Doctor Who and the Scales of Injustice | Page 3

couldn't be far from the gateway.
And the chemical stench had to be confusing the Stalker to some extent. Surely...
'Traynor, please. This is so pointless. You knew when you signed on, when you signed
the OSA, that you couldn't just walk away. We need you back, Traynor. Whatever your
gripe, let's talk about it. You're too useful to us, to our boss, to lose you like this.'
Traynor smiled and let his head loll back against the damp wall. He smiled without
humour. There was no way he was falling for that.
'Traynor?'
They were so close now. And that creep was down there, personally, with the Stalker.
You're brave, I'll give you that, Traynor thought. Psychotic, twisted, malicious and evil.
But brave.
But he wasn't going to let admiration stop him. He wouldn't let it hold him back. He
simply couldn't. Getting out, spilling everything to the papers, was too important. It was
too -
'Hello, Traynor.'
'Oh God.' Traynor could only see one thing in the dark - his own reflection caught in his
pursuer's dark sunglasses. The same sunglasses his pursuer always wore whatever the

weather, wherever he went, whoever he saw.
Traynor saw fear reflected back into his own eyes. The fear of a man caught by his
immediate boss and the Stalker.
'I'm sorry, Traynor. You had your chance, but you blew it.'
Traynor was momentarily aware of a snuffling noise near his left foot, and then he was
falling, and then the pain hit. He screamed, his mind filled with nothing but agony, as the
Stalker bit cleanly through his lower leg. He fell, feeling himself hit the floor, his blood
adding the scent of human suffering to the overpowering smells in the tunnel. Somewhere
in the darkness, someone was chuckling. The last sensation to pass through Grant
Traynor's mind was one of bitter irony as the Stalker bit deep into his side, tearing
through flesh with genetically augmented fangs that he'd designed for precisely that
purpose.
---
Liz Shaw stared around the laboratory at UNIT headquarters, gazing towards the jumble
of test-tubes, burners and coiled wires. Then there were the less recognizable scientific
artefacts, probably from other worlds, or alternate dimensions at the very least. Well,
maybe. Whatever their origins and purpose, they were strewn in untidy and illogical
designs all over the benches. Doing nothing except being there.
They annoyed her.
It was ten-thirty in the morning, her car had taken nearly thirty minutes to start, and it
was raining. No, frankly she was not in the highest of spirits.
'The sun has got his hat on. Hip-hip-hip hooray! The sun has got his hat on and he's
coming out to play!' The Doctor was singing - out of tune, off-key and with little feeling
for rhythm, tempo or accuracy but, Liz decided, it would just about pass a
dictionary-definition test as 'singing'. Maybe.
She had been stuck in this large but rather drab UNIT laboratory for eight months now -
staring at the same grey-brick walls, the same six benches with the same scattered tubes,
burners and Petri dishes for far too long. Liz told herself often that before her 'employer',
Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, had whisked her down here she had been enjoying her life
at Cambridge, researching new ways of breaking down non-biodegradable waste by
environmental methods. It had been a challenge, one that looked set to keep her occupied
for some years. Scientific advancement rarely moved fast.
Instead, she had fought a variety of all-out wars against Nestenes, strange ape-men,
stranger reptile men, paranoid aliens and other assorted home-grown and extra-terrestrial
menaces. Her initial and understandable cynicism about the raison d'tre for UNIT had
quickly given way to an almost enthusiastic appreciation for the unusual, unexplained
and frequently unnatural phenomena that her new job had shown her. Her most recent
assignment had pitted her against an alien foe not only far away - the tropics - but, via the

Doctor's bizarre 'space-time visualizer', back and forth in time as well. UNIT had
provided her with novel experiences if nothing else.
But as she twirled a pen between her fingers and left her subconscious trying to make
some sense of the complex chemical formula the Doctor had scribbled on the blackboard
during the night, three things were gnawing at her mind. How much longer she could
cope with UNIT's sometimes amoral military solutions; how much longer she could cope
with UNIT's cloak-and-dagger-Official-Secrets-Act-walls-have-ears mentality; and how
much longer she could cope with UNIT's brilliant, sophisticated, charming, eloquent but
downright aggravating, chauvinistic and moody scientific advisor.
Oh, the Doctor was without doubt the most inspiring and intellectual person (she couldn't
say 'man' because that implied human origins, and she knew that to be wrong) she was
ever likely to meet. He was also the