Doctor Who: Players: 50th Anniversary Edition
Page 2
‘I say, Aylmer,’ called the war correspondent. (His lisp turned the words into ‘I shay’.) ‘Any news? A few crumbs of information for a poor devil of a correspondent?’
He was hopping up and down with sheer impatience.
Captain Aylmer Haldane, tall, elegant, as languid and utterly conventional as a British officer should be, grinned affectionately down at the energetic figure.
He and the war correspondent, totally different in temperament, had been friends for quite some time. They had fought on the Indian Frontier together when they were both young subalterns. Haldane had always regretted his friend’s decision to resign his commission and go in for politics. He’d tried to talk him out of it. Not that he’d listened, of course… Typical! The fellow was able, energetic, and completely harebrained. Once he got a new idea in his head he was off.
Some time later, Haldane had heard of his friend being adopted as parliamentary candidate for some town up north – and of his defeat in the election. Now he’d turned up here in South Africa, bouncy and bumptious as ever, covering the newly-begun Boer War as the accredited war correspondent for the Daily Mail.
How he’d managed it, heaven alone knew. Charm and cheek probably, as usual. And connections, of course. When your late father had been a Cabinet minister and your mother was still a famous political hostess, there were always strings to be pulled.
Anyway, here he was, larger than life as always.
‘Well?’ said the war correspondent impatiently. ‘Dammit, Aylmer, there must be some news.’
‘Nothing very much,’ said Haldane. ‘Our revered commanders can’t decide whether to advance, retreat or stay where we are.’
‘We must advance,’ said the correspondent decisively. ‘We cannot stay here, the position is untenable. And there is no occasion to retreat. General Joubert is ensconced on the Tugela River, he is unlikely to risk an attack. We must seize the moment and attack him first!’
‘I know, I know,’ said Haldane. ‘I heard you telling the Colonel all about it over dinner last night.’
Typically the war correspondent had arrived with his own tent, his own cook and a liberal supply of food and drink. Most nights he entertained a selection of senior officers to dinner. Quite frequently he ended up telling them how to win the war.
The war correspondent frowned. ‘We have consistently underestimated the Boers and we are paying the penalty. We have suffered many defeats and now Ladysmith is besieged. But this is no time for despair. We must be resolute.’
‘All right, all right,’ said Haldane. ‘Stop addressing me like it’s a public meeting. You gave up politics, remember?’
The war correspondent grinned sheepishly. ‘It would be truer to say politics gave up me.’
‘The Colonel’s decided we need more information,’ said Haldane. ‘I’ve been ordered to take the armoured train out on a reconnaissance patrol, first thing tomorrow. Want to come along?’
The war correspondent hesitated, and Haldane knew what he’d be thinking. He had been on such trips before. Almost invariably, nothing happened. You chugged out of the station on an armoured train crowded with troops. You moved cautiously along the line, until you were as close as was considered safe to the border of enemy territory. Then you stopped, reversed the engine and chugged even more slowly back. If you were lucky, some enterprising Boer enlivened things by taking a few pot-shots at you from behind a rock, but that was about the only entertainment you could expect.
‘Well?’ said Haldane. ‘We set off tomorrow morning. Five a.m. sharp. Are you coming?’
The war correspondent shuddered. ‘I’m more fond of late nights than early mornings, but, well, I suppose I might as well.’
Haldane smiled. ‘Good man. Until tomorrow, then.’
Once again, Peri stood looking at herself in front of her big bedroom mirror. This time she was wearing a costume chosen for her by the Doctor.
She wasn’t crazy about it. A long skirt, a severely tailored jacket, a high-necked blouse, a parasol and a broad-brimmed hat, all in dark subdued colours. It was sober and elegant, but it really wasn’t much fun.
She went off to the control room to find the Doctor, only to receive a considerable shock. He too had changed into an equally formal outfit. Now he was resplendent in dark trousers and a frock coat, open to reveal a waistcoat complete with gold watch-chain. A white shirt with wing collar and a flowing black bow tie completed the ensemble. On the TARDIS console rested a glossy black top hat.
