Doctor Who: Time and the Rani (6 page)

Careful not to alert the Doctor, she entered the arcade and quietly closed the door.

There was nothing furtive about her actions as she approached the row of cabinets.

'Beyus!' she called.

His height emphasised by the thick tuft of hair arcing from his scalp, Beyus appeared at the far end.

'Where were you?' she demanded.

'I was about to feed the Tetraps,' he replied, hooking the pails of plasma onto the yoke.

Any resentment at being treated as a lackey was suppressed: Beyus had to portray compliance. His priority was to avoid antagonising the Rani. The defection of Sarn had apparently gone unnoticed. The longer that was so, the greater the prospects of her survival.

And yet he could not rid himself of a presentiment of ill-fortune. Why hadn't the Rani commented on the young Lakertyan's absence?

'When you've done that, I want you to prepare the empty cabinet.'

He nodded and left.

Those who deduced the Rani was devoid of feeling were wrong. Passing the cabinets, she experienced an intoxicating glow of satisfaction: Charles Darwin, Louis Pasteur, Albert Einstein, the
creme de la creme!
Adrenalin pumped through the Time Lady's veins and she saw, with unflawed clarity, the inspired beauty of the new dawn her scheme would usher in. Not only for this insignificant cosmic fragment called Lakertya, but for the whole of creation.

She halted by the vacant cabinet. A small smile embellished her lips. Soon the final piece of the mosaic would be in place. She slid the card into the empty slot and read again the name she had inscribed:

The Doctor

9

The powdery sand of the beach bore the imprint of Mel's and Ikona's tracks. For the stalking Urak it served as a conspicuous guide.

Mel's scarf was now clasped in his downy paw: a fluttering trophy plucked from the

'bubble'.

Racing across uneven and pitted ground, the breathless duo slithered into a crater.

Circumspect, gulping air, Ikona shuffled to the rim.

'Any sign of the - what did you call it?' asked Mel.

'A Tetrap.'

'What's it look like? All I saw was a net.'

'If you'd been close enough to see the hideous brute it'd probably be the last thing you ever saw. Those nets can stun or kill.'

'A pleasant thought.'

'Then let's go!' Ikona scrambled from the crater.

'Hold on! Hold on! Do you have a name?'

'Ikona.'

'Right. I'm grateful for your help, Ikona, but gratitude isn't going to turn me into a puppet.'

'I've already come to that painful conclusion!'

'Then tell me, are we just running scared, or are we heading somewhere in particular?'

'The answer to both questions is yes. Now, can we go!'

Their goal was a rock face laced with vines. Unerringly Ikona flicked a vine, disentangling it. Like the hideaway in the drainage pipe, this was another of his secret caches.

'You're full of surprises.'

'It's known as survival.'

Using the vine, he scaled the rock face. 'I'm not prepared to be completely supine.

Unlike most Lakertyans. Now! Wait there!'

Resentment of Ikona's abrasive manner did not prevent Mel immediately regretting the loss of his reassuring presence. The many granite outcrops could offer concealment for a marauding Tetrap.

She glanced up to where Ikona was lodged precariously on a ledge. He delved into a fissure, extracting what appeared to be a firework. Tucking this into his belt, he again foraged in the inaccessible cave.

A soft scraping sound . . .

Distant. But not imaginary . . .

'Hurry, Ikona!' whispered Mel, fidgety with anxiety. 'Hurry!' Her skin was prickled with goose-pimples. A sixth sense warned her of imminent danger.

Urak's scrawny, membraned claw, sporting its pink, chiffon scarf, inched over a crenellated boulder . . .

Four elliptical screens converged into one . . .

Two hairy feet leapt into the air - and landed behind Mel.

She turned!

The vulpine, rodent-like face was covered with a gangrenous, oily down. Splayed, moist nostrils and thin sucking lips were dominated by a single luminous eye that glared unblinkingly from beneath a cockscomb of bristle. The veined, bloodshot orb had an enlarged pupil with a green halo.

As if this did not create an ugly enough apparition, above each delicately pointed pink ear, a similar eye bulged.

