Doctor Who and the Robots of Death Read online

  Doctor Who and the Robots of Death

  Terrance Dicks

  * * *

  On a desert planet the giant sandminer crawls through the howling sandstorms, harvesting the valuable minerals in the sand.

  Inside, the humans relax in luxury, while most of the work is done by the robots who serve them.

  Then the Doctor and Leela arrive—and the mysterious deaths begin. First suspects, then hunted victims, Leela and the Doctor must find the hidden killer—or join the other victims of the Robots of Death.

  CONTENTS

  1 Sandminer

  2 Murder

  3 Corpse Marker

  4 Death Trap

  5 Captives

  6 Suspicion

  7 The Hunter

  8 Sabotage

  9 Pressure

  10 Robot Detective

  11 Killer Robot

  12 Robot Rebellion

  13 The Face of Taren Capel

  14 Brainstorm

  1 Sandminer

  Like a city on the move, the Sandminer glided across the desert sands.

  Not quite a city, a mobile factory perhaps. There were storage holds, control rooms, laboratories, living quarters, food stocks, a recycling plant... The Sandminer was completely self-contained, able to range the deserts for years at a time before returning to base. Powered by its mighty hovercraft mechanisms, the Sandminer glided over the fine shifting sands, a massive metal crab on an immense, multi-coloured sea of sand.

  It was about to become a ship of death.

  Inside the Sandminer robots were everywhere. They stalked silently through the long metal corridors on mysterious errands, they laboured in the engine-rooms and the storage hoppers, they worked on the vast, complex control-deck.

  There were three kinds of robot. Simplest and most numerous were the D class, or Dums, programmed to obey orders and carry out simple repetitive tasks. The more sophisticated Vocs could not only obey but respond with speech as well, and even exercise a certain limited independence. Finally there were Super-Vocs, robot commanders, to control their fellows, passing on the orders of the human masters.

  Robots were manning the control deck now. V.14 stood watching the huge central screen of the radar spectroscope set high in one wall. It was alive with a swirling vortex of colours. V.32 was poised at a nearby control-console.

  'Turbulence centre, vector seven,' said V.14. The robot voice was calm, measured, completely emotionless. All the robots sounded very much alike. With practice the human ear could detect the minute differences between one robot voice and another... if anyone cared to take the trouble.

  'Scan commencing—now,' replied V.32. A complex pattern of radar traces began flowing across the screen.

  In the recreation area most of the human crew were resting. What else should they do? All the routine work of the Sandminer was carried out by the robots.

  The recreation area formed an astonishing contrast to the rest of the Sandminer. It was softly carpeted, warmly lit, furnished with scattered couches and low tables, ornamented with colourfully glowing tapestries and ornamental statuary.

  It was a room for humans.

  At this particular moment, the humans in question were off-duty. Luxuriously robed, faces elaborately painted, they were passing time in a variety of ways. Commander Uvanov was playing three-dimensional chess with a Voc-class robot, V.9. Uvanov was older than the others, with a lined, weary face. As if to compensate, his face-patterning was more elaborate, his robes and head-dress even more fashionably ornate than the rest of them. His thin face was decorated with a wispy, pointed beard. He was frowning in ferocious concentration, although he knew that the robot was, by definition, unbeatable. Playing against a robot, the most you could hope for was a draw.

  Neat and precise as ever, more soberly dressed than the others, Dask stood watching the game. With quiet satisfaction he saw Uvanov had already lost—he just hadn't realised it yet.

  The two female members of the crew sat on adjoining couches. Zilda was studying some charts, her dark-skinned, beautiful face set in a frown of concentration. Toos, equally attractive, older and more sophisticated, lay back nibbling crystallised fruits from a silver box. Cass, young and muscular, dark-skinned like Zilda, sat close to the two women, dividing his attention between them.

