Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen Read online

  ‘Borusa,’ hissed the Doctor in a stage whisper that rattled the shelves, ‘my dog’s found something.’

  Realising he had their the attention, K-9 paused dramatically. His tone was grandiose. ‘The Matrix is at fault.’

  The archivists gasped so loudly they had to shush themselves.

  K-9 nodded. ‘I am quite correct,’ he insisted. Well, he would. The Doctor delighted at finding someone else on the receiving end of his dog.

  ‘It’s not possible,’ gibbered a librarian.

  The Doctor considered. There was a worrying precedent – after all, there’d been that time the Master had temporarily made Gallifrey forget all about him.

  Borusa waved a finger. ‘Be careful, Doctor. The Matrix is the total of all that is known and all that we can predict. The Matrix did not say the Krikkitmen were coming back. Therefore they are not.’

  ‘Balderdash and poppycock,’ said the Doctor, crisply and firmly.

  Romana reached in her pocket and pulled out a newspaper. ‘I made us stop off to the get the next day’s paper.’ She unfolded a copy of The Times. It showed a blurry picture of a Krikkitman blasting its way across the pitch.

  The Doctor smiled at Romana. She really did think of everything.

  ‘But this is impossible!’

  ‘No!’ Romana had always enjoyed arguing with her tutor. This was the first time she’d stood up to him outside of his study and it felt marvellous. ‘You know what,’ she squared up to Borusa. ‘I think that something’s wrong with the Matrix.’

  ‘Oh, this is excellent.’ The Doctor was rubbing his hands.

  Romana had got into her stride now. ‘We need to examine everything the Matrix has on the Krikkitmen.’

  ‘Quite right.’ The Doctor nodded warmly.

  ‘In order to do that, we need to go into the Matrix.’

  The Doctor’s face fell. ‘Oh, that never ends well.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  FURTHER IMPORTANT AND EXCITING GALACTIC HISTORY. AGAIN, DO NOT SKIP.

  So far, much has been said about ‘the rest of the universe’ or ‘everyone else in the Galaxy’ and so on. And of course, everybody knows that the Galaxy is an extremely large place, teeming with a bewildering prolixity of life forms of every kind, carbon-based, silicon-based, light-based, mammals, fish, molluscs, insects, travel agents, etc.

  At least, nearly everybody does.

  And here we come to the next in the series of major mistakes which has led to the situation which lies at the heart of this story, and it occurred during the seventh civilisation wave, and for this reason:

  The night sky over Krikkit is probably the least interesting sight in the entire Universe.

  The mistake the people of Krikkit made was in thinking that they were alone.

  They didn’t think, ‘We are alone in the Universe.’ They thought, ‘We are alone.’ They didn’t know about the Universe. In fact, it is even a little misleading to say they thought, ‘We are alone.’ As with all of the most basic assumptions, it never even occurred to them that there was any other way to be.

  The reason for this is that the planet of Krikkit and its sun existed right out on the very edge of the Galaxy. Beyond it was nothing till you got to the next Galaxy which was so far away as to be practically invisible. And between Krikkit and the rest of its own Galaxy, our Galaxy, lay a dense dust cloud, through which nothing whatever could be seen at any time.

  It never occurred to them to spend any time looking into the sky because there was nothing to see there, nothing to catch attention, provoke curiosity or stimulate the imagination. It was just a blank.

  During the day there was the sun, of course, but anyone who looked at that directly tended then not to be able to see anything else, and this was sufficient to deter the curious.

  And Krikkit itself was such a beautiful world, so full of colour and light and life of all kinds, that the Krikkitas (as the inhabitants of Krikkit are called) had absolutely no incentive to look up at the blankness or ponder its meaning. It didn’t have a meaning to ponder. As far as they were concerned, the sky hardly existed,

  They were happy. They lived in peace. They worked the fields for their food, built themselves pleasant houses, they played music, painted pictures. Ask a Krikkita what he wanted out of life and he would have said, ‘This’, indicating that he was very happy with what he had.

