第 26 页

Jana, still training her pistol on Liz, stared around the phosphorus-lit tunnel. 'Nope, not really. I just followed my orders.'

'Our anonymous informant's?'

Jana smiled. 'Don't be pathetic, Doctor Shaw. I work for your people. C19.'

'You're with Sir John Sudbury?'

'Wrong again.' Jana pushed Liz along to the left. 'Our mysterious benefactor thought he was safe from us, but we knew he wanted someone to expose what we do. We got rid of Traynor and I was sent down to pose as some stupid Dutch journalist he had written to. I followed his instructions, wound up in Smallmarshes and lo and behold, one Silurian gets the policewoman and the child. I make contact with you and go through the motions of being Jana bloody Kristan for a little longer.'

'You killed her, I suppose.'

'No, but someone did. Think yourself lucky I wasn't asked to impersonate you.'

'Probably because I'd be harder to kill at UNIT.'

Jana just laughed again, and pushed Liz into another corridor. 'I could walk into UNIT any time I wanted to with my credentials. No, impersonating you would have been difficult simply because we knew UNIT would become involved.'

'Stop, Apes!' A Reptile Person stood directly in front of them. 'I am Chukk, leader of the Shelter and I will -'

Jana shot him straight through the head, jumping over his body before it had stopped twitching.

In front of her, Liz saw a massive chamber, occupied by about thirty Reptile People. Standing in front of them was the Doctor. She shoved Jana out of the way and dashed through the startled Reptiles towards him.

'No you don't, bitch!' Jana aimed her pistol and pressed the trigger. As she did so, the third eye of every Reptile Person in the room glowed red.

Jana, or whoever she really was, was slammed back against the chamber wall, her mouth opening and closing in soundless agony. After a few seconds, she fell lifeless to the ground, her pistol skittering across the floor to stop at Auggi's feet.

The female picked up the gun. 'So Apes will help us, will they, Chukk?'

All the other Reptile People turned to look at the Doctor, waiting for Auggi to decide what to do with him and the other Ape.

And they saw the Doctor sitting on the floor, cradling the unmoving body of the other Ape in his arms, blood soaking into his shirt from the bullet that had gone straight through her back and out through her right shoulder.

A tear ran down his cheek. 'Oh Liz, no. I'm so sorry.' He stroked her hair. 'So very sorry.'

Chapter Six

The Mercedes was waved to a stop at the tunnel's entrance by an armed guard standing in front of a red-and-white barrier. The guard wore a one-piece black boiler suit and a black belt decorated with various pouches and a pair of handcuffs. Hanging from it was a long black truncheon. He wore a matt-black helmet, attached to which was a clear plastic visor that covered his whole face.

The guard's machine pistol was held casually in his left hand, but it was undoubtedly primed and ready.

In the last few miles, they had passed so many 'Keep Out' signs that Sir Marmaduke had lost count. 'Since when have we had armed guards at tunnels in this country?' he asked. 'I thought I was in East Germany for a moment.'

Ciara did not turn to him as she explained that it was a safety precaution to protect the unwary as much as those working under the hills.

'You mean the place we're going is built inside these hills? But how?'

The pale young man showed a pass to the guard, who spoke into a walkie-talkie and then lifted the barrier. Cellian drove through. As the Mercedes entered the gloom, a series of red lights flicked on, dotting the roof in two parallel lines rather like, Sir Marmaduke thought, an airport runway upside down.

They carried on in silence for about half a mile before the two red lines became four as the tunnel forked. They took the right-hand turning and Sir Marmaduke swivelled round to watch all the lights behind click off, plunging their entry route into darkness. The glow from the lights through the windows cast unearthly shadows across his captors and for the first time Sir Marmaduke felt decidedly nervous.

'What exactly is this place?'

The pale young man smiled and settled back in the seat.

'OK, Sir Marmaduke, brief history lesson coming up. Why was UNIT set up?'

'I don't know. I wasn't aware of it until a few years back, after that business with the electronics firm with the dodgy components in their wirelesses.'

'Radios, Sir Marmaduke. Do try and keep up with the times. But that's by the by. What do you believe UNIT does?'

Sir Marmaduke focused on the red lights, trying to avoid seeing his captors' faces. 'I suppose it deals with things out of the regular military forces' purview. Alien invasions, extra-terrestrial infections, the paranormal, people with extra-sensory powers. That sort of thing. I only know that really because of the people we treat at the Glasshouse. It's just a job for me, a service I provide. I don't investigate that much.'

The pale young man chuckled. 'Oh rubbish, Sir Marmaduke. Why did you abduct the policewoman from Hastings? To continue your feud with LethbridgeStewart, perhaps? Or because you knew that she was connected with the Reptile People whose previous victims you had cared for?'

'What would I want with Reptile People?'

'A good question. We wondered that for a long time. Even Ciara and Cellian here couldn't find that out. None of my agents at the Glasshouse could work it out. Shall I tell you what I believe?'

Sir Marmaduke snorted. 'I'm sure you will anyway.'

'True. I think you believed that she would lead you to these Reptile People - UNIT's Silurians, or whatever they're known as colloquially. I think you believed that if you had one at the Glasshouse, you could begin to set up some kind of indispensable repository of... let's lump it together as alien paraphernalia. You'd go in after a UNIT operation and clean up. Gather the spare part, dead aliens or whatever and sell them to the highest bidder. I believe you already have contacts, especially where UNIT, as a United Nations sub-division, has no jurisdiction. Behind the Iron Curtain, perhaps? Or the Middle East? Somewhere where the leaders would hope to upset the balance of power.'

Sir Marmaduke did not reply. Cellian had driven the car into a small side tunnel which flared with a bright light, revealing them to be in something no larger than a domestic garage. He turned as a mesh shutter dropped down soundlessly behind them. Then he realized that they were going up, on some massive hydraulic ramp. Eventually they stopped, the shutter lifted, and Cellian drove the car into a huge hangar-sized car port and stopped. About thirty other vehicles littered it, some recognizable as cars and vans, others looking decidedly unusual. Sir Marmaduke saw one craft which he recognized as Mars Probe Six.

'That?' said the pale young man, as if reading his prisoner's thought. 'We got that shortly after the British Space programme was abandoned. With James Quinlan's death and Professor Cornish's retirement, the Government put the whole thing into limbo. They're looking at moving part of it down to Devesham in Oxfordshire, out of the prying eyes of the public, but until then, we have their cast-offs.' He unwound his window and as he did so a black-clad armed guard rushed over.

'I understand that everything is prepared, sir. The woman is in the laboratory with the two science people.' The guard looked across at Sir Marmaduke, then back at the pale young man. 'We have also had a report from our agent on the HR Project.'

'Go on.'

'She reports that the targets are on a Channel Island known as L'Ithe. Mister Bailey decided that it would be inadvisable to send a force in because it would be difficult to avoid alerting people on the other islands. Traffic to and from L'Ithe is infrequent enough to draw attention.'

'Fair enough. What is his proposal?'

'He has sent some men down to Smallmarshes to wait in case the creatures return to the mainland, that way. He thought it safe to assume they would stick to familiar routes.'

'Probably right. OK, I'll review the situation later. Let me know if our agent contacts us again.'

'Yes, sir. Need anything else, sir?'

'No thank you, Mister Lawson.' Then he gently tapped his forehead, as if remembering something. 'Oh, Mister Lawson?'

'Sir?'

'Has anyone exercised the Stalker recently?'

'Not recently, sir, no.'

'Tell Bailey it will be going for a run sometime later today. I don't want it getting idle.'

'No, sir. Very good, sir.' Lawson nodded at the Irish Twins and walked towards one of the doors that dotted the huge car park.

'Now, Sir Marmaduke, where were we? Oh yes, I remember. You were veering close to queering my pitch.' The pale young man opened his door. In unison, Ciara and Cellian undid their seat belts, wound up their windows and got out of the car. Ciara then opened Sir Marmaduke's door for him, much as she always had.

'Ciara, why?' he asked quietly, but she ignored him.

Her real employer moved around to the front of the car. 'I think it might be best to incapacitate this vehicle. We wouldn't want Sir Marmaduke to attempt an escape.' He held his hand out and Cellian dropped the car keys into his palm.

With a smile, the pale young man closed his fist and dropped what was now a tight ball of metal onto the floor. 'And just to make quite sure...' Effortlessly, he thrust his arm through the bonnet, into the engine and started hitting things. After a few seconds, he extracted his arm, brushing off some minute fragments of metal. 'I don't think that's going anywhere.'

He looked at Sir Marmaduke again. 'Now, where was I? Oh yes, you asked what this place is.' He waved his arm around the area like an estate agent showing prospective clients around a house. 'This is the Vault. A - how can I put this - a side-line of C19. The sort of side-line that, should he be aware of it, would cause the likes of Sir John Sudbury to have a coronary. You see, I already do what you were hoping to.' He led them through one of the doorways and Sir Marmaduke found himself on a metal catwalk, high above another stadium-sized room built into the inside of the hill.

'The Vault takes up eight levels per hill. Two hills. Sixteen areas of research, storage and development, plus a few outlying areas where some of our more interesting experiments live. Look down there.' He pointed below, where white-coated men scurried about with clipboards. They were moving between various large computers with spinning tapes and other oddly shaped devices, while the double doors were guarded by more gun-wielding, black-clad men. 'Not everything here is extra-terrestrial in origin, Sir Marmaduke. Those men are building new computers, using man-made technology from a super-computer built during the sixties.'

'WOTAN? My God, I thought it was destroyed.'

'Oh, rest assured it was. But here at the Vault, we're very interested in any kind of artificial intelligence, especially an accidental one like that. Imagine the possibilities of an AI that could run businesses, administer hospitals and schools. And, of course, the Government. No need to feed it, water it, give it sleep. That's something we're working towards.'

The pale young man walked on, Sir Marmaduke trailing him, with the Irish Twins bringing up the rear. They went through a doorway which led to an airlock. Before the next door was opened, Ciara shut the four of them inside the cramped area and a fine mist sprayed all over them.

'Decontaminant. All perfectly harmless. But necessary between each section.' They entered the next area, which was a little smaller and was bathed in a blue light. Sir Marmaduke's captor continued his recital: 'Basically we go in after UNIT has done its job. We collect the dead, the detonated, the inanimate and the unusual. We strip away the ruined computers, the deactivated weaponry. Ostensibly it is all destroyed. Incinerated, under the Brigadier's strict orders. But what no one at UNIT, or the main part of C19, knows is that it all comes here. We sift through it, cannibalize anything interesting and store the rest. Nothing is disposed of.

'This area is devoted to flora,. Every day millions of particles of dust enter our biosphere from outer space. Most of them are so microscopic that they are untraceable and irrelevant. But some attach themselves to plants on the planet's surface, causing interesting mutations. Did you know, Sir Marmaduke, that last winter eighteen people in Western Australia died after eating what appeared to be normal local fruits? They contained, however, appallingly high levels of mercurial duoxide, an element unknown to occur naturally on Earth. Over in that far corner is a new strain of the Venus flytrap. As you can see, it is large enough to catch a rabbit or small dog. It grew in someone's garden in Rhodesia a couple of months back. A unique specimen which, it has to be said, has created quite a stir in botanical circles. Among those who are aware of it, anyway.'

'This is obscene, you know.' Sir Marmaduke ran a finger round his collar. He was very hot.

'Obscene?' His captor pursed his lips in apparent confusion. 'In what way is it more obscene than that which you were planning? Or is it just that we've already done it, and on a scale, with resources, you could only dream about.'

'We were working towards something similar I grant you, but we were nowhere near this audacious. Or secretive.'

'Pish and tosh, Sir Marmaduke. You had Peter Morley and his team working day and night on experiments that none of them guessed the end result of. Well, almost none.'

Sir Marmaduke stopped. 'How do you know about Morley? Was he one of your spies?'

'Good gracious no, I wouldn't have employed anyone who was that big a security risk. The man is a positive liability. No stomach for what he was doing. But a genius, I have to say. Quite useful to me now.'

'So he is here, then?'

'Yes. Under protest. Come through to the next area and he'll tell you all about it. I think it might interest you.'