Doctor Who_ Dinosaur Invasion - Malcolm Hulke [22]
Another jeep screeched to a halt. Captain Yates stepped out. ‘Anything I can do, Doctor?’
‘You could get my stun-gun,’ the Doctor called back.
The Captain ran to the Brigadier’s parked jeep. As he picked up the weapon, he took a small metallic disc from the palm of his hand and pushed it into position under the barrel. It would, Professor Whitaker had assured him, neutralise the stun-gun without endangering the Doctor.
‘You carry the gun,’ Yates told a soldier. ‘I’ll take the power pack.’ Yates picked up the rucksack which contained nothing more than high-voltage batteries attached to the stun-gun. Together they carried the apparatus to where the Doctor was standing.
‘Thank you,’ said the Doctor. ‘Now, someone help me on with the power pack.’
With Captain Yates’s help the Doctor struggled into the rucksack, and then took the gun from the soldier.
The Brigadier called to his soldiers, ‘Stand by with covering fire if necessary! ‘
‘It won’t be necessary,’ smiled the Doctor. ‘These things don’t bite. Five minutes from now we shall have a very unconscious brontosaurus on our hands.’
The Doctor walked forward into the cul-de-sac. The reptile turned its head again, focusing on the midget now approaching. It backed away, its vast whiplash tail pushing down a high brick wall at the end of the street. The Doctor stopped when he was directly under the monster’s head. Satisfying himself that the stun-gun had been correctly adjusted, he took careful aim and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. The Doctor examined the controls, made a finer adjustment, took aim, and fired again. Still no response from the stun-gun. Suddenly, the Doctor heard a great roar of anger from behind him. He spun round. Blocking the exit from the narrow street towered a thirty-feet-high tyrannosaurus rex, its savage jaws dripping with the blood of some prey it had just killed, before being hurtled through a hundred and fifty million years of Time.
The Brigadier blinked. ‘What happened?’ For a fraction of a second, Time had stood still for him.
‘That monster,’ shouted Captain Yates, ‘it must have suddenly appeared. I must save the Doctor. It’s a killer!’
Yates drew his service revolver and ran towards the tyrannosaurus rex.
‘Yates,’ called the Brigadier, ‘come back. We can’t fire on it with you there! ‘
But Captain Yates ignored the Brigadier. He worked his way round the giant’s foot, hoping to get a shot at its head. Rounding the base of the monster, he saw that the brontosaurus had vanished. The Doctor had tripped, and lay stunned on the ground. The tyrannosaurus rex was lowering its blooded jaws to eat the Doctor. Captain Yates fired twice at the monster’s bead, hitting the huge jaw with the second bullet. The reptile raised its head, as though angered by the bite of a fly. In that moment Captain Yates threw himself across the narrow street, landing beside the discarded stun-gun. He ripped off the concealed metallic disc, grabbed the stun-gun, and rolled over on to his back. Aiming the sights at the monster’s towering head, he pulled the trigger. The stun-gun sizzled with the power flowing through it. Instantly the monster staggered. Yates blasted it again. The tyrannosaurus rex, the most feared animal which had ever lived, leaned drunkenly against the wall of the factory, its little two-fingered hands flaying the air hopelessly. Captain Yates scrambled to his feet, grabbed the Doctor under his arms and pulled him to safety, just as the reptile crumpled forward in a dead faint.
5 Monster in Chains
‘You tried to murder the Doctor!’
Captain Yates was standing over Professor Whitaker, shaking with anger. ‘You deliberately materialised a savage monster knowing full well it would attack the Doctor!’
Butler, his scar more livid than usual, spoke up. ‘An unavoidable mistake, Captain Yates.’
‘It was deliberate,’ Yates stormed. ‘And you know it!’
‘If I may be allowed to speak,’ said Professor Whitaker, ‘it was you, Captain Yates, who sabotaged the stun-gun.