  No stars twinkled in the cloudy night air. A warm breeze brushed over the sandy beach. The planet was, at first glance, on the pleasantly dull end of very ordinary. Apart from the large letters blazing in the sky.

  A hundred yards out to sea, a door opened, and the Doctor, Romana and K-9 splashed out, striding through the surf onto the beach. The Doctor and K-9 spent most of the walk arguing about the door.

  ‘It’s a fictional door, K-9, could you not have moved it closer to the shore?’

  ‘Negative. Also, Master, the sea is similarly fictional.’

  ‘Still feels odd walking through it.’

  ‘Not to this unit.’

  ‘Whatever you say, my socks are soaked.’

  ‘Negative.’

  ‘Well, they feel soaked.’

  Romana was already standing neatly on the shore. ‘Are neither of you going to mention the large letters hanging in the sky?’ she asked.

  The Doctor glanced up. ‘Oh them,’ he shrugged. ‘That’s just the Matrix narrating.’

  The words which hung in the air in giant letters of fire were:

  THE PLANET OF KRIKKIT LIES IN AN ISOLATED POSITION ON THE VERY OUTSKIRTS OF THE GALAXY.

  ‘Subtle,’ observed Romana.

  The Doctor picked up a stick from the shore and threw it for K-9. The dog ignored it.

  ‘Look at the sky.’

  ‘No stars. Which is strange as there’s no light pollution. Mind you it’s overcast. Maybe it’s the weather.’

  The Doctor clicked his fingers. The burning letters changed:

  KRIKKIT IS OBSCURED FROM THE REST OF THE GALAXY BY A DUST CLOUD.

  ‘Oh I see,’ said Romana. ‘Fascinating. So, given the lack of any external lights, they just assume they’re not just the centre of the universe, but that they are the universe. That’s pushing solipsism on a global level far beyond the egotistical sublime.’

  The Doctor chewed the air for a moment. ‘Well, quite. They probably have a lot of mopey poets. And you’ve read far too many books.’

  ‘There’s no such thing as too many books,’ Romana retorted, skipping up a sand bank. ‘What an odd place.’ She clicked her fingers.

  The Sky now read (in lower case):

  For millions of years, Krikkit developed a sophisticated scientific culture in all fields except that of astronomy.

  ‘I changed the font,’ said Romana. ‘Something a bit more subtle. I don’t like being shouted at all the time.’ She glanced at the Doctor meaningfully.

  ‘K-9, I think Romana’s having a go at you.’ The Doctor patted his dog and winked at her. ‘Can we have the next slide, please?’

  Romana obliged.

  In all their history, it never once occurred to the people of Krikkit that they were not totally alone. Until dot dot dot.

  She frowned. ‘The punctuation is a bit off.’

  ‘No, it’s spot on,’ said the Doctor. ‘I’d step back a bit if I were you.’

  Romana stepped back. A spaceship crashed where she’d been standing.

  It tore through the murky sky, lighting it up with a streak of fire. The roar of its dying engines boomed off the cliffs, the sea and the distant lands as it scythed through the air, and then smacked into the sandy beach.

  The shock waves shook the entire planet, heaving the sea up like a dusty rug and rattling the ground. The noise went on for quite a while.

  The Doctor and Romana stood in the middle of the conflagration. Romana picked a chunk of burning debris from off of K-9.

  ‘I think,’ the Doctor remarked, ‘the caption’s changed again.’

  ‘I can’t see through all this fire.’

  ‘Neither can I. Ah well.’

  ‘Shall we wait until the smoke’s cleared?’

  ‘Good thought. Romana, did you bring any marshmallows?’

  The Doctor, Romana and K-9 found a patch of beach that wasn’t melting into glass and sat down. The ship burned on, and the day steadily dawned. The words remained hanging in the sky.

  The day that the wreckage of a spacecraft floated through the Dust Cloud and into their vicinity was one that would totally traumatise the whole race.

  People came onto the beach. Slowly, cautiously, they walked to the cliff and peered down. Someone rowed up in a boat. The boat bobbed on the waves. All of them were watching the fire. No one said a word.

