Doctor Who_ St. Anthony's Fire - Mark Gatiss [92]
The Doctor held up his hands for quiet. ‘Well, this may seem difficult to accept, I know, but all these events are interrelated. I know because I’ve seen this planet’s past.’
Liso leant towards the Doctor and blinked his solitary eye. ‘What do you mean?’
The Doctor sighed. ‘You were right. The Keth have returned. In fact, they – or rather it – never really went away.’
There was more frightened muttering from the Betrushian soldiers. The Doctor raised his voice. ‘I’ll be brief. Time, as they say, is of the essence.’
Ace looked around the bridge. Everyone was hanging on the Doctor’s words. Even Yong seemed mildly interested.
‘A very long time ago, in the Time Before, as Betrushian religion has it, this planet was inhabited by a mammalian species. It’s clear from what I’ve seen of their technology that they were highly advanced. But, like many intelligent species, they got a little above themselves.
‘They invented, devised… grew… an evolutionary catalyst. An organism, a regulator if you like, which would assess various lifeforms’ fitness for survival. If the lifeform didn’t come up to scratch, threatened the eco‐system or was pursuing an evolutionary blind‐alley then the regulator’s function was to annihilate it.’
‘Sounds like an eminently laudable scheme, Doctor,’ chimed in Yong. ‘I just know you’re going to tell us something awful happened.’
The Doctor’s face was grave. It did. The regulator found all life unsuitable and began to consume all life on this planet. I think this is where the Keth legend comes from.’ He glanced over at Grek. ‘A race memory of this all‐powerful force.’
He leant wearily against the navigational console. ‘The original Betrushians recognized their folly but it was far too late. The only thing they could do was to stop the thing from spreading anywhere else. In the time they had left they constructed what amounts to an engineering miracle.’
He paused. Imalgahite frowned. ‘Well?’
‘They built a necklace of orbiting satellites around the planet, each one containing a mechanism which somehow restrains the regulator’s behaviour. Probably some sort of inhibitor aligned to its original chemical structure. These satellites kept the thing on Betrushia but only at the expense of their entire civilization. It sated itself on them but could never escape from this planet because of the power of the satellites.’
‘So… what happened to these satellites?’ queried Liso.
‘Oh, they’re still there,’ said the Doctor. ‘Over the millennia they accrued dust and other natural asteroid fragments until they –’
‘The rings!’ shrieked Bernice. ‘Of course! The ring system.’
‘Exactly,’ said the Doctor. ‘Their influence has kept the organism dormant for millions of years. It’s become part of the planet itself, unable to escape its earthly prison, allowing the Ismetch and the Cutch, or rather their ancestors, to evolve in place of the original inhabitants.’
‘And the meteorites?’ said Grek. ‘The earthquakes?’
‘Well, all was fine until our friends here,’ he gestured at Yong, ‘came crusading. As soon as they began blasting their way through the rings, the imprisoning mechanism started to fail. A chain reaction which began gradually bought the organism back to life. I think that it’s been part of the planet’s structure for so long that it’s caused the instability which will destroy Betrushia in a very few hours.’
He chose this moment to activate the main viewing screen. There was an audible gasp as everyone took in the shivering yellow sky and the matrix at its centre.
‘Really,’ yawned Yong, ‘do you expect me to believe that?’
‘I do,’ hissed the Doctor. ‘You and your cack‐handed maniacs have not only doomed this planet, but, if we don’t prevent this thing from leaving Betrushia, all life in the galaxy as well!’
* * *
Thoss staggered through the shuddering dug‐out, gazing appealingly into corners as though expecting to see people he knew. It was strange for the place to be unoccupied after the long, long years of war.
He made his way through the creaking tunnels towards the Number