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

He staggered to his feet and surveyed the general dilapidation. The Doctor’s police box, he observed ruefully, was unscathed, while blocks of carved stone, columns, capitals, the lintel of a door were piled above and around the toppled, yellow, time-machine. The robot struggled for a while with the enormous chunks of masonry, but, for all his amazing powers, he was not Superman.
    But his alter ego in the trapped pillar was not dismayed.
    ‘Quickly,’ called the Time Lord. ‘Go to the Doctor’s machine and materialise that preposterous box inside my TARDIS.’
    The Master’s other half hurried over to the blue police box and set the co-ordinates for the short journey while the Master speculated pleasurably on the Doctor’s dismay at finding himself without the amenities of a TARDIS in such an uncomfortable corner of the Universe.
    It should have been simplicity itself to navigate the undamaged time-machine into the buried console room, but although the lights on the control panel flashed while the column jerked and the whole console grumbled and groaned with effort, the Doctor’s police box would not move.
    In the nearby laboratory the Master was growing impatient.’why do you delay?Activate immediately!’ he called.
    ‘There is some malfunction,’ the metal Master replied.
    ‘There is always malfunction with the Doctor’s TARDIS. Override the disabled units.’
    The Kamelion-Master began to extract circuit boards from the centre panel and soon spotted the cause of the trouble. ‘The comparator is missing!’
    The Master gave a cry of anger. ‘The girl must have removed it while my control was weak. You must find her before she rejoins the Doctor!’ And he vowed that, come what may, the wretched child would die for her interference, marooned with the Doctor on the benighted planet of Sarn.
    Peri had never seen a more forbidding place. The land was barren, devoid of colour, a slagheap that stretched as far as the eye could see. Smoke from the volcano on the horizon clouded the sky. If this was interplanetary travel she would stay at home in future.
    She looked nervously back at the ruin. At least she had escaped that vile creature from the ship. There was a distant boom. Out of the frying pan into the fire, she thought morbidly, as the volcano rumbled. Unless she could find the Doctor and Turlough... With a stab of relief she spotted two tiny figures hiking across the black tufa, about half a mile away from where she had stopped to get her breath back. `Doctor! Turlough!’ she called. But it was a voice crying–quite literally–in the wilderness. The Doctor and Turlough continued, unaware of the girl’s frantic efforts to attract their attention.
    But Peri wasn’t letting them out of her sight. She quickly abandoned the rough path that led away from the ruin to make a beeline for the distant explorers.
    She soon learned the reason for the well worn track.
    What had appeared to be a gentle slope ended in a precipice. A deep ravine lay between her and the Doctor.
    Peri slithered to a halt, like a hang-glider pilot with second thoughts, on the edge of the drop. Several dislodged pieces of brittle rock and an avalanche of small stones cascaded over the cliff while Peri picked herself up and hurried back to the safety of the path.
    The metal Master left the ruin in the opposite direction to that taken by the girl in whose pocket lay the vital comparator. The path followed by the robot led upward to high ground. Despite the loose rock and pumice the creature moved swiftly and had soon established himself on an excellent vantage point. As Kamelion looked slowly round, the Master’s evil smile contorted his plastic features. In the far distance he could just make out the Doctor and Turlough, followed, some way back, by Peri who was halfway along the winding ridge path. The steep hillside between the young American and her single-minded pursuer would present no problem to a robot. He would intercept the girl