Doctor Who: The Silurian Gift Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Copyright

  About the Book

  ‘My new Fire-Ice will solve all the problems of the planet!’

  The world is on the brink of crisis. As fuel runs short, society begins to break down. One man seems to have the answer. But is it too good to be true?

  The Doctor arrives at an old oil refinery near the South Pole, concerned by claims about this new form of energy. He soon discovers something huge and terrifying is stalking the refinery. It brings death and destruction in its wake.

  The battle has begun for planet Earth.

  About the Author

  Mike Tucker has written (or co-written) ten Doctor Who books, as well as a number of Merlin novels and non-fiction titles. He is also a designer of visual effects who has worked on the show off and on for over twenty years. Mike shares his workshop at Ealing Studios with several Daleks.

  * * *

  Chapter One

  Bob Clamp was cold. Colder than he had ever been in his life. Given where he was, he really shouldn’t have found his coldness quite so surprising. He crossed to the window of the small security hut and stared out at the falling snow.

  ‘The South Pole,’ he muttered. ‘How on earth did I end up in Antarctica?’

  There was an easy answer to that question. Work. Two months ago he had lost his job. He’d been a bouncer at a Croydon nightclub, but the club had been steadily losing money and customers, until everyone had been laid off. He tried to get another job in London, but there didn’t seem to be anything about. Not for someone of his age, at any rate.

  Then he saw the advert in the paper. Security guard for a top-secret project with PelCorp. That had made him think. He’d always fancied himself as a secret agent when he was younger. The idea of working on something ‘top secret’ was too good to miss.

  To his surprise he got an interview straight away. It was with the boss of the company, a flash American named Rick Pelham.

  Bob glanced at the newspaper on the table. Pelham’s photo was all over the front page. He claimed he had the solution to the energy crisis. Bob snorted. If he’d known that this was the ‘top-secret’ project…

  He peered at the rows of oil drums lined up outside in the snow. The PelCorp logo was on each one. It didn’t look like much, but his new boss Pelham had said that this was the answer. Bob didn’t understand how this ‘Fire Ice’ was going to put more petrol in people’s cars, but Pelham was paying him very well to guard the drums. Not that he knew quite who he was guarding them from, mind you. He shook his head. ‘As if anyone is going to trek all the way down here to steal barrels…’

  Almost as soon as the words had left his lips, a strange electronic noise filled the air. Bob caught sight of a dark shape flitting through the snow flurries on the far side of the compound. Cursing under his breath, he snatched up his torch. He struggled with the zip on his coat, then pulled on his gloves and goggles and hurried out into the freezing night.

  Flinching against the biting wind, Bob made his way over to where he thought he had seen the figure. Sure enough, there were footprints in the fresh snow.

  The odd noise came again. He pulled the taser stun gun from his belt and peered into the swirling snow. ‘All right, I know you’re out here. There’s no point in hiding.’ He started to move through the lines of oil drums.

  Suddenly a dark shape was caught in the light from his torch.

  ‘OK. Come out. I’m warning you. I’m armed,’ Bob called.

  The shape darted to one side, and Bob caught a glimpse of shaggy fur. He backed off. He could deal with a man, but not with some kind of animal. He reached for the radio on his belt, intending to call his boss for back-up. As he did so, he became aware of a shadow falling over him, and of the sound of monstrous breathing.

  Bob turned, looking up in disbelief as something huge loomed over him. The radio dropped from his gloved hands as he fumbled with his weapon. The monstrous thing gave a huge roar, then razor-sharp claws slashed down.

  The strange electronic burble cut through the air again and the huge shape turned and moved away. Silence settled over the ranks of oil drums once more as the snow started to turn a deep, dark red.

  Laughter rang in Rick Pelham’s ears. He glared in irritation at the strange young man in the tweed jacket and bow tie sitting in the front row of the meeting room.

  The day had started out so well, Pelham thought. He had dressed in his most expensive suit, made sure that his stylist had made his hair look just right and had a cup of his favourite coffee.

