Doctor Who: Target - Novelisations [062] - The Tenth Planet by Gerry Davis

Author:Gerry Davis
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science-Fiction - Doctor Who
ISBN: 9780426110682
Publisher: Target Books
Published: 1975-12-31T23:00:00+00:00

10

Prepare to Blast Off

‘Doctor! Doctor!’ Ben was worried sick. The Doctor seemed to have aged even in the few minutes that they had been locked in the cabin. The guards had thrust them into a room belonging to a couple of the base technicians. It resembled a ship’s cabin – with two bunks set one above the other, a built-in wardrobe, chest of drawers, a desk and chair. The Doctor had fallen asleep on the lower bunk almost immediately.

Was it Ben’s imagination, or had the Doctor’s hair gone a shade whiter and finer during the last few hours? His skin, which looked as transparent as old parchment, was stretched tightly over his prominent cheek bones.

Ben shook his head dejectedly. He began to speak to himself as usual – a habit he had picked up during long night watches at sea.

‘Better let the poor old geezer sleep. He looks all done in.’ He looked around the cabin, then got up, walked over to the door and tried the handle. Locked. Parts of an electric iron were scattered about the table – one of the technicians had obviously been repairing it. Beside it was a small tool kit – pliers, wire cutters, screwdrivers, etc. Ben eagerly picked up the tools, and started work on the door lock.

After a quick examination, however, he gave up in disgust and flung the tools back on the desk. ‘What’s the use? They didn’t have locks like this back in the 1970s.’

He sat down dejectedly in a chair, and began to rock it backwards. Suddenly, something on the ceiling caught his eye.

Just above one end of the upper bunk, a large square grille – part of the air conditioning system – had been let into the ceiling.

Ben measured it with his eye. How large was it? Taking a sudden decision, he sprang to his feet, picked up one of the screwdrivers and, carefully avoiding the sleeping Doctor, scrambled on to the upper bunk.

Dyson and Cutler entered the silo room. Cutler looked around him curiously.

Although as base commander he made a monthly tour of inspection, the silo room was not a place to linger in. In spite of the many nuclear technology courses which Cutler had attended, he had little real understanding of how to assemble and launch a nuclear weapon. ‘All a General needs to know is the location of the “fire” button,’ was how he usually explained away his ignorance. It was his job to make the decisions – and up to the scientific egg-heads to understand the technology that made it all possible.

The oblong-shaped room, which had been painted a neutral mid-green, contained a complex array of pipes colour-coded in red, blue, and yellow. Along one wall ran a bench containing electronic equipment and several large cylinders connected by pipes to the bomb itself. A large hatch led through to the tall, two-storey-high Demeter rocket in the firing tube. From there, the bomb could be placed directly into the ‘payload’ area.

However, it was the Z-bomb itself which caught – and held – their attention.

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