Doctor Who: Shada (38 page)

‘And we’re flying about in a bit of university,’ the Doctor grinned. ‘You’ll get used to it.’

Skagra read off a similar console display. ‘The force field is weakening already,’ he told the Kraag Commander. He consulted the mind of K-9. ‘I estimate the field will break in approximately fifty-eight seconds.’

‘Romana! Turn off the vortex-shield failsafe around the door!’ called the Doctor urgently, his hand grasping the doorknob.

Clare stared at that hand, feeling sick to her stomach. Opening the door of a TARDIS onto the vortex was almost suicidally stupid. The time winds would surely burst in and suck them all out into nothingness.

Romana punched out the failsafe cancel sequence on the console and called, ‘Good luck, Doctor!’

The Doctor nodded to her, gave Clare a small smile and turned the doorknob. The door swung easily open and the Doctor strode casually out into the space-time vortex, as if he was off for nothing more momentous than a morning stroll.

For just a second, Clare saw the bright glare of the force field beyond him, extending in a shimmering and frankly wobbly corridor through the screaming whirlpool of the vortex.

Then the door slammed shut.

Skagra watched the scanner screen incredulously as the Doctor started to run along the glowing tunnel of light connecting the two TARDISes.

‘A futile exercise, Doctor,’ he said. But he never took his eyes from the screen.

Romana and Clare stared up at the scanner.

The Doctor was racing for the police box doors of his own hijacked TARDIS as fast as the swaying, undulating force field would allow. Clare gasped as he seemed to stumble, but he found his footing and raced on. The Doctor extended his arm desperately, his hand groping for the solid, blue surface just out of his reach.

And the force field around him flickered and crackled alarmingly.

‘We’ve got to give him more power!’ cried Romana.

Clare gestured helplessly at the console read-outs. ‘There
is
no more power!’

On the screen, the Doctor was being shaken violently as the tenuous protection of the force field began to succumb to the ferocious time winds. But he was almost there, one more second and he would make it –

Suddenly there was a massive explosion from the brass control panel. Clare and Romana were thrown to the floor, sparks showering around them, heavy books thudding down from the higher shelves of the study.

Clare lifted her head to the scanner. A dazzling flare of light filled the screen as the force field suddenly snapped out of existence.

Skagra, and by proxy his mind-slaves, averted their eyes from the scanner as the force field flared.

When he looked back, there was no sign of the Doctor. The Professor’s TARDIS was spinning wildly away, sent hurtling off by the violent severing of the link.

The controls of the Doctor’s TARDIS began to respond once more under the ten ministering hands of the mind-slaves.

Skagra smiled as the TARDIS settled back on to an even keel. The mind-slaves smiled back. K-9 wagged his tail happily.

This time, Skagra, and by proxy the mind-slaves, thought contentedly, the Doctor was absolutely, definitely dead.

Chapter 67

THE DOCTOR LAUGHED and laughed and laughed.

He lay in a woolly bundle on a reassuring solid surface. Even more reassuringly, the surface was white and it hummed. The Doctor leapt to his feet, tottered a moment, then patted the nearest wall, which was covered in the extraordinarily reassuring circular pattern of his own TARDIS. ‘Thank you, old girl,’ he said. ‘Thank you so very much. Sorry I had to barge in through the back door like that. But have you any idea what it’s like to travel through the space-time vortex?’ He paused a moment and patted the wall again. ‘Well of course you have, haven’t you, you do it all the time. But at least you’re built for it, eh?’

He didn’t really expect a reply, so he was only mildly disappointed when he didn’t get one.

‘Right then,’ he said. ‘Let’s get to work!’

He looked around and was surprised and delighted to find himself in the TARDIS’s cavernous storeroom, which was located (at least presently) a good ten minutes’ brisk walk from the control room.

‘And this is exactly where I wanted to be,’ he grinned, patting the wall a third time. ‘Oh you’re going to get such a treat when this is all over, you cunning old capsule, you.’

