Doctor Who_ Time Flight Part 8

'That pillar?'

'Of course, that's where he's hidden the other pa.s.sengers.' Hayter gulped. 'It's not big enough!'

'Something else for me to explain later,' said the Doctor casually.

The Professor's spine tingled. 'That revolutionises the whole concept of relative dimension!' He all but genuflected in front of the Doctor. 'Oh Doctor, if only I were a younger man and had the time to make use of your knowledge.'

'Time? That's another thing,' replied the Doctor tantalisingly.

Worlds within worlds, universes beyond the known universe kaleidoscoped in the Professor's mind. He was dizzy with excitement.

But something else had attracted the Doctor's attention. 'What's this?'

A cable snaked out of the half-open door of the Master's TARDIS.

'I want to see where this goes.'

He followed the trail. It soon became clear that the trunking encircled the rotunda. Various components were connected at regular intervals.'

'An induction loop!' cried the Doctor. 'So that's how he generated the time contour!'

Hayter looked at him, desperate now to understand more of the Doctor's amazing technology.

'Don't you see what this means?'

'I certainly do not,' said the Professor who would have given his pension to know the half of it.

A terrible new urgency entered the Doctor's voice. 'The Master's already harnessing the power in the loop. The Sanctum!'

He dashed back to where Angela was acting as unofficial site foreman on the demolition of the rotunda wall. The Professor, who could hardly wait for a peep into the Master's TARDIS, followed reluctantly.

'We've got to get that wall down at once!' the Doctor shouted. 'Tegan and Nyssa are behind it!'

In Kalid's chamber Scobie was investigating the apparatus beneath the crystal ball. He was totally at sea with the outlandish components.

The return of the Master was heralded by the same whirring they had heard when the police box first vanished.

'Quickly!' shouted Captain Stapley, and he pushed Roger Scobie and Andrew Bilton into a dark recess.

The three men had hardly recovered from the further amazement of watching the TARDIS reappear when the Master opened the door and stormed towards the pedestal in the centre of the chamber.

Like a car thief, indignant that his stolen vehicle has broken dov/n on him, the Master fretted and fumed as he sorted various circuit boards from his own TARDIS. How typical of the Doctor to travel in a machine that was unserviced, unsafe, and light years out of date!

'I've got an idea,' whispered Captain Stapley. 'Roger, you wait here for the Doctor. Andrew, you come with me.'

Stapley and Bilton tiptoed across the chamber, right behind the Master's back, and into the Doctor's TARDIS.

As Bilton and Stapley walked through the double doors into the TARDIS control room they staggered to a halt, stunned with the disbelief of any stranger who enters the time machine that something could be larger inside than out.

'I don't believe it,' said Andrew Bilton.

But wonder was a luxury they could ill afford. They had, possibly, only seconds before the Master returned.

'You're never going to try and take off!' Andrew was watching the Captain as he scrutinised the instruments on the console.

'Of course not. But somewhere there must be a control for those doors.'

'We lock the Master out of the TARDIS?'

'Maybe not out of the TARDIS, but at least we can keep him off the flight deck.' Stapley looked round, daunted at the array of unfamiliar dials and switches. 'Always a.s.suming this is the flight deck.'

The Captain selected a control at random. 'Here goes.'

Only a buzzing resulted from Captain Stapley's intervention. He tinkered recklessly with more levers and b.u.t.tons.

Andrew Bilton watched him anxiously. 'I hope you know what you're doing, Skipper.'

'Not the remotest.'

A sudden whir swung them round to face the screen which had opened with a view of the Master still at work in the chamber.

'Now that's more like it.'

They would now be forewarned of the Master's return.

'If only we can hold up the Master until the Doctor's got through to Tegan and Nyssa.' The Captain had another go at shutting the doors.

'Skipper!' Andrew could see the Master returning to the TARDIS with an armful of spare parts.

There was only one place to hide. Stapley and Bilton dashed through the inner door of the control room and into the corridor.

Leaving the door very slightly ajar, the two men watched the Master kneel under the console and insert the components from his own machine.

The Master stood up and reset the coordinates.

'He's going to take off again. We've got to get out of here!' Andrew whispered.

But the Captain had no intention of leaving. The Doctor's TARDIS is our only link with the twentieth century. Where it goes, we go!'

It seemed, for the moment, that the TARDIS was going nowhere. Lights flashed, the column jerked and thumped, but the Doctor's time machine refused to dematerialise.

A gleeful Captain Stapley turned to his First Officer. 'Engine trouble?'

'That's a bit of luck.'

The smile faded from the Captain's face as he realised the implications of a serious malfunction. He voiced his fears to Andrew Bilton If there is a fault in the TARDIS, we could be marooned in this wilderness forever.'

The rage and frustration of the Master knew no bounds. He pulled more units from the inner control systems and hurled them to the floor, then strode out through the double doors.

Captain Stapley dashed back into the control room and knelt under the console. He began to remove various chipboards.

'What are you doing?' asked Andrew.

'A trouble shared is a trouble doubled,' said the Captain, replacing the modules in a random order.

'Sabotage!' Andrew grinned.

'I only hope the Doctor knows how to put all this back.'

It was a mystery to the First Officer how the Doctor could begin to cope with the baffling technology that made such a machine work. He ran his eye over the intimidating control panels. 'I thought, after Concorde, you could fly anything. But I can't make head nor tail of this ...'

He would have done better, however, to have kept a watchful eye on the screen.

'I'm sorry the Doctor is not here to explain it all to you.'

Bilton and Stapley sprang guiltily to their feet. The Master had returned. He waved them away from the console with the Tissue Compression Eliminator.

'You seem to be having trouble with the TARDIS yourself,' bluffed Captain Stapley.

The Master had now quite overcome his feelings of exasperation. 'It is no longer important to me,' he replied with nonchalant charm, as he detached several more components. 'I now have all that I require. The TARDIS, for what it's worth, is yours.' Pausing only to realign the coordinates, he turned to the entrance and swept out.

To the dismay of Stapley and Bilton, no sooner had the Master pa.s.sed through the double doors than they closed fast. Almost instantly a new sound came from the central mechanism. The column began to rise and fall; not falteringly as during the Master's attempted take off, but with a regular rhythm. They watched, almost mesmerised by the weird motion.

After a few minutes the column slowed and stopped. Bilton and Stapley looked at each other. Where, or when had they gone?

'Look!'

Bilton followed Stapley's gaze to the screen.

They had a perfect bird's eye view of the Citadel.

'If that's a view from this s.h.i.+p,' said Captain Stapley, 'then the TARDIS has turned into a helicopter.'

'Easy does it,' cried Angela in a voice more used to giving instructions about seat belts.

Another stone was lifted out and the hole was big enough to climb through to the Sanctum.

The Doctor peered into the rough entrance. An unearthly light shone on his face. He was nervous now. 'You don't have to come if you don't want to,' he said, looking at the Professor.

'I'll learn nothing waiting for you here.'

The Doctor was more than grateful. 'Good man.' He turned to the pa.s.sengers. 'The rest of you stay put.'

The Professor and the Doctor hauled themselves up and disappeared through the opening.

The Doctor looked round the Sanctum. He was immediately aware of the sarcophagus in the centre, but went straight to where Tegan and Nyssa lay on the ground. He knelt beside them.

To his immense relief, Tegan began to stir. She groaned and opened her eyes. 'Doctor?'

The Doctor smiled.

'I've got such a headache.' She was stunned and disorientated and could remember nothing but a great explosion.

'Rest a while,' said the Doctor gently.

'They willed us to come here.' Nyssa was sitting up, fully recovered, her mind still mysteriously in tune with the alien intelligence.

'Who are they?' asked Professor Hayter. He had hardly moved since climbing down from the hole, so humbled and awed was he by the seraphic calm of the Sanctum.

'Look in the sarcophagus, Professor,' said the Doctor.

Both men walked slowly towards the marble casket in the centre of the chamber. They peered fearfully over the edge.

A thin stratum of vapour floated above the open repository. Below the mist a great cerebellum glowed and trembled.

'It's alive!' gasped the Professor.

They stood for a moment listening to the ethereal murmer, and watching the fibrilation of the huge viscera.

Professor Hayter had never seen a living organism like it before. 'What is it?' he whispered.

'An immeasurable intelligence,' whispered the Doctor, 'at the centre of a psychic vortex. All-seeing, all-knowing.'

Tegan and Nyssa gathered round. They all stood silently, just a little afraid.

'Why did it want me to destroy it?' asked Nyssa.

The Doctor thought for a moment. 'It didn't,' he replied. 'That's why it deflected your attack.'

He explained what must have happened at the moment of explosion. A ma.s.sive burst of psychokinetic energy held back the rock thrown into the sarcophagus by Nyssa, hurled the two girls to the ground, and caused the beast summoned by Kalid to evaporate. So great was the power diverted to defend itself against Nyssa's physical a.s.sault, that every other manifestation of its energy was relinquished - even down to the plasmic body of Kalid. Now the force was expended.

'But why work against itself?' asked the Professor.

'Two aspects of the same personality?' suggested Nyssa.

'Jekyll and Hyde,' the Doctor nodded. 'The good and the bad.'

'The Professor was enthralled at such a perfect example of the co-existence of the Ego and the Id.

Tegan's interest was more pragmatic. 'Why should half the creature want to attack us anyway?'

The Doctor told her the worst. 'Its power is being used by the Master.'

Tegan and Nyssa were horrified to learn that the Doctor's supreme enemy was up to his old tricks, and exploiting the strange energy. But at least one part of the mighty intelligence in the sarcophagus had offered itself as their champion.

Nyssa tried to describe the force that drew them into the Sanctum and ultimately destroyed Kalid's monster, but no words of hers could convey that feeling of irresistible gravitation.

'How did you get in?' asked Hayter.