Doctor Who_ Illegal Alien - Mike Tucker [89]
'So you're the thing that's been blowing up half of London,' the Time Lord murmured.
Lights flickered menacingly across the surface console of the squat machine. Gingerly, the Doctor reached towards it.
'Here goes...'
He keyed a sequence of buttons. The surface lights flickered once more and then died. The machine toppled on to its side into the mud.
Suspended outside space and time, the TARDIS hung immobile and hummed to itself.
If the Cybermen's little toy was to trigger any more explosions it could do so in the TARDIS, where no one except the Doctor would feel the effect.
The Time Lord was on his knees in a corner of the console room. The device lay next to him, upside down, legs in the air. He had removed a panel from its exposed underside and was rummaging around inside.
'Yes... I see...' he muttered to himself. 'You generate a force field around yourself and then trigger a plasma explosion just outside the force field. Now... we shall remove the forcefield chip, for a start... Temporal anomalies are bad enough. Indestructible ones are quite out of the question.'
He placed a tiny piece of microcircuitry in his pocket.
'But why?' he muttered. 'No Cyberman was ever so well armed. You must be very important to them... Ah!'
He peered deeply into the machine's interior.
'You're some sort of commandrelay unit! In effect a portable battle computer, capable of constantly receiving and processing new data and updating and relaying orders. Very clever! And presumably you were sent here with your big friend as a sort of advanced reconnaissance mission.'
The machine emitted a low beep, almost as if agreeing.
The Doctor continued. 'Spy out the land, formulate a battle plan and then send in the cavalry. Then he got hit by a bomb, his homing signal was damaged, and ever since you've been running about London like a lost dog trying to find him.' He tickled the metal underbelly of the console. 'You know, you remind me of an old friend of mine...'
The Doctor groped blindly about the floor where he knelt.
His fingers closed on one of his jeweller's screwdrivers. He gingerly inserted it into the guts of the command unit.
'Let's see,' he murmured, 'if I can't make you dance to a different tune.'
In a remote storage bay, deep underground, deserted and empty, the stillness was ripped in two by the asthmatic shriek of the Doctor's old TARDIS taking material form. The door to the blue box opened and the little Time Lord emerged. Grimly, he planted his battered hat upon his head.
Jersey.
He pursed his lips and let out a low, enticing whistle.
Responding with an electronic burble, the squat form of the Cybercommand unit waddled after him.
'Stay,' said the Doctor. 'I'll call you when I need you.'
The walking time bomb slipped into the shadows.
'Now... the front door, I think'
Having pushed open the unlocked doors of the storage bay, the Doctor sauntered down the corridor beyond, whistling tunelessly to himself, umbrella slung jauntily over his shoulder.
It was a matter of yards before he was challenged by an SS private.
'Halt!' the young soldier barked. 'What are you doing here?'
'Oh, nothing much,' replied the Doctor. Just out for an afternoon stroll. Is it the afternoon? It's so difficult to tell when one has just materialised, particularly when one is underground. I don't suppose you could...' He paused, struck by a sudden thought. 'You know, I'm not sure I've ever said this to a human before... Would you be so kind as to... take me to your leader?'
The soldier had unslung his rifle and was pointing it at the Doctor's head.
'March!' he barked.
'Certainly,' the Doctor replied.' "Colonel Bogey"?'
And, shouldering his umbrella militarystyle, he set off down the corridor at a brisk pace, half singing, half humming the irreverent old tune. 'Hitler... ta ta ta tum turn tummm...'
The late Major Lazonby would have felt quite at home in