Doctor Who_ The Doomsday Weapon - Malcolm Hulke [42]
Dent did not reply because he never spoke to colonists unless it was necessary. But he agreed with what Ashe had said. There was something very strange about this Adjudicator.
15 Primitive City
It was not difficult for the Doctor to follow the tracks made by the six-toed Primitives and their prisoner, Jo. The tracks led fairly directly from the ruin where he had left John Ashe, and the outcrop of rocky hills on the other side of the section of flat desert. The foot tracks eventually converged with the drag marks of the TARDIS, the combination of the two brought the Doctor to what appeared to be a solid rock face. He concluded that there must be some kind of door in this rock face, and started to look for it.
Gtom the distance he heard the pounding of running feet. He turned to see a group of Primitives racing toward, him across the desert, spears raised. There was nowhere to hide, and these strange half-men could out-run even the Doctor. He waited, with his back to the cliff face Then the Primitives were all around him.
'I have come here to take back the girl,' he said. 'You may not understand my words, but I know you can read my mind. I am willing to buy the girl back with exciting and interesting bits of machinery. Then also a tall blue box which happens to belong to me...' But he was interrupted by one of the Primitives suddenly going up to the rock face and nodding his head towards it. To the Doctor's astonishment, a concealed door in the rock opened. 'How very kind of you,' said the Doctor as he was thrust inside, then partly dragged, partly pushed, down a long corridor with rock walls. Some distance along the corridor there was an opening in one of the walls. As the Doctor went by he glanced through the opening and for a moment caught a glimpse of a vista of strange machinery, silent and unattended. The Doctor wanted to stop, but the Primitives pushed him forward. Presently the corridor ended with a T-junction. The Primitives turned to the right, dragging and pushing the Doctor with them. From this point on, the Doctor found himself being taken through a maze of turns and forks, and he desperately tried to commit the route to memory. Finally, they arrived at a door set in the rock, a door with a heavy metal bolt. One of the Primitives pulled aside the bolt, and the Doctor was thrust into a room cut in the rock. Jo was standing there.
'Doctor!' She rushed forward and flung her arms around him.
'Now just a minute, Jo,' he said, 'I want to try to talk, or at least think, to these fellows.' The Doctor turned but the door had already been slammed shut. 'I can't say much for their hospitality,' he muttered.
'They've probably gone to get the other one,' Jo said. 'What other one?' asked the Doctor.
There's a sort of creature,' she said, 'that seems to be in charge of them.'
'Humanoid?' asked the Doctor.
'No.' she said, 'not really. At least, it's got a horrible face, like an animal.'
'It might have a horrible face to you,' said the Doctor, 'but to itself it might be rather good-looking.'
'You haven't seen it,' she said. 'Anyway, how do we get out of here?'
'No worry about that,' said the Doctor. 'I'm here to buy you back. Just a simple business transaction. Ashe says it's happened before.' He started to look round the room. At one end there was a machine, rather like a clock with all its parts showing. The Doctor examined it, and realised that, whatever its purpose, it hadn't actually worked for centuries. 'This room, and this machinery,' he said, 'must have been part of a highly-advanced civilisation, once.'
Jo said, 'Then what's happened to it?'
'Somehow it must have gone into decline,' conjectured the Doctor. 'Those people we call the Primitives may be the descendants of a tremendously advanced race.'
'I've been looking at this over here,' Jo said, leading the Doctor to the other side of the room. 'Look.' Jo pointed to a series of pictures