The key slid into the lock, and Susan reluctantly pushed the door open.
‘That’s far enough!’
Susan and the Master both spun round, and Susan felt a giddy relief. Though the face and body were completely different, there was no mistaking the person. She almost cried ‘Grandfather’, but bit her tongue just in time.
‘Doctor!’ The Master sounded almost pleased. ‘And you’ve brought along your little band of disciples. How charming.’ He held the TCE to Susan’s head. ‘And I believe you know this human, too? Don’t take another step if you want her to remain alive.’
David was with the Doctor, along with some girl whom Susan found vaguely familiar. For a ludicrous moment she felt her heart lurch as she realised this girl was seeing her without her disguise in place, seeing her as a girl barely out of her teens. She looked apologetically at David in spite of everything. Both he and the girl tried to move forward, but the Doctor held them back.
‘Don’t,’ he said quietly ‘That’s a very lethal weapon he’s got there.’ Then he blinked. ‘And something else…’
‘It’s a matter transmuter!’ blurted Susan.
The Doctor’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Of course…’
The Master smiled, agreeably. ‘My key to achieving all I desire.’
The Doctor’s face hardened. ‘I can’t allow you to take that,’ he said quietly ‘David, your gun.’ David clearly didn’t want to obey, but, as usual, the Doctor’s will won out, and David handed it over. ‘You know how much I dislike using weapons,’ the Doctor said. ‘But I won’t hesitate here. I can’t. Drop that device, or I shoot.’
‘I’ll kill the girl,’ the Master promised.
The Doctor hesitated, the gun half raised.
The Master dropped the TCE, and instead brought up his own pistol, firing before the Doctor could bring himself to do so. Susan screamed as the bullet tore into the Doctor’s shoulder, sending him crashing back to the floor, a stunned and pained expression on his face. Blood began pooling on his coat.
Susan struggled to move towards her grandfather. The Master slammed the barrel of the pistol across the back of her neck, and she fell, half inside the door to his TARDIS.
‘Enough games,’ the Master decided. He raised the gun again and fired the rest of the clip at the Doctor.
14
The Gates of Hell
Susan’s blurred vision caught what happened next in shock. David flung himself to cover the Doctor. The bullets tore into him, throwing him back against the Doctor, blood flowing Susan whimpered, trying to get to her feet to run to the aid of her husband and her grandfather. Her fingers clutched the TCE that the Master had dropped.
Cursing, the Master flung the useless gun away, and again grabbed Susan, shoving her further into his TARDIS. Susan saw the girl with the Doctor snatch up the fallen revolver, and she heard shots as the Master’s TARDIS doors slid closed. Susan crumpled to the floor, her world a mass of pain and shock as she tried to focus her thoughts. The Master strode to his console, and started to slam home switches.
‘You haven’t won, Doctor,’ he sneered. ‘I have the transmuter – and you have nothing!’ He shot home the last controls, and Susan looked up in despair as the time rotor began to rise and fall…
Donna stared in shock as what looked like a computer console simply sighed and vanished. She let the gun fall and then remembered her companions. She turned back to them.
She could see immediately that there was no chance that David would make it. He’d taken four shots to the chest, and the dark, arterial blood was gushing down him. More blood trickled from his mouth as she knelt to try to give him some sort of comfort.
‘No use,’ he told her, gasping with the strain. ‘Too late.’ He looked at the Doctor. ‘Better this way, perhaps. Now Susan won’t have to wait for me to die.’
Controlling the pain he had to be feeling, the Doctor had a hand to his own wound, using his cravat to staunch the flow of blood. ‘She would have looked forward to the rest of your life,’ he assured David. ‘You didn’t have to do this.’
‘Yes, I did,’ David insisted. ‘Get her back, Doctor,’ he begged.
‘He won’t keep her,’ the Doctor swore.
David looked back at Donna, a faint smile on his lips. ‘He always keeps his promises.’
‘Eventually,’ she couldn’t help adding.
David nodded slowly, his face wreathed in pain. Then he simply stopped breathing. Donna felt the tears welling inside of her.
‘He was a good man,’ the Doctor murmured.
‘One of the two in the universe,’ Donna muttered. His head was still in her lap, and she was smeared with his blood. That would wash off, but the memory of David Campbell would not.
There was a noise from the corridor, and the Doctor looked back and then frowned. ‘Daleks…’
Donna looked at him, then glanced at the far door that led to the pit. ‘That’s our only way out now.’
‘And there are more Daleks at the top of it,’ he pointed out. ‘But we’ve no other choice. Come on.’ He pulled her free of David. She winced as the dead head hit the floor. The Doctor jumped for the door‐lock controls, obviously hoping to buy them a few extra seconds.
Then Donna remembered the grenades Barlow had given her. She fumbled them from her bag as the door started to slide closed. Pulling their pins, she rolled them under the descending door. ‘Die,’ she muttered, as she hared after the Doctor.
The door slid shut and then shook from the explosions.
‘They won’t be getting out of there very quickly,’ Donna told the Doctor. They had reached the base of the pit now, and he stood at the foot of the ladder. Forcing herself not to think about what was happening, she moved to him. ‘How’s your shoulder?’
‘I’ll live,’ he answered. His cravat was wet with blood.
‘You can’t climb like that,’ she objected. ‘Here.’ She helped him out of his coat, and then tore a strip from its lining to tie the cravat about the wound. ‘Lousy field dressing, but it should hold for a while.’
‘I liked that coat,’ he objected.
‘I’ll buy you a new one later,’ she promised him. ‘If there is a later.’
‘There’s always a later,’ he answered. ‘The question is, will there be an us in that later?’ He shrugged and then winced with pain. ‘That’s as good as it will get,’ he said, struggling to get hack into the tatters of the coat. She helped him.
‘Can you manage?’ she asked.
‘Is there an option?’ he replied, a broad grin on his face. ‘There’s climbing and maybe dying to be done this day.’ With his good hand, he gripped a rung, and started up. ‘Heads up,’ he murmured.
‘Are you sure you can manage this?’ Donna asked anxiously.
‘We don’t have any choice,’ he stated, exasperation starting to show in his words. ‘Our little bit of sabotage won’t stop the Daleks for long, and all they have to do is to communicate with the ones at the top of this climb anyway. I’m at the top of their shoot‐on‐sight list.’
Somehow that didn’t surprise her.
The first reinforcements had started to trickle in now. Barlow felt a little better about this, but the troops were the lightly armed ones, none with anything that could really take out Daleks. And his observations of the pit area showed that they were still working on something, having hauled equipment up. He strongly suspected it was a replacement transmitter. All he’d managed to do so far was to delay the Daleks a little. Perhaps the Doctor was having better luck. It was time that somebody did.
‘Let’s start moving in,’ he decided. He still had a few of his grenades left, and two of the fresh batch had the more conventional kind. The others would be able to deal with the handful of Robomen still alive, at least. He looked around at the dismal grey sky, wondering if he’d live to see the night fall.