Peri knew she was staring at him, but couldn’t stop. The transformation was extraordinary. Out of his habitual garish clown outfit and, dressed like this, the Doctor looked powerful, dignified, important. He looked like somebody. Which, of course, reflected Peri, he was. Several somebodies, in fact.
The Doctor stuck on the top hat at a jaunty angle and grinned at her.
‘Well?’
‘That’s quite a change, Doctor,’ said Peri cautiously. ‘You look almost – respectable.’
‘Quite right – and so do you.’ He flicked some switches on the console apparently at random. ‘We’re going to visit a very respectable age.’
‘I feel like I’m dressed for my grandmother’s funeral,’ grumbled Peri.
‘Nonsense, my dear girl. You’re wearing the walking-out dress of a fashionable late-Victorian lady.’
‘Victorian?’
The Doctor nodded. ‘London, 1899. The last years of fin-de-stècle elegance. Garden parties, Henley Regatta, society balls and country-house weekends. Elegance galore, Peri, you’ll love it. We’ll take a house in Town and do the Season. I might even get you presented.’
‘Oh yeah?’ said Peri suspiciously. ‘Presented to who?’
‘To the Queen of course. Mind you, I can’t guarantee it – not with you being American. But it’s possible.’ The Doctor bent over the TARDIS console, and made a few last-minute adjustments. ‘Not long now.’
Peri watched with her usual mild apprehension as the time rotor slowed its rise and fall and then came to a gradual stop. The Doctor studied dials and meters for a moment, and then straightened up looking smug.
‘Perfect! Even if I do say so myself. 1899 on the dot!’
He touched a control, the doors opened and bright sunlight flooded into the TARDIS.
‘Ah yes,’ said the Doctor happily. ‘That glorious summer of 1899! Come along, Peri.’
He strode towards the door, checked himself, took Peri’s arm and escorted her gallantly from the TARDIS.
As they stepped out into the blazing sunlight there was the sudden crack of a rifle.
A bullet blasted the Doctor’s top hat from his head.
The war correspondent was leaning against the hot metal side of an armoured train-car, smoking a cigar and wishing he’d stayed in bed.
Everything was happening exactly as he’d predicted. The train was chugging across the bare and rocky South African veldt. The sun was climbing high in the sky. It was already too hot for comfort, and soon the heat would be unbearable.
Trains such as this one, sheeted with ramshackle armour, had been improvised by the British Army when they realised how rapidly the Boer commandos could move across the veldt. They appeared from nowhere, launched brief, devastating raids and then vanished like ghosts.
This particular train consisted of an ancient steam engine and a number of open-topped armoured trucks, each filled with hot and sweaty riflemen. Firing slits had been pierced through the heavy metal sheets protecting each carriage. One of the trucks held a field-gun, manned by a detachment of naval gunners, on loan from the Senior Service. To protect the engine – steam engines were in short supply in South Africa – it was placed towards the middle of the train, so that some trucks were pulled and others pushed.
The war correspondent was riding with Captain Haldane in the front truck. They reached Frere station with no sign of the enemy, and, according to orders, moved on to the next station, Chievely. It was only a few miles down the line, on the other side
of a range of low hills.
As the armoured train came to a shuddering, clanking halt, a soldier ran from the station office clutching a telegraph form. Saluting, he handed it up to Haldane.
The war correspondent watched as Haldane studied the form.
‘Message from HQ,’ said Haldane. ‘There’s a report of Boer troops sighted here some time last night.’
The war correspondent looked around. Everything was peaceful. The little station, which consisted of no more than a signal box and a hut, lay baking quietly in the African sun.
‘No sign of them now.’
‘We wouldn’t necessarily see them if they were here,’ said Haldane grimly. ‘We’re ordered to go back to Frere and await further orders – “taking care to preserve our safe retreat”.’
