Doctor Who_ Time Flight Part 5

The corridor ended in a great hall from which radiated several other pa.s.sages. In the centre of the hall was a large rotunda, forming a room within a room, constructed with much greater precision and of smoother blocks than the surrounding walls.

A large group of men and women were chiselling with crude implements at the tight mesh of stones which concealed the inner room.

'There's Bilton and Scobie!' The Captain had spotted his crew members, mindlessly labouring with the crew and pa.s.sengers from the 192.

The Doctor's first thought was that Andrew and Roger could lead them to the hiding place of the TARDIS. But he didn't need Professor Hayter to tell him that they had lapsed into a deep, though active, state of trance. It would be quicker to look for it himself. He started to walk round the circular hall.

'If we could separate Bilton and Scobie ...' began Stapley, thinking aloud that it would be relatively easy to bring his copilot and engineer to their senses and, with their help, work on the others.

'Look out for the guards,' cautioned the Professor, who was not a man for heroic gestures.

The Captain tried to rea.s.sure him. 'If the Doctor's theory is right ...' He looked round. 'Where is the Doctor?' The Doctor had vanished.

It was the tracks of some heavily loaded sledge or barrow that brought the Doctor into one of the side corridors. If the grooves on the floor had indeed been left by the TARDIS, he needed only to follow the tramlines to the terminal...

One corridor led to another and intersected a third. The Doctor kept going. He finally came to an archway in which was set a door of stone.

Some hidden mechanism swung aside the heavy portal, and the Doctor stepped into Kalid's chamber.

At first he saw nothing of the pedestal in the centre of the room, or the great globe of crystal which rested on it, or the necromantic trappings around the walls. His eyes went straight to the far corner of the chamber -and the TARDIS. He hurried over to it.

'So you are here at last, Doctor.'

The Doctor spun round. The sinister magician had stepped from the shadows behind him.

Captain Stapley walked right round the rotunda inside the great hall looking anxiously for the Doctor.

The Professor bore the Doctor's disappearance with more equanimity.

'I don't know what this Doctor's qualifications are,' - he adopted a tone of voice heard frequently in the senior common room of Darlington University - 'but if you ask me, the man's a lunatic'

'I don't believe I did,' said Captain Stapley.

The pa.s.sengers and the Concorde crews toiled away at the side of the circular inner room, like marauding insects a.s.sailing the walls of a giant hive. It was a strange sight. Blue-rinsed American matrons, a pop star and his manager, financiers, stewards from the airline: they all applied themselves, without thought of protest, to the interstices of the blocks, uncaring of the debris that rained on their smart clothes.

They took no notice either of Captain Stapley or Professor Hayter.

Stapley watched them in amazement. 'What do you think's behind that wall?' he asked the Professor.

'Another wall, I shouldn't wonder. It's called hard labour.'

The Captain sighed. He started to explain. 'The Doctor's theory is that it's a hi-jack in time rather than s.p.a.ce ...'

The professorial features contracted into a sneer.

'This isn't the Soviet Union, Professor,' the Captain battled on. 'The Doctor ...'

'This Doctor needs his head examined,' announced Professor Hayter.

The Doctor stood between Kalid and the TARDIS. 'So you're the conjuror?' he finally spoke.

'I am Kalid,' the oriental replied grandly.

'You say that as if you expected a round of applause.' The Doctor answered with a lack of respect that obviously displeased the magician.

'Have a care, Doctor. You are not summoned to my domain to play the clown.'

'Your domain?' The Doctor's flippant tone changed to one of a.s.sumed interest.

'Here Kalid rules!'

'Then I apologise for my levity.' The Doctor bowed with exaggerated politeness. Kalid, however, failed to spot the irony of the gesture and inclined his head in return. 'Not to mention my curiosity,' added the Doctor, hoping for some sort of explanation.

'What troubles your mind?' 'What you're doing in this time zone for a start.' 'Shall Kalid not travel where the spirit leads him?' The Doctor was silent for a moment. He glanced round the chamber before turning back to Kalid. 'Would the spirit have anything to do with the ruin of that s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p outside the Citadel?' There was no response to the Doctor's probing. 's.p.a.ces.h.i.+p?' asked Kalid blandly. 'Yes,' said the Doctor, unconvinced by the other's a.s.sumed ignorance. 's.p.a.ce is within us,'

Kalid persisted enigmatically. 'Then how exactly do you travel?' 'By the power of the Great One.' Kalid narrowed his eyes. 'In the deserts of Arabia I learned all the magic arts.'

The Doctor had had enough of this play-acting. 'Seven league boots, eh? Magic carpet? I suppose it makes for convenience.' He jeered at the artful pomposity of the grotesque figure before him.

Kalid's anger was very real. 'You mock me, Doctor!' His sunken eyes burned like live coals and he uttered a terrible warning. 'Do not doubt that I could summon furies and cacodaemons, a company of cherubim, or Lucifer himself!'

The Doctor knew this was no idle threat. 'Yes, you're surrounded by a lot of powerful bioenergetics,' he agreed. But there was more - or perhaps less - to Kalid than that. 'I can't help feeling, Kalid,' he continued 'that there's something a great deal more mechanistic about all this.'

'Mechanistic?' Again the innocence.

'What are you doing sitting at the end of a time contour, like a spider in a web? And what do you want with my TARDIS?'

Kalid smiled. 'My familiar spirits have told me of your miraculous cabinet. The spirits have told me you would come.'

'Your spirits are certainly well informed,' said the Doctor, irritated by the inscrutability of the man.

'I hold the whole genius of Night bound to my will,' Kalid ranted on, puffing himself up like a great toad. 'And now the Great Elemental has summoned you, Doctor. Destiny has brought you to me.' He continued to talk in riddles.