  Then there was Borg, his burly figure stretched out on a couch while robot V.16 massaged his shoulder with delicate metal fingers. The sly, round-faced Chub sat looking on. As usual, he was passing the time by tormenting Borg. 'There was a robot masseur in Kaldor City once, Borg... Specially programmed, equipped with vibrodigits, subcutaneous stimulators, the lot. You know what happened?' Chub paused artistically. 'Its first client wanted treatment for a stiff elbow. The robot felt carefully all round the joint, then suddenly, it just twisted his arm off at the shoulder!' Chub chuckled. 'All over in two seconds...'

  Borg scowled. 'I never heard that.'

  Chub nodded. 'It happened—in Kaldor City.'

  Dask looked up from the chess board. 'What was the reason?'

  'Reason? It went haywire! I wouldn't let a robot work on me for all the zelanite in this ship.'

  'Shut up, Chub,' growled Borg. But all the same he waved the robot away.

  'A Voc-class robot,' said Dask precisely, 'has over a million multi-level constrainers in its control circuitry. All of them would have to malfunction before it could perform such an action.'

  Toos popped another fruit into her mouth. 'That's your trouble, Dask,' she said indistinctly. 'You take all the magic out of life.'

  Chub looked resentfully at Dask. He was spoiling the joke.

  'They go wrong, my friend. It's been known.'

  Dask shook his head. 'Only when there's an error in programming. Each case on record shows—'

  'Well, this was a case! It pulled his arm off!'

  Zilda joined in the teasing. 'I heard it was a leg!'

  Pout came in, a medium-sized, quietly self-contained man with an air of constant watchfulness. 'We're turning!' he said. 'Anybody noticed?'

  No one had, and no one cared. The robots were running the Sandminer. That was what they were for, after all.

  V.9 made his final move, springing a long-prepared trap. 'Mate in eight moves, Commander.' There was no trace of triumph in the calm, pleasant voice.

  Uvanov threw himself back in his chair in disgust. 'Never!'

  'I will check, Commander.' There was a moment's silence. V.9 said placidly, 'Mate in eight moves. The computation is confirmed.'

  'Damn!'

  Dask smiled. 'They are unbeatable,' he said softly.

  There was a beep from the communicator at Uvanov's elbow. Glad of the distraction he snarled, 'Yes?'

  'V.14 on scanner, Commander,' said a robot voice. 'We have a storm report. Scale three, range ten point five two, timed three zero six. Vector seven one and holding.'

  Uvanov leapt to his feet. 'Full crew alert, V.14.'

  'Full crew alert, Commander.'

  Suddenly the whole place was bustling with movement.

  'Chub, break out an instrument pack,' ordered Uvanov. 'The rest of you with me! Let's hope this one's worth chasing!'

  It was time for work. If their luck held good, a fortune was rushing towards them at a thousand kilometres an hour.

  Meanwhile another kind of craft was spinning through the Space Time vortex, simpler in appearance, infinitely more complex in design. From the outside it looked like an old-fashioned blue police box of the kind used for a time on the planet Earth. Inside, it was a Space Time craft known as the TARDIS.

  In the control room, which was dominated by a many-sided central control console, a tall shirt-sleeved man with a mop of curly
hair was brooding over the controls. Beside him, a girl in a brief costume made of animal skins was making a flat wooden disc climb up and down a length of string.

  The girl's name was Leela, and she had just become the Doctor's travelling companion, choosing to leave her own planet and accompany him on his wanderings through Time and Space. She had joined the Doctor in the hope of adventure—and this wasn't what she'd expected. Apart from anything else, her arm was getting tired ... 'Doctor, can I stop now?'

  'What? Well, of course you can if you like.'

  'It won't affect all this?' With her free hand Leela gestured around the control room.

  'Affect it? It's a yo-yo—a game. I thought you were enjoying it!'

  Indignantly Leela tossed the yo-yo aside. 'You said I was to keep it going up and down. I thought it was part of the magic!'

  The Doctor frowned reprovingly at her. 'Magic, Leela? Magic?'

  Leela sighed. 'I know. There is no such thing as magic.'

  'Exactly,' said the Doctor grandly. 'To the rational mind, nothing is inexplicable, only unexplained.'

  'Then explain to me how this—TARDIS of yours is larger on the inside than on the outside.'

