Doctor Who: Planet of Fire by Peter Grimwade, British Broadcasting Corporation Read Free Book Online

me!’ yelled Peri.
     
    ‘You will remain in the TARDIS.’
    Peri, who was unaccustomed to taking orders from strangers, aimed a sharp kick at the Master’s shins that would have repulsed a Globetrotter. There was a howl of pain–from Peri. The man was made of titanium!
    The Kamelion-Master transferred his hand to Peri’s shoulder. As the hard sharp fingers sunk into her flesh, Peri screamed with pain and fear. The strength of her emotion was not lost on the robot. The same energy that had triggered his metamorphosis into Howard Foster began to inhibit the Master’s own projection.
    Peri instantly noticed the look of discomfort on the man’s face. She screamed again–and louder. Feeling his grip relax, she screamed some more. The Master’s features blurred, his body glistened...
    ‘Now what’s happening?’ Peri looked hopefully for the devil she knew to reappear. But there was nothing of Howard in the bald puppet that materialised in front of her.
    ‘Who are you?’ She stared at the authentic Kamelion.
    ‘ What are you?’
    The arms of the silver marionette jerked. A finger stabbed at the console. ‘Help me,’ said a little tin voice.
    Only a genius of the Master’s rank could have controlled the functions of his TARDIS entirely from the workbench of the laboratory, deep inside the time-machine. (Or so the Master told himself as he scanned the hastily assembled remote control units that operated the equipment in the console room.) The renegade Time Lord allowed himself a moment of relaxation. There had been a time when he feared Kamelion did not fully understand what was required of him. The metamorphosis projector. with which he now controlled the slave, had been an inspired invention, its design and construction–with materials available in the workroom–an achievement of epic proportions.
     
    The Master observed with great satisfaction that his co-ordinates had been aligned with the Doctor’s TARDIS, and turned to align his own head with the antennae of the new machine. He peered at the coherer with which he monitored the robot’s morphic state. He snarled with rage.
    The round glass screen should have reflected his own image, but now he stared at the silver mask of the undisguised robot. Some interference–that girl!–had encouraged the creature to reassume its own identity. He increased the power of the projector, yet still Kamelion resisted. A robot that was not for him was against him.
    ‘You will resist the girl!’ he called. ‘Her mind is strong, but you will obey only the Master.’
    The Time Lord increased the radiation by a factor of ten, until the machine howled with the power surging through it, and the Master himself groaned with the pressure on his own brain. ‘Kamelion! Kamelion!’ he screamed. ‘You will be the blind slave of my will!’
    But the image in the coherer remained that of an unco-operative automaton. Kamelion must be transfusing with the Doctor’s computer, the Master decided as he reduced power. There was no choice but to wait until he could use the projector at close range.
    Kamelion felt himself grow stronger. He must be loyal to the Doctor, help the Doctor’s friend–and quickly! Not for long could he resist the demands of his other master.
    ‘What’s happened to Howard? Who was the other man?
    What’s going on?’ Peri plied the seemingly friendly robot with questions.
    ‘Howard is safe on Earth,’ Kamelion reassured her in a friendly voice. ‘His appearance was a projection of your own energy which overwhelmed my personality circuits.’
    ‘Circuits?’ repeated the confused American. ‘You really are some kind of robot?’
    ‘I am Kamelion,’ said the aristocrat of automata proudly. ‘Was Kamelion,’ he added in a sad voice, scanning his own neuronic damage. `But I must help you...’
    Neither of them saw, on the scanner, another pillar–a yellow, fluted Corinthian column–appear in the ruined colonnade outside the TARDIS. The Master had