Doctor Who: The Mark of the Rani Read Online Free Page B

correct.
    Davy gets the credit. Controversial decision, I’ve always thought. Which reminds me – where is Stephenson?’
    ‘He could be anywhere in this place. Even underground!’ Gulping, she peered over the rim of a shaft.
    Seemingly stretching to infinity, the bottom could not be seen. The giddy drop induced her to sway, experience vertigo, feel as though she were about to he plucked into its inky depths...
    A hand clutched her shoulder.
    ‘Peri, you have an extraordinary capacity for seeking out danger.’ The Doctor’s words were lost on Peri. She was staring beyond him to where the miners were advancing.
    ‘Doctor!’
    Imperturbably, he lectured on. ‘You must learn to avoid getting into situations –’
    ‘ Doctor !’
    Too late. A lump of coal came whistling past his ear.
    Intuitively, he bundled Peri behind a truck. A random missile? Or was it meant for him? The introspective debate was rudely terminated. With arrogant ease, the brawny Ward sent the truck trundling along the track and the three vengeful aggressors closed in.
    ‘Peri! Get away from here!’
    ‘But –’
    ‘Don’t argue! Go!’ His concern for Peri made him unwary. His toe stubbed against a rail causing him to stagger. A smart punch from Green jerked the tracer from his grip, lobbing it over the edge of the shaft. After what appeared to be an eternity, there came a faint thud.
    ‘Now you really have gone too far! The effort that went into constructing –’
    A man of deeds rather than chitchat, Rudge lunged at the Doctor. A crash barrier might have averted disaster.
    But this was the nineteenth century and there was none.
    Briefly, they tottered on the brink... then fell...
    The Doctor grabbed for the lift rope.
    So did Rudge.
    The Doctor succeeded. Not so Rudge.
    His protracted, diminishing scream underscored the sickening drop to the bottom.
    Incensed by the fate of his companion, Green snatched up a pit prop and, with frenetic fury, stabbed at the Doctor, trying to force him to lose his tenuous hold on the rope.
    Releasing one hand, the Doctor reached for the edge of the shaft to steady his dangling body. A spade, wielded by Ward, chopped at the straining fingers... missing by a hair’s breadth as the Doctor snatched them away.
    He clung desperately onto the rope. But his weight and the constant blows were beginning to tell. Resourcefulness was basic to his nature, yet even that had deserted him.
    Could it be that escape was impossible? Ridiculous though it seemed, he wondered if falling to one’s death was the same as drowning. Would all his previous lives flash before him? The drop was long enough!
    ‘Get away from him!’ Peri had not capitulated. ‘Leave him alone!’
    She pelted chunks of coal at Ward and Green. A hit and miss affair. Some found their targets, some found the beleagured Doctor.
    ‘Help! Please help! They’re crazy! They’ll kill him!’
    If her aim was erratic, her predictions were perilously near to being accurate; the Doctor’s stamina was fast ebbing away.
    Spurred on by his weakening grasp, the antagonists thrust with increasing fervour.
     
    Bang !
    A burst of gunfire!
    ‘Stop that or I’ll blast you to Kingdom come!’
    There was no disputing that the warning was genuine.
    Nor was there any doubting the authority in the voice. The attackers scarpered.
    The man behind the blunderbuss had not finished giving orders. ‘Quickly! Haul that fellow to safety!’
    The guard who had accompanied Peri and the Doctor to the office sprang to carry out the command. It had come from his boss, Lord Ravensworth, the mine owner.
    Restored to terra firma, the Doctor could not resist a quip. ‘Almost at the end of my tether, eh?’
    ‘It’s no joke, Doctor!’
    An opinion shared by Lord Ravensworth as he rejected the Doctor’s expressions of gratitude. ‘Perhaps you’ll tell me who you are. And I don’t want any flummery about VIPs. I’m Lord Ravensworth, the owner. I issued –
    personally – the