Doctor Who - Target Novelisations - 009 - The Cave Monsters by Malcolm Hulke

Author:Malcolm Hulke [Hulke, Malcolm]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, General, Science Fiction, Children's Stories
ISBN: 9780426102922
Publisher: W.H. Allen
Published: 1974-07-14T07:00:00+00:00

‘No one’s going to tell him,’ said the Doctor.

‘I am,’ said Liz, ‘unless I’m going with you.’

‘You realise this is blackmail,’ he said.

‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘We started this together, so let’s finish it together.’

The Doctor shook his head in despair. ‘Since I have no alternative,’ he said, and then smiled, ‘let’s go and find some monsters.’

The Doctor and Liz went along the main passageway of the caves leading from the entrance. The Doctor paused, pulled from his pocket papers he had taken from Dr. Quinn’s office. He opened up a folded paper to reveal a crudely drawn map. Liz shone her torch on it. The Doctor pointed his finger to an X which Dr.

Quinn had marked on the map. ‘That, presumably, is where we’ve got to make for,’ he said.

‘All right,’ said Liz, ‘let’s go.’ She shone her torch back to the route ahead of them, then noticed something on the cave floor glint in the light of the torch. The Doctor also noticed it, went and picked it up and inspected it.

‘A cartridge from an FN.303 rifle,’ said the Doctor.

He held it close to his nose and sniffed. ‘Recently fired.’

Liz shone her torch around on the floor. ‘Look, there’s another one, and another! The FN.303 is what UNIT uses.’

‘Yes, I know,’ said the Doctor. ‘But they haven’t been down here for some time. I wonder if it could have been our elusive Major Barker?...’

‘Well, anyway,’ said Liz, ‘let’s find the point marked X on the map.’ She took a step forward, but the Doctor suddenly grabbed her arm and pulled her back.

‘That sand there,’ he said, pointing, ‘it’s a little too smooth.’ He looked around, found a small rock and threw it at the sand. The trellis-like man-trap sprung up from the smoothed sand, crushing the piece of rock.

‘He came down here,’ said the Doctor, ‘got himself trapped in that thing and tried to shoot it out.’

Liz looked in horror at the man-trap. ‘You think we can make peaceful contact with these monsters, Doctor?’

‘I think we have got to,’ he said. ‘Now come on.’

They skirted round the man-trap and continued deeper in the cave. For the next thirty minutes they carefully followed the route sketched on Dr. Quinn’s map. It brought them into the huge cathedral-like cave where a little daylight came in from a distant opening to the outside world.

Liz said, ‘What do you hope to find? I mean, what does the X mean on the map?’

But the Doctor pulled Liz sharply into a recess in the cave wall and signalled her to be silent. As they watched a reptile man appeared from one of the passages leading into the great cave. He went up to a huge rock and stood facing it. After a second or two his third eye glowed a brilliant red. The rock opened like a door and the reptile man went inside. The rock closed behind him. The Doctor could feel Liz quaking beside him. ‘It was an upright lizard,’ she said, ‘a reptile!’

‘It was also a man,’ said the Doctor.

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