A fourth eye adorned the back of the Tetrap's skull.

These four eyes were the reason for the three hundred and sixty degree perspective: the quadview.

A predatory grimace exposed razor-sharp cuspids as the repulsive half-ape-half-rat leered at Mel. Then a venomous forked tongue spat at her!

Her scream was shrill enough to splinter glass! A rapid series of sharp retorts came from above.

Fireworks split asunder . . . and the air became festooned with shimmering strips of foil.

Urak threw up his arms, vainly trying to shield all four eyes.

'Mel! Up here!'

A hanging vine slapped against her shoulder.

Confused by the torrent of foil disorientating Urak, Mel did not budge.

'Grab the vine!'

She grabbed.

Ikona hauled feverishly . . . until Mel was able to clamber untidily into the fissure.

The foil strips that wrought havoc with the bat-like radar of the Tetrap optics, were beginning to settle.

Some clung to the greasy pelt covering of Urak's jutting, angular, full-bellied torso.

From above the elbows, a mucous membrane connected the spindly arms to the trunk in the fashion of a cape. The upper legs were bulky haunches that exuded a sinewy power.

Spitting venom, Urak glowered up to where his victims should have been stranded.

But they had vanished.

10

'I can't understand how I could make such a fundamental mistake!'

The numerals shown on the radiation wave meter confounded the Doctor.

With almost demented fervour, he attempted to rip the damaged casing off the machine.

'Let me.' Jostling him aside, the Rani undipped the casing without difficulty.

'What was the mistake?'

'You saw. The heat radiation from the catalyst was of high frequency.'

'I - er - you used the wrong heat conducting material?' Almost a slip! Had he noticed?

He hadn't. 'Yes.' Inspecting the casing. 'So elementary. I broke the Second Law of Thermodynamics.'

'If we substituted a suitable material - would it work?'

'You should be able to answer that, Mel. Didn't C. P. Snow expound on thermodynamics?'

C. P. Snow was a man of letters whose lectures on the Twin Cultures were world-famous on Earth. Mel would have recognised the reference.

'Doctor, is this relevant?'

Carelessly discarding the casing, the Doctor prowled the lab . . . but did not change his theme. 'You told me you admired his writings. Read all his books.'

'I've obviously forgotten.'

The remark stopped him in his tracks.

'Forgotten, Mel? You? A kangaroo never forgets.'

'Elephant!' The automatic reply inaugurated a chain of thought the Rani had not intended.

'That's it! Memory like an elephant. A running gag . . . applied to you, Mel... I feel sure.'

Quite true. During the Doctor's and Mel's encounter with the terrifying Vervoids aboard the spaceliner
Hyperion III
in a previous adventure, he had, on several occasions, compared Mel to an elephant.

The Rani had to divorce him from such introspection!

'Perhaps the machine's blowing up affected my memory too. What were the readings?'

He shoved the radiation wave meter at her. 'Take it. Read for yourself.'

Crossing to the monitor, she fed in the information.

The Doctor had other ideas. Scavenging in the debris of his repair efforts, he cannibalised a T-joint and a length of thin rubber tubing. Cutting the tubing with his penknife, he fitted the pieces into the T-joint. He now had a three-ended tube.

Into one end he inserted a glass funnel. The other two ends he stuffed into his ears -

an improvised stethoscope.

With dedicated interest, he tested his own hearts . . . satisfied, he then marched to the spherical chamber and pressed the funnel against its panel.

An almost ear-splitting throbbing, similar in rhythm to a pulsebeat accosted him . . .

What could that spherical chamber contain?

The exterior of the laboratory complex offered no clue to the Doctor's question either.

'That's where they've set up operations.' Ikona had led Mel to a vantage point above the headquarters.

The project robbed Mel of her propensity to verbalise her reactions.

A structure consisting of a bizarre mixture of styles nestled in a hollow. The main building was a tasteful architecture of marble, vaulted columns framing panels of pastel yellow, green and orange, all surmounted by a gracefully-proportioned pyramidal roof.

