The Sons of Grekk (short story)

Summary
The TARDIS materialises and the Doctor is amazed to find a pig's head filling the screen of the scanner. Further examination reveals that this is one of several dishes being carried by a spherical robot. Checking that the environment is safe, he emerges to find himself in the wide corridor of a palatial building, hung with illuminated tapestries. He follows the smell of food and emerges on a gallery above a banqueting hall, where men in in metallic tunics feast.

Suddenly, he notices a black-clad figure in the gallery aiming a gun at one of the diners. He disarms the would-be assassin with his stick, and the man flees. The diners send a robot to bring him down forcibly, and accuse him of being a spy for the Crustians.Describing themselves as the Sons of Grekk, they disbelieve his assurances that he is an offworld traveller, and mock the TARDIS when he claims it is his vessel. The eldest, Swarf, urges caution, believeing it potentially dangerous, and tells his brother Morag to take the Doctor to the Pit, while the robots, called Mechanislaves, are set to guarding the TARDIS.

The Pit proves to be a smooth-sided volcanic crater, in which members of various sentient species are imprisoned. Morag pushes the Doctor in, but his fall is broken by webbing spun by large, spider-like prisoners. Other prisoners resemble cockroaches, butterflies (their wings clipped by the Sons of Grekk) and turtles. These last are the Crustians: one of these explains that the black-clad assassin is an evil genius named Deemon, left on the planet by Grekk to provoke his sons to endless hostility towards its other inhabitants. He has also smuggled a sustenance unit into the Pit, which is keeping the surviving prisoners fed.

The Doctor is able to convert the unit into a radio transmitter, with which they tell the other Crustians of the Pit's location and ask to be rescued. The Sons of Grekk intercept the message, and venture into the Pit to massacre its occupants before the Crustians arrive, but the Doctor has organised a trap using the webbing of the spider-creatures. The Sons are wrapped up, and as the prisoners leave by the ladders by which they descended, they are left to cool off in the Pit, to change their minds about the need for peace.

The Doctor accompanies some of his fellow escapees to the Sons' castle, where Deemon has programmed the Mechanislaves to be become hostile; but the Doctor bluffs that his stick is a gun, and orders Deemon to stand them down. He notices to his horror that another party of Mechanislaves are about to throw the TARDIS from a high window: he grabs the lower edge, hauls himself up, opens the door, slides across the control-room floor and manages to dematerialise the TARDIS in mid-air before it hits the ground.

Characters

 * The Doctor
 * Deemon
 * Swarf
 * Morag
 * 'The Cockroach'
 * 'The Butterfly'
 * The Crustian

Continuity
to be added

Timeline

 * This story occurs after DWAN: The Cloud Exiles
 * This story occurs before DWAN: Terror on Tiro