking. Now hurry, we haven't much time.'
Adelaide sat hunched by the dying fire while Skinsale paced nervously about the crew room. 'Oh, do keep still,' she snapped.
Skinsale looked at her in surprise. 'I'm sorry,' she said hastily. 'It's just that I'm so frightened. This is all like some terrible dream.'
'Pity it's not, we might stand some chance of waking up!' Skinsale turned as Leela came into the room. 'I suppose Harker's dead too?'
Leela nodded. 'Yes, like the others.'
Adelaide jumped to her feet, opening her mouth to scream. Leela glared warningly at her. 'There is no time for weeping. The creature has got into the lighthouse. Now we must fight for our lives—and everyone must play their part.'
Adelaide fainted.
When the Doctor arrived outside the little cabin, Reuben's door was standing open. He slipped into the empty room and began a rapid search. Even without the power relay, the signal modulator would transmit for some time. It was essential to find and destroy it.
The room was tiny and the Doctor's search thorough—but he found nothing. Suddenly he heard slow dragging footsteps coming along the corridor. Immediately he switched off the lights and looked for a hiding place. But the room was too small—there was nowhere to go.
The creature in Reuben's shape came along the landing and paused on the threshold as if sensing danger. It came into the room and switched on the light, looking round suspiciously. The room was empty. It moved over to the window and drew the curtain.
Outside the window, the Doctor was plastered flat against the sheer side of the lighthouse, high above the rocky ground. His toes were on a tiny ledge and his fingers clasped a shallow ridge between the stone blocks. He clung to the side of the light-house like a fly on the wall. All at once the Doctor saw a glint of alien metal just above the window ledge. He had found the signal modulator. Suddenly he felt his fingers beginning to slip and wondered how much longer he could hold on...
Leela watched impatiently as Skinsale held a glass of water to Adelaide's lips. 'Drink this, Adelaide. Come along, drink it.'
'Hurry,' snapped Leela. 'The Doctor wants us to go to the lamp room?'
'Why the lamp room?'
'He says it is the easiest place to defend. If she cannot walk then we must carry her.'
Skinsale helped Adelaide to rise. 'Come along now.,
She clung to him in blind panic. 'No... no...'
Skinsale lifted Adelaide to her feet and half carried her towards the door. There was a dragging foot-step outside the room and Leela shouted, 'Back! Get back!'
Reuben appeared in the doorway. He stared at them for a moment. His white face twisted in a ghastly smile.
The Doctor heard Reuben leave the little room, and started edging his way slowly towards the window. He reached it at last, heaving a great sigh of relief when his feet were on the sill. He rested for a moment and then reached upwards, wrenched the signal modulator from its niche in the stonework and climbed thankfully back into the room.
Leela, Skinsale and Adelaide backed away as Reuben advanced slowly towards them, the horrible grimace still fixed on his deathly-white face.
The monster sprang with terrifying speed, choosing Adelaide for its target. It clasped her in its arms in a deadly embrace. Her back arched, she went rigid and blue sparks flamed round her body.
Leela snatched the knife from her boot and hurled it with all her strength. It struck the monster's chest and rebounded harmlessly.
The monster's lunge for Adelaide had left clear the path to the doorway. 'Run!' shouted Leela, and fled up the stairs. Skinsale hesitated for an agonised moment and then followed.
The Reuben creature let go of Adelaide, who slumped lifeless to the floor.
The Doctor, Leela and Skinsale collided on the stairs. 'The creature is close behind us,' panted Leela. 'We must find weapons.'
'I know,' said the Doctor calmly. He gripped Skinsale by his arm. 'Listen carefully, Colonel. Just below the lamp room is the service room. It's full of maroons and rockets. I want you to break them open and scatter the powder on the lamp-room steps. Have you got that?'
Skinsale nodded. 'Right, Doctor, leave it to me.' There was a dragging footstep on the stair. 'It's coming,' called Leela.
The Doctor gave her a shove. 'Off you go, then, both of you!'
Leela and Skinsale dashed away.
The Doctor stood waiting.
The Reuben creature came slowly onwards. It stopped when it saw the Doctor, as if sensing a trap.
'Can I help you?' said the Doctor politely. 'You don't look very well. Are you having trouble? Not too easy holding the human form for so long, is it?'
The creature spoke, but its voice was not that of Reuben. It was weird, high, shrill, totally alien. 'It is no longer necessary. We can now abandon this unpleasantly primitive shape.'
'Why don't you do that?' suggested the Doctor. 'You'll find it much comfier, I'm sure.'
Reuben's body began to glow and melt and change... The human form warped and twisted and finally disappeared. In its place was a glowing shapeless mass. The creature was resuming its natural form.
Leela and Skinsale dashed into the lamp room, their arms full of rockets and maroons, and immediately stumbled over Vince's body
. Skinsale examined it. 'Dead, like all the others.'
'Then there is nothing we can do,' said Leela practically. 'Let us move the body out of the way and then prepare the weapons.'
Skinsale was staring at Vince's body. The sudden spate of violent deaths had shaken him badly. 'That ghastly creature plans to kill us all—just like poor Vince...'
'You must forget him now,' said Leela practically. 'Now it is time for us to fight!'
A shrill alien howl came from below.
The howl was the triumphant cry of the alien, now back in its natural shape. The Doctor, who had been watching the transformation with detached scientific interest, was able to see the true shape of his enemy at last.
To be frank, he thought, it wasn't a pretty sight. In place of Reuben's form there was a huge, dimly glowing gelatinous mass, internal organs pulsing gently inside the semi-transparent body. Somewhere near the centre were huge many-faceted eyes, and a shapeless orifice that could have been a mouth. The Doctor nodded. 'Well, well, well, I should have guessed. Reuben the Rutan, eh?'
'We are a Rutan scout, specially trained in the newly-developed shape-shifting techniques.' (Rutans have little concept of individual identity, seeing themselves as units of the all-conquering Rutan race. Hence they always speak in the plural.)
'Never mind,' said the Doctor consolingly. 'I expect you'll get better with practice. What are you doing in this part of the galaxy, anyway?'
'That does not concern you. You are to be destroyed.'
'Got it. You're losing that interminable war of yours with the Sontarans.'
The Sontaran-Rutan war had raged through the cosmos for untold centuries. An insane struggle to the death between two fiercely militaristic species, it had swept to and fro over hundreds of planets, first one side winning and then the other. 'I should have realised I was dealing with a Rutan,' thought the Doctor. But they were a strange savage species with an implacable hatred for all life-forms other than their own. Even the Sontarans were preferable—and that was saying something!
The Doctor's charge provoked a fierce crackle of rage from the Rutan. 'That is a lie!'
'Is it? You used to hold the whole of Mutters Spiral once. Now the Sontarans must have driven you to the far fringes of the galaxy.'
'The glorious Rutan Army is making a planned series of strategic withdrawals to selected strong-points...'
'That's the empty rhetoric of a defeated dictatorship, Rutan,' mocked the Doctor. 'And I don't like your face either!'
'Your mockery will end with your race, Earthling, when the mighty Rutan Battle Fleet occupies this planet.'
Suddenly the Doctor realised that the fate of the whole Earth was at stake in this struggle. 'Why bother to invade a planet like Earth? It's of no possible value to you.'
'The planet is obscure, but its strategic position is sound. We shall use it as a launch-point for our final assault on the Sontarans.'
'If you set up a power-base here, the Sontarans will bombard the planet with photonic missiles. Between the two of you, you'll destroy the earth in your struggle.'
'That is unimportant. The sacrifice of the planet will serve the cause of the final glorious Rutan victory!'
'And what about its people?'
'Primitive bipeds of no value. We have scouted all the planets of this solar system. Only this one is suitable for our purpose.'
The Doctor had a ghastly vision of Earth as the battlefield in a vast interplanetary conflict. Whoever won, the people of Earth would lose. 'I can understand your military purpose. But why are you bothering to murder a handful of harmless people?'
'It is necessary. Until we return to our Mother Ship, and the Mother Ship informs the Fleet that a suitable planet has been found, no one must know of our visit to Earth.'
'But you crashed, didn't you, Rutan? Just as you made your discovery. You've failed.'
'We are sending a signal to the Mother Ship, with the power from the primitive mechanism below.'
'You're not, you know.' The Doctor tossed the gleaming alien spiral down the stairs.
There was a crackle of anger. 'It is of no importance. The Ship will still home in on the primary signal.'
The Doctor threw the larger spiral after the first. 'I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I fixed that too!'
'All your interference is useless. The beam was transmitting long enough for the Mother Ship to trace the signal and fix our position.'
The Rutan was probably quite right, thought the Doctor. But he refused to admit defeat. 'You can't be sure of that, can you—oyster-face?'
There was total confidence in the Rutan's voice. 'The Ship will come.'
'Perhaps. But long before that you will be dead!'
'We are Rutan! What could you Earthlings possibly do to harm us?'
'Just step this way and I'll show you,' said the Doctor politely—and sprinted back up the stairs.
Unhurriedly the glowing mass of the Rutan flowed after him. There was no need for haste. The stairs led only to the lamp room, the highest point of the lighthouse tower. After that there was nowhere to go.
The Doctor was trapped.
11
Ambush
The Doctor ran up the last few stairs, his feet crunching on the thick black powder underfoot. He had managed to delay the Rutan long enough for Leela and Skinsale to do their work. They were waiting for him just inside the lamp-room doorway.
