Doctor Who: The Silurian Gift Read online

  For a moment she hesitated. If she went through with what she had planned then she was finished. No career, no future. Finished. Was what she was doing right?

  Then the newspaper on the desk caught her eye. The picture of Rick Pelham’s grinning face leered out at her. She had grown up watching men like him destroy the planet. That was why she had joined the Wholeweal protest group in the first place. It was time to fight back.

  With new certainty, Lizzie lifted the case down off the desk. With luck, she would be able to find what she was looking for and get back before anyone even noticed that she was missing. She snatched up the camera and slung it over her shoulder. She had to keep up the act of being a determined photographer at all costs.

  Lizzie snuck out of the office and into the corridor, peering at the signs and posters that lined the walls. Which way to go? Every part of the base looked the same to her. She set off down a corridor at random, but just found herself in an empty room. The second corridor she tried seemed to end at a blank wall – it must be a part of the base still not finished. Frustrated, Lizzie retraced her steps and tried another direction.

  There was a sudden violent gust of wind, enough to rattle the walls of the base. The lights flickered and died. For a moment there was total blackness, then, with the hum of back-up motors, dim, red emergency lights slowly came on.

  ‘Great,’ muttered Lizzie. ‘Even the man who thinks that he has the solution to the global energy crisis has a power cut.’

  She fumbled in her pocket and pulled out a small key ring with a torch on it. Praying that the batteries were still working, she flicked the switch. To her relief, the little light was bright and steady.

  She started to edge slowly along the corridor, feeling her way in the gloom. The bland refinery corridors now seemed sinister and dangerous in the eerie red light. The entire complex was bigger than she had thought, and Lizzie started to regret her decision to set off without finding out a bit more about the layout.

  She was suddenly aware of movement behind her. She turned just in time to see a dark shadow flash past the end of the corridor. Her heart leapt. If she had been spotted, she would have to bluff it out.

  ‘Hello?’ she called out nervously. ‘Who’s there?’

  She peered along the corridor where the figure had gone. Nothing.

  Realising that she would soon be missed, she set off in the other direction. Before long, she came to a large door blocking her way. She shone her torch at a sign that read:

  DANGER!

  POWER ROOM

  AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY

  She grinned. ‘Bingo.’

  Setting down the briefcase, she pulled a scrap of paper from her pocket and tapped the numbers written there into the keypad. The heavy door swung open. She gave a sigh of relief. It had taken the promise of a lot of money to persuade Bob Clamp to text the security code to Wholeweal. Lizzie felt a pang of guilt as she recalled how badly injured he was. She hoped he would survive to spend that money.

  Checking that she was alone, she slipped inside the power room. It was dark, lit with the same eerie red emergency lights as the rest of the base. Machines lined the walls and in the centre of the floor sat the squat, ugly shape of the power cell. Lizzie hurried over to it, sliding the briefcase under the main body of the machine.

  With a pounding heart, she pulled a small plastic box from her pocket. It was about the size and shape of a small mobile phone. She pressed a button on the side. There was a muffled beep from the briefcase.

  Stuffing the device back into her pocket, Lizzie hurried back out of the power room.

  As she watched the heavy door close, Lizzie let out all her breath in a rush. It was done. For better or worse. Now she had to get back. She turned to retrace her steps.

  Something dark rushed at her from the shadows. Lizzie got a sudden glimpse of jet-black eyes and matted fur, and then everything went dark.

  * * *

  Chapter Four

  ‘Lizzie, are you OK?’

  Lizzie groaned and forced her eyelids open. She stared groggily up at the figure kneeling over her.

  ‘Doctor?’

  ‘Steady now…’ The Doctor helped her to sit against the wall. ‘What happened?’

  Lizzie rubbed at her scalp. ‘I got lost when the lights went out. I was trying to find my way back when—’ Her eyes suddenly widened and she clutched at the Doctor’s arm. ‘It was here! Right here!’

  ‘It’s OK.’ The Doctor calmed her. ‘What did you see?’

  Lizzie shook her head. ‘I didn’t get a proper look. It was dark. I felt fur!’

  ‘Fur?’ The Doctor looked puzzled.

