Doctor Who: Target - Novelisations [093] - Planet of Fire by Peter Grimwade

Author:Peter Grimwade
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science-Fiction - Doctor Who
ISBN: 9780426199403
Publisher: Target Books
Published: 1985-02-14T23:00:00+00:00

8

An Enemy in Disguise

The ship had split, on impact, into three parts. Two sections had been so badly burned as to be unrecognisable, but the third was easily identified as the flight deck.

Turlough stared at the shattered instruments and twisted controls – it was amazing that anyone could have lived after such a crash. He walked across to the tail section where Malkon stood gazing at the charred, half-dissolved skeleton of the ship. Volcanic dust had collected in drifts against the distorted bulkheads, some alloy in the hull was slowly corroding in the sulphurous air and had bled a lurid green and yellow across the superstructure.

‘This was your sacred fire,’ said Turlough to the young boy. ‘A crashed ship.’

‘A ship,’ repeated Malkon thoughtfully. ‘Did I really travel from Trion in this?’

Turlough nodded. He had tried to explain to his companion as they hurried across the valley and over the ridge into the forbidden land, that the mark of Logar on his arm branded him a citizen of Trion. Turlough’s own home, not this planet of fire. ‘It must have been spectacular,’ he added grimly, thinking of the ship hurtling in from space, red hot with friction, engines screaming against the inevitable impact. He imagined the explosion and the massive conflagration from which a baby had crawled alive. A miracle indeed, but not quite as the superstitious Sarns had interpreted it.

‘Where are the others?’ said Malkon.

Turlough had been asking himself the same question. If Malkon had survived, why not the passengers or the crew?

Could they still be in hiding somewhere?

He moved to the clearing between the three hulks.

There was a circle of small stones, around which a few ragged flowers brightened the scorched earth. Malkon walked across to join the elder boy who was staring at the ground.

‘Turlough?’

Turlough turned roughly aside. He did not want his new friend to see him weeping.

Peri was hopelessly lost. ‘Doctor! Turlough! Anybody!’ she wailed, desperately scanning the vista of clinker and dust.

She was cut and and exhausted by her terrifying scramble down the side of the ravine, and hot from her trek through the sterile valley. She was thirsty, she ached all over, and she was very, very frightened. She held back another wave of blind hysteria and tried to work out the direction of the Doctor’s blue box.

There was something on the horizon that was not made of rock and lava. As she got closer, she could distinguish girders, struts, a hotly of metal and – she could have cried with relief – two human beings.

‘Hey, Turlough!’

A dishevelled Peri staggered towards Malkon and Turlough as the two boys emerged from the shadow of the wreck.

‘What are you doing here?’ said Turlough as the girl collapsed on the ground.

‘Thank goodness I’ve found you,’ she moaned. ‘I was beginning to think I was the last of the Mohicans.’ Sitting up, she caught sight of Malkon. ‘Who’s this?’

‘Malkon,’ said Turlough impatiently, wanting to know why Peri had left the TARDIS. ‘Another traveller,’ he explained to Malkon.

‘Hi,’ said Peri, hoping that Malkon was the ordinary, uncomplicated teenager he looked.

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