  He had watched as the journalists he had invited were flown in by helicopter. They had stumbled across the deck of the ship, shivering from the cold in their waterproof anoraks. Once in the meeting room, they had been left to wait, drinking lukewarm coffee from plastic cups. Rick Pelham knew how to make an entrance. By the time he appeared to make his announcement, they should have been glad to see him.

  Instead he was being made to look foolish.

  ‘Forgive me, Mister…?’

  ‘Doctor, actually,’ said the young man cheerfully.

  ‘Doctor.’ Pelham forced himself to smile. ‘And which paper are you from, again?’

  ‘Oh, the Beezer, I think.’ The man waved his hands around airily. ‘Or Whizzer and Chips… One of the quality tabloids.’

  ‘Well, you have been asking rather a lot of questions. Perhaps if someone else could ask something…’

  ‘Oh, they’ll just ask you boring stuff, like what breakfast cereal you prefer or whether your hair is real,’ said the Doctor. ‘But there’s something I want to know. Out of all the hundreds and hundreds of miles of ice and snow in Antarctica, how did you manage to find this great fire-ice-fuel-source thingy? And on your first try? Was it a lucky guess?’

  Pelham tried to ignore the chuckles of the other journalists. ‘It wasn’t exactly luck, Doctor,’ he said. ‘We did a lot of research. Now that I am ready to deliver our first shipload of fuel to the world, it seems a good time to…’

  ‘Yes, that’s another thing,’ interrupted the Doctor. ‘Extracting and refining the actual fuel from the ice should have taken you years. You’ve managed it in a few weeks. Even I couldn’t do it that fast!’

  ‘Well, perhaps I’m cleverer than you,’ said Pelham through gritted teeth.

  The Doctor frowned. ‘No, I don’t think that can be true…’

  There was another ripple of laughter from the room. Pelham could feel his temper starting to rise. ‘Well if you will let me continue, perhaps I can prove that to you,’ he said.

  The Doctor leant back in his chair and folded his arms. ‘Right-oh. Off you go then. Best of luck.’

  Before Pelham could say another word, the ship’s alarms went off. He glared at his personal assistant, Matt. ‘What the devil is going on?’

  Matt was struggling to listen to the message coming through his headset.

  ‘It’s the refinery, sir. There’s been some kind of accident.’ He looked shocked. ‘Some kind of animal attack.’

  Suddenly the man in the bow tie was there at Matt’s shoulder. His face was grave. ‘Then I think that we should get out there right away, don’t you? I am a Doctor, after all.’
/>   * * *

  Chapter Two

  The Doctor watched as sailors unlashed a helicopter from the deck of the tanker. He was worried. He’d been concerned before he had come out here. Pelham’s discovery of a new super-fuel had been all over the newspapers, but it all seemed too good to be true. When he’d heard that there was to be a publicity launch he’d pulled some strings at UNIT (the Unified Intelligence Taskforce) to get out here. Now, with an attack on the refinery and a mystery animal on the loose, he was convinced that his hunch was correct. Something was very wrong.

  Pelham’s assistant, Matt, waved him over. ‘If you’re coming, you’d better hurry. There’s a storm blowing in. We need to leave before it hits.’

  As the Doctor started to cross the deck towards the waiting helicopter, a voice called out from behind him.

  ‘Doctor, hang on a moment.’

  The Doctor turned to see a young woman hurrying towards him, a black briefcase in her arms. He frowned. She was one of the other journalists, wasn’t she?

  ‘You’re so forgetful,’ said the woman breathlessly. ‘You left your case!’

  The girl turned to Matt, hand outstretched. ‘Lizzie Davies. Doctor’s assistant. I’ll be coming out too.’

  Matt ignored the offered hand and bustled the two of them towards the helicopter. ‘Yes, fine. Just hurry. Mr Pelham wants to get to the refinery as quickly as possible.’

  The Doctor clambered into the aircraft. Pelham was in the pilot’s seat. It seemed that there was no end to the man’s talents. As the Doctor strapped himself into the seat next to Lizzie, he turned and raised an eyebrow at her. ‘You’re my assistant?’