  ‘Doctor, this thing wasn’t big, not big enough to make those footprints, this was small, like a child…’

  The Doctor rubbed his chin thoughtfully. Slowly he reached out and placed his palm on the door of the power room. ‘Warm…’ he muttered to himself.

  There was a sudden whirr of power. The red emergency lights faded as the main lighting came back on. At the same time, there was the sound of footsteps in the corridor and the bellow of a familiar voice.

  ‘I should have guessed that you would be the cause of this!’ Pelham snarled at Lizzie. ‘Messing about with the power cell, were you?’

  The Doctor sprang to his feet, trying his best to calm the situation.

  ‘Now, Mr Pelham. Don’t be hasty. She’s had a nasty knock on the head.’

  ‘That’s nothing to what will happen if she’s damaged anything! I knew there was something fishy about you two. From Wholeweal, are you? Here to shut me down?’

  ‘Will you stop being so… suspicious!’ cried the Doctor. ‘She wasn’t interfering with anything! She’s a photographer. There’s a dinosaur on the loose! What do you think she was trying to do?’

  Pelham glared at him, then glanced at the expensive camera slung over Lizzie’s shoulder.

  ‘Lizzie says that she was attacked,’ said the Doctor calmly. ‘The thing that attacked her is probably still inside the base. If we mount a search right away…’

  ‘Thing?’ Pelham growled. ‘Another dinosaur, I suppose?’

  ‘No, no, no.’ The Doctor shook his head. ‘This one seemed…’ He shot a glance at Lizzie. ‘Furry.’

  ‘If there is something on this base then my men will deal with it.’ Pelham turned to the guards standing at his shoulder. ‘I think that visiting time is over. Get them out of here. Send them back to the ship.’

  ‘That’s not going to be possible just yet,’ said Matt nervously. ‘We can’t get the helicopter airborne until the storm is over. That could be several hours according to weather control.’

  ‘Then lock them up somewhere!’ shouted Pelham. ‘Just keep them out of my way. I’ve got a meeting with the scientific team and I don’t want to be disturbed!’

  With that, Pelham spun on his heel and swept back down the corridor.

  Matt glared at the Doctor and Lizzie in irritation. He held out his hand.

  ‘Your scanning device please, Doctor. Just as a precaution.’

  The Doctor reluctantly handed over his sonic screwdriver.

  Matt slipped it into his pocket then turned to the guard captain. ‘Lock them up in the storeroom.’

  Pelham stamped towards the meeting room in a foul mood. That annoying Doctor had made him look foolish again and he wasn’t used to being made to look foolish. On top of everything else, the power cell was obviously faulty. That had been the third power failure in as many days.

  He stopped outside the door of the meeting room. Standing in the quiet of the corridor for a moment, he controlled his temper. All that he had to do was wait a few more hours. As soon as the storm died down, they would be able to start loading the first shipment of Fire Ice. Once that was done…

  Pelham gave a deep, contented sigh. He was going to be the richest, most powerful man on the planet.

  ‘I just need to remind my… partners, that they must continue with their side of the bargain,’ he murmur
ed to himself.

  Straightening his tie and smoothing out the creases in his jacket, he unlocked the double doors, and pushed them open.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting…’

  ‘Well at least they’re not going to let us starve,’ said Lizzie, pulling a biscuit from the packet on the table.

  ‘But they’re not Jammie Dodgers, are they?’ The Doctor peered at his biscuit in distaste. ‘If they’d locked us in here with a packet of Jammie Dodgers, I might have believed Pelham was one of the good guys. But Rich Tea…’

  He put the biscuit back on the table and crossed to the door. ‘Time for us to get out of here, I think.’

  ‘Seriously?’ Lizzie raised an eyebrow at him. ‘Are you going to get us into more trouble than we’re already in?’

  ‘Absolutely!’ The Doctor beamed at her. ‘There’s a meeting of the scientific team. Lots of scientists. Talking about science stuff. That sounds interesting. I think we ought to be there too, don’t you?’

  ‘I’ve always been keen on science!’ Lizzie hurried to his side. ‘But we do have the problem of a locked door to deal with. Probably with an armed guard outside.’

  ‘No problem.’ The Doctor pulled the torch thing from his pocket. ‘Sonic screwdriver.’

  Lizzie stared at him in amazement. ‘I thought Matt took that off you!’

  ‘He did, but I picked his pocket when he was talking to the guards. Swapped it for a stick of rock with “Southend-on-Sea” right through the middle. It’ll be all fluffy by now. Yuck.’

  ‘OK, that takes care of the door. What about the guard?’

  The Doctor glanced at his watch. ‘Phil? Oh, he should be going about now. Overheard him moaning about missing the football. The rest of the base is probably shutting down because of the storm. Pelham is in his meeting. Matt is doing whatever it is that personal assistants do. Phil checked the lock himself so he knows that we can’t possibly get out. Now he thinks he’s safe nipping off for ten minutes to check the scores, so…’

  The Doctor pressed the tip of his sonic screwdriver to the lock. There was a whine and a flare of green light and the door swung open.

  Grabbing Lizzie by the hand, the Doctor crept out into the dark empty corridor.

  Finding where Pelham was holding his meeting wasn’t that difficult. They just followed the shouting. Pelham’s voice rang down the empty corridors.

  The Doctor guessed that most of the staff were just trying to keep out of his way.

  Pressing an ear to the door of the meeting room, the Doctor tried to listen to what was being said. Pelham’s voice was easy enough to make out, but there was something strange about the voices of the other people in the room. Something that seemed familiar to him.

  ‘You told me that we would have no problem extracting the Fire Ice in quantity!’ screamed Pelham. ‘We had an agreement. If I find that you have gone back on that agreement then you know what will happen! Think about that!’

  The Doctor pushed Lizzie back against the wall as Pelham came crashing out of the room, slamming the doors behind him. The Doctor held his breath. If Pelham stopped… If he turned around…

  Fortunately Pelham was in too mad a mood. He simply stormed off down the corridor, bellowing for Matt.

  ‘Time for a bit of peace-making, I think,’ said the Doctor pulling out his sonic screwdriver.

  Unlocking the door, the Doctor barged inside. ‘Sorry to interrupt, but I couldn’t help overhearing, and it sounds to me as though you could use a good trade union…’

  The Doctor tailed off, staring in disbelief at the assembled scientists. From behind him, Lizzie gave a little gasp.

  Bright intelligent eyes stared from delicately scaled faces. Elegant crests and fins jutted from the hairless heads. The scientists weren’t human.

  ‘What are they?’ asked Lizzie in amazement.

  The Doctor couldn’t keep the surprise from his voice. ‘They’re Silurians!’

  * * *

  Chapter Five

  ‘You say “Silurians” like I should know what you mean,’ said Lizzie, gripping the Doctor’s arm nervously. ‘Are they aliens?’

  ‘Far from it,’ explained the Doctor calmly. ‘They are the original rulers of this planet. They were here long before man evolved. Survivors of the race have slept under the ground for millions of years. It seems Mr Pelham has woken them up.’

  ‘Underground lizard men from the dawn of time.’ Lizzie nodded. ‘Right.’

  ‘Would you close the door, Doctor?’ said one of the Silurians calmly. ‘We do tend to find the base outside this room rather too cool for comfort.’

  ‘Of course.’ The Doctor closed the door and locked it. ‘How do you know who I am?’

  The Silurian scientist held up a phone. ‘The internet is a wonderful source of information, Doctor. It was the work of moments for us to break into the secure files at UNIT. You have been busy in the affairs of this planet.’

  ‘Prehistoric lizard men with smartphones.’ Lizzie slumped into a chair. ‘It’s all a bit much to take in.’

  ‘I am Oclar,’ said the Silurian. ‘My colleagues are Vondar, Kastac and Eliya.’

  ‘So, this Fire Ice… This wonder fuel that Pelham says he’s found. It’s not his discovery, is it? It’s yours.’

  Oclar nodded.

  ‘I knew he couldn’t have done it by himself!’ said the Doctor happily. ‘Didn’t I say that he couldn’t be cleverer than me?’

  ‘Believe me, Doctor, we do not help him out of choice.’

  ‘Oh?’ The Doctor’s smile faded.

  ‘Pelham has hostages.’

  The Doctor pulled out a chair from the table and sat down. He fixed Oclar with a steady gaze. ‘I think that you’d better start at the beginning, don’t you?’

  The Silurian nodded and sat opposite him.

  ‘We were part of a small scientific task force. When our people were preparing to hibernate – before the arrival of the body that you call the Moon – we were given the task of stockpiling a new fuel source for our eventual revival.’

  ‘The Fire Ice.’

  ‘That is what Pelham calls it, yes. It was a way of preserving fuel for the future. It provides instant clean energy. Pelham found us about a year ago. He was working on a survey of the ice sheet and his instruments picked up our distress beacon.’

  ‘Distress?’ asked the Doctor curiously.

  ‘Our base is on the bottom of the underground sea below us. When we retreated to our shelter, this land was warm and green,’ explained Oclar. ‘To wake and find a world of ice and wind…’

  ‘Not the best situation for a cold-blooded species, I’ll admit,’ murmured the Doctor.

  ‘We tried to contact others of our race, but could find nothing. Then one day, we had an answer to our distress call.’

  ‘Pelham.’

  ‘Yes. We welcomed any contact with the outside world. He promised that he could act on our behalf, that he could introduce us to the human leaders. But he had one condition…’

  ‘That you provided him with the means of releasing the energy that you had stored.’

  ‘And you believed him?’ Lizzie asked in disbelief. ‘Someone should have warned you!’

  Oclar gave an almost human shrug. ‘It seemed such a perfect solution. You humans are far better at operating at low temperatures than we are. The Fire Ice would be our peace offering, our gift to the human race.’

  ‘So what happened?’ asked the Doctor.

  ‘He built a lift shaft to our base – pretending to the world that he was constructing his drilling rig. He and his guards took over our facility one evening. We had not been expecting such treason, and there were too few of us to put up any kind of struggle. He put guards on the hibernation unit with orders to destroy the controls if we resisted. Those of us who were already revived were threatened with being left out on the ice sheet…’ Oclar looked away. ‘After the first death there was no desire to resist.’

  ‘I
’m sorry.’ The Doctor kept his voice gentle. ‘It was someone close?’

  Oclar nodded. ‘My daughter.’

  The Doctor shot a look at Lizzie, remembering the thing that had surprised her in the corridor. Something small.

  ‘Is there a chance that any of your people have managed to avoid being captured?’ he asked. ‘A resistance group of some kind?’

  ‘No.’ Oclar looked at the Doctor puzzled. ‘Why do you ask such a thing?’

  ‘Because someone seems very keen on messing things up for Mr Pelham. Someone with the means to control something large, reptilian and prehistoric…’

  The Doctor sprang to his feet and started to pace around the meeting room. ‘Now, I know from experience that your hibernation chambers tend to have lots of big, toothy beasts in deep freeze. And I also know that your people have the means of controlling them, directing them. Well, someone seems to be doing just that.’

  The Silurian scientists glanced nervously at one another.

  ‘What is it?’ asked the Doctor. ‘What are you not telling me?’

  Oclar said nothing.

  ‘I can help you!’ said the Doctor urgently.

  ‘But I need to know everything.’

  ‘The complex beneath us…’ said Oclar warily. ‘It was not just a scientific research facility. It was also used by our military. A squad of shock troops was frozen, along with several genetically altered specimens.’

  ‘Myrkas.’ The Doctor shook his head in despair.

  ‘You know of the Myrkas?’ said Oclar in surprise.

  ‘Oh yes.’ The Doctor smiled grimly. ‘We’re old friends.’

  ‘Would one of you mind telling me exactly what a Myrka is?’ asked Lizzie, frustrated at being left out.

  ‘A prehistoric creature,’ explained the Doctor. ‘But one that has been altered to turn it into a creature of war. Able to carry out basic tasks, but basically just a savage killer.’

  ‘That sounds like an unexpected but most welcome bonus!’ The rich tones of Rick Pelham boomed from the corridor.