Doctor Who: Time and the Rani (12 page)

The ultimatum left Beyus in an agony of indecision.

'Do you realise how close the Rani must have taken her TARDIS in recording this, Mel?'

In the hologram, the star had been reduced to a molten lump: a miniature of its former size.

'All I realise is we've just seen what she intends to happen to Lakertya! Can she do it, Doctor?'

'Not by my reckoning. The only known detonator for exploding Strange Matter is Strange Matter itself.'

'But you said Strange Matter is incredibly heavy.'

'A chunk the size of a cubic metre - say, a large suitcase - would weigh as much as your Earth.'

He inspected a sheaf of vertical transparent tubes suspended above the crucible.

Each tube contained different coloured granules.

'Could she be using the brain to come up with a formula?' Mel speculated.

'. . . for a lightweight substitute? Might explain why she needs a crucible.' His prowling continued, his unease increased.

'Then - haven't we found the answer?'

'Not completely, Mel. What I can't fathom' - he pointed to the dead star - 'is why the Rani took such an incredible risk to record a supernova.'

'To discover how to reconstruct the same event?'

'More than that. She wouldn't simply be interested in a display of pyrotechnics. Too negative.' He was truly baffled. 'She'd have a deeper motive.' He jabbed a forefinger into each temple. 'The answer's in here!'

'Calm down, Doctor. Let's apply a bit of logic, shall we? What is it you can contribute that those other geniuses can't?'

'A knowledge of time! Oh, a great discovery!' He jigged about the circular gantry, his correspondent shoes rattling on the grids. 'I'd worked that out ages ago!'

The clatter of footsteps.

Mel peeked into the lab.

'The Rani!'

20

For Mel, survival expunged all other considerations. She scooted into a recess separating the crucible from the rocket's breech.

Flustered, the Doctor was torn between the same instinct and the paramount need to uncover what the Rani hoped to achieve by her extraordinary efforts.

He remained still.

'So now you know.' The Rani regarded the Doctor with calculated sangfroid.

'Not the full story. The last chapter's missing.' Anxious to divert her from discovering Mel, he indicated the magenta brain. 'Keeping quiet, isn't it?'

'Perhaps, unlike you, it speaks only when it's got something intelligent to say.'

Gradually she shifted her position in her quest for Mel.

'Possibly,' replied the Doctor. 'On the other hand, it could be wondering why you want Helium Two . . .'

The Rani halted. Temporarily thrown.

'That is why you're seeking to explode Strange Matter, isn't it? To re-enact the Leptonic Era and so secure Helium Two?'

The Leptonic Era to which the Doctor was referring was a microsecond period after the Big Bang that gave birth to the Universe: a moment of mind-boggling temperatures which, if marginally protracted, would have produced the fabulous substance, Helium Two.

'If only you didn't choose to waste your talents on superficial exploits, you could be quite brilliant, Doctor.'

'I'd never be as scientifically brilliant as you, Rani.'

'Flattery? Too obvious a ploy.' She was abreast of the crucible and nearer to Mel. . .

'Not flattery. I deliberately said scientific brilliance. When it comes to the less attractive aspects of your nature, you're congenitally unbalanced.'

'You could have it wrong. What you call balance could be chaos.'

'Well, that's the way of the world and nothing can change it.' The pat cliche was merely a subterfuge. He was trying to determine why the Rani was humouring him.

Perhaps she wasn't beyond redemption. At university, in their debates, they had enjoyed many an academic battle of wits. She'd even confessed to a grudging admiration of his own versatility. A whiff of nostalgia maybe? Plus, as Mel had suggested earlier, a smidgen of vanity.

How wrong these assumptions were.

When Beyus released her from the cabinet, the Rani had seen the dead Tetrap guard. Until Urak returned, she alone had to hold the fort!

'Nothing can change it? I think I can negate that fallacy.' She tossed her head. Her scarlet earrings, looking like scarlet droplets of blood, swirled against her brunette tresses. 'The last chapter, Doctor? The denouement?'