'I've brought someone to see you,' said the Doctor. 'I hope you're ready for visitors, he'll be here any minute. Pass me one of those fuses, Colonel.'
Skinsale passed him the fuse, a short piece of soft rope, frayed at both ends. The Doctor was patting his pockets. 'I'm sorry to bother you,' he said politely. 'Could you oblige me with a light?'
'Yes, of course! ' Skinsale produced some matches, lit one and held it to the Doctor's fuse, much as if he were lighting a friend's cigar. 'I say, Doctor, do you really think this is advisable? So much powder in a confined space?'
'Probably not. But we've no other choice.' A faint crackling came from the stairs below. 'I think our guest is coming.'
The crackling grew louder, and a faint greenish glow appeared round the turn of the stairs. 'How did you manage to hold it back for so long?' whispered Lecla.
'Just a little military chit-chat. You know what these old soldiers are once they get talking.'
The Rutan moved round the bend of the stairs and came into full view. At the sight of the glowing, pulsating mass, Skinsale gave a gasp of horror, and even Leela took an involuntary pace back. Only the Doctor was unimpressed. 'Ah, there you are. What took you so long?'
'The time for talk is over now,' shrilled the weird, high-pitched voice.
'Correct!' The Doctor threw the fizzing fuse.
It landed close to the Rutan, on the powder-strewn stairway. There was a blinding flash and the stairway disappeared in a sheet of flame. The Rutan sprang back with a high-pitched shriek of agony. When the smoke cleared it had gone.
'Where is it, Doctor?' demanded Leela fiercely. 'Have we killed the thing?'
'Unlikely, I'm afraid!'
Skinsale was sweating with relief. 'I've never seen anything so horrible! What the devil was it?'
'An intelligent, highly-aggressive alien life-form from the planet Ruta 3.'
'Was it a sea-creature?' asked Leela.
'Evolved in the sea, adapted to land. Now then, Colonel, what about some more gunpowder?' Skinsale ran down into the service room.
Leela's eyes were fixed on the stairs. 'We are lucky that the beast fears the flame, Doctor.'
'Ruta 3 is an icy planet. The inhabitants find heat intensely painful. What we really need is a flame-thrower!'
Skinsale came out of the service room lugging what looked like a small oddly-shaped cannon. 'What about this thing, Doctor? Some sort of mortar by the look of it.'
The Doctor helped Skinsale carry the device up to the lamp-room doorway. 'It's an early Schemurly!' he exclaimed delightedly.
'It's a what?'
The Doctor repeated the tongue-twisting phrase. 'An early Schemurly. It fires a rocket and line.'
'Then we could fire it at the monster.'
'We could, but it wouldn't do any good. Projectile weapons are useless against a Rutan. They go straight through and it simply seals the wound. The only way to dispose of a Rutan is to blow it to bits.'
Skinsale looked nervously at the stairs. 'Then what are we going to do?'
'Stay calm,' said the Doctor. 'I'll see what I can find.' He went dourly into the service room and began rooting through lockers and shelves. A few minutes later he emerged carrying a gun-like device mounted on a tripod. 'Rocket-launcher,' he explained. 'Now, loaded with a few extra odds and ends this could cover the stairs.' The Doctor went over to the tool-locker and came back with an assortment of rusty tins, filled with nuts and bolts, nails, cogs and other engineering debris. He began picking out the biggest and sharpest objects and arranging them in a little pile. 'Mind you,' the Doctor went on, 'it's not just this Rutan I'm concerned about. It's the others.'
Skinsale went pale. 'Others? You mean there are more of the creatures?'
Briefly the Doctor explained the background of the Rutan-Sontaran conflict, and the Rutan plans for Earth. 'By the time the Rutans and Sontarans have finished with it, this planet will be a dead cinder hanging in space.'
'Is there nothing we can do?'
The Doctor considered. 'The Battle Fleet won't come here unless the Rutan Mother Ship reports back with the news that their scout has found a suitable planet. If we could kill the Rutan, and knock out the Mother Ship as well... The Rutans are a cautious species. They'd simply conclude that this sector of space was too dangerous.'
'Then that is what we must do,' said Leela firmly. She looked expectantly at the Doctor. 'How?'
'How indeed. We've nothing here that would stop a Rutan spaceship in its tracks...' The Doctor struggled to recall what he knew of Rutan technology. 'Rutan ships have a crystalline infrastructure. They're shielded of course, but landing on a primitive planet like this they might risk cutting the protective energy-fields to save power.' The Doctor looked at his two companions, who hadn't understood a word of what he'd said. 'What we really need is an amplified carbon-oscillator.'
DOCTOR WHO AND THE HORROR OF FANG ROCK Page 7
