Someone cleared his throat behind Cameron. “Sir?”

The sergeant turned. It was Private Doherty, the com-tech.

“What is it, Private?” Cameron asked.

“I’ve triangulated our position,” said Doherty.

Cameron noticed he had a small portable terminal over his shoulder.

“We’re four-thousand metres off point,” he went on. “The observation team’s LZ is forty-one degrees, north-by-north-east.” He gestured in the direction.

Cameron nodded. “Any luck hailing the Orbital yet?”

Doherty spread his hands and shook his head.

“Okay; well, keep trying.”

“Yes, sir.” Doherty drifted away again.

Cameron turned back to the crater. He looked at the digital Geiger counter he was holding. The numbers were continuing to climb, but they were still within safe limits. Before they ditched, he had jettisoned three of the four fuel rods; the fourth had jammed. It had been a low-yield detonation, but only in armament terms.

Nothing salvageable had survived. Cameron looked at the munitions cases they had pulled out before the explosion. They were piled up fifty yards away, beside the pit where it seemed Captain Hamilton was still berating the prisoners. All of a sudden, it didn’t look like they had managed to save much.

Cameron hoped it would be enough.

“Sarge,” another voice called.

Three soldiers were approaching from the other direction. He recognised the team he had sent to scout the area. It was Corporal Carlisle who was calling him; now they were on the ground, the chain of command had been restored.

Cameron moved away from the crater.

“What is it, Corporal?” he said.

“Sir, we’ve found something,” Carlisle reported.

“What do you think it is, sir?”

Sergeant Cameron was standing fifteen yards away from it; the gentle spin was captivating, almost mesmerising. “I have no idea.”

“It doesn’t look like it belongs here, does it, Sarge?” Carlisle said.

“No; no, it doesn’t.” He paused. “I’ll tell the Captain.”

When Sergeant Cameron returned to the pit, both prisoners were busy ‘bartering for their lives’, as Captain Hamilton had put it.

“Forgetting me for a minute,” the male prisoner was saying. “But does the girl look like she’s dressed for sabotaging spaceships? Honestly now.”

“She looks like she’s dressed for the beach,” Captain Hamilton said.

“Exactly!” both prisoners chimed in together.

“Which just makes it all the more suspicious,” the captain went on. “Because as far as I know, there isn’t a single beach on any planet in this system.”

Their faces fell; they swapped furtive glances.

“Yeah, but anyway,” the girl said. “What kind of saboteurs would hang around on a ship they’d just sabotaged to make it crash; you know what I mean?”

“Ah, now that’s a good question,” her male companion said, wagging a finger at the captain. “Do you have a good answer to go with it?”

Captain Hamilton snorted. “A very stupid saboteur, perhaps?”

The man looked almost offended, Cameron thought.

“Just for the record, I’d make a damn good saboteur,” he said.

The girl slapped him. “Doctor, shut up!”

“Sir?” Cameron interjected.

Captain Hamilton turned. His face was a fiery red, but the electric twinkle in his eyes betrayed the fact that he was having fun toying with the prisoners.

“Sir, some of the men have found something.”

“What is it? Is this urgent?”

“I think you should come and look; yes, sir.”

Hamilton glared at the prisoners, who were looking up out of the pit at him with expectant looks upon their faces.

“Bring them,” he said.

Rose felt the barrel of a gun jab her in the back and yelped.

“Hey; there’s no need for that,” the Doctor told the culprit angrily. “We’re not going anywhere.” The soldiers stopped doing it after that.

“It’s just over there,” the sergeant said.

The Doctor and Rose were being herded across the junk. The sergeant was in the lead, with the captain striding beside him, and everyone else behind. The sergeant took them round the side of the deep crater where their ship had once been.

There were three soldiers waiting on the other side.

“Over here,” one of them said.

The sergeant and the captain stopped on top of a rise. Then Rose saw what they had been brought to see. To her, it looked like a telegraph pole.

“What is it, Doctor?” she whispered.

He had a dark look on his face and didn’t answer.

Unlike most of the junk that littered the surface of the planet, the telegraph pole didn’t look like it had been discarded; it was standing bolt upright. She wondered if it went all the way down to the ground; at thirty feet that would make it the tallest telegraph pole she had ever seen. As she looked at it, she saw the red light.

“Is that a laser emitter?” the captain asked, though not to anybody in particular, as he made his way down toward its base.

The red light was very bright and came from the very top of the telegraph pole. The top couple of inches of the pole were gently spinning.

“I wouldn’t go near that, if I were you, captain,” the Doctor said.

The captain stopped suddenly and shot a look at the Doctor. He was standing right next to it, his hand hesitating from touching it. “Why?”

“I don’t think it’d be a very good idea.”

“What do you know about it?” He frowned. “What is it?”

“I think it’s a proximity sensor.” The Doctor gestured up into the air. “There’s a laser beam going over our heads as we speak.”

The captain drew back from the telegraph pole and narrowed his eyes. “I heard the girl call you Doctor. Just what are you a doctor of, Doctor?”

“Well, a bit of everything, really.”

The Doctor gave him an unblinking stare.

“I see,” the captain said slowly.

The captain was trying to stare him out; he failed. He turned back to the telegraph pole and touched the trunk with his hand. An arc of blue electricity crackled over his leather glove and he snatched his hand back in shock.

The captain glared up at the Doctor.

“Well, I did warn you,” the Doctor told him.

“Careful, sir; you might trip the sensor,” the sergeant said, quickly adding with a sideways glance at the Doctor, “If it is what he says it is.”

Rose saw the little red light blink out.

“Hey, Doctor; did you see that?” she said, pointing up.

The top wasn’t spinning so quickly now, either.

“I think it’s a little late to worry about that, sergeant,” the Doctor said.

Behind them, the junk began to shift. Silently, two hydraulic limbs extended upward from an inconspicuous pile of scrap. They folded open once, twice, and then the first joints bent back on themselves again. Had any of the soldiers been looking in that direction, they might have said the first joints looked like knees, the second ankles; the limbs might almost have been legs. But they weren’t looking. Similarly, they weren’t looking when the ‘legs’ stood up, nor when they began to walk.

As the Doctor and the captain took turns dismissing each other’s theories, Rose looked down at her training shoes. They’d been through a rough time these last few months, but clambering over all this metal had done the most damage. Both shoes were scuffed and scratched, the rubber soles punctured by sharp bits.

She noticed her right shoelace was coming undone and bent down to tighten the double-knot. She found the lace snagged round the end of a short metal pipe.

Suddenly, and it happened so fast, there was uproar.

“Doctor; watch out!” a voice shouted.

Rose looked up and saw the sergeant shove the Doctor out of the way. When she saw what he had shoved the Doctor out of the way of, she froze.

Coming over the rise was a giant robot, at least nine foot tall. It had no arms, no head; just a body that looked like a car motor, swivelling back and forth on top of a pair of legs. Gaping, Rose remembered passing the robot’s body on the way here; it had looked like just another piece of junk to her. What else was really a robot?

“Rose; get out of the way!” the Doctor hollered.

She didn’t need telling twice. She leapt to her feet as the robot headed toward the group. But as she tried to run, her snagged shoelace yanked her back.

Her ankle twisted; Rose winced.

“Doctor, help; I’m stuck!” she cried out.

And then the robot seemed to change course; it was coming straight for her, feeling its way with twin laser beams pivoting in her direction.

“Shoot it!” said the Doctor, scrambling over the junk to reach her first.

Rose caught sight of the soldiers. She couldn’t believe it; none of them were doing anything to help. They were standing back, rifles aimed; but not firing.

“Hold your fire,” the captain ordered instead.

The Doctor grabbed at her foot. “Hold it still, Rose!”

There was no sun, the sky was too cloudy, but the robot was so large and so close now that its shadow plunged both the Doctor and Rose into darkness.

“Cut it!” she pleaded. “Just cut it!”

The Doctor had a better idea.

He plunged his hand into the pocket of his leather coat; fortunately the soldiers had been too busy stripping their ship to frisk him. He grabbed the sonic screwdriver, yanked it out of his pocket and held it up at arm’s length toward the robot.

The end of the sonic screwdriver popped up and flashed blue, but the robot kept on coming. The Doctor tried another setting. Nothing.

He tried the final setting, just as Rose managed to get her foot free. The end of the sonic screwdriver let out a high-pitched squeal.

“Move, Rose!” The Doctor gave her a helpful push.

Suddenly, with one leg in the air, the robot began to shudder. The Doctor gave it another blast from the sonic screwdriver, and then it started wobbling.

The Doctor scuttled out of the way just in time.

With an almighty crash, the robot toppled over, smashing into the spot where, only seconds before, Rose had been trapped by her recalcitrant shoelace.

For a few moments, nobody said anything, nobody moved. They all just stood there watching the broken robot settle. Eventually its inner whirring died down.

Inevitably, it was Rose who finally broke the silence:

“Why the hell didn’t you guys do anything?”

They all turned to look at her. She had retreated to the far side of the group and was perched on a hollow metal chassis, nursing her twisted ankle.

“You sabotaged our ship,” the captain replied. “Why would we help you?”

“For the last time: no, we didn’t, moron!”

The Doctor frowned; there was something he was missing.

“Sir, can I have a word with you in private?” the sergeant asked the captain.

“What’s this about, Sergeant?” Captain Hamilton said.

Sergeant Cameron had led him away from the group and they were now out of earshot. They stood on the next rise, watching the prisoners examine the robot.

“Sir, I don’t think they’re Syndicate members.”

“What?” Hamilton frowned. “Why?”

“Come on, sir; you know as well as I do, no member of the Syndicate would have destroyed that robot; not even to convince us they weren’t a member.”

Hamilton grunted. “Under threat of death they might.”

“The Syndicate knows the law; they’d know you don’t have the authority; and those guys, sir, I think they actually believed you were going to shoot them!”

The captain chuckled. “So what are you suggesting?”

Rose was watching the Doctor poke the robot. Though it hadn’t moved in nearly five minutes, she was keeping her distance, her arms crossed.

The Doctor ran his hand along the metallic monster, then checked his fingers as if expecting them to be oily. They weren’t. Then he took out the metal device with which he had downed the robot, changed the setting, and gave it a quick blast.

The robot started moving; Rose took a step back.

The Doctor chuckled. “I did that.”

Warily, Rose looked over his shoulder. The robot wasn’t actually moving, after all; the Doctor had just made the body open up.

“Fascinating,” he murmured.

He squatted down in front of it and began poking around inside.

“Careful, Doctor,” she said.

From what she could see, the robot was a tangle of wires and circuit boards; it looked a bit like one of those smashed television sets she’d seen on the estates.

“Oh, it’s quite safe, Rose,” he said.

“Not if you bring it back to life, Doctor.”

“I don’t think it would have hurt you intentionally.”

Rose snorted. “Oh, don’t you?”

“No; come and look.” He cocked his finger. “It doesn’t have any weapons; it doesn’t even have any defence mechanisms.”

Rose approached cautiously.

“What it does have, is plenty of these.” The Doctor flapped a loose circuit that had obviously snapped off when it fell. “I think it’s a reconnaissance droid.”

Rose frowned. “You mean Leonardo designed it?”

The Doctor froze. “No; Rose, no.” He sighed. “It’s a data gathering unit; it’s basically just an extension of that proximity sensor. When that laser up there detects movement, it must activate this droid, which then investigates who’s there.”

“So it’s like a kind of security guard, then?”

“Yes; pretty much. See here, this looks like a multi-spectrum photogrammatic capture system; it can see you in infrared, ultraviolet; it can even see the radioactive isotopes in the air; and this, this looks like some sort of audio sensor.”

The Doctor promptly managed to break it off.

“That’s probably why it honed in on you screaming,” he said, tossing it aside and sticking his arm back into the hole.

Rose looked around, shivering. “Who’d need a security guard here?”

“Hang on; what’s this?” The Doctor frowned.

He had his arm in the robot up to his shoulder. Rose thought he looked a bit like those vets on TV who stuck their hand up a cow’s backside.

“A transmitter, huh?” he muttered.

Rose saw that the captain and the sergeant were on their way back.

“It must relay what it finds back to a central processing hub,” the Doctor said.

“Doctor, can you leave that for a minute?” she said.

Instead, he ignored her and stuck his head into the robot’s shell.

“Wait a second,” his muffled voice cried. “This thing’s still transmitting!”

Rose prodded his back. “Doctor!” she hissed.

A moment later, his head popped up. “Got it,” he said, and brandished a metal disc that was the size and shape of a biscuit; it made Rose feel hungry.

“I wonder where it’s transmitting to,” he muttered.

Then the soldiers encircling them parted to allow the captain through.

The Doctor slipped the transmitter into his pocket.

“I am satisfied that neither of you are members of the Syndicate,” the captain was saying. “This does not rule out the possibility that you might have sabotaged our shuttle for other reasons, but the simple truth of the matter is that, like you said, Doctor, you’re not going anywhere; your only way off this planet is with us.”

Captain Hamilton went on to introduce himself, and his second-in-command, Sergeant Cameron; the one who had saved the Doctor from the robot. The captain also explained what his mission had been prior to the crash: to locate and rescue an observation team who had disappeared several days previously.

They were going to head to the observation team’s landing zone, which would be the most likely spot the Titan Orbital would launch a dual-rescue to.

“See; I said it’d all work out,” the Doctor told Rose.

As they followed the marines back to the pit to collect the salvaged equipment, the Doctor decided to thank Sergeant Cameron personally for that push.

Sergeant Cameron laughed nervously. “Don’t thank me yet, Doctor; we’ve got a long way to go before we’re safe; wait until we’ve left Erebus.”

The Doctor stalled. “Did you just say Erebus?”

Sergeant Cameron nodded.

“We’re on Erebus?” The Doctor couldn’t quite believe it.

The sergeant frowned. “You didn’t know?”

“What is it, Doctor?” Rose asked.

The Doctor looked around the surface of the planet, and glanced back at the rise where they’d left the robot, and suddenly everything became crystal clear.

“Of course!” he cried. “The Io Accord!”

NOTES:
This is a significantly different chapter five to which I planned to write, and which I indeed started writing. It was going to start with the Doctor talking his way out of being shot, and THEN happening upon the 'telegraph pole'. I realised that it was getting bogged down in talk and losing momentum, so instead of immediately addressing the last chapter's cliffhanger, I decided to cut to Sergeant Cameron's discovery, thereby keeping the forward momentum going; having the plot progress whilst the characters are caught up doing character-stuff. What's left of the original thousand word slanging match is relegated to those few exchanges where the Doctor mentions Rose's unsuitable clothing for sabotage and Rose argues that no saboteur would hang around on a ship they had sabotaged. I think it works much better this way.

The Doctor's line, "That's a good question; do you have a good answer?" is lifted directly from the Tom Baker story (and my all-time favourite "Doctor Who" story), "Genesis Of The Daleks". You'd have to see the episode to hear it the way I meant it to sound.