  ‘So,’ whispered Romana, ‘These are the people of Krikkit? They seem … normal.’

  The Doctor nodded. ‘Not for long.’

  The sun rose and the sun set. Still the ship burned. More and more people came and stared at the ship. Some of them sang songs to it. A group of women emerged from the crowd and stepped as close as they dared. They put down a garland of flowers.

  The crowd stared at this gesture, trying to work out if they agreed with it, thought it obscene, or wished they’d done it first. Then the flowers burst into flame. Which seemed to settle matters.

  A few days later, the fire had died down to embers. The hull of the ship seemed remarkably intact – but the beach was a complete write-off.

  A man in robes strode forward from the crowd and made to address the ship. He faltered on his words, shook his head and settled for gently, gently tapping the hull. Then he walked away.

  Whether it was the tap, the lack of words, or the simple shipness of the ship, this did not go down well.

  The first rock landed on the hull. F
ollowed by another immediately afterwards. Then everyone in the crowd was throwing stones at the ship. They didn’t stop, and all pinged harmlessly off the ship. But that didn’t stop them from throwing them. When the stones ran out, people ran away to get buckets more of them. After a while, the throwing was joined by another noise. An angry howl that surged out from the crowd and didn’t stop.

  Here’s how Galactic History records the event:

  It is hard to imagine the shock that was inflicted on the minds of the people of Krikkit when the wreckage of the giant spacecraft crashed onto their beautiful planet.

  It just came, bang, like that. Out of the blue. Out of what they had always assumed was nowhere. No warning. No follow-up. Bang. One wrecked spacecraft and that was that.

  It was as if the Universe had suddenly said to them, ‘There, what do you think of that?’ when they didn’t even know there was a Universe.

  It had an unfortunate effect on them. They were stunned. And working with sudden, stunned swiftness, they examined the wrecked spaceship in every detail, took it apart, put it together, took it apart again, put it together again, wrung every last and tiniest secret out of it, and then within a year, a miraculous, incomprehensible year, they did something which should have taken them generations.

  They built a spaceship for themselves.

  They went up through the Dust Cloud, and they had a look at the glittering inconceivable vastness of the Galaxy.

  They came back lost and reeling. They came back different.

  They told of what they had seen.

  A huge ‘Aaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhhhhh!’ of terror and shock went up from the whole people. For a hideous day and night the cry of terror rang continuously around the planet and it was as if a biological trigger had been tripped.

  From out of nowhere the most primitive form of racial consciousness hit them like a hammer blow.

  They weren’t bad people in any way. They were never bad. It wasn’t that they hated the rest of the Universe. It was just that they couldn’t cope with it being there.

  Overnight they were transformed from intelligent, charming, thoughtful, ordinary people, into intelligent, charming, delightful, manic Xenophobes.

  ‘So that’s how it all started,’ said Romana.

  ‘Well, that’s the official story,’ the Doctor mused. ‘I’m always wary of those.’

  The beach had emptied. The waves crept up the shattered shore. The ship had gone.

  ‘Come on,’ the Doctor climbed up a cliff path, pulling Romana along with his scarf. K-9 trundled loudly behind them.

  At the top of the cliff the Matrix presented them with a wooden door, with a copper plate on it. In glowing red letters it said:

  Later …

  They opened it, finding themselves in a really very impressive laboratory. Lying in the centre of the huge clinical space was the ship, cracked open into Easter egg segments. People milled around benches, crawled over the pieces of the hull, and stared with fascination at tiny pieces of copper wire. Over at the far end of the hangar, an exact copy of the ship was slowly taking place. Well, not quite exact. Somehow every edge seemed sharper, every angle tauter. The graceful lines now sneered, the prow shoved its way into the air.

  In another chamber, scientists worked diligently, examining the controls, the chairs, and mining data from the flight computer to produce detailed clay models of what the inhabitants of the craft might have looked like. These were carried next door to where each model was lined up against a wall and shot, stabbed, or set on fire.