But Mel's awestruck silence derived from the desecration that had been inflicted on the harmonious edifice. The gaunt girders of a utilitarian ramp for a rocket, thrust through a rent that violated the pyramidal roof.

'Then that's where the Doctor will be,' pronounced Mel hoarsely, her throat dry.

'You can't be sure.'

'I can! You don't know the Doctor.'

'If he is in there - I probably never will!'

'There's no "if about it. He's in there!'

'Well, the argument's academic. You won't gain access. The place is too well guarded.'

'Any notion what that rocket's for?'

'All I know is that building it cost the lives of many Lakertyans.' Not relishing the recollection, Ikona moved on.

'Something must have gone desperately wrong.'

'The logic of that misses me.'

'They kidnapped the Doctor,' explained Mel, tagging along beside him. 'No one would do that unless they were desperate for his help. He's not exactly predictable!'

How the Rani would have applauded that sentiment!

'Would phb or pes do?'

No response.

She turned from evaluating the equations on the monitor. The Doctor had his improvised stethoscope pressed against the curved panel.

Furious, she yanked the rubber tubing from his ears!

'What? What?'

'I asked you a question!'

'You did?' He indicated the spherical chamber. 'Mel. There's something in there!'

'No doubt.' Curt: subject terminated. 'Would phb or pes do?'

He frowned his lack of comprehension. Not that he didn't understand; polyhydroxybutyrat and polyethersulphone were types of high grade plastic needed if the heat the machine would generate was to be conducted into the atmosphere and dissipated.

'As a substitute material for the machine casing!'

The penny dropped. 'Oh . . . yes - I'd prefer the phb. It's biodegradable. Don't want to litter Lakertya with non-destructible waste like they're doing on your planet, Mel.'

The preservationist homily accompanied an erratic search of shelves and drawers.

'What're you looking for?'

'Sugar and starch. We could ferment our own.'

'You won't find them here.' As a chemist, the Rani knew the process was quite practicable, but the delay would be unacceptable. 'What about the alternative?'

'Pes? That's hopeless. Petroleum-based plastic'

'Slightly amber? Almost transparent?'

'Yes.' "

She slammed shut the cupboard he was rummaging in. 'I know where there is some.'

He blinked at her in astonishment. 'Where?'

'Oh-a storeroom.'

'What storeroom?'

'In the grounds.'

'Whose is it?'

'A Lakertyan's, I assume.' Authoritatively. 'You carry on here while I get the plastic'

He picked up the acetylene torch. Hesitated. 'A Lakertyan's? I thought you said they weren't very advanced.'

'Did I?'

'Yes. When we discovered that skeleton.'

A dismissive shrug and she made for the exit to the grounds. . .

... At that precise moment, Mel was also approaching the grounds enclosing the lab.

After leaving the heights from which they had been contemplating the complex, Mel and Ikona's route took them towards the path where Sarn's sad skeleton lay.

Suddenly, Ikona bustled Mel behind a boulder. 'Stay put!'

Vouchsafing no explanation, he stepped onto the path and hurriedly intercepted a regal, handsome female Lakertyan.

'Faroon,' he called.

In her middle years, Faroon, dressed in a voluminous apricot cloak, her blonde tresses gathered into the symbolic plaited band worn by all her race, smiled affectionately. 'I'm glad to see you, Ikona. Although I ought not to be.'

A pleasure that should have been mutual, but Ikona's was marred by the need to divert her from the skeleton. 'Does my sitting on the fence mean we can't still be friends?' he asked.

'I'm afraid it does, Ikona, when you cut yourself off from the rest of us and deliberately oppose Beyus's instructions.'

'I can't accept he's right to collaborate.'

'He's being held hostage. He has no choice. It is the only way Beyus can save us from destruction.'

'He didn't
save
her, did he?' Mel's blunt interjection was made in Ikona's defence. But its impact was disastrous. Her reference was to the skeleton.

Faroon's first reaction was of disquiet at the sight of this alien so reminiscent of the Rani.

'She won't harm you, Faroon. She's not with the Tetraps.'

A reassurance that served only to allay her fear of Mel . . . but she had seen the skeleton.