Doctor Who BBCN13 - Sting of the Zygons Read online

  ‘There.’ With a steel shunk! the image was held trembling on the wall. It showed a barn in the background of the debris of the grand house, a barn with its front door wide open, showing off the hazy shapes inside. ‘Bit of focusing. . . ’ His nimble fingers spun a wheel on the side of the projector and sharpened the image.

  Now Martha could make out something that looked like a big funnel in a framework of pipes. ‘So what are we looking at?’

  The Doctor donned his glasses and peered at the glowing image.

  ‘That thing in front looks like a double cylinder hoisting engine.’

  ‘Gracious!’ Mrs Unswick exclaimed. ‘A what?’

  ‘Lifting gear.’ he said, glancing at Martha. ‘Kind of an early crane.’

  Martha shrugged. ‘So?’

  ‘So that’s pretty specialist lifting equipment. Funny thing to find parked in the Lord of the Manor’s barn.’

  ‘That’s Sir Albert and Lady Morton’s residence.’ said Mrs Unswick.

  ‘He was Victor’s client, wasn’t he?’ Martha recalled.

  ‘I know he died when the Beast ran rampant.’ Mrs Unswick turned from the screen. ‘Wonder what he was doing with all that new-fangled 64

  machinery.’

  ‘So do I.’ murmured the Doctor. He crossed to the windows and swept open the curtains. ‘How far is Kelmore from here, Mrs U?’

  ‘Five miles or so,’ she informed him.

  ‘Five miles?’ Martha was afraid she knew what was coming next.

  ‘That’s a long walk.’

  ‘But it’s not such a long ride,’ Mrs U told her, her haggard face brightening with a smile. ‘Did I neglect to show you the stables?’

  ‘Ha!’ cried the Doctor with delight. ‘Kelmore on horseback – here we come!’

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  The bedroom at Goldspur was cool and dark. Two creatures stood inside it, watching the prone figure of Edward Lunn as he slept.

  They were Zygons in their natural forms.

  ‘How do the humans know of our kind, Commander?’ hissed one, smaller than its superior and with a green-orange tinge to its skin.

  ‘It does not matter, Algor,’ said the commander; a massive Zygon with a scarred face, his name was Brelarn. ‘The Doctor and his friend are outsiders, not trusted by this community of primitive fools. Talk of aliens will not be heeded. Martha Jones knows this, or she would have made explicit what she saw in Haleston’s study.’

  ‘But Haleston must know the Skarasen is not native to this world?’

  ‘His journals betray his fear of what he cannot understand.’ Brelarn’s lips twitched in what might have been a smile. ‘Haleston seeks to create a disturbance in the waters of Wolvenlath, in the hope of rousing the Skarasen from hiding. Your assessment of this plan?’

  ‘Given the Skarasen’s present condition,’ Algor said cautiously, ‘they may be able to disturb it. But then they must subdue it.’

  Brelarn nodded. ‘By now, Haleston will have been told of the construction machinery. . . ’

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  ‘The Doctor and the female have already left for Kelmore,’ Algor informed him. ‘They will discover it also.’ He hissed, a low, threatening noise. ‘This Doctor is dangerous.’

  ‘And yet, he may be of great value to us,’ Brelarn told him. ‘See that our field troops maintain constant watch on the Doctor’s progress.’

  ‘Our troops near exhaustion, Commander,’ warned Algor. ‘Morale is low. Some feel your strategy is based on unacceptable levels of risk –’

  ‘I am Warlord of the Zygons,’ rasped Brelarn, bearing down on Algor, ‘and if our people are to survive and triumph and refashion this world in the image of our own, then calculated risks must be taken.’

  The intensity in his eyes faded, and his breathing became a little heavier. ‘These are difficult times. But they are filled with unique opportunities. Opportunities which must be taken. . . ’

  A look of understanding passed between the two creatures. Then, the air seemed to shimmer and burn around the Zygons’ monstrous forms as they prepared to blend back into the world of humans.

  As she followed Mrs Unswick and the Doctor out to the stables, Martha noticed a large, black carriage standing in the courtyard. ‘Couldn’t we take that?’ she asked. ‘Comfier than horseback.’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ said Mrs Unswick. ‘I let a friend of mine keep it here, but he’s collecting it later. . . ’ She stopped and held her stomach.

