Part 1 (1/2)

DOCTOR WHO.

WARRIORS OF THE DEEP.

by Terrance d.i.c.ks.

1.

The Intruder.

The Base might have been in s.p.a.ce.

It had been built at enormous effort and expense. It was surrounded by a hostile environment into which humans could venture only with elaborate life-support systems.

The Base was the nucleus of an elaborate attack and defence system. Its inhabitants lived lives of constant tension, perpetually under the shadow of planetary annihilation.

It might have been in s.p.a.ce but it wasn't.

s.p.a.ce stations had proved too vulnerable, too exposed to spy-satellites and the searing blast of laser-beams. In the early years of the twenty-first century, mankind concealed many of its weapons of destruction beneath the seas.

Sea Base Four crouched like a giant metal spider in the black depths of the ocean floor. It waited, like every other Sea Base, for any hint of an attack from the other side.

Such an attack would unleash a swarm of proton missiles in ma.s.sive retaliation.

East confronted West, hostile, suspicious, waiting.

Yet neither side realised that there were other enemies beneath the sea beings equally hostile to both sides alike, creatures who regarded all all mankind as primitive apes who had stolen the planet Earth from its rightful owners. mankind as primitive apes who had stolen the planet Earth from its rightful owners.

Mankind's oldest enemies had awakened once more and they were poised to attack.

Outside Sea Base Four was only the cold green darkness of the ocean depths. Inside, everything was gleaming, modern, brightly lit. The predominating colour was a dazzling white, as if designed to counter the threatening blackness that lurked outside.

Sea Base personnel moved busily along the corridors and catwalks, wearing the distinctive cross-belted coveralls of the Undersea Service. Uniforms were colour-coded according to rank and function blue for officers, reds and greens and greys for the different specialisations. Moving amongst the brighter colours were the drab khaki uniforms of the Radiation Squad, responsible for the Base's nuclear reactor. They alone wore side-arms and helmets in the unlikely event of the Base being attacked, they would double as marine guards.

In the central control room, referred to as the Bridge, instrument consoles hummed gently, glowing blips chased each other across monitor screens, and the steady electronic beep of scanner systems filled the air.

Commander Vorshak sat at the central command console, staring broodingly at a monitor screen. Vorshak was a tall, dark-haired man in his mid-forties. Elegant in his dark-blue coverall, Vorshak had the rugged good looks of a recruiting-poster hero, much to his own embarra.s.sment.

Cl.u.s.tered around him were his officers: the ever-calm, coldly reserved Controller Nilson; Lieutenant Preston, a pleasant capable looking woman in her twenties; Lieutenant Bulic, the burly combat officer in charge of the marine guard.

There was an emergency.

Vorshak studied the moving blip on the screen, listened to the steady accompanying electronic beep.

He looked up at Bulic. 'What do you you think?' think?'

Bulic paused for a moment, a.s.sessing the data. 'Too small to be a hunter-killer missile.'

'Could be one of their probes, though, trying to locate our position.'

Vorshak swung round to a nearby sub-console.

'Maddox, let's have a computer scan.'

The computer console stood a little apart from the rest.

Beside the console, and linked to it, stood an empty chair with a helmet-like apparatus suspended above the synch op chair. Somehow people avoided mentioning, or even looking at it. At the console by the chair, Maddox, a thin-faced and nervous young man, sat staring abstractedly in front of him. Vorshak's sudden command jolted him into awareness. Feverishly he set to work, fingers clumsy on the instrument panel.

Vorshak watched him impatiently. Maddox was new, a temporary emergency replacement, and Vorshak had little patience with him.

From a nearby console a dark-haired young woman with attractive oriental features looked sympathetically at Maddox's fumblings. Lieutenant Karina was the Scanner Officer, and she had been worried about Maddox for some time. The boy was close to breaking point, and Vorshak was pus.h.i.+ng him too hard. It could be a bad mistake.

Un.o.btrusively she moved to help him.

The undersea vessel that was causing so much concern on Sea Base Four was long, slender and cigar-shaped, and it was travelling away from the Base at incredible speed.

Its greenish hull had a rough, irregular surface, like something grown rather than manufactured.

The vessel sped to the centre of a low range of undersea volcanic mountains. For a moment it hovered over one of the larger craters, then sank down slowly out of sight.

The interior of the vessel too had a strangely organic look.

Certainly there was a control room, with instruments roughly equivalent to those on a human s.h.i.+p. Yet, like the craft itself, these oddly shaped instruments seemed grown rather than built, and the atmosphere here was one of dark and shadowy gloom, shot with greenish light.

The s.h.i.+p was not human in origin, and neither were those who inhabited it. The immensely tall, robed figures were brown-skinned with great crested heads and huge bulging eyes. Their slow, almost stately movements, their coldly measured speech-tones gave evidence of their reptilian origin. They were Silurians.

The eldest and the most high-ranking was Icthar; he was the sole survivor of the Silurian Triad, the warrior-scientist elite that had ruled Earth in the days before man.

His two companions were Scibus and Tarpok.

Scibus looked up from an instrument console and spoke with the calm dignity that Silurians gave every p.r.o.nouncement. 'No hostile movement is registered. There is no pursuit.'

'Excellent,' said Icthar, in the same deep, impressive tones.

Tarpok said, 'Is it wise to risk provoking them, Icthar?'

The great crested head swung round towards him. 'We shall continue to monitor the activities of the humans, Tarpok. But we shall also take care to remain undetected until we are ready to strike.'

'We've lost it, Commander,' reported Lieutenant Karina matter-of-factly. 'The trace got fainter and fainter then suddenly it cut out.'

Vorshak looked across at Maddox. 'Computer a.n.a.lysis?'

'Seems to be organic organic in structure. There was some heat radiation.. in structure. There was some heat radiation..

'Could it have been volcanic debris?'