Doctor Who: The Edge of Destruction (9 page)

‘Not to me,’ countered the Doctor, ‘nothing at all has happened to me.’

You stupid old man, can’t you see that you’re the worst affected of the lot of us! thought Barbara viciously. Lower your idiotic defences for just one minute and see what’s happening to us!

‘This is undoubtedly a plot between the two of you to get control of my Ship,’ the Doctor asserted.

‘That isn’t true!’

‘Can’t you see I’ve found you out?’ chuckled the Doctor, highly satisfied with his deductive skills. ‘Why don’t you just admit it?’

‘No, why don’t you admit it?’ countered Barbara savagely. ‘Why don’t you admit that you haven’t a clue as to what’s going on around here, and so to save your own precious self-esteem, you’re clutching at straws, shifting the blame onto everyone and everything apart from your own precious self!’

She laughed self-deprecatingly. ‘Get control of the Ship! We wouldn’t know what to do with it even if we had. If you can’t operate your own machine I see absolutely no chance of Ian and myself ever working it!’

The Doctor’s face reddened with fury at having his ability to control the TARDIS brought into question once more.

‘How dare you!’ he exploded. ‘I will not tolerate this any longer. I told you I’d treat you as my enemies—’

Susan who had remained quiet up to now, scarcely understanding what had been going on and torn between two conflicting loyalties now spoke up. ‘No, Grandfather,’ she pleaded.

Slightly taken aback, the Doctor looked down at his granddaughter.

‘There is no other way, Susan,’ he said imperiously.

‘But...’

‘There is no other way, my child,’ insisted the Doctor sternly.

Susan bowed her head in defeat, recognising her grandfather’s firmness of purpose.

Down by Barbara’s side on the floor Ian was beginning to stir but Barbara continued to look up at the Doctor. ‘What are you going to do?’ she asked apprehensively.

‘That, madam, is my concern.’

Barbara turned back to Ian and shook him. ‘Come on, Ian, wake up! For heaven’s sake, help me!’

Ian muttered a few indistinct words, and Barbara strained to hear them.

‘There is no alternative,’ continued the Doctor superiorly. ‘Your little antics have endangered all our lives.’

Susan crossed slowly over to Ian and Barbara. She had entered the control room a little after Barbara and had not seen as much as the schoolteacher.

‘How did he get like this?’ she asked, looking down at Ian.

‘It’s all a charade,’ insisted the Doctor flatly.

Susan repeated her question.

‘He went near the control panel...’ Barbara said slowly, and suddenly realisation dawned. ‘Just like...’

‘Just like me,’ finished Susan and looked back to the Doctor. ‘Grandfather, it did happen to me,’ she said earnestly.

‘That’s right—you remember now!’ interrupted Barbara, delightedly seizing on Susan’s words. ‘You lost your memory and there was this terrible pain at the back of your neck.’

‘Yes, that’s true...’

‘What did you think we’d done?’ asked Barbara, ‘Hypnotised you? Drugged you? Susan, believe me, we wouldn’t do anything like that to you!’

‘Wouldn’t you now?’ asked the Doctor cynically. ‘I begin to wonder just what it is you and that young man are not capable of. You break your way into my Ship, sabotage its controls and now you are attempting to divide and conquer. She’s trying to poison your mind against me, Susan—’

Just then, Ian tried to sit up, and reached out a hand towards the Doctor.

‘Doctor... the console... stay away... the controls are alive...’ he croaked.

Barbara flashed the Doctor a venomous look. ‘You see? He wasn’t trying to kill you after all! He was trying to pull you away from the control panel. Don’t you see? He wasn’t trying to harm you, he was trying to help you—though Heaven knows why!’

For a moment the Doctor appeared shaken, as if the truth of Barbara’s arguments was just beginning to filter into his mind. Then Susan went over to him and took his arm gently.

‘Grandfather, I do believe them,’ she said softly. ‘They wouldn’t have done all those terrible things you said they would.’

But even his granddaughter’s words wouldn’t sway the Doctor from his irrational and stubborn belief.

‘Whose side are you on, Susan?’ he asked coldly. ‘Mine or theirs?’

‘Can’t I be on both?’

The Doctor shook his head. ‘Oh, I admit they have been very smart,’ he said, but this time his voice didn’t quite carry the amount of conviction it had previously.

‘No, its not a question of being smart,’ countered Susan firmly.

The Doctor took his granddaughter protectively in his arms. ‘Don’t you see I won’t allow them to hurt you, my child? These humans are very resourceful and cunning—who knows what other schemes they may have devised to harm you? You must realise that I am left with only one recourse. They must be put off my Ship!’

Susan broke away from the Doctor’s embrace. ‘No, Grandfather, you can’t!’

‘I can and I must.’ The old man’s tone was final.

‘But you can’t open the doors,’ protested Barbara. ‘The controls are dead!’

‘Don’t underestimate my powers, young lady!’ riposted the Doctor.

‘But, Grandfather, you’ve no way of telling what’s out there now that the scanner isn’t working properly,’ protested Susan. ‘There may be no air; it may be freezing; it might even be too hot to exist...’

The Doctor played his master card. ‘Yes—or it might be Earth in the twentieth-century. Hasn’t that occurred to you? My Ship is very valuable...’

‘Why are you so suspicious of us?’ asked Barbara coldly.

‘Put yourself in my place, young lady. You would do precisely the same thing.’

Barbara turned away with a snort of derision; if the Doctor had any sense or understanding of them at all he would know they would never behave in the hysterical and illogical way he was behaving now.

The Doctor looked down dispassionately at Ian. ‘It’s time to end all your play-acting, Chesterton. You’re getting off the Ship!’

‘Now?’ he asked groggily.

‘This instant!’

Too weak to argue, and still dazed, Ian looked up at Barbara. ‘You’ll have to help me up,’ he said pathetically. ‘I’ll be all right when I’m outside in the fresh air.’

‘Grandfather, look at him,’ pleaded Susan. ‘He doesn’t even know what’s happening. I won’t let you do this.’

The Doctor regarded his granddaughter for a moment, recognising in her the same firmness of purpose which he had always displayed. He knew that she would not weaken in her resolve.

Finally, to save some face he announced: ‘Of course, if they would like to confess what they have done to my Ship I might possibly change my mind.’ The Doctor began to march over to the lever on the control console which opened the doors.

‘Why won’t you believe us! We haven’t—’

An ominous sound suddenly interrupted Barbara.

It was a low repetitive chime, like the tolling of a huge bronze bell. It seemed to echo from deep within the TARDIS itself, and seemed to infiltrate their very beings.

The Doctor and Susan looked urgently at each other. instantly recognising the sound for what it was. The Doctor instinctively held his granddaughter protectively in his arms.

Ian was filled with a foreboding he had not felt since he was a small child. Barbara was immediately reminded of a verse she had learnt long ago at school and the meaning of which she had never fully understood till this moment:
Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.

‘What was that?’ Ian asked fearfully, as the last reverberating tones echoed away.

‘The danger signal...’ Susan’s voice was trembling and her face was deathly white. She clutched at her grandfather’s arm. ‘It’s never sounded before...’

‘The Fault Locator!’ cried the Doctor and rushed over to the bank of instruments at the far end of the control chamber.

Lights were flickering furiously on and off and the VDU screen itself showed a crazy jumble of flashing figures and letters. The entire machine seemed to be overloading; sparks and wisps of acrid smoke filled the entire area beyond the protective glass screen.

‘Don’t touch it, Doctor!’ warned Ian as he staggered to his feet with Barbara’s help.

Susan was at the Doctor’s side in an instant. She looked up and recognised the fear in her grandfather’s face. It was the most horrifying feeling she had ever had in her life, seeing that look of terror.

‘What is it?’ she asked, already knowing what the answer would be, but somehow wishing that the Doctor would suddenly turn and tell her that everything was going to be all right. ‘Tell me, please...’

The Doctor looked down at her and then turned to Ian and Barbara who had joined them in the Fault Locator area.

‘The whole of the Fault Locator had just given us a warning,’ he announced gravely.

Ian looked at the green VDU screen as it flashed on and off, casting its macabre emerald light on all their faces. It was seemingly registering every single piece of equipment on board the TARDIS.

‘But everything can’t be wrong!’ he said incredulously.

‘That is exactly what it says,’ said the Doctor. ‘Every single machine on board the Ship, down to the very smallest component, is breaking down.’ He looked gravely at his companions, as though considering whether to tell them the truth. Finally he decided.

The words came heavy to his lips: ‘I’m afraid that the TARDIS is dying...’

For minutes all four of the time-travellers stared at each other in dumbstruck horror. It seemed impossible to believe that the machine which had become their sanctuary and only hope of safety in a threatening universe was about to die. It was like being a passenger in an aircraft who has just been told that the plane is about to crash and that there is nothing the pilot can do to prevent it. Like those passengers there could be no escape from the doomed ship.

Finally Ian broke the heavy, doom-laden silence.

‘But, Doctor how can that be? How can the Ship just die?’

The Doctor pointed back to the Fault Locator. ‘Whenever one small piece of machinery fails a little light illuminates and the fault is registered on that screen. By its very nature the Fault Locator is designed to be free of any malfunction and has a power source separate from the rest of my machine. Now think what would happen if all the lights lit up. It would mean that the Ship is on the point of disintegration!’

He considered Ian and Barbara carefully and then admitted: ‘You two are not to blame—all four of us are to blame!’

‘That drink you gave us...’ said Ian.

‘A harmless sleeping drug,’ admitted the Doctor sheepishly. ‘Yes, I rather suspected you were up to some mischief...’

Ian nodded. ‘I told you not to go near the console. I told you that you might electrocute yourself.’

‘I’m afraid I might have misjudged you and Miss Wright,’ conceded the Doctor. ‘I thought you had sabotaged my Ship in some way. But such damage is far beyond your capabilities. Even I would be incapable of harming the Ship to this degree.’

Susan who had been watching the VDU screen of the Fault Locator as it flashed on and off came back to her grandfather’s side. ‘It’s happening every fifteen seconds,’ she said and added, ‘I counted the seconds.’

‘Very well,’ said the Doctor. ‘Please goon counting.’ As Susan went back to the Fault Locator he turned to the schoolteachers.

‘Now, listen very carefully. We are on the brink of disaster; the TARDIS’s circuits are failing because of some unknown force. The Ship could fall apart at any moment. We must forget any petty differences we might have and all four of us must work closely together. We must work to find out where we are and what is happening to my Ship. Once we know that there may be the chance of saving ourselves.’

Ian was tempted to say that that was exactly what he and Barbara had been suggesting from the very beginning. Instead he let the Doctor continue.

‘The facts are these. there is a strong force at work somewhere which is threatening my Ship, so strong that every piece of equipment is out of action at the same time.’

‘The life support systems are still functioning,’ pointed out Barbara. Even in the present crisis she could still hear the in-out in-out breathing of the machine which had so terrified her before but was now becoming oddly reassuring, almost like the heartbeat a baby hears in the warm protection of its mother’s womb.

‘Yes,’ said the Doctor, ‘and that is most unusual. Why isn’t that failing when everything else around us is?’

‘It’s almost as if whatever force it is wants to keep us alive...’ Barbara thought aloud, and shivered as she thought for what possible terrifying purpose.

‘But you said that nothing could penetrate the TARDIS’s defences, Doctor,’ Ian remembered.

‘Exactly.
No evil intelligence can get inside the TARDIS. The Ship is equipped with a very powerful built-in defence mechanism, which among other things protects us from the forces of the time vortex.

‘Neither do I believe any longer that either of you are responsible for our predicament. And we haven’t crashlanded—I would have discovered that immediately.’

‘But what is it then?’ asked Ian despairingly.

‘I don’t know but we must find out soon!’

‘Just how long have we got?’ asked Barbara.

Susan returned from the Fault Locator. ‘The screen is still flashing on and off every quarter of a minute,’ she said.

‘But what does that prove?’ Ian was at a loss to understand.

‘That we have a measure of time as long as it lasts,’ the Doctor replied cryptically.

He stroked his chin and looked thoughtfully at the melted face of his ormolu clock. Suddenly his eyes flashed with understanding. ‘Yes, of course!’ he said excitedly. ‘That explains the melted clockface!’

‘How?’ asked Barbara. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Don’t you see?’ The Doctor’s excitement was obvious as he explained his theory. ‘We had time taken away from us’—here he pointed at the clockface, and then indicated the flashing screen of the Fault Locator—’and now it’s being given back to us because it’s running out!’

As if in response to his words, the lights in the control room suddenly flashed on, bathing the chamber for a moment in a bright circle of light. A sonorous clanging, lighter in tone and less threatening than the alarm signal, resounded throughout the room. Beneath their feet the floor vibrated slightly, causing the four time-travellers to stagger.