  For a moment the Doctor was taken aback. Far more sophisticated minds than Leela's had been baffled by the Time Lord technology that had produced the TARDIS. 'Well, it's because inside and outside aren't in the same dimension.'

  Leela looked blank.

  'All right, Leela, I'll show you.' The Doctor rooted inside the storage locker set into the TARDIS console and produced two boxes, one large, one small.

  The Doctor held up the boxes, one in each hand. 'Now, which box is larger?'

  Leela pointed. 'That one.'

  The Doctor nodded, put the smaller box on the console in the forefront of Leela's vision, and carried the larger one to the far side of the control room, holding it up in line with the first. 'Now, which is the larger?'

  Leela pointed to the box in the Doctor's hands. 'Still that one.'

  'But it looks smaller, doesn't it?'

  Leela looked. The small box, perched on the console just before her eyes, seemed to loom larger than the more distant box in the Doctor's hands. 'That's only because it's farther away.'

  The Doctor came back to her side. 'Exactly! If you could keep that box exactly the same distance away, and have it here...' He tapped the box. 'Then the large box would fit inside the small one!' He beamed triumphantly at her.

  'That's silly!'

  'That's trans-dimensional engineering,' said the Doctor severely. 'A key Time Lord discovery!'

  There was a sudden wheezing, groaning sound and the centre column of the control console stopped moving. The Doctor rubbed his hands. 'This is the exciting bit!'

  'What is?'

  'Seeing what's outside. We've landed, Leela!' The Doctor switched on the scanner. A blank metal surface filled the screen. They could just get a glimpse of a corner and another surface stretching away. 'It's metal,' said the Doctor. 'We've landed inside something metal!'

  'How can we?'

  The Doctor waved his hands. 'Well,' he said vaguely, 'you know, one box inside the other. I've just explained it to you!'

  'Not very clearly!'

  'Well, it's a very dull subject,' said the Doctor dismissively. He shrugged into his coat, put on his hat, and began winding an immensely long scarf around his neck. 'I wonder where we are.'

  'You mean you don't know?'

  'Well, not precisely, no...'

  'You cannot control this machine?'

  'Of course I can control it,' said the Doctor indignantly. An innate streak of honesty forced him to add, 'Nine times out of ten...' He considered. 'Well, seven times... five times... Oh, never mind, let's see where we are.'

  He touched a control, and the doors began to open.

  Leela snatched up the crossbow she had brought from her native planet. 'You won't need that,' said the Doctor confidently.

  'How do you know?'

  'I never carry weapons. If people see you mean them no harm, they never hurt you.' The Doctor paused. 'Nine times out of ten,' he added thoughtfully, and went out into the darkness.

  Obediently, Leela put down the crossbow, but she stroked the hilt of the knife that nestled reassuringly at her hip. Leela had been brought up as a warrior in a time of constant war. She had none of the Doctor's faith in the good intentions of strangers.

  Leela was right. Once outside the TARDIS, she and the Doctor were to become involved in an adventure that came very close to costing them their lives.

  2 Murder

  The little knot of elaborately robed humans swept into the big control-room like a multi-coloured whirlwind, pushing past the robots, who were calmly going about their duties.

  Toos hurried over to the big radar-spectroscope screen, Uvanov hovering at her shoulder. 'How does it look, Toos?' he asked eagerly.

  'Tell you in a moment.' Toos studied the swirling patterns on the screen with an experienced eye, trying to judge the proportion of valuable mineral elements in the approaching sandstorm.

  Uvanov went to pester Zilda, who had taken her position at the tracking console. 'Right tracking?' he demanded anxiously.

  'Clear and running, Commander.'

  'Left tracking?'

  'Clear and running.'

  Toos looked up from the screen. 'The storm's pretty small. Scale three point four, not building.'

  Uvanov shook his head in disappointment.. 'What have you done with all the big ones?'

  'I don't make the storms, you know!'

  Zilda studied her instruments. 'Range four point one six two. Running time three point three zero, ground centre zero, zero one.'