  Hovering above this chamber were more glowing words:

  Quietly, implacably, the people of Krikkit aligned themselves to their new purpose. The simple and absolute annihilation of all alien life forms.

  ‘Well, that sounds ominous,’ said the Doctor.

  ‘All the same,’ Romana mulled as they turned a corridor, ‘reverse-engineering a spaceship and developing a whole new cultural and scientific mind-set? Well, that’s going to take thousands and thousands of years …’

  At the end of the corridor more words appeared:

  For another year, they worked with almost miraculous speed.

  ‘That’s you told,’ the Doctor muttered.

  ‘Hush,’ said Romana.

  The letters continued:

  They researched, perfected and built the technology to wage vast interstellar war.

  The wall dissolved. Behind it was a warehouse filled with an interesting prime number of missiles. It was just one warehouse. Beyond it were many more, silos crammed with bombs, ordnance, neutron blasters, de-mat guns, matter-warpers and tissue compressors. And built over the warehouse were layer upon layer of warships.

  Rather pointlessly the words continued:

  They had mastered the techniques of rapid travel in space.

  The words were now emblazoned across a huge runway. On every side of it were the hangars. They walked through the glowing letters, heading towards a vast black cylinder at the far end of the runway. It had a door. On the door was written:

  And then they built the Krikkitmen.

  The door slid up and those spindly, white killer robots marched out, rank after rank of them. Seen en masse, you could appreciate the brutal efficiency of the design. The spare frame, the armoured head, the glowing red lights flickering within. An army built out of whatever was to hand.

  ‘Yes, but in a year?’ Romana queried. ‘I mean, that’s asking a lot of people. Or expecting a really slow orbit.’

  Galactic History is only too happy to tell you what happens next:

  The Army of Krikkit was an army of androids – again, developed and built within a timescale which should have been impossible. This has always been put down to the power of single-minded obsession, and it is only very recently that the question, ‘Yes, but whose mind are we talking about here?’ has been asked.

  The design of these androids was very curious, and particularly interesting in the light of subsequent events, which we are, by degrees, coming to.

  The androids – or Krikkitmen as they were known – were anthropomorphic, or man-shaped. This has remained a phenomenally popular shape throughout recorded history.

  They were white – still a major colour.

  The lower halves of their legs were encased in ribbed rocket engines which enabled them to fly when required. They wielded multifunctional battle clubs, which brandished in one way would knock down buildings, brandished another way fired blistering rays, and brandished another way launched a hideous arsenal of grenades. This was a particularly ingenious piece of systems economy. Simply striking the grenades (smallish red spheres) with the multifunctional battle clubs simultaneously primed them and launched them with quite phenomenal trajectorial accuracy over distances ranging from mere yards to thousands of miles.

  As battle weapons, the Krikkitmen were fiendish. Puzzling, but fiendish.

  The Doctor, Romana and K-9 stood on the parade ground, watching the Krikkitmen march past, climbing into those strange ships which had evolved. Sleek lines had been folded back and stretched out. Aerodynamics were no longer important – these were simply containers for as many Krikkitmen as possible, with small windows at the front and a pointed top. Eleven robots filed into each box, which slid out of the hangar, roared across the pitch and punched straight up into the sky.

  Craft after craft pushed its way up into the Dust Cloud. The Doctor blinked. ‘They do, you know, look like cricket pavilions. Remarkable.’

  The fleet of boxes filled the entire sky. The engine noise changed – and then Romana realised.

  ‘It’s the people,’ she breathed.

  Echoing over the surface of the planet was that same roar. The people of Krikkit were screaming with anger again. An anger that said they wouldn’t be satisfied until everything went back to the way it was.

  The roaring peaked and the craft vanished.

  The only thing hanging in the empty sky were the following words:

  Finally all preparations were complete, and with no warning at all the forces of Krikkit launched a massive blitz attack on all the major centres of the Galaxy simultaneously.

  The words faded, and were then replaced by, in a much bigger, grander font: