Doctor Who: The Green Death by Malcolm Hulke

could not read very fast, although he tried to keep this a secret. Hinks had looked through the picture story many times before, but it always fascinated him to go through it again. He was just about to turn the page that carried the first picture of the torture sequence when an alarm buzzer in his room started to bleep. Angrily he put down the comic, picked up a phone.
    ‘What is it?’
    ‘Demonstrators,’ replied the voice of a security guard. ‘Lots of them.’
    Hinks switched on the television monitor screen by his bed. It immediately showed the view around the front gates. Professor Clifford Jones and a crowd of young people from the Wholeweal Community were parading up and down in the road, banging drums, playing musical instruments, and shouting slogans. He turned up the volume to hear what they were shouting.
    ‘Save the valleys from Panorama Chemicals... PC stands for pollution and corruption... Stevens must go—the further the better.’
    Hinks snapped off the sound, picked up the phone again. He barked orders into the mouthpiece. ‘All security units to the front section. Under no circumstances must they be allowed to break into the grounds.’
    Regretfully he put away his comic, got up to go and protect the building. Still, the comic would be there when he got back. And he hadn’t yet got to the pictures of people being beaten and burned, so he had something to look foward to.
    From his position high in a tree, the Doctor could just see the noisy demonstration taking place at the front gates of Panorama Chemicals. He waited until he saw security guards run to take up their positions against the possibility of the demonstrators trying to break in. Then, with great care, he crawled along the one branch of the tree that had grown over the electrified fence which surrounded the building. As he neared the end of the branch it began to sag under his weight, almost touching the fence below. The Doctor knew that if it did make contact, a charge of electricity would course through the branch, and through him, too, and that it was probably powerful enough to kill. With the tree branch barely an inch from the fence, the Doctor gave a final little jump—and landed on his feet inside the compound. He released his hold on the branch a fraction of a second before it came into contact with the fence. There was a flash, and it withered and fell from the tree.
    The Doctor paused a moment to consult the map which Professor Jones had sketched for him. Then he raced across open ground towards the buildings.
    From his office Dr Stevens looked down at the demonstrators. He had hoped UNIT was going to stop all this nonsense. In his mind he started to formulate a strong letter of protest to the Government, complaining that Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart seemed more involved in the colliery than in protecting Panorama Chemicals. These idiots, Dr Stevens thought, banging drums and shouting, might have good intentions, but they were not realists. What the world wanted was more and more petrol and diesel, for industry, areoplanes, and road vehicles. As for pollution caused through the continued use of oil, that was the price mankind had to pay. But in time, Dr Stevens believed, even this problem could be solved. Professor Jones and his followers lived in a world of make-believe. The clock of technological progress could not be turned back.
    As he watched from his window he saw Hinks run out to give orders to the security guards. Dr Stevens did not like Hinks. He seemed to be a survival from an earlier brutish age, a very violent sort of man. But, Dr Stevens reminded himself, the price he paid to keep Panorama Chemicals secure from hot-heads like Professor Jones was to employ thugs like Hinks. It saddened the idealistic side of Dr Stevens’s thinking that nothing was for nothing.
    His thoughts were interrupted by a ring on the internal phone. He lifted it.
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘A stranger is in the grounds,’ said a guard’s voice. ‘He