DOCTOR WHO - THE INVASION

by Ian Marter

  'That'll be the tenth floor up there,' gasped the Doctor, pointing to the sheer wall of glass rising like a cliff above the next roof.

  Jamie craned upwards unenthusiastically. 'Aye, but how do we ken which room they're in?' he objected. 'And how do we get them out?'

  'Stop looking for problems,' the Doctor snapped. 'Let's just get up there first, Jamie.' He scurried across the asphalt and started scrambling up the vertical ladder to the next storey.

  Just as Jamie followed suit, Vaughn's eerily calm voice suddenly blared out from huge tannoy speakers fixed to the corners of the tower building above them:

  'Wherever you are, Doctor, listen carefully. You have just ten minutes to relinquish your freedom. Ten minutes from now your friend Zoe will pay for your foolish lack of cooperation..

  Clinging unsteadily to the creaking ladder, they listened to the cold mechanical threat echoing around the complex.

  'Not much time,' muttered Jamie gloomily, staring up at the inaccessible identical windows.

  'Oh, time enough to effect a simple rescue operation,' replied the Doctor with airy confidence. 'Come on, Jamie.'

  Seconds later they reached the second roof and Jamie suddenly grabbed the Doctor's arm and pointed upwards. 'Somebody's there. It's Zoe!' he cried excitedly.

  While Jamie started waving frantically to attract the attention of the vague figure behind the reflective glass ten or so metres above them, the Doctor took out the polyvox unit the Brigadier had given him, deployed the stubby aerial and pressed the call button. 'Jamie, try to tell Zoe to keep away from the window, otherwise she'll give the game away,' he muttered urgently. 'And keep down.'

  'Hallo Doctor, come in...' buzzed the Brigadier.

  'Brigadier, I think we shall require your assistance in a few minutes. Do you have a helicopter in the vicinity?' said the Doctor hurriedly.

  'We do indeed, Doctor.'

  'Equipped with a rope ladder of some kind?' 'Naturally, Doctor. I'll order Captain Turner to find you immediately.'

  The Doctor glanced up at the roof of the Administration Building a dozen storeys above them. 'We'll be on the roof of the tower block, Brigadier. North East corner. That should give your helicopter cover from any ground fire.'

  'Excellent,' crackled the Brigadier appreciatively. 'Over and out.'

  'Oh yes... Out and... and about,' the Doctor signed off, trying to hide his uneasy expression from Jamie as he stared at the thin metal ladder running up the side of the tower. 'And all in one piece too, I trust!'

  Zoe had been staring clown at the grey concrete and metal buildings which formed the International Electromatix Factory Complex with an expression of hopeless gloom. 'I'm sorry, Isobel, this is all my fault,' she muttered. 'If I hadn't blown up that stupid computer...'

  Isobel still looked shocked after the ordeal inside the containers. 'Why didn't they just turn us over to the fuzz or something, Zoe?' she wondered. 'It was horrible inside those crate things. Why have they kidnapped us like this?'

  Zoe shrugged. 'I don't see any way out of here, Isobel. It's a sheer drop,' she said, turning to look round the bare featureless office where they were imprisoned. 'There's nothing to make any sort of ladder with either.'

  'Or a set of wings,' Isobel joked with a brave smile, pressing her pale face to the window. Suddenly she caught sight of Jamie waving frantically directly below them. 'Zoe, look, it's Jamie and the Doctor!' she cried, clapping her hands with delight.

  Zoe peered down, trying to interpret Jamie's wild gestures. 'I think Jamie's telling us to keep away from the window, Isobel.'

  Jamie was pointing to his eyes and then to the window and then doing an obscure little mime.

  The two girls glanced at each other in bewilderment. Then Zoe noticed that what appeared to be a spotlight bulb suspended from the ceiling was in fact a rotatable electronic eye.

  'Just act as if nothing was happening...' she murmured out of the side of her mouth. 'I think Big Brother is watching us.'

  They moved away from the window with affected casualness and sat down against the wall, as if giving up all thought of resistance. But inside, they were tense with excitement and expectation.

  Vaughn pressed a button on his desk and leaned towards the slim microphone. 'Doctor, you have just five minutes left,' he announced in an expressionless monotone. 'Do you hear me, Doctor? Five minutes...'

  Packer stood at the window, listening to his miniature VHF unit and scanning the sky over the complex. 'They won't give themselves up, Mr Vaughn. They'd be mad to,' he whined.

  'Not mad, Packer. Merely human,' Vaughn retorted mildly, selecting a different channel on one of the video screens in the wall opposite him. 'They won't want their charming little friends to come to any harm.'

  On the screen, Zoe and Isobel appeared sitting in disconsolate silence on the floor of their room. Packer turned and gazed at them, his lip curling in a cruel sadistic sneer.

  The sudden clattering whine of a helicopter made Packer spin round to the window again. 'The helicopter, Mr Vaughn. It's right overhead!' he warned.

  For a fleeting moment Vaughn looked slightly uneasy. He came to the window and looked up at the helicopter as it passed out of sight, hovering directly over the tower block. Then he looked back at the girls slumped in their prison. 'Perhaps the Doctor and the boy plan to save their own skins and to desert the young ladies,' he speculated. 'How very ungallant of them. No doubt the helicopter is manoeuvering to pick them up. Stop them, Packer. Shoot the machine down if necessary.'

  Packer's eyes lit up. 'Yes, Mr Vaughn!' he rapped and he hurried out of the office.

  Vaughn reclined in his chair, observing the girls on the screens for a moment. Then he leaned forward and pressed the tannoy button. 'Two minutes, Doctor,' he murmured. 'Two minutes...'

  Jamie was tempted to wrench the cables out of the speakers as he and the Doctor clambered over the parapet and onto the roof of the tower block with Vaughn's deafening warning ringing in their ears. He watched the Doctor signalling to Captain Turner to lower the rope ladder from the hovering helicopter.

  'Surely you're not going to leave the lassies behind!' he shouted above the din of the rotors, as the end of the ladder came snaking down.

  'Don't be an imbecile, Jamie,' the Doctor yelled back irritably, catching the swaying rungs and throwing them over the parapet on the side of the tower where Zoe and Isobel were confined. He leaned over to check the length as Turner paid out the ladder from the helicopter. 'Good,' he muttered, signalling to Turner to stop lowering. 'Now Jamie, down you go.'

  The beefy young Scot stared at him and then shuddered dizzily as he looked over the edge at the end of the ladder snapping to and fro in the stiff breeze. 'What? Me? Climb down there...?' he expostulated, backing away from the parapet.

  'Surely you're not going to leave the lassies here?' the Doctor shouted sarcastically, punching Jamie's muscular arm.

  Glaring resentfully, Jamie set his jaw, took a deep breath and hauled himself onto the violently swinging ladder and out over the parapet. As he began the long, terrifying climb down the lurching rungs, the banshee chorus of sirens struck up again, wailing the alert all over the compound.

  Eventually Jamie reached the tenth floor and kicked himself sideways to align with the window where he had spotted Zoe.

  The girls visibly jumped, screaming with fright as Jamie's heavy boots crashed against the glass. Zoe leaped to her feet and managed to force open one side of the window after a struggle.

  'Come on, lassie, hurry yerself!' Jamie cried, squeezing himself through the gap and jumping into the room with the end of the ladder.

  Isobel's delight at seeing him turned to queasy doubt. 'You... you don't expect us to climb up that, do you?' she exclaimed.

  Jamie looked daggers at the pouting, countyish girl. 'Och, ye're quite welcome to stay here wi' Mr Packer,' he retorted indignantly.

  Zoe gave Jamie a quick grateful hug. 'No, thanks,' she said firmly. 'Come on, Isobel.'

  'Zoe
first, then Isobel and me last,' Jamie commanded, steadying the ladder as Zoe obediently clambered on and started to climb confidently upwards. 'And dinna look down whatever ye do,' he added, lifting the trembling Isobel onto the ladder with his free hand.

  To Zoe and Isobel it seemed to take forever to reach the parapet where the Doctor was anxiously waiting for them under the threshing blades of the helicopter. Just as Zoe scrambled safely onto the roof a fusillade of machine pistol fire zipped up the side of the Administration Building from the main entrance far below, smashing several windows around Isobel. Jamie struggled desperately up the ladder behind her, shouting encouragement as bullets whizzed against the concrete and glass all around him. On the steps at the front of the building, Packer was screaming orders and gesticulating like a maniac up at his escaping quarry.

