DOCTOR WHO AND THE BRAIN OF MORBIUS Read online

  Why do so many spaceships crashland on Karn, a bleak, lonely and seemingly deserted planet?

  Are they doomed by the mysterious powers of the strange, black-robed Sisterhood, jealously guarding their secret of eternal life? Or does the mad Dr Solon, for some evil purpose of his own, need the bodies of the victims? And more especially the body of DOCTOR WHO...

  ISBN 0 426 11674 7

  A Target Book

  Published in 1977

  by the Paperback Division of W.H. Allen & Co. Ltd.

  A Howard & Wyndham Company

  44 Hill Street, London

  WIX 8LB

  Copyright © 1977 by Terrance Dicks and Robin Bland

  'Doctor Who' series copyright © 1977 by the British Broadcasting Corporation

  Printed in Great Britain by

  Hunt Barnard Printing Ltd, Aylesbury, Bucks.

  ISBN 0 426 11674 7

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  DOCTOR WHO

  AND THE

  BRAIN OF MORBIUS

  * * *

  Based on the BBC television serial The Brain of Morbius by Robin Bland by arrangement with the British Broadcasting Corporation

  * * *

  TERRANCE DICKS

  published by

  The Paperback Division of

  W. H. Allen & Co. Ltd

  CONTENTS

  1 A Graveyard of Spaceships

  2 The Keepers of the Flame

  3 The Horror Behind the Curtain

  4 Captive of the Flame

  5 Sarah to the Rescue

  6 The Horror in the Crypt

  7 Solon's Trap

  8 The Doctor Makes a Bargain

  9 The Monster Walks

  10 Monster on the Rampage

  11 Deathlock!

  12 A Time Lord Spell

  1

  A Graveyard of Spaceships

  Kriz was dying.

  Painfully he dragged his insect-like body away from the blazing ruins of the shattered spaceship. Only a powerful survival instinct kept him alive and moving. Two of his legs were broken, and he scrabbled painfully across the razor-sharp rocks with the remaining four. The tough, chitinous carapace that covered his body was cracked clear across, and thick purplish blood welled sluggishly from the wound, leaving a glistening trail across the rocks behind him.

  Kriz paused, swinging his huge head with its shining, many-faceted eyes. Behind him he could see the ship, its body as buckled and shattered as his own by the savage impact of the crash. Black smoke was pouring from the wreckage. Even as he watched there was a sudden red glow, and a shattering explosion as the fuel-chamber of the Zison-drive blew up. The rilium plates twisted and buckled in the fierce blaze, molten metal running over the rocks. Dimly Kriz felt that the life-blood of the ship, like his own, was pouring away onto the rocks of this bleak alien planet.

  Painfully Kriz crawled on. His dying mind was still full of the moments before the crash. It had been a routine exploratory flight. Kriz came from a world where his insect-like species had evolved into the dominant race. Their deep-seated instincts for order, co-operation and selfless hard work had built a great civilisation. Kriz, like all his people, existed only to serve the Race, which in turn was symbolised by the Nest, and by the Great Mother, Goddess and Queen in one. The Race had only one problem—lack of living space. As Nest after Nest was established, the home planet became impossibly crowded, and they sought always for new worlds to colonise. Not to conquer, for Kriz's people were a moral race. Planets too harsh to sustain other species, worlds devastated by the wars in which other life-forms so often destroyed themselves, were taken over and made habitable by the technology of the Race.

  This had seemed just such a world. Orbiting the planet on his preliminary survey, Kriz had seen nothing but ruin and desolation on his scanners. A world of mountains and rocky deserts, barely able to sustain life. A few ruined buildings suggested a civilisation once powerful but now vanished. Kriz remembered his growing feelings of exaltation. Surely this was another home for the Race... Then something, some incredible force had seized his little scouter and smashed it down at the foot of this mountain range.

  Kriz struggled on. He had no very clear idea where he was going and he sensed that even if he found help, he was too badly hurt to survive. But while he lived, he would struggle. It was not in the nature of the Race to surrender.