The storeroom contained line after line of tall metal shelves stretching into the dimly lit distance. Every shelf heaved with dusty cardboard boxes, many of them undisturbed for centuries. Every box was jammed full of vital components, spares and handy bits of stuff the Doctor had picked up over the long years of his travels. Between the shelves were a bewildering variety of drawers, cabinets and cases. Everything was labelled precisely. But completely inaccurately.

The Doctor started rummaging about. He had a plan to follow for once, after all. First off, he would need a neural vectometer…

He found a neural vectometer almost straight away. In a box marked ‘LIGHT BULBS’.

‘Oh good!’ he cried.

Next up – a synchro-relay. He rummaged about and found a synchro-relay. In a drawer marked ‘NAILS (ASSORTED)’.

‘Oh good!’ he cried.

And, of course, a megapathic-interrupter was essential to the whole plan. He rummaged about and found a megapathic-interrupter. Underneath a string shopping bag full of faulty reacting vibrators, which was jammed in the back of a cabinet labelled ‘ADAPTORS (UK-US, US-EU, EU-MARS)’.

‘Oh good!’ he cried.

The megapathic-interrupter fell to bits in his hand.

‘Oh bad!’ he cried.

Chapter 68

CLARE WATCHED AS Romana, her coolness and composure seemingly undented by being flung off through space and time, made her final repairs to the navigation panel of the Professor’s TARDIS and reset the coordinates.

There was a moment’s silence in which Clare and Romana crossed their fingers at exactly the same moment, then a soft hum filled the room and the clock on the mantelpiece juddered back into life, rising and falling smoothly once more.

‘There,’ said Romana, inputting the final string of the complex sequence. ‘We’re on our way to Skagra, as planned.’

Clare bit her lip. Romana seemed so capable and focused. Like a frighteningly competent and unflappable head girl at a particularly old and intimidating grammar school. She was a very reassuring person to have with you in a crisis, thought Clare. Reassuring in a terrifying kind of way. Clare wasn’t sure Romana would want to hear her next question, but it had to be asked.

Clare took a deep breath. ‘Do you think the Doctor made it?’ She avoided looking at Romana as she said this, instead staring doubtfully through the curtains of the nearest window at the endless distorting maelstrom of the vortex.

‘I have no idea,’ said Romana. ‘Speaking logically, statistically, and scientifically – not a chance.’ She smiled suddenly. ‘But then again, he’s the Doctor. We have to assume that he did make it, and go ahead according to plan.’ She read off a dial and glanced across at the clock on the mantelpiece, which was still moving smoothly up and down. ‘We arrive at the asteroid in five minutes, relative time.’

Clare gave Romana a friendly pat on the shoulder. ‘I’ve got to hand it to you, you’re a cool one. Without you here, I think I’d have gone to pieces worrying about Chris. And underneath, you must be just as worried about the Doctor.’

‘I’m almost always worried about the Doctor,’ Romana smiled.

Clare gave a small, involuntary sob. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ she said. ‘I know this doesn’t help, but I’ve loved Chris for so long, but I never actually said it to him. Never did a damn thing.’

Romana put an arm around Clare’s shoulder. Clare sniffed and looked up at her with a rueful smile. ‘Someone like you, I bet you just marched up and grabbed the Doctor straight away, no messing around. And who can blame you, he is an amazing man.’

Romana’s eyes widened a little and she disentangled herself from Clare, fetching a box of tissues from the coffee table and offering her one.

‘I think you might have misunderstood the nature of my relationship with the Doctor.’

Clare blew her nose. ‘Oh right, sorry. So you aren’t married or whatever you do on Gallifrey?’

‘We’re just friends. And one thing I’ve learnt from being the Doctor’s friend, Clare – the universe is full of wonderful things, amazing opportunities. And you have to grab them with both hands. And hope they never end.’

There was a chime like a vesper bell.