The war correspondent yawned. ‘Advance – retreat! We go forward – we go back again. Honestly, Aylmer, this is the most boring war! The North-West Frontier was much more fun!’
Captain Haldane gave him a withering look and sent a message to the engine driver.
The driver, a stolid middle-aged railwayman called Wagner, received the message in much the same spirit as the war correspondent. He looked glumly at his stoker.
‘All the way here – all the way back! What’s the point? War!’
He reversed the engine and the armoured train began chugging back towards Frere.
What had been the front truck now became the rear one. From it Haldane and his friend surveyed the bare and rocky landscape.
‘I’ll be happier once we’re past those hills,’ said Haldane. ‘If I were setting an ambush…’
There was a bright flash and the crump of a heavy shell detonating. Haldane shaded his eyes and peered forward.
‘Men and artillery, up on that hill!’
More shells rained steadily down on the armoured train, and the front truck was torn wide open by a huge explosion. From the other trucks, the riflemen and the naval gunners began returning fire.
‘Sounds as if they’ve got two or three guns up there,’ said the war correspondent coolly. ‘If the engine driver keeps his head we may be able to run past them. Luckily it’s a down gradient.’
Already the train was picking up speed. Still under heavy shell-attack, with the riflemen and naval gunners returning fire, it sped towards the safety of Frere – straight into a pile of heavy boulders blocking the track.
There was a screeching, clangorous crash and the armoured train rattled bone-jarringly to a violent halt.
Captain Haldane and the war correspondent picked themselves up, jumped down from their truck and ran forward to assess the situation.
It wasn’t good. The three trucks now in front of the engine had been derailed. Worst of all, the already badly-damaged foremost truck, the one that had actually struck the boulder, lay slewed across the track, barring the train’s escape.
‘We must get the track cleared,’ said Haldane. ‘We’re outnumbered, and out-gunned, we can’t hold them off here for long.’
‘You can leave the track clearing to me,’ said the war correspondent.
‘Dammit, man, you’re supposed to be a civilian.’
‘So I’ll do a bit of civil engineering. Come on, Aylmer, someone has to do it. You go and command the counter-attack. Give us what covering fire you can.’
Not waiting for Haldane’s reply, the war correspondent ran towards the group of able-bodied soldiers who had crawled out from the wrecked trucks and who were now milling about confusedly beside the track.
‘All right, men,’ he called, in a surprisingly loud voice. ‘Now listen, we have to get those trucks off the track. So all together now, and heave for all you’re worth.’
The men were still half-dazed from the crash, but the energy and authority in that voice were irresistible. They stumbled over to the trucks and began to heave.
The Doctor reacted instinctively to the rifle-shot, hurling himself on Peri and throwing them both to the ground.
They found themselves rolling over and over down a steep slope, finishing up wedged behind a massive boulder where they lay gasping for a moment, taking stock of their situation.
They were halfway down a small, roughly conical hill, one of a number scattered around a group of larger ones. Behind, and quite a way above them, was the TARDIS, wedged in a narrow crevice close to the top of the slope they had fallen down.
Below them was a steep-sided railway cutting with a wrecked armoured train on the track. Three derailed trucks were blocking the track and a party of soldiers was trying to shift them – by the look of things – under heavy enemy fire.
On top of a hill on the other side of the railway track was the source of the fire, a battery of three heavy field-guns supported by riflemen, some mounted and some on foot.
From the shelter of the train, more riflemen were shooting back at the gunners on the hill, doing their best to cover the men working on the track. The air was filled with the crack of rifles and the thudding of artillery.
The Doctor surveyed the scene with calm interest. ‘Yes, of course,’ he said suddenly. ‘I see!’ He sounded almost pleased.
Peri rubbed her face and spat out dry, choking dust. ‘Doctor…’ she gasped.
The Doctor turned to her, his face alive with interest. ‘Don’t worry, Peri, I’ve worked out what must have happened. A slight spatial error, that’s all. We’ve reached Earth in 1899, all right. Unfortunately we’ve landed in South Africa, not London – just at the beginning of the Boer War!’ He studied the scene below them. ‘There’s quite a little battle going on down there.’