She spun the bossed beading and the planet of Lakertya replaced the spent star in the hologram. 'In the aftermath of the Strange Matter explosion, Helium Two will fuse with the upper zones of the Lakertyan atmosphere to form a shell of chronons.'

In concert with the dissertation, an explosion engulfed the cerise gases enveloping Lakertya. When it subsided, a shimmering shell had crystallised.

'I don't have to tell you what chronons are, Doctor.'

'Indeed you don't. Discrete particles of time.'

'In the same millisecond the chronon shell is being formed, the hothouse effect of the gamma rays will cause the primate cortex of this brain to go into chain reaction.' A further spin of the beading. 'Multiplying until the gap between shell and planet is filled.'

In the hologram, the gap between the chronon shell and Lakertya's surface was filling with the primate cortex - the segment of the brain responsible for thought.

A shock of realisation ravaged the Doctor: there was to be an immense conjugation of time particles and the brain cells distilled from the intellectual giants.

'You're going to - turn this planet . . . into a Time Manipulator,' he stammered.

'A cerebral mass capable of dominating and controlling time anywhere in the cosmos!'

Mel had been forgotten by the two Gallifreyans. But the enormity of the revelations reduced her own concern for survival to an irrelevance.

The obscenity of the proposition had even robbed the Doctor of speech.

'All I need to bring it about,' continued the Rani, 'is the material for exploding Strange Matter. And my congress of geniuses here' - lovingly she stroked the railing surrounding the brain - 'will provide me with the means of obtaining that.'

'I've underestimated you.' The Doctor's voice was hoarse with disgust. 'I thought science had blinded you. But it's power.'

'Wrong again.'

'They should never have banished you from Gallifrey. They should have locked you in a padded cell!' It was a sentiment the Doctor had given vent to before.

'If the Time Lords hadn't refused to intervene in the pedestrian evolution of other species, a Time Manipulator wouldn't be necessary!'

Cheeks flushed in the magenta glow, she strolled the circular gantry.

'I still can't believe - a Time Manip -' The Doctor was struggling to marshal his thoughts. 'This - this monstrosity will give you . . .the ability to . . . change the order of Creation!'

'Creation's chaotic. I'll introduce order. An order based on logic not the capricious whims of chance.'

She switched off the hologram.

'Wherever evolution has taken the wrong route, I'll redirect it.'

'Redirect . . .' repeated the Doctor, staring at his arrogant antagonist.

'That planet you're so obsessed with - Earth - I shall return to the Cretaceous Age.

The potential of the dinosaurs was never fully exploited.'

'Cretaceous Age . . .' Mel mouthed in silent horror.

'Shakespeare . . . Louis Pasteur . . . Michelangelo . . . Elvis . . . Even Mrs Malaprop .

. . will never have existed!' The Doctor gasped.

Mel, however, was not the sole eavesdropper. Urak had returned to the laboratory.

'Your concern with those minions on Earth is pathetic,' said the Rani. 'They're an inferior species.'

Instead of putting himself at his Mistress's disposal, Urak remained by the laboratory exit, listening.

'To be cast into oblivion?'

'Why not?'

'The same with Lakertya? All life on this planet would become extinct?'

'An unfortunate side-effect.'

'Every living creature left behind - will be exterminated?'

'Of which you will be one, Doctor.'

Urak's jaws widened in a grin. He squatted on his haunches, enjoying the obsequies emanating from the spherical chamber.

'There'll be no pain,' continued the Rani. 'In microseconds Lakertyans will be reduced to dust.'

'While you float off safely in your TARDIS.'

'Oh, I shall be back. Once the turbulence has passed.'

'I believed you were a psychopath without murderous intent. I withdraw that qualification -'

'EIGHTY-SEVEN TO THE POWER OF NINETEEN E
- interrupted the synthesised voice.

Throbbing undulations rippled the purple furrows and grooves of the gestating brain.

' - CORRELATED WITH FIFTY-TWO TO THE POWER OF SIX-POINT-FOUR

EQUALS TWENTY-NINE V- '

'Thirty-nine! The Doctor's correction was automatic. 'Er - I mean, twenty-nine - yes, yes, twenty!' Too late did he realise he had aided the brain in making the crucial breakthrough.

'CORRECTION IS NOTED
,' intoned the synthesised voice.

'THIRTY-NINE TO THE POWER OF V PLUS W. . . EUREKA! OBJECTIVE

ACHIEVED!’

Simultaneously there came the rising sonic whine of a power unit. The coloured granules in the sheaf of transparent tubes began to cavort and dance.

Then the sheaf rotated . . . gathering momentum . . . until it became a variegated blur.

Abruptly, the high-pitched screech became muted . . . beneath the centrifuge, a globule of glistening, phosphorescent alloy took shape.

'LOYHARGIL!
' pronounced the synthesised voice.

'I knew it! I knew they could do it!' Elated, everything but the triumphant achievement effaced, the Rani went to the crucible to pay homage to the miracle of Loyhargil.

Just the opportunity the Doctor needed.

Signalling to Mel, he slipped from the spherical chamber - and into more trouble!

21

Once Mel was safely in the lab, the Doctor slapped the locking mechanism and the panel slid, shutting the Rani inside the spherical chamber.

They dashed for the exit, where Fate dealt them an unkind blow - Urak blocked it!

'The arcade!'

Fleet-footed, Mel was in the van of the helter-skelter retreat.

Urak hesitated, undecided whether to release the Rani or chase after the absconders. He opted for the latter and trundled towards the arcade.

Once in the arcade, Urak exhibited no hesitation. He turned in the direction that led to the outside. Where else would the craven pair of troublemakers have gone?

Not a very astute conclusion. Limited though his acquaintance with the Doctor was, Urak should have known the obvious rarely appealed to the eccentric Time Lord.

His Tetrapian rearview eye registered the mistake the instant the net-gun fired . . .

and it was with a bellow of rage Urak crumpled beneath the mesh of sparks.

The Doctor, his memory revving in overdrive, had remembered the net-gun he had propped beside a cabinet when the Tetrap guard was despatched by the Rani's fungal concoction. He had steered Mel towards the eyrie and lain in wait. The gamble succeeded: Urak was effectively neutralised!

'Get clear of the danger zone, Mel! I'll catch you up.' This order was barked with such authority that Mel was haring across the grounds before her propensity to question the Doctor's wisdom reasserted itself.

However, back-tracking was pre-empted. An ally, in the shape of Ikona, beckoned.

In a whirl of windmilling limbs, wrenching open cupboards and drawers, the Doctor searched the laboratory.

'Ah! That's the wicket!' he exclaimed, extracting a flask with a rocco stopper.

Pocketing it, he spotted his furled umbrella lying beside the bench. Claiming that too, he raised his hat to the spherical panel in a saucy adieu to the imprisoned Rani - and scarpered!

Coming from the plasma bank, Beyus flinched. The arcade resembled a graveyard.

One Tetrap was a fungus-barnacled corpse, and another was lying beneath a net.

He lifted the corner of the net . . . Urak's veiny eyelids fluttered.

The only movement in the Centre of Leisure was from the fountains spewing their jets of water into the pool.

'You are sure of this, Doctor?' called Faroon, when the Doctor finished speaking from the gallery.

'Every word I've spoken is the truth, Faroon.'

Although declamatory oration from elevated positions was anathema to him, the Doctor, yielding to Ikona's and Mel's browbeating, had delivered a resume of the Rani's intent to the Lakertyans assembled below.

'And you are certain she can do it?'

'She has the means. The Loyhargil was all she needed.'

'Faroon,' intervened Mel ardently, 'you've got two choices. Sit tight and wait for the Rani to load that Loyhