Read Online Doctor Who: The Doomsday Weapon by Malcolm Hulke - Free Book Online

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    Six months later Dent returned to Earth again, this time with a bigger bonus. In the envelope with the bonus statement was a key bearing an address tag. This was his new home. His wife was waiting for him, quite a pretty young woman with short hair dyed dull blue, as was the fashion that month. 'Are you my husband?' she said as he let himself in.
    'I imagine I will be,' he answered, looking round his new home. It had two rooms, a shower, a lavatory, and a tiny kitchen. He was amazed at the influence wielded by IMC which could get him anywhere to live in as big as this.
    'It's all fixed,' said the girl. 'IMC had our State records stapled together in the Automatic Personnel File, so we're already married.'
    'That's fine,' Dent said, still looking about his new living quarters. 'What's that?' He pointed to a set of knobs and dials in the tiny kitchen.
    The girl explained it was the infra-red cooker, and spent the next hour showing Dent all the gadgets in their home. Finally he asked, 'Do you know how much all this is going to cost me '
    'I worked it out,' said the girl. 'Even if they make you up to Captain in a year, with your earnings you'll pay off IMC for all this in about twenty years' time. But, of course, by then we'll have moved to somewhere bigger, and there'll be children, so I imagine you'll be paying back IMC for just about the rest of your life!'
    She laughed. It was a very pretty laugh. And now, for the first time, Dent really noticed her in among all the other gadgets of his new home. Over the next few days of leave he found that the IMC match-making computer had done a good job, and that the two of them were going to be very happy together. Two years later they had their first child, then their second, and both children were now in a school owned and run by IMC solely for the children of IMC staff.
    As Dent sat there, touching the controls of the IMC spaceship, he felt happy and secure in the fact that he was an IMC man, with an IMC wife, IMC children, with a beautiful four room IMC home. His present and his future were as secure as IMC, and IMC would go on for ever.
    These pleasant thoughts were pushed from his mind by the arrival of First Officer Morgan, who came hurrying into the control room with a file in his hand. 'I've just got the first survey results from the computer, Captain, he said, showing Dent the file. 'There's enough duralinium on this planet to build a million living units on Earth.'
    'Excellent,' said Dent. He had trained his mind to switch instantly from one set of thoughts to another. All the personal memories were now switched off, and he was eagerly scanning his eyes down the set of figures on the computer print-out contained in the file.
    Morgan said, 'I can't think how this planet ever got assigned for colonisation, can you, Captain?'
    'Does it really matter?' said Dent, still eagerly reading the figures.
    'Look,' said Morgan, ' Caldwell seems to have found a colonist for us.'
    Dent looked up at the monitor. On it they could see Caldwell on the buggy driving straight towards them. Seated by Caldwell was a tall man with curly fair hair dressed in a knee-length black jacket and a frilly white shirt. The robot sat at the rear.
    Morgan was amused, 'Why's he wearing fancy dress?'
    'All colonists are eccentric,' said Dent, which was something he had once read in an IMC handbook on interplanetary sociology. 'Otherwise they wouldn't be colonists. They're drop-outs from society.'
    By now the buggy had gone out of range of the outside television eye, so presumably it was too close in to the spaceship, it had probably stopped by the outside entrance, and its passengers would be in the process of dismounting.
    Morgan asked, 'What are you going to say to this eccentric?'
    'The usual story,' said Dent. 'We've only just arrived, and we are surprised and shocked to discover that the planet has been colonised.'
    'Why couldn't we just blast them off the planet?' Morgan said. 'We've got the