‘Well, it’s not our battle, is it?’ said Peri crossly. ‘For heaven’s sake, let’s get back inside the TARDIS.’
They ducked as a shell thudded into the hillside above them.
‘That could be a little difficult,’ said the Doctor ruefully. ‘That hillside’s a bit exposed at the moment. The Boers will think we’re British, and the British will think we’re Boers and they’ll both do their best to shoot us dead. Better to wait here till the fighting’s over and then make our way back to the TARDIS.’
Peri looked down at the battle with horrified fascination. It was like having a seat at the Royal Tournament, only the ammunition was live and the blood, the wounds, the dying were all real.
She saw one of the men heaving at the trucks stagger back and drop. A soldier ran forward to drag him to safety, and another took his place.
‘What do you think will happen, Doctor?’ she whispered.
‘If they can get that track cleared, the British will be able to get away on this occasion – some of them at least. Otherwise the Boers will overwhelm them and they’ll all be captured or killed.’
‘Do you think they can clear the track?’
A cheer floated up from below as one of the trucks tipped over, away from the line.
‘They will if that red-headed chap’s got anything to say about it,’ said the Doctor. ‘He’s organising the whole thing.’
He pointed to a figure running up and down the track, rallying the men and urging on their efforts.
‘The funny thing is, he looks familiar,’ the Doctor went on. ‘I’ve met him before somewhere – before or after. Only he was different then – and so was I of course…’
Peri was struggling to make some kind of sense of this when her eye was caught by a movement further down the slope.
‘Doctor, look!’
A man was moving across the side of the hill below them. He wore a tweed suit with plus fours, and a deerstalker. A long leather case was slung over his shoulder.
Moving with calm deliberation, he found a boulder, much like their own but smaller, and settled down behind it.
He opened the case and took out a long gleaming rifle equipped with telescopic sights. Then he took a handful of long bullets from his pocket and loaded the rifle. Calm, deliberate and precise, he leaned forward against the boulder, resting his elbows on the top and brought the rifle up to the aiming position.
‘I doubt it. That’s a Mannlicher rifle, worth a small fortune. No commando ever carried a gun like that. Besides, he doesn’t look like a soldier.’
The unknown marksman peered through the telescopic sight, making some minute adjustment. He wet a finger and held it up, testing the wind, then settled back to the aiming position.
‘He looks like a hunter,’ said Peri. ‘A big game hunter.’
Another cheer went up from the soldiers below as the second truck slowly tilted and fell away from the line.
The marksman shifted his aim, singling out the directing figure standing a little apart from the rest.
‘Not a hunter, Peri,’ said the Doctor suddenly. ‘An assassin! He’s trying to kill our red-headed friend down there.’ He stared at her, his face impassioned. ‘Of course! It’s just like before!’
Scrambling to the top of the boulder, the Doctor yelled, ‘Hey, you, stop that!’
The astonished marksman swung round, raising his rifle – just as the Doctor launched himself into space.
CHAPTER THREE
CAPTURE
THE ASSASSIN FIRED, and Peri ducked as the bullet ricochetted off the boulder.
Before the unknown marksman could fire again, he was struck by the Doctor’s substantial bulk. The speed of the assault sent the pair hurtling down the hillside.
Peri watched in horror as the two men rolled over and over in a cloud of dust and stones. They came to a halt against another boulder and immediately began a ferocious struggle. It ended abruptly as one man disentangled himself. It was the assassin. The Doctor lay at his feet, a trickle of blood on his forehead.
The assassin was still clutching his rifle and, to Peri’s horror, he raised the butt high in the air, about to smash it down on the Doctor’s skull. Peri jumped out from the cover of the rock. ‘No!’ she screamed.
The assassin froze, rifle raised high, staring at her in utter astonishment, giving Peri her first clear look at him.