‘We’re almost there,’ said Romana.

Clare straightened up, crumpling the tissue into a tight ball. ‘And we go ahead as planned,’ she said.

Chapter 69

SKAGRA STRODE FROM the Doctor’s TARDIS, the Kraag Commander and the mind-slaves following him into the giant observation dome that looked out onto the infinite universe.

Skagra surveyed the stars with new eyes. Five pairs of new eyes. ‘An infinite concert of the mind,’ he whispered to himself.

He signalled towards K-9 and the five humanoid mind-slaves. The spheres attached to their heads instantly divided once again. Each small sphere then multiplied into hundreds of tiny, almost invisible spheres, aggregating in one large silvery swarm. Six tiny silver dots split off and flew back to re-attach themselves to the foreheads of the mind-slaves, now virtually invisible.

Then the swarm broke up, section by section, patches of silver, like glistening fireflies, each of them knowing where they needed to be, each shining cloud moving swiftly through one of the many arched doorways that led from the giant dome.

Skagra followed their journey using the part of his mind that controlled the sphere matrix. The microbial particles flowed down through the curving rock walls of the asteroid and into specially prepared hatches in the sides of the mighty spaceships ranged along the underbelly of the massive rock. Each of the ships contained a crew of Kraags, each of them burning with the ambition to serve their lord and master, Skagra, to spread the Universal Mind.

Deep in the TARDIS storeroom, the Doctor surveyed his handiwork with less than total enthusiasm. But there was no time to improve the dubious aesthetics of the thing. A good five minutes had gone by since a soft, distant thump had signalled the TARDIS’s materialisation. It was now or never.

Carefully, reminding himself just how quickly it had been cobbled together, he lowered the thing onto his head. A tall gilt-edged mirror leant against one wall of the storeroom. The Doctor walked over to it, slowly and carefully, like a debutant with a book on her head, and checked his reflection. He sighed heavily.

‘With this thing on, it won’t matter whether it works or not,’ he mused to himself. ‘They’ll all be paralysed laughing at me.’

‘Crews report all ships are prepared,’ said the Kraag Commander.

Skagra fought down a wave of animal exultation. This was the time of destiny. His apotheosis. His plan had succeeded. But then he had always known it would. There was no need for excitement or unnecessary emotion of any kind. But perhaps a word or two to mark the occasion was appropriate.

‘Mark this moment,’ he said, calmly and smoothly as ever. The mind-slaves gathered behind him in a semicircle, looking with black eyes – his eyes – out at the stars. ‘This is the beginning of the new life, the new universe.’

He turned to the Kraag Commander and opened his mouth to give the order to launch the ships.

A wheezing, groaning sound came from behind him.

Skagra whipped around to see the wooden door of the Professor’s TARDIS fading up from transparency against the far wall.

All his thoughts of the Universal Mind were replaced by a sudden and terrible surge of violent hatred. And what made this even worse, what really made his blood boil, was that anyone
could
make his blood boil. For his whole life, Skagra had been cool, rational and logical, his emotions merely minor irritations. Now this one man, this
buffoon
, had consumed him with fury and animal rage. Skagra had long ago realised that other people in general were irritating. But how could one solitary person have taken being irritating to such an unbearably high level. But the worst offence the Doctor had committed against Skagra, the most unforgivable, was this emotional pollution. He had violated the inviolable. He would pay!

‘Doctor!’ he cried, the vein on his temple throbbing uncontrollably. ‘The man is like an itching flea on my skin! I shall eliminate him once and for all!’

He strode towards the wooden door, the mind-slaves following in perfect unison.

‘Out you come, Doctor!’ he cried. ‘Out you come! I know you are in there!’

But the door remained shut.

A voice from behind Skagra said, ‘Did someone call?’

Skagra head jerked around in the direction of the voice. The hated voice.

The Doctor was standing in the police box door of his own TARDIS. And he had something quite, quite ridiculous on his head.