  ‘Feeling all right?’ asked the Doctor.

  ‘I fear I’m a little unsettled by the cinema show,’ she said, smiling weakly. ‘Would you mind tacking up yourself?’

  ‘No problem!’ said the Doctor cheerily.

  ‘Why not go and have a lie down,’ Martha suggested.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Mrs Unswick. She looked pale and unwell. ‘Oh, and you’d better leave the black horse be. He won’t be ridden. Doesn’t like strangers.’ She forced a smile. ‘Do excuse me.’ And with that, the matronly woman shuffled off back inside.

  ‘How do we even find the stables?’ Martha wondered.

  The Doctor sniffed. ‘Just follow our noses.’

  He was right. Martha was no expert, but reckoned the landlady’s three horses had been left untended for a little too long. They looked 68

  well fed, but their tails were tangled and their flanks were covered with stable stains. And, judging from the mushrooms growing in the corners of the smelly stable, they definitely hadn’t been mucked out for a while. The black one snapped at Martha when she tried to pat its neck, so she and the Doctor decided to heed Mrs U’s advice and go for the others.

  Once back outside in the fresh air, Martha watched the Doctor move easily and confidently around the horses, feeling more than a little nervous. She’d loved ponies as a kid, but wasn’t exactly experienced at riding them.

  But as they set off together, her limited knowledge started to come back. And, luckily, her chosen horse – a chestnut gelding with calm, dark eyes – proved to be well schooled and to have a forgiving tem-perament. She supposed he was quite used to different riders. Aside from once almost throwing her off when he pulled his head down to graze on the long grass growing at the side of the muddy lane, he gave her a surprisingly pleasant journey through the countryside. He had a long stride and walked out with his ears pricked, responding obediently to her hesitant aids.

  The Doctor rode beside her on a dark bay horse with a black tail that he’d christened Arthur. In fact, for some reason he’d christened all the horses Arthur.

  ‘So why are we going to Kelmore, then?’ Martha enquired.

  ‘There’s something in the air.’ came the evasive reply. ‘At least, I’m hoping there is.’

  ‘Probably the whiff of those stables.’ said Martha sourly. ‘Mrs U

  can’t have cleaned out Arthur, Arthur and Arthur in a while. It’s cruel.

  I mean, I know there must be a lot to do when you’re running your own place, but even so. . . ’ She frowned. ‘You’d think she’d have got some more help in since Clara left. . . ’

  ‘Me and Hercules could have used some help that time we had to clean out the Augean stables in a single day.’ the Doctor announced.

  He had pulled out the mouldy old Zygon activator from his pocket and was turning it idly in his fingers. ‘You know, as part of his twelve labours. Muck everywhere. You couldn’t move for the stuff.’

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  Martha sensed a wind-up. ‘What, you helped Hercules from the Greek myths?’

  ‘Be serious! As if that could ever happen!’ He peered more closely at the orange lump. ‘No, this was on the planet Augea. Luckily, a day there is the same as three months on Earth. We finished in bags of time and had a big picnic. I do love a picnic. . . Mind you, we had to muck out the dreaded Cerberus afterwards, which wasn’t so easy.

  Wasn’t just heads he had three of, let me tell you. . . ’

  As the lanes and the tall tales meandered on, the muscles in Martha’s legs and back began
to protest against the long ride. But at last they passed a sign proclaiming the boundary of Kelmore.

  Not that they needed telling. The churned-up earth and splintered trees by the roadside were advertisement enough. Martha’s Arthur snorted and stopped dead as if spooked. She clicked her tongue and touched him with her heels. Tossing up his head, he stepped backwards.

  ‘Steady,’ she said, shortening her reins.

  ‘Whoa, boy!’ the Doctor cried to his own Arthur. He turned him round, rode back to Martha and held up his activator. ‘I think they can hear this.’

  Martha stroked her horse’s neck, trying to calm him as faint trembles of eerie alien song pulsated from the Zygon device. ‘It’s started signalling. Why?’

  ‘Told you something was in the air. Around here, anyway.’ The Doctor turned to her and grinned. ‘Diastellic transmissions. They leave a trace resonance in the airwaves – can last for a good couple of weeks.’ He tapped the activator. ‘And those traces are stimulating regrowth in the organic crystals since they were generated by a similar device.’

  Martha found her horse edging closer to the Doctor’s for comfort.

  ‘In which case, the Skarasen that trashed Kelmore was summoned here. And if you’ve got that activator signalling again, aren’t we going to have some pretty unpleasant company on the way?’

  ‘Oh, shouldn’t think so.’ The activator went dead and the Doctor smiled. ‘You know the way your mobile beeps when you plug it in to 70

  charge it up? I think that was the same thing. It’ll be regenerating its cells now. . .

  But it shouldn’t actually start transmitting till it’s properly triggered.’

  ‘Which you can do with the sonic.’ She widened her eyes at him.

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Aha! Then all I need to do is find a way of keeping the Beast of Westmorland docile long enough to reprogram it. Convince it that Skarasens really love the Arctic Circle, safely out the way.’ The Doctor grinned. ‘And if the Zygons want to keep getting their fix of lactic fluid, they’ll have to go out there with it. Good big place to hide, the Arctic. No one else around to get hurt. Problem solved.’

  ‘We hope,’ Martha murmured.

  Ian’s anger had died down into boredom. He was fed up of sitting in his room, waiting for his mother to remember she was supposed to be talking to him.

  Now Father’s been hurt she ought to turn to me, Ian thought. But no, she just stayed in her room, lying down with one of her headaches.

  And meanwhile, it was only a matter of time before Nanny Flock came in with the usual punishment – an extra large spoonful of castor oil emptied over his tongue. . .

  He was gloomily contemplating the thought when he heard Teazel barking outside – frantic, aggressive barks.

  The intruder, Ian thought with a thrill of fear.

  He ran over to the open window and saw Teazel standing motion-less on the lawn beneath, as if getting a scent. He cursed. If only he could get down there, Teazel could lead him straight to the intruder.

  The scoundrel would surrender soon enough with the Mastiffs jaws around his leg, and Ian would be able to show his mother and nanny that he and Martha had been telling the truth right along.

  Teazel glanced up and saw him. He barked once as if in recognition

  – or in warning. But now Ian had noticed the thick ivy that smothered the wall from the ground to the window. It must have been growing there for decades, securing itself ever more tightly to the stone. If he scrambled down, spider-like and swift. . .

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  ‘He who hesitates is lost,’ Ian told himself, and swung himself down from the window sill, sinking his hands into lustrous leaves and snaking creepers as he clambered down the green-clad brickwork.

  The moment he touched the ground, feeling slightly giddy with fear and exhilaration, he looked around to check his escape had not been observed. There was no one in sight. But now Teazel was heading off through the gardens.

  ‘Lead on, boy,’ whispered Ian and, with a thumping heart, ran after him.

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  AsMarthaletherhorseleadheralongthechurned-uproad,acreeping feeling of deja vu turned her spine to ice. It was like being inside Romand’s flickering film show, only living colour made everything so much worse. The sense of trauma still hung in the air. Houses lay demolished, carts crushed, as if invisible elephants had fallen from the sky. She watched people dressed in mourning black cluster outside the roofless church. The graveyard was littered with the crumbs of shattered tombstones.

  It wasn’t long before she and the Doctor had coaxed their horses up to Morton Manor. One corner of the house had been demolished, and a couple of thickset men were sifting through possessions scattered about the tumble of masonry. Another was heaving a huge chunk of fallen hedge across the trench-torn battleground of the front lawn.

  They glanced at the new arrivals and touched their hats, but showed little interest. Martha supposed they were used to strangers poking about here lately.

  ‘Splendid day, what?’ the Doctor called in an aristocratic manner, jumping down from Arthur. ‘Any chance of rustling up the ostler?

  Lady Morton’s expecting us and our horses need parking.’

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  ‘Jack the stable-boy’s about somewhere, sir,’ one of the men informed him. ‘I’ll fetch him.’

  The Doctor nodded approvingly. ‘Where’s her ladyship staying, with the house in this state?’

  ‘In the guest cottage, sir,’ said the red-faced man pulling the hedge.

  ‘But I’m afraid she can’t receive you now. She’s “otherwise engaged".’

  He said the words carefully, like he’d been taught them parrot-fashion.

  ‘That’s all right,’ the Doctor said, helping Martha down from her horse. ‘We’re only here to inspect the machines.’

  Disapproving looks passed between the men. ‘Top barn’s over that way, backs onto the canal.’

  ‘Splendid.’ The Doctor strode away across the lawn, linking arms with Martha. ‘There we are! See? Oh, yes. Act like you own the place, can’t go wrong.’

  ‘But we don’t own the place, do we? We’re trespassing!’

  ‘Only in a physical sense,’ he said defensively,

  ‘A canal next to a lake,’ said Martha, noticing the beautiful view beyond the gardens. ‘This district really does like-to hog the water, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Useful to get about,’ the Doctor remarked. ‘For humans by boat. . .

  or Skarasens by flipper.’

  Soon they had reached the barn. The canal stretched past its rear doors like a flat, grey strip, and a kind of makeshift jetty had been built there. Around the front, the broken door on show in Romand’s film had been removed completely, and the Doctor waltzed inside to study the heavy-duty machinery. It was like some museum exhibit to Martha, depicting the early tools of the construction game. Several more large crates were stacked high at the rear, not yet opened.

  The Doctor threw loving looks in all directions. ‘What a haul! Loco-motive crane, American ditcher. . . ’ He hugged a hydraulic arm protruding from one of the machines, then, with a grating noise, acted out the opening and closing of the colossal claw dangling from another.

  Martha raised her eyebrows. ‘What does this stuff actually do?’

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  ‘Well, this one is for digging ditches along rail-beds, that one’s a general-purpose excavator. And look at this, one of the first travelling derricks! Movable, pivoted arm. . . ’ The Doctor clicked his tongue happily. ‘Could shift some serious weight, this could. All this stuff must have cost a fortune.’ He scooped some papers from the floor.

  ‘And according to the delivery note, it was transported from Sheffield by barge. . . the day before the Skarasen attacked this place.’

  ‘Those wacky English upper classes,’ said Martha. ‘They hide away tons of machinery that could clear the damage to the manor in hours, and let the peasants toil to clear it by hand instead.’

&nbs
p; ‘Perhaps no one knows how to use it. I mean, instruction manu-als are all well and good, but when your average farm worker can’t read. . . ’ The Doctor frowned and pulled a face. ‘Wonder what Sir Albert wanted with all this lot.’

  Martha shrugged. ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Maybe not,’ he said, still lost in thought. ‘I’d like to know though, just the same. Shame her ladyship’s otherwise engaged, or we could ask her. Tell you what! Let’s ask her anyway!’ And, with that, the Doctor launched himself like a pinstriped missile, out through the door and down the path towards her ladyship’s quaint little red-brick cottage.

  Martha jogged to catch up with him – and almost cannoned into the back of him when he suddenly stopped. Like him, she saw a slightly crumpled, very familiar motor car was parked outside the cottage –and then Victor came out through the front door.

  ‘Well, bless me!’ he declared, with a wonky smile. ‘Doctor, Miss Jones, whatever are you doing here?’

  ‘Oh, just passing,’ said the Doctor airily. ‘Thought we’d drop in on the Lady of the house, take some tea, p’raps a biscuit or two. . . ’

  ‘And then ask her why she’s got about a hundred tons of construction gear in that barn over there,’ Martha concluded.

  The Doctor nodded. ‘And then ask you, how come you’re chatting to her ladyship behind closed doors when you should be off hunting monsters?’

  ‘I believe I told you I had business here,’ Victor informed him, look-75

  ing genuinely affronted. ‘Happily, my visit to Lady Morton is not simply as lawyer or friend, but as an emissary of Lord Haleston – here to conduct some business that will benefit us all.’

  The Doctor smiled. ‘Do tell, old boy.’

  Victor regarded the Doctor haughtily for a few moments. Then he shrugged. ‘To answer your earlier question, I have no idea why Sir Albert decided to move into the construction business, particularly when buying that machinery damned near bankrupted him. But I may have found a rather more colourful use for his equipment.’ He smiled and tapped his nose. ‘I’ve made arrangements to have it all transported to Wolvenlath, right away.’