  On the mountain slope just above him, a massive figure leaped ape-like from rock to rock, moving ever closer. Condo, attracted by the smoke as a vulture is drawn by blood, was stalking his prey. Satisfied there was no danger, he rose to his full height, a massive figure in rough leather garments. He steadied himself against the rocks with the steel hook that took the place of his left hand.

  Should he wait till the creature was dead? Even though wounded it could still be dangerous. Sometimes those who survived the crashes carried weapons... Condo rubbed a scar on his massive forearm. He growled impatiently, deep in his throat... It might take the creature many hours to die. If Condo moved quickly enough... He drew the heavy, short-bladed sword from his belt, running a grimy thumb along the razor-sharp edge. Suddenly he bounded forwards, following the blood-trail across the rocks.

  Kriz's failing senses gave him no warning of the hunter's approach. Suddenly the massive figure was there, looming above him. Feebly Kriz moved two of his fore-limbs in the Intergalactic signals that offered peace, and begged for help. He saw the shining blade in the newcomer's hand, and realised that here was no help—only death. Kriz gave a high-pitched whistling scream of distress. The blade flashed down, and his pain was over.

  Condo bent over the body, dragging a grimy sack from inside his jerkin. Minutes later he straightened up, thrust the sword back in his belt and bounded away across the rocks. He carried a round, sacking-wrapped bundle beneath one arm.

  Darkness was falling as he made his way across the barren, rocky landscape. There was a distant rumble of thunder, an occasional lightning-flash. Condo shivered with superstitious fear. Solon, his master, had told him time and time again that the frequent sudden storms were a purely natural phenomenon. But to Condo they were the work of the black-robed Sisterhood, weaving their evil spells in a temple deep in the mountain caves. Apart from Solon himself, the Sisters were the one thing on Karn that Condo feared. Perhaps it was because he sensed that, in spite of all his denials, Solon feared them too.

  There was another lightning flash, a louder crash of thunder. Great spattering drops of rain began to fall. Condo increased his already headlong pace, hoping to reach the shelter of the building he called the castle before he was hit by the full fury of the storm. Deep in his savage heart he believed that the Sisters summoned up the storm, riding on the night-winds like great bats in their long black robes.

  He came to the castle at last, an immense towering structure that dominated the end of a narrow valley. So huge was the edifice that it seemed to merge with the towering mountain range behind it. The ramparts and terraces, the broken towers and shattered turrets, stretched up and up against the lightning-streaked blackness of the sky. The place would have given most people the screaming horrors, but to Condo it was home.

  He padded lightly across the broken drawbridge. It was never raised now, nor could it be, since the complex electronic machinery that controlled it was long since rusted and useless. Condo set his shoulder to the great main door. Slowly it cr
eaked open, revealing the shadowy depth of the great hall. Solon was working in the little pool of light cast by one of the fossil-fuel lamps. On the stone table before him was the head-and-shoulders clay bust of a humanoid, with high, domed forehead, arrogantly jutting nose and a great square jaw. It was a face for a king and emperor. Condo watched silently as Solon's long slim hands caressed the still-wet clay. Solon had made and re-made the bust a hundred times, always creating the same face. Always he destroyed his efforts and began again, muttering that it was 'Not right, not right...' Condo stood waiting, not daring to speak.

  Solon hated interruptions when he was engaged on this seemingly endless task, and Condo feared to provoke one of his sudden, terrible rages.

  Solon stepped back, frowning with dissatisfaction. Still gazing at the bust, he said suddenly, 'You were quick, Condo. Did you find survivors?'

  Condo jumped. 'One—oxygen-breather.'

  'Excellent. Quick, quick, let me see.'

  Fumbling in terror, Condo passed over the sack. Solon groped inside and pulled out the head of Kriz, severed cleanly at the neck. He held it up. Kriz's sightless, many-faceted eyes seemed to glow in the light of the lamp. Solon examined the head, moving it closer to the lamp. 'Oh, no, no, no. That won't do. No, even if the ganglia could be re-connected... the cranium is too narrow, the development of the cerebrum totally different.' He held the severed head up against the clay bust. 'Look—it's an insect! Even a half-witted cannibal like you can see it won't do.'