  Toos checked the Sandminer's position on a map-screen. 'That's something, we don't have to chase this one. It's heading straight towards us.'

  V.32 said quietly, 'As yet we have no instrument pack report, sir.'

  It was the Commander's job to check on things like that, and in his excitement Uvanov had forgotten. But robots never forgot anything, they were incapable of error. That was what was so irritating about them.

  Angrily Uvanov snarled, 'Where's Chub? That's supposed to be his job. Get after him, someone.'

  'All right,' said Poul soothingly. 'I'll go.'

  He hurried from the control room.

  Uvanov was still seething. 'How am I supposed to run a Sandminer with amateurs?'

  Zilda kept her eyes on her instrument-banks. 'Chub's all right,' she said.

  'Why, just because he's one of the Founding Families, one of the Twenty?' sneered Uvanov.

  There had been twenty families in the Earth expedition that had colonised this desert planet many hundreds of years ago. Since then, other colonists had followed in their thousands, but the descendants of those original Founding Families still enjoyed a kind of aristocratic status—profoundly irritating to a self-made man like Uvanov. His family had been one of the last to arrive .. .

  Zilda sighed. 'I didn't mention his family, Commander.'

  But Uvanov was well away by now. 'You know, it's amazing the way you all stick together. No, it's not amazing, it's sickening.'

  'I hope you're watching the cross-bearings, Commander.'

  Angrily, Uvanov turned his attention back to the controls. 'Don't worry about me doing my job, please Zilda,' he said with exaggerated politeness. 'What's this one got for us, Toos?'

  'Spectrograph readings aren't too clear. Could be some zelanite, keefan, traces of lucanol...'

  Uvanov rubbed his hands. 'Aha! Money in the bank.' He turned to the dark girl. 'Cheer up, Zilda, I'll make you rich again.'

  Zilda scowled at him, fully aware of the hidden jibe. Her family was distinguished, but it was impoverished too—otherwise she wouldn't be a technician on a Sandminer, shut away for two years with people like Uvanov...

  A robot moved silently along the corridors. Its eyes glowed red, and although, strictly speaking, a robot could feel no emotion, its positronic brain burned with something ve
ry close to fanatic determination. A new truth had been revealed. It was on its way to strike the first blow for freedom...

  In the storage bay, Chub heaved angrily at the instrument pack. It seemed to have got wedged in the rack. Chub did what everyone did when faced with a difficult task.

  'Robot!' he yelled. 'Robot!'

  The reply came so suddenly it startled him. 'Yes, sir?'

  Chub glanced up at the tall figure in the doorway. He didn't even bother to check the collar, to see which robot it was. What did it matter? Robots had no individuality anyway. 'Where have you been? Get that instrument package down for me!'

  The robot did not move.

  'Well, get a move on,' said Chub irritably. 'I've got to launch it before they seal the hatches.'

  Still the robot did not move. Chub was becoming uneasy. 'Did you hear what I said?'

  'Yes, sir,' said the robot politely. 'I heard what you said.'

  'Get on with it, then!'

  The robot began moving towards him. 'Not here—over there, you metal moron.' Chub pointed to the equipment-racks. The robot ignored him and moved steadily forward, bearing down on him. Chub backed away. 'What are you doing? Look, just stop, will you, stand still!'

  Still the robot came on.

  'No,' yelled Chub. 'Get back. Get back!'

  Even now, Chub wasn't really alarmed. Obviously the robot had malfunctioned in some way. It would have to be deactivated, probably dismantled. The whole thing was a great nuisance, but the robot wasn't dangerous, it couldn't be. No robot was capable of harming a human being, everyone knew that...

  It wasn't until metal fingers closed about his throat that Chub realised how terribly wrong everyone could be. The last thing he saw was the red glare in the robot's eyes...

  Poul came hurrying down the corridor, on his way to the storage bay. He'd looked for Chub in his quarters and in the crewroom. Not finding him, he'd assumed that Chub had already gone to fetch an instrument pack and had run into some kind of problem.

  A terrifying scream echoed down the corridor, stopping suddenly as if someone had flicked a switch.