Doctor Who_ The King of Terror - Keith Topping [108]
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It was only as they reached the very summit of the road and burst into the deserted Griffith Park itself that they were finally able to accelerate away from the mass of terrified humanity below them.
‘It’s like War of the Worlds,’ noted Paynter, looking at the skies above him.
They were already beginning to darken slightly as the first of the alien ships started to hover and mass above the clouds. ‘Book, film and prog-rock album!’
The Doctor’s take on the spectacle was, as his friends might have expected, a touch more cerebral. ‘There’s something to be said for races who stay at home and refuse to accept the possibility of extraterrestrial life,’ he noted.
That brought a reaction from Lethbridge-Stewart. ‘I never thought I’d hear myself saying this Doctor,’ he heard himself say. ‘But, why don’t these aliens just leave us alone?’
‘Because they don’t know any other way Brigadier.’ the Doctor replied, sadly. ‘So, however upsetting it may be for a man of peace like myself, we’re going to have to show them another way. And it’s going to hurt me as much as it’s going to hurt them.’
The tiny convoy of four armoured cars reached the observatory and the soldiers immediately began unloading the Doctor’s plethora of equipment as Paynter asked him, for what seemed the twentieth time, whether he was certain this would work.
The Doctor, not surprisingly, looked wounded. ‘Of course it will work,’ he said. ‘I think. The point is, anyway, that it gives us a fighting chance. The power-booster from the sonic relay is only a small part of the network of such devices around the world that, when linked, will form a defence grid against the alien armada.’
‘A force field?’
‘My word, you did watch a lot of science fiction as a boy, didn’t you?’ said the Doctor caustically. ‘Yes, I suppose that’s one, very unsophisticated, way of putting it!’
The Brigadier joined them at the chosen spot, on top of the observatory’s domed roof. ‘So these devices will prevent the aliens from taking half the world with them when they start to blow each other up?’
The Doctor knelt on the roof, fiddling with the settings on the black instrument panel in front of him. ‘Again, a rather simplistic way of looking at things.
Not to mention a touch inaccurate! No, Brigadier, this won’t just bounce the alien ships off into space. I wish technology like that existed but it doesn’t, not even in my world. However, once we get the grid up and running it should cushion most of the blows that the Jex and the Canavitchi feel like throwing in our direction.’
‘And that’ll give the CIA time to wheel out their secret weapon?’ asked Paynter as the Doctor finally connected the power cable to the booster, then 205
on to the relay and switched on.
There was a low, ominous hum that seemed ready to break the air down to its constituent molecules.
‘Something like that,’ the Doctor said. ‘Which I’m sure they’ll be delighted to do for the good of all mankind. I’m also certain that they have one or two other surprises up their collective sleeve that they haven’t seen fit to share with me.’
The Brigadier began to scramble back from the booster. ‘It may be apt for us to be somewhere else,’ he noted.
‘Indeed,’ said the Doctor as the three men climbed down from the dome and hurried back on to the lawn in front of the observatory. The Doctor began to run towards one of the jeeps but Paynter caught his arm.
‘Too slow.’ he shouted above the drone of the power-booster and, the Doctor realised, the distant noise of a helicopter engine. On the horizon a Chinook troop transport was swooping towards them out of the rapidly blackening sky.
‘Speed being, you know, the essence and all that,’ continued Paynter.
The Brigadier stood next to the Doctor and looked up towards the clouds.
Already twenty or thirty black specks in the upper atmosphere were growing larger and darker and more ominous with each passing second. ‘How long until the grid is fully activated?’
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