  At last Isobel and Jamie were dragged unscathed over the parapet by Zoe and the Doctor.

  'Thank goodness that's over...' gasped Isobel, ashen-faced.

  'I'm afraid it isn't quite yet,' the Doctor shouted, pointing at the second length of ladder leading up at an angle to the helicopter hovering over the opposite corner of the rooftop.

  Isobel shook her head in despair. 'I'm sorry. I don't think I can,' she panted.

  Jamie put a comforting arm round her and squeezed. 'Course ye can, lassie.'

  At that moment, a shower of lethal concrete splinters suddenly exploded out of the edge of the parapet, sending them all diving flat on their faces as Packer's men fired a last futile salvo at the roof.

  Then Packer ordered his men onto the roof and stormed after them, seething with rage and frustration at his continuing failures.

  With urgent persuasiveness, the Doctor, Zoc and Jamie finally got Isobel back onto the ladder. Zoe followed her, then the Doctor and finally Jamie. The ladder creaked and stretched under their combined weight and the rocking of the helicopter sent the fugitives gyrating in all directions.

  Below them, Packer and his men were racing up the fire escape and as soon as they came within sight of the UNIT helicopter, they spread out over the flat roof immediately below the tower and concentrated their fire.

  Safe in the helicopter, the Doctor, Zoe and Isobel yelled encouragement to Jamie as he forced himself up the last few rungs of the crazily whipping ladder with bullets sizzling past him. Four pairs of hands hauled him into the cabin and the pilot banked steeply and climbed rapidly away westwards and out of range.

  5

  Skeletons in Cupboards

  Packer stood bowed and defeated in Vaughn's office, his lank hair sticking in long black strands across his sweating forehead.

  'I told you so. That chopper was from the UNIT outfit. I told you...' he persisted accusingly.

  His master was moving briskly around his desk, checking printouts and consulting telex messages.

  'Oh, do stop panicking, Packer,' Vaughn purred wearily. 'Your incompetence defies description, but fortunately it no longer matters.'

  Packer thumped the desk with both clenched fists. 'But there'll be an official reaction now that lot are involved,' he whined anxiously.

  Vaughn clicked his tongue and shook his head. 'There will be no official reaction, Packer. I am fully in control of the situation, which is more than I can say for you.'

  Packer muttered darkly to himself like a chided schoolboy.

  'Don't argue:' Vaughn rapped. 'I want Watkins's Cerebration Machine loaded into the car immediately. We're going back to London.'

  Packer stared at him aghast and started to object ineffectually.

  Vaughn leaned forward on the desk and thrust his impassive face a few centimetres from his Deputy's pallid mask. 'Thanks to your bungling I shall be obliged to bring the invasion forward,' he murmured menacingly. 'We have just twenty-four hours to prepare.'

  Packer looked appalled. Then he laughed derisively.

  'Twenty-four hours? They'll never agree to that. The invasion forces are nowhere near complete...'

  Vaughn silenced him with a curt nod. 'The forces are sufficient for our immediate purpose,' he hissed. 'You will attend to the machine and then bring Watkins up here to me. Meanwhile I shall attend to our UNIT friends.'

  Packer opened his weak mouth to object, but the diamond glint in Vaughn's pale eye silenced him. Cowed, he turned on his heel and strode out with as much dignity as he could muster.

  As soon as he was alone, Vaughn punched a private code into the keyboard of the small videophone in front of him. Seconds later, a smart young woman appeared on the screen.

  'Good afternoon, Ministry of Defence.'

  'Good afternoon, my dear. Major-General Routledge, please,' Vaughn requested pleasantly. 'My name is Tobias Vaughn.'

  In the bowels of the vast Ministry of Defence building in Whitehall, Major-General Routledge sat in his cheerless, darkened office in front of an ornate marble fireplace with sporting trophies lining the mantelpiece. He was a thickset, square-faced man of about forty-five, with grey hair and moustache and a florid complexion. He was wearing a drab suit and a rugger club tie.

  '... fine, Minister, I'll see you at eight at the Club. Goodbye,' he said into a green telephone receiver, laughing nervously as he rang off.

  At once a light started flashing on the videophone unit mounted on the huge, cluttered mahogany desk. He pressed a switch and the smart young lady appeared.

  'Outside call for you, General.'

  Routledge cleared his throat and grinned roguishly at the screen. 'Male or female?' he inquired in a public school voice.

  'Mr Tobias Vaughn, sir.'

  Instantly Routledge's face set in an odd, uneasy half-smile and his eyes dulled imperceptibly. 'Vaughn? Ah yes... Mr Vaughn...' he stammered uncomfortably. 'Put him through on priority scramble.'

  The screen fuzzed and then Vaughn's smiling face took shape. 'Good afternoon, Routledge. Is this channel secure?' he asked casually.

  The Major-General nodded, croaking an indistinct confirmation.

  'Excellent,' Vaughn replied, suddenly hardening his tone. 'Now listen to me. Your UNIT friends have been causing me considerable aggravation. They must be stopped at once. Do you understand?'

  Routledge licked his pale lips and twisted his trembling hands together. 'I... I understand,' he mumbled after a pause. 'They must be stopped.'

  Vaughn's eyes stared unblinkingly into his. 'There must be no more interference.'

  'No more interference,' Routledge echoed meekly in a dreamy, mechanical voice. 'I shall deal with it at once.'

  Vaughn smiled bleakly. 'Good fellow. I know I can rely on you,' he said with measured significance.

  The screen went black and Routledge sat quite still staring at it for several minutes:Then he winced and sank his head into his hands and shuddered, slowly massaging his temples as if to rid himself of a violent headache. Eventually he gazed back at the screen again, his eyes glazed and lifeless. 'Yes. I understand,' he repeated, wiping his cold clammy forehead with his sleeve. 'UNIT must be stopped.'

  The Brigadier was just cancelling the alert when Captain Turner ushered the exhausted Doctor and Jamie and their two rescued friends into the Hercules Operations Room.

  'All Red Sector groups stand down and stand by,' he ordered briskly.

  Then he jumped up to greet them heartily.

  'Mission accomplished, sir,' Turner reported laconically.

  'No casualities, jimmy?'

  'None, sir. Fortunately Vaughn's jackboot brigade can't shoot for toffee.'

  'Splendid!' breezed Lethbridge-Stewart, gesturing towards the welcoming tray of mugs of steaming tea and generously-filled sandwiches which an orderly was just bringing in.

  Jamie grabbed a doorstep sandwich and started munching avidly. 'Aye, splendid. A simple rescue operation!' he muttered through his mouthful, glancing ironically at the Doctor who was nibbling thoughtfully on a more modest portion.

  'But what about my uncle? He's still a prisoner,' Isobel pointed out anxiously, accepting a brimming mug of tea from Captain Turner.
<
br />   'Don't worry, miss, I'm going to raise hell about this business and get some prompt action, I can tell you,' the Brigadier promised.

  'If you'd had your camera with you, Isobel, you could have made a fortune with the pictures,' Zoe mused, sipping her tea gratefully.

  'Yes. Pity, that would've clinched things as far as the Ministry is concerned,' agreed Turner.

  The Brigadier frowned. 'Billy Routledge will have to take some action now. Not even Tobias Vaughn can get away with shooting at UNIT personnel,' he declared, indignantly stirring a heap of sugar into his tea.

  The Doctor had not said a word. They all turned to him as he sat hunched over his untasted tea, chewing absently and staring into thin air.

  Eventually Zoe broke the silence. 'What's the matter, Doctor?'

  'Mmmm?' mumbled the Doctor distantly, still staring into space. 'Oh, I was just wondering, Zoe... That object we saw on the other side of the Moon this morning...'

  Isobel exchanged looks of astonishment with the Captain and the Brigadier.

  'Other side of the Moon?' spluttered the Brigadier, wiping his moustache.

  'The TARDIS went wrong and we got stuck,' Jamie explained.

  'And they fired a missile of some kind at us,' Zoe added.

  'Who did?' demanded Captain Turner incredulously. 'Whoever it was in that spacecraft behind the Moon,' Zoe told him with patient emphasis.

  'Spaceships behind the Moon?' exploded the Brigadier, blowing crumbs in all directions.

  The Doctor gazed around the assembled throng of sceptical faces. 'There appears to be some kind of deep-space communications installation at Vaughn's factory complex...' he revealed quietly. 'And I am beginning to wonder...'

  The Brigadier looked extremely disturbed at this revelation and he waited impatiently for the Doctor to continue.