  Lizzie gave him a sly smile. ‘For the moment, yes.’ Her face fell. ‘Unless you’re going to give me away…’

  ‘Not at all!’ The Doctor beamed at her. ‘I like you, Lizzie Davies. Clever, cheeky, just what I need on an adventure like this. I just hope you know what you’re letting yourself in for.’

  Lizzie tapped the case. ‘With luck, some good photos for a quality tabloid newspaper!’ she whispered.

  The Doctor grinned at her as the helicopter gave a throaty roar and lurched into the air.

  The helicopter swept across the cold grey water of the Antarctic Ocean. The bulky shape of the cargo ship they had left was far behind them in moments. Matt kept up a constant sales pitch.

  ‘Of course, Mr Pelham is also ensuring that a specially built fleet of PelCorp cargo ships will be on standby to deliver the Fire Ice across the planet. At present the refinery is still at an early stage, but as time goes on we aim to expand it.’

  The Doctor stared out of the helicopter window as the refinery slowly came into view on the distant ice. It seemed to be nothing but a collection of metal shacks dumped down on the ice. A fenced area enclosed hundreds of barrels of Fire Ice, waiting to be shipped to the coast on snow tractors. In the distance a tall tower, the drilling rig, jutted up into a darkening sky.

  ‘Doesn’t look like much to me,’ muttered Lizzie.

  ‘Well, a lot of the labs and work rooms are under the ice,’ explained Matt. ‘The fuel itself is being mined from an underground lake.’

  ‘Yes,’ murmured the Doctor. ‘It’s being mined from an underground lake that has been untouched for millions of years.’

  Matt bristled in anger. ‘I can tell you that every care has been taken to ensure that we have as little impact on the environment as possible.’

  The Doctor stared at him. ‘But what steps have you taken to ensure that it has no impact on you?’

  The helicopter landed heavily on the ice. Pelham and his passengers were bustled into the refinery. Pelham was quickly surrounded by dozens of assistants, all of them talking at once. For a moment it was uproar, then Pelham slammed his hand against the wall.

  ‘Quiet!’ he shouted. Instantly there was silence. The Doctor had to admit that he was impressed.

  Pelham glared at his staff. ‘I am going to my office. I want a full report on my desk within ten minutes. Everything else can wait. The most important thing right now is to see whether we have lost any of the fuel barrels.’

  The Doctor’s respect for the man quickly faded. ‘Excuse me…’ he butted in. ‘I think that the most important thing is, in fact, seeing to the crewman who’s been injured. Don’t you agree?’

  For a moment Pelham looked as though he was going to explode, then he took a deep breath and nodded. ‘You are quite right, Doctor. My assistant will show you to the sickbay at once.’

  With that, Pelham turned and vanished down the corridor. His assistants followed him meekly.

  Matt turned to the Doctor, amazed. ‘I’ve never seen him admit that he’s wrong before.’

  The Doctor smiled grimly. ‘Let’s just hope it’s the only thing he’s wrong about, shall we? Now, where’s the sickbay?’

  Lizzie was surprised by how small and basic the medical facility was. There were just two beds, surrounded by compact equipment and a small office in one corner. It looked as though the sickbay had been set up to deal with nothing more than minor injuries.

  The wounds of the injured man, Bob Clamp, looked far from minor. It looked like some wild beast had clawed him. Lizzie felt sick.

  The Doctor’s help was gratefully received. The base medic, Beryl, had been able to treat the man’s physical injuries fairly easily, but something else was worrying her.

  Bob seemed to have a fever. He shifted restlessly in the bed, sweat soaking the sheets and pillows. He kept muttering under his breath. The Doctor leaned close to hear what he had to say.

  ‘He’s been like this since he came around,’ said Beryl. ‘Just keeps saying the same thing over and over.’

  ‘What is he saying?’ asked Lizzie.

  ‘Nothing that makes sense.’ Beryl shook her head. ‘The shock must have affected him.’

