Doctor Who: The Edge of Destruction (5 page)

Ian looked all around him. The Doctor was nowhere to be seen. Ian was left alone in the dark threatening confines of the TARDIS interior.

Ian shouted down the corridors after the Doctor. But if the old man was there he didn’t hear him; the only reply was the monotonous in-out in-out breathing which in the darkness, and now that Ian was alone, sounded louder than ever.

Trying not to panic, Ian realised that there was no point in trying to go after the Doctor. His chance of finding the old man in the maze of passageways would be impossible; if the TARDIS was indeed as big as he suspected he could be lost there for days. Better, he reasoned, to retrace his steps back to a part of the TARDIS which he recognised and from there find Susan who would surely know her way around the Ship’s corridors.

Using as points of reference the antiques he had seen on his journey down the corridor, Ian began to walk back. But to his horror when he reached one of the doors which opened onto the main corridor that led up to the main area of the TARDIS, and which had been open when they had passed it before, he found that it was locked shut. Vainly he tried to open it but it refused to yield to his touch. In a futile gesture he pounded on the door and called out for help; but the only answer was the mocking breathing of the life support system.

In desperation he looked around for another entrance into the control centre of the Ship. But he knew he had no choice: his only possible route was back down into the depths of the Ship. Resigned, he followed the corridor he had taken with the Doctor.

He seemed to walk for miles; and as he did so it occurred to him that the TARDIS corridors seemed somehow different. It took him a while to realise that doors which had before been open were now firmly closed, and doors which had been locked shut were now open.

He reached the intersection of three corridors and, despite himself, stood and watched in amazement as two of the three doors slammed shut in his face, thereby leaving him no choice but to go through the one door that remained open. And as he passed through a doorway that door too would close soundlessly behind him, thereby cutting off his only means of retreat.

Ian felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise and he tried to shrug off the notion that someone was watching him and mapping out his route for him, as dispassionately as a human scientist would watch a mouse trapped in the maze of some scientific experiment.

Occasionally he would stop at a door which was not locked and look into the room beyond. But invariably these rooms would be closed off, and the gothic treasures which they housed, together with that infernal in-out in-out breathing and the darkness, did nothing to calm his nerves.

Finally he admitted defeat and almost meekly followed the route which was somehow being chosen for him.

Within minutes the descent of the corridor seemed to level off. Ian found himself in a large, featureless unfurnished anteroom. The in-out in-out breathing was almost deafening down here and, to make matters worse, the light in the room pulsed up and down in brilliance in accordance with the breathing, plunging the room one moment into pitch darkness and then into searing brightness. The entire effect was quite disorientating and Ian had to lean against one wall to maintain his balance.

He tried three of the four doors which led off from the anteroom. They were all securely locked. He was about to try the fourth door when it slowly began to creak open. The lights in the anteroom faded all together, until the only one in it was the ever-widening arc from the opening door.

With no place to run or hide, Ian stepped back in horror as a shadowy threatening figure appeared silhouetted in the doorway.

‘Chesterton, what on Earth are you doing there?’

Ian breathed a sigh of relief, which rapidly turned to embarrassed anger as he recognised the Doctor’s voice. Nevertheless he controlled his temper.

‘I... I got lost,’ he said lamely.

The Doctor tut-tutted. ‘You should have kept up with me,’ he reprimanded; but did Ian detect a glint of malicious amusement in the old man’s eyes?

‘I did do!’ he protested. ‘But I stopped for a moment and the next minute you were gone!’

‘If you must go wandering off on your own what do you expect?’ chastised the Doctor. ‘Although goodness knows how you found your way down here.’ He imperiously beckoned Ian forward. ‘Now, do come along—we haven’t got all day you know!’

Ian eyed the Doctor suspiciously; disconcerted by the old man’s lack of concern about his plight, but recognising that he had no alternative, he followed him down a winding spiral staircase which he surmised most lead to the very deepest part of the TARDIS.

If he had thought to look he would have noticed that all the doors he had passed which had been locked now miraculously opened by themselves...