'But not just me, Kalid.' The Doctor was determined to get some sense out of him. 'What do you want with all those pa.s.sengers?'

'Slaves are required in my domain.'

'You have the Plasmatons.'

'They have other uses.'

Just as the Doctor thought: the power that controlled those manifestations was limited.

'You mean you need that psychotronic energy for something else!' The Doctor was thinking of Nyssa trapped in the bioplasmic s.h.i.+eld.

'The power must be used for the great work we shall do together.'

'We?' The Doctor had no intention of co-operating with this inflated poseur.

'Together we shall scourge the entirety of time and s.p.a.ce!' proclaimed Kalid.

The Doctor had heard it all so many times before. These vainglorious tyrants with their dreams of absolute power. 'You can exclude me from your wizardry,' he replied sharply.

But Kalid was not offering the Doctor any choice. 'You cannot resist, Doctor. In this place all things obey Kalid. Come!' He led the Doctor to the crystal in the centre of the room, and began to chant. 'Vizaan, vizaan, zanoor minaz...'

The crystal clouded. Out of the mists appeared the image of Tegan and Nyssa. 'You see your friends?' He called a second time: 'Vizaan! Vizaan!'

The mists rolled back. When the crystal cleared again the Doctor could see the great hall and rotunda. 'Your Captain Stapley and his fellow mortals.' The Doctor was very impressed at such a display of clairvoyance. But such power could not come from a mere human being. The incantation was releasing energy from elsewhere.

'You're not in control here,' the Doctor challenged Kalid. 'You're as mortal as anybody else!'

7.

The Enemy Unmasked

Captain Stapley and the Professor had no idea that the Doctor could see them - albeit fleetingly in the crystal ball.

The Captain would have appreciated a sighting of the Doctor. He wished the man wouldn't just wander off like that.

Hayter, his confidence boosted by the prolonged absence of the guards, was all for making contact with Bilton and Scobie and shepherding thepa.s.sengers back to the relative safety of the aircraft. 'Your crew are in front of you,' he urged Captain Stapley. 'Or do you have to ask the Doctor's permission first!'

'Don't provoke me,' growled Stapley. But it did seem a little lacking in initiative not to try and rescue his two officers.

Hayter and Stapley walked up to the group attacking the rotunda.

Hayter selected the young stewardess Andrew Bilton had originally recognised in the party with the TARDIS. Stapley approached his First Officer.

'Andrew!'

'h.e.l.lo, Skipper.' Andrew Bilton was very matter of fact, totally convinced that the man beside him was sitting in the left-hand seat on the flight deck, preparing to take off. 'I've got the Met. report. We'll clear those thunder storms by the time we get to the subsonic cruise.' He was absorbed in a waking dream in which he acted out the routine of ordinary life. 'Andrew!' Stapley tried to shake some sense into him.

Angela Clifford, the stewardess, saw Professor Hayter as a particularly obstreperous pa.s.senger. But she was trained to deal with the likes of him. 'Will you please sit down, sir, and fasten your seat belt. We're about to take off.'

'Listen to me!'

'The bar will be open as soon as we're airborne,' she retorted in her most cut-gla.s.s accent.

'Andrew!' said the Captain. 'We're not on Concorde. Remember the Doctor!'

But nothing seemed to convince the first Officer he wasn't at Heathrow, about to leave for New York.

'Oxygen checked. Flight control inverters on. Anti-stall system on ...' He launched into the pre-flight checks. To his horror, Captain Stapley felt himself being drawn into Andrew Bilton's fantasy.

'Altimeters checked. Navigation radios set...'

'Stop it, Andrew!'

But the Captain could already hear the whine of engines, and the ghostly outline of the flight deck was taking shape around him. 'We must fight ...' he stammered, forcing his conscious mind to hold back the illusion.

But the hypnotic rhythm of the calls only stimulated the hallucination.

'Brakes.'

'Checked,' responded the Captain, half-believing he really was in the pilot's seat.

'Throttles.'

'Idle.'

'Throttle masters.'

'On.'

Stapley made another desperate attempt to hold back the images flooding up from his subconscious. 'We must fight...' But the dream was becoming its own reality. 'Speedbird Concorde 193 to tower.

Permission to start engines ...' He made one more supreme effort. '

Professor!'

Hayter rushed to the Captain's help. 'Wake up, man!' The Professor pulled him away from Andrew Bilton. 'Concentrate! What about the Doctor, Captain Stapley!'

The Doctor?' Stapley blinked. His perception reverted like a change of shot in a film. His mind was in control again. 'The Doctor! And my crew!' He was angry with himself for losing control. It wouldn't happen again. 'Bilton!' He turned back to his copilot with renewed determination. 'Mr Bilton, remember what happened at Heathrow!'

'What's that, Skipper?'

'Remember the Doctor. And Nyssa. And Tegan. Remember Tegan?'

The mention of the pretty Australian stewardess seemed to have a positive, though unexpected effect. 'Rope,' he muttered.

'Rope?' said Captain Stapley.

But the Professor knew they were winning. 'You've triggered a rational a.s.sociation,' he cried to the Captain. To Andrew Bilton he spoke gently but persistently. 'That's it! Rope, rope, rope ...'

'The Indian rope trick!' exclaimed Bilton. He blinked, and looked around in amazement at the bizarre activity in the great hall.

'Together with your box, the power will be absolute,' shrieked Kalid.

'We shall command the whole universe!' he climaxed in a manic falsetto.

'I've always found domination such an unattractive prospect,' replied the Doctor, concealing his disgust in urbane understatement.