  ‘Oh, he’s making perfect sense.’ The Doctor’s eyes shone with excitement. ‘He’s telling us what attacked him. He says that it was a dinosaur!’

  * * *

  Chapter Three

  The Doctor ignored the warning about the coming storm. He insisted on going out to look at the site where Bob had been attacked. Despite the cold, Lizzie offered to join him. A grumpy Matt was told to keep an eye on them both.

  ‘What is he doing?’ shouted Matt above the howling wind as he watched the Doctor.

  ‘I have no idea,’ said Lizzie.

  The Doctor was poking around the barrels with what looked like a slim metal torch. The green light from its tip flickered across the snow. There was a high-pitched whine as he swept it back and forth. Snapping the light off, the Doctor peered at a tiny reading on the side of the tube. He was still dressed in nothing warmer than his tweed jacket. Lizzie couldn’t work out how he wasn’t freezing to death. Even in her windproof anorak and fleece, Lizzie’s teeth were chattering so hard that she could barely talk.

  ‘Have you found anything yet?’ she called.

  ‘Hmm?’ the Doctor looked over at her, brushing snow from his floppy fringe of hair. ‘Oh, yes, come and see!’

  Lizzie and Matt hurried over to where the Doctor was crouched between the barrels. He had brushed away the loose snow to reveal a deep mark in the frozen ice beneath.

  ‘What does that look like to you?’ he asked.

  It took Lizzie a few moments to make sense of the shape. Her eyes widened.

  Matt realised what it was at about the same time. ‘You have got to be kidding…’

  ‘It’s a footprint!’ gasped Lizzie. ‘A huge footprint!’

  ‘Which does tend to back up Mr Clamp’s claim that he was attacked by some kind of dinosaur.’ The Doctor rose to his feet, peering at the line of footprints leading off into the worsening storm. ‘The question is, where did it come from, and where is it now?’

  ‘I’ve got to tell Mr Pelham,’ said Matt nervously.

  ‘And I’ve got to get some pictures!’ Lizzie fumbled under her parka, trying to extract her camera.

  ‘No!’ Matt s
natched the camera from her. ‘There is to be nothing on the record about this until Mr Pelham decides otherwise.’

  With that, he turned and started to hurry back towards the base.

  ‘Now you just wait a minute…’ Lizzie hurried after him.

  The Doctor tried to ignore them. Humans. They were always arguing about the least important things. He chewed his lip. They were in the middle of one of the most remote places on Earth. There was a storm bearing down on them. There was a monster on the loose.

  He grinned. ‘Someone must have known I was coming!’

  With one last glance at the dark sky, the Doctor hurried towards the base. Somehow he had to persuade Pelham to stop work, whilst he worked out exactly what had been disturbed.

  ‘A dinosaur? Rubbish!’ Pelham snorted in disbelief. ‘This is just another attempt to stop me. You’re as bad as those green activists from Wholeweal. Worried about the penguins or the polar bears.’

  ‘Ah, now, not polar bears,’ the Doctor started to correct him. ‘You only find them at the North Pole, not the South. Penguins on the other hand…’

  As the two men argued, Lizzie started to edge her way back to the door. She checked to see that Matt wasn’t watching her. He was too busy trying to keep his employer calm.

  Slipping out into the corridor, she started to make her way back towards the small office where Matt had put her gear. The base was quiet and gloomy. Most of the staff were in the canteen, waiting to see how bad the storm got. She smiled to herself. Her trick with the camera out on the ice had worked perfectly. Now, if anyone noticed that she was missing, they would assume that she had gone back outside to photograph the footprint.

  She found Matt’s office easily. He had a big plaque on the door that said ‘Mr Pelham’s Personal Assistant’. She gave a snorting laugh. What an idiot. He hadn’t even bothered locking the door. Her black briefcase and camera were sitting on the desk. She closed the door, and then unlocked the clasps on the case with a small key. She checked the equipment inside. Happy that everything was untouched, she closed the case again.