The in-out in-out breathing which permeated the TARDIS and the pulsating lights which Ian had noticed in the anteroom had their origin in the Ship’s power rooms. This was a series of fifteen interconnected rooms containing all the machinery and power sources which operated the TARDIS.

Here, explained the Doctor, were the regulators and engines which powered every function of the TARDIS: its lighting and heat, its life supports, its navigation and memory banks, and, most importantly of all, the drive mechanisms which powered it on its journeys throughout space and time.

Ian noted with wry amusement that, although all these machines were undoubtedly centuries ahead of his own understanding, they still retained, with their elaborate brass fittings and antiquated pistons and levers, all the magical Edwardian splendour of a Heath Robinson mechanism, as though the Doctor had imprinted his own fascination with the Edwardian era onto his machine.

Ian glanced around the room. Apart from the pulsing lights, the area was in darkness. The machines were dusty, and even the normally sterile atmosphere of the TARDIS here was dull and muggy, as though the rooms had never been used or visited in a long long time. Littering the floor were large leatherbound technical manuals, their bindings worn with age.

Every single movable part of every single machine was motionless and silent, but when Ian and the Doctor examined them more closely they found that they were still warm, as though they had been in operation but a few minutes ago.

The Doctor crossed over to the door which, he said mysteriously, led into the ‘power stacks’ of the TARDIS. He frowned as he turned and twisted the handle.

‘What’s the matter, Doctor?’ Ian asked.

‘The door seems to be locked,’ said the Doctor. ‘Now that’s most unusual... I wanted to check the power gauges...’

‘Tell me, Doctor,’ said Ian as the old man came back over and bent down to examine a video screen on one of the banks of computers which lined the room,‘what is that infernal noise all around us?’

‘Noise?’ queried the Doctor.

‘That sort of breathing,’ explained Ian.

The Doctor snorted superiorly. ‘Oh that,’ he said. ‘Why, it’s the life support systems, of course... Whatever did you think it was?’

Ian ignored the question and continued: ‘And the main controls of the life support system are housed down here?’

‘Of course,’ said the Doctor, and then realised what Ian was trying to say.

He indicated a large intricately constructed mechanism on the wall which Ian laughingly thought resembled a large pair of bellows.

‘And yet the life support mechanism itself, the system which provides as with all our oxygen, Earth-type gravity and heat, and protects us from the time vortex, is not functioning.

‘Just like everything else down here,’ added Ian. ‘Doctor, what exactly is going on? By rights we should have been dead long ago. But even though not one major machine in the TARDIS is functioning, we’re still alive!’

The Doctor directed Ian’s attention to the video screen he was examining which, like several minor and unimportant instruments on board the Ship, was still operating normally.

‘And this indicates that all the power necessary for the smooth running of my Ship is being generated and channelled correctly,’ he said,‘and yet not one iota of it is being used to power the mechanisms of my Ship.’

‘As if all the power is being drawn off somewhere before it reaches the machines,’ reasoned Ian. ‘But if that’s the case, why is the life support system still operating and keeping us alive?’

‘How am I supposed to know, Chesterton!’ snapped the Doctor. ‘I’m not a miracle worker!’

Ian muttered a half-hearted apology, only vaguely aware that he had touched a raw nerve in the Doctor. The Doctor liked to pretend that he was the absolute master of his Ship; the truth was that he understood very little about its mechanisms and the way it operated.

‘So what do we do now, Doctor?’ asked Ian, in an attempt to change the subject and assuage the old man’s wounded pride.

The Doctor paused for a moment and looked thoughtfully at Ian. Then he pointed to an open door at the far end of the room. ‘In there you will find the internal scanner, Chesterton. It is designed to give a general visual overview of all the TARDIS’s power rooms. If my machines cannot tell me what is affecting the Ship’s power perhaps the eye can. The machine is very simple to operate. I suggest you go in there and report your findings to me.’

Ian nodded. He crossed over to open the door and entered the room, watched closely by the Doctor. The room was small, about the size of a dentist’s waiting room, and featureless apart from the usual TARDIS wall roundels. In the corner, as the Doctor had said, was a video screen and control panels, housed in an ornate mahogany cabinet, rather like an old-fashioned television set. Following the Doctor’s instructions, Ian bent down and switched on the machine.

The screen buzzed into life and began to show a succession of pictures of all of the TARDIS’s fifteen different power rooms. Each was in darkness and silent. their machines no longer operating.

Ian studied the pictures one more time and then called out to the Doctor. ‘They’re exactly like everywhere else, Doctor,’ he said. ‘Dark and silent—’

He stopped and turned around anxiously when the Doctor did not reply. The door behind him was closed. Panicking, he stood up and tried to open it; it was locked firmly shut.

He banged on the door and called out the Doctor’s name but there was no response from the old man. Beads of perspiration appeared on Ian’s forehead; ever since a child Ian had had a fear of being trapped in a confined space, and now the four walls of the room seemed to crowd threateningly upon him.

His heart missed a beat as he realised that the air inside the room was rapidly becoming stale and stuffy. He called out the Doctor’s name once more, using up valuable oxygen, and rattled at the door handle. But the door refused to budge. Frantically he looked around for anything with which he could lever the door open, but apart from the internal scanner the room was hare. There did not seem to be any visible locking mechanism on the door, or an electronic circuit which he could trip. He pressed against the door with all his weight, but it refused to give. His futile beating on the door became weaker as the life-giving oxygen in the room remorselessly ran out. His heart and lungs pounded painfully in his chest as he struggled to gasp whatever air he could. Through fogged eyes he looked at the room which began to spin sickeningly around him. Close to unconsciousness, he fell despairingly to his knees.

Click!

Ian raised his head and gulped in gratefully the rush of air which flooded into the room as the door creaked slowly open. Raising himself with difficulty onto his feet, he staggered through the now open door and into the power rooms beyond.

To Ian’s surprise the Doctor had not opened the door. Instead he was standing some way off, absorbed in examining a piece of equipment. He started when he saw Ian coming out of the room.

‘Doctor,’ groaned Ian, ‘didn’t you hear me?’

‘Hear you? What on earth are you talking about, Chesterton?’

‘That room back there... I was trapped... air running out...’

The Doctor turned his eyes almost nervously away from the young schoolteacher and continued to examine the piece of equipment. Finally he put it down on a small work bench. ‘Well, you’re safe now,’ he said. ‘And since nothing seems to be working down here I see little point in staying around. Shall we join the others?’

Ian regarded the Doctor suspiciously. The old man was behaving very strangely, almost guiltily. Ian knew so little about the Doctor, but one thing he did know was that the old man had a completely alien set of codes and morals to those of him and Barbara.

Could it be possible that he had actually deliberately locked Ian in that room, with the express intention of getting him out of the way—permanently? Though he had known the Doctor for such a short measure of time Ian wouldn’t have put it past him.

But if the Doctor had locked him in the room, then how had the door become unlocked? Had the Doctor had a sudden change of heart?

‘Well, Chesterton?’ asked the Doctor irritably. ‘I said, shall we join Susan and Miss Wright?’

Ian nodded. ‘Fine, Doctor,’ he said. ‘But this time I think you had better lead the way.’

The Doctor eyed Ian viciously, and then led the way out of the power rooms and into the corridors outside. All the doors which had before been securely closed were now open again.

As the Doctor and Ian left the power rooms, all the machines which had been silent and motionless during their visit, suddenly chattered into life again...

‘Your companion, Miss Wright,’ began the Doctor, as he and Ian walked up the corridor.

‘Barbara,’ corrected Ian.

‘Yes, quite,’ continued the Doctor. ‘Your companion, Miss Wright, suggested that the problem might lie not in the TARDIS itself but in some sort of outside entity—’

‘Which you said was ridiculous,’ Ian reminded him pointedly.

The Doctor caught the implied criticism in Ian’s voice but chose to ignore it. ‘And which I still maintain is impossible. But it is still feasible that we are in the grip of some powerful force which exists outside the Ship.’