BENEATH THE STONE
Part 1
BY BERNIE FISHNOTES
Katie, Ben, Anselm and Kyle stood around the site. Dark clouds hung over them, and a strong, cold wind was blowing in. But they still waited. “He’s not coming” Anselm moaned for the umpteenth time. Ben reassured him. “He always comes”, he said.
Ben was just beginning to lose hope when gently, on the wind, he heard a gentle electronic twittering. His face lit up as it was joined by a wheezing, groaning noise, building up to a crescendo as the fabric of space and time was ripped open and the large blue box faded into existence before him. There was a loud thunderous boom, as the noise diminished, and the door opened. Out rushed a man in a tight brown suit, his hair stylishly messy, a look of determination on his face.
“Sorry I’m late”, The Doctor said, hurriedly, “What’s the emergency?”
Ben had finished explaining the problem, and the Doctor had been huffing all the way through. He jiggled his feet on the table in Katie’s site office, and glared at Ben. “Ben, Have you ever heard of the Catalogue of Shere Thar?” Ben had to admit he hadn’t. “It’s a marvellous place, every thing that has ever existed, and even a few things that haven’t, has an example in storage. Well, almost,” he said, looking at the TARDIS out of the window. “You can only look round it once, and I’ve never got round to visiting it, so I though this would be the chance. So I’m inside, looking at the last remaining painting of the Cathedral of Chalesm, when I get a text message.” He pulled out a battered mobile phone from his pocket, and read out the message. “Doctor. Please could you come back to Earth and help us, we have a mystery to solve. Ben.” He dropped the phone onto the desk. “Nice use of proper English, by the way. Anyway, I now have a choice. Do I stay in the Catalogue, enjoy myself, and generally get over everything I’ve been through in the last few months, or do I rush off and help my friend with his mystery.” He held his hands out, in a “here I am” attitude. “But what do I find? Your Geophys machine is on the blink.” He took his feet off the table. “Ben, give me one good reason why I should help you?”
Ben gulped. The Doctor was angry with him, and he didn’t like it. He thought, and hit upon an idea. “Well, how many times have we investigated strange events at archaeological sites?”
The Doctor could see where this was going, but he played along. “A few.”
“And how many of those times has it turned out to be part of either an alien invasion, or a doomsday cult?”
The Doctor sighed. He hated to admit it, but Ben was right. He pushed himself out of his chair. “Alright,” he said reluctantly “I’ll help. But,” he added “If this is a wild goose chase, I’m changing my number!”
“You say that the geophys is picking up an anomaly under this monolith?” he said.
“That’s right” Ben confirmed “it’s quite deep, but we get a very clear shadow within a 12 metres diameter”
“We were wondering if the monolith went deeper, but boreholes gave us nothing up to two metres below the surface” Katie added, feeling left out of her dig. She had organised this operation, she’d arranged the facilities and organised the schedules, yet as soon as something unusual had turned up, Ben had taken over. “It must be deeper though, mustn’t it?”
“Possibly…” The Doctor said. He was on his knees, peering at the monolith through his glasses. “Is this Triassic sandstone?”
“It seems to be” Katie replied. “It’s not exposed anywhere around here though, so it must have been transported from somewhere in the Bristol area, about 30 miles away.”
“I thought that,” The Doctor said, “But it’s huge as it is, and if there’s more beneath the surface, this thing must weigh over 10 tonnes. Even modern methods would have trouble moving that.” He looked at the monolith, and ran his fingers through his hair, leaving it looking even messier than before. He had no idea what was going on.
Anselm and Kyle were stood back from the Doctor, Ben and Katie. Neither of them knew much about archaeology, and were only there because Ben had insisted. Kyle didn’t get on with Katie, she’d always looked down on him, treating him like a lesser person. She was like this with most people though, so he didn’t take it personally. Anselm knew why Katie didn’t like him. She had a history with Ben, he’d found that out soon after he’d first met Ben, and although she rarely mentioned it, she still held a candle for Ben, and saw Anselm as an obstacle to that, and ever since Ben had caught him with Simon she’d been unbearable. “So, that’s the Doctor.” Anselm said to Kyle. Kyle found it hard to believe that Anselm hadn’t met the Doctor yet, it seemed that the Doctor was always popping by, yet Anselm always seemed to miss him. “Yep” Kyle said. “Bloody good bloke, if a bit weird. Still, what he don’t know ain’t worth knowing, and he’s saved our lived more times than I can remember!”
Anselm watched the Doctor. He could see why Ben liked the Doctor, he was quite attractive, if a bit geeky. Still… He realised the Doctor was walking towards him. “Hello” The Doctor said. “You must be Anselm. I’ve heard all about you”
“Hello” Anselm said. The Doctor was even more attractive close up.
“I’ve got a job for you.” The Doctor said “I want you to go to the village library and see if they have any books on the monolith.”
“Katie has already done all the research” Kyle interjected. “It’s all in her office” he added, pointing at the caravan.
The Doctor thought of the huge messy piles of paper that littered the caravan. Rather you than me, he thought. “Well, saves you a journey.” He said with a grin. “See if you can find any pictures of the monolith as it was. I want to see how big it was.”
Anselm nodded. He suddenly noticed Ben giving him the evil eye, and rushed off to the caravan. “Shall I give him a hand?” Kyle asked.
“Nah,” the Doctor replied “I’ll have a job for you soon enough.”
“It’s the best the faculty could spare” Katie admitted “They’re using the best one elsewhere. This one was about to go in the skip before I requested it.”
“Well, we can soon sort that out!” The Doctor said, pulling out his Sonic screwdriver. He held it to the emitter, and pressed the switch. Blue light shone across them, as the crystalline structure of the focusing apparatus realigned. He then moved up to the control box, and gave that a zap too. He passed it to Katie. “There ya go!” he said, breezily, “Good as new! No, Better than new!” he added with a grin.
“What have you done?” she asked, looking at it closely. It looked exactly the same as when she’d handed it over to him.
“Bit of jiggery pokery, improved the resolution a bit. Should be more use now.”
“Thanks” she said. “I hope it works”.
“Of course it’ll work!” Ben said “The Doctor is a genius!”
“Well,” the Doctor said, modestly.
Any further backslapping was prevented by Anselm rushing out of the caravan holding a piece of paper. “Doctor, I’ve found one!”
He handed the piece of paper to the Doctor, who held it out so everybody could see. “It’s from a woodcut in the sixteenth century,” Anselm said “about two hundred years after the village was founded.”
Ben looked at the picture. The monolith looked different to how it was now. Rather than the blank, smooth pillar he saw in front of him was a rather ornate object. Although it clearly showed signs of having been broken up by that point, it clearly had ribbing down it’s length, and circular markings. Every so often there were stubby arms sticking out.
“I don’t like the look of this” The Doctor said. He turned to Katie. “are there any older pictures?”
“Not that I can remember.” She said.
“Anselm,” The Doctor said, turning to him. “Get back in there, and see if there is anything older than this.” He turned to Katie and Kyle. “You two, I want you to do your geophys.”
“What are you going to do?” Ben asked.
“We,” The Doctor said, putting his arm round Ben’s shoulders “are going to cheat.”
As the TARDIS wheezed out of existence, Katie and Kyle got to work, setting up the geophys equipment in silence. Katie was holding the emitter, connected via a short cable to a laptop computer Kyle had on a tray supported round his neck. Katie glanced at the screen, and was amazed by the clarity of the picture. Nice one Doctor, she thought to herself. “Let’s collect some data”, she said to Kyle, who responded with a fake smile. They set off across the site, towards the monolith.
The trip had been bumpy, but it was now over. Ben picked himself up, brushed himself down and went to the door. The Doctor was already there, opening the door. “Here we are, the year 100.” He held out an arm “Tiberius Avidius Quietus has just ended his governorship of the British Isles, the Romans have started using bricks, and some clever chinaman has stuck a wheel on the fulcrum of a type one lever and invented the wheelbarrow.” He emerged from the TARDIS “and the monolith is… Oh.” Ben followed, and saw what the Doctor saw. The landscape was similar, but different. The contours were there, but instead of green fields there were forests, and the village was nowhere to be seen. The monolith was the only familiar thing, and yet it was different too. It was weathered, but it still displayed all of the details that had been partial visible in the woodcut.
“That’s amazing!” Ben said. He could see the ribs, the arms, the fins… “It’s a statue of a spaceship.”
“No it isn’t” the Doctor said, distracted.
“What do you mean?” Ben said “You’re not telling me that that is a real spaceship, made of stone”
“No, it’s not that either.”
“Then kindly stop gaping and explain what it is then” Ben said testily.
“There are some races that are nervous about landing on alien planets. They think that the natives will steal their technology. And most of the time, they’re right!” He looked at the monolith. “They’ve adapted their teleport technology to create a perfect hiding place, where they can only be reached via an internal teleport system.”
“Where?” Ben asked. He wished the Doctor would stop giving lectures and get to the point.
“Underground.” The Doctor said. “They transport the ship underground. Of course, they can’t just materialise underground, or there’d be all sorts of reactions as molecules try to occupy the same place as other molecules.” He pointed at the monolith. “They swap a similar area of the strata beneath them as they transport, so the ship is where the rock was, and vice versa.”
“So the ship is still down there? What happened?”
“Must have been damaged.” The Doctor said. He walked round the monolith, and pointed. “There”, he said, pointing at an indentation near the top of the monolith. “Guidance systems were knocked out. Had to make an emergency landing.”
“I guess it didn’t send a distress signal”
“Luckily for you, no.”
Ben looked at the Doctor. “What do you mean, luckily for me?”
“This is an Dalmanite ship.” The Doctor said urgently. “They find new planets, and preserve their heritage.”
Ben didn’t understand “But that’s a good thing, isn’t it?”
“Not the way they do it.” His face dropped. “Oh no…”
Ben was about to ask what the Doctor meant, when he was grabbed and dragged back into the TARDIS.
“What’s wrong?” Ben asked, adjusting the collar of his shirt. It had cost him nearly seventy pounds, but luckily it didn’t seem damaged.
“Ben, we need to stop the surveying NOW!”
“Why” Ben asked, annoyed that the Doctor was attempting to stop vital archaeological work.
“The Dalmanite ship is awaiting an electromagnetic signal sent through the earth.”
Ben knew where the Doctor was going with this “The Geophys machine!” he stopped. “But we used it before, it didn’t set anything off.”
“It hadn’t been boosted then” The Doctor said, wrestling with controls on the TARDIS, the glass central column pumping up and down. “As soon as they get over the area where the ship is…”
The TARDIS thudded to a halt, and the Doctor ran to the doors. He threw them open, and saw Katie and Kyle walking towards the monolith. “GET BACK!” he began to shout at the top of his voice, but it was too late. As soon as the words left his mouth, there was a blinding white flash, and Katie and Kyle were gone.