  He flung the head down in disgust. It rolled across the table and thudded to the floor. Condo cringed away. 'But the big-heads not come, master. Not come to Karn.'

  Solon's eyes gleamed. 'They will, Condo. One day... One day a true humanoid will come, warm-blooded with a compatible nervous system. One such specimen, just one, and I can complete my work.'

  Condo touched the head with a booted foot. It rolled a little further. 'Not want?'

  Solon sighed. 'Oh, take it to the laboratory. I can always use it for experiment.' As Condo gathered up the head and crept from the hall, Solon returned to the bust. His voice was low and yearning. 'One day, Morbius, I promise. One day...'

  A wheezing, groaning sound filled the night air of Karn, merging with the occasional rumblings of thunder. A square blue shape materialised out of the air. In outward form it was a police box, of the kind once used in a country named England, on a distant planet called Earth. Inwardly it was something very different—a Space/Time craft called the TARDIS.

  The door opened and a very tall, very angry man sprang out. He was casually dressed in a loose comfortable jacket and trousers, with a battered, broad-rimmed hat jammed on to a tangle of curly hair. An extraordinarily long scarf was wound round his neck. He shook his fist at the lowering night sky and shouted, 'All right! Come on out! Just show yourselves, I dare you!'

  A slender, dark-haired girl followed him out of the TARDIS. She was carrying a big torch which she shone round the unfriendly-looking landscape. She shuddered, not very favourably impressed by what she saw.

  The Doctor ignored her, still addressing his unseen adversaries. 'Meddlesome interfering idiots,' he bellowed. 'I know you're there somewhere. Come out, I say!'

  There was no reply. Just the constant rumble of thunder, the howling of the night wind. 'Messing about with my TARDIS, dragging us a thousand par-secs off course...'

  The girl tapped him on the shoulder. 'Have you gone potty, Doctor? Who are you shouting at?'

  The Doctor looked round impatiently. 'My dear Sarah, the Time Lords, who else?' He glared round indignantly. 'And now, you see? You see? They're out there listening and they haven't even the courtesy to show their noses!'

  Sarah sniffed. 'I don't wonder. Probably afraid of getting them punched, the way you're carrying on.'

  The Doctor stamped up and down, muttering, 'Intolerable! Well, I won't stand any more of it!'

  Sarah looked thoughtfully at him. At times like this, she realised she knew very little about the Doctor, and even less about his mysterious superiors, the Time Lords. She'd first encountered the Doctor when he was working as scientific adviser to an organisation known as UNIT—the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce. Sceptical at first, she. had finally come to accept that the Doctor was a being from some other planet, with the ability to travel in Space and Time. She had even seen him change his physical form, becoming literally a new man, in order to overcome the effects of a near-fatal dose of radiation.

  As for the Time Lords, Sarah knew only that they were the rulers of the Doctor's own mysterious race. Long, long ago the Doctor had apparently quarrelled with them, fleeing his home planet to roam the Universe in his TARDIS. The Time Lords had hunted him as a fugitive, captured him and sentenced him to exile on Earth. Eventually there had been a kind of uneasy truce. The Time Lords had restored the Doctor's freedom to travel in Space and Time. In return they expected him to carry out occasional missions for them, invariably of a hideously dangerous kind. Limited as it was, the Doctor still resented this interference with his freedom, and never accepted a mission without furious protests. To counter this, the Time Lords sometimes dropped the Doctor right into the middle of a perilous situation, confident that his curiosity, and sense of justice, would force him to discover what was going on, and so do their work for them..

  Another possibility occurred to Sarah. Nodding towards the TARDIS, she interrupted the Doctor's tirade. 'Why can't it just have gone wrong again?'

  The Doctor whirled round indignantly. 'What?'

  'The TARDIS. After all,' added Sarah unkindly, 'it wouldn't exactly be the first time, would it?' Miracle of technology though it was, the TARDIS did have an undeniable tendency to be erratic. Take its present shape, for example. The TARDIS was supposed to change its appearance to blend in with the surroundings. In a forest it should look like a tree. Here, it should have taken on the appearance of one of the surrounding rocks. Unfortunately this 'Chameleon mechanism' had long ago jammed, and the TARDIS now arrived on alien worlds in the constant guise of a London police box.

  This was only a minor inconvenience. More serious were the undoubted faults in the TARDIS's guidance circuitry. Although it could travel in Space and Time, the TARDIS had an awkward habit of delivering its passengers to the wrong planet or the wrong century. Was this what had happened now? Clearly the Doctor didn't think so. 'Don't you think I know the difference between a simple error and outside interference? Oh no, there's something going on here, some bit of dirty work they won't touch with their lily-white Time Lord hands.' Again the Doctor raised his voice. 'Well, I won't do it, do you hear?' He raised his face to the sky, and shook a defiant fist. A very large raindrop came down and hit him in the eye. There was another rumble of thunder, louder and nearer this time.

  Sarah looked up at the night sky. 'That sounds ominous. Where do you think we are?'

  The Doctor sat down on a rock. 'Don't know. Don't really care.'

  'Oh, come on, Doctor, stop being childish.'

  'I am not going to move, Sarah. I'm just going to sit here and do nothing...'

  '... so there!' completed Sarah. And indeed, the Doctor sounded exactly like a sulky child.

  The Doctor refused to be laughed out of his bad temper. He hunched his shoulders and pulled his hat down over his eyes. More scattered raindrops fell, huge splashy ones that seemed to hold a good cupful of water each. One landed on Sarah's nose, and she wiped it away with the back of her hand. 'We're going to get awfully wet soon.'

  Loudly the Doctor said, 'Bah!' and relapsed into silence.

  Sarah swung round the torch. As far as she could make out they were in some kind of hollow in the rocks. If she climbed to the rim, she could get a better look around them. Suddenly a gleam of white caught Sarah's eye and she scrambled across to it. Lying at the foot of one of the rocks was a white plastic globe about a metre in diameter. It had been partially smashed open, and resembled, thought Sarah, a giant table-tennis ball that had been stepped on by a giant foot. Despite its size th
e thing was incredibly light. She picked it up and carried it across to the Doctor.

  'Hey, look what I've found! What is it?'

  The Doctor peered from beneath the brim of his hat. 'Ejection bubble,' he said dismissively.

  'It's a what?'

  'Space parachute.'

  Sarah studied the plastic sphere, trying to work out how it was used. Presumably you shut yourself inside it, and got shot out through some kind of automatic ejection chute. 'So someone's had a crash?'

  'Apparently.' The Doctor was still refusing to get involved.

  Sarah dropped the ejection bubble, made her way across the little hollow, and climbed the low rim at its edge. A sudden lightning flash lit up the area before her and she gasped in astonishment.

  The plain was littered with wrecked spaceships. Sarah guessed there were at least a dozen of them, in all shapes and sizes, all stages of decay. She jumped down and ran back to the Doctor.

  'There must be a dozen wrecks out there, Doctor. It's like a graveyard of spaceships.'

  So determined was the Doctor to go on sulking that even this extraordinary news aroused only a flicker of interest. 'Fancy that.'

  'It's incredible. Why should they all have crashed here?'

  'No idea.'

  'Well, I think we ought to take a look, Doctor. It might have something to do with the reason we crashed.'

  The Doctor fished something from his capacious pockets. To her astonishment Sarah saw it was a Yo-Yo. Impatiently she said, 'Well, are you coming?'

  The Yo-Yo flashed up and down in the Doctor's hand. 'No, I'll just sit here and practise my backward double loops.'

  'Please yourself. I'm going anyway.' Sarah began moving off. She stopped, hesitated. Despite her torch, the night seemed very dark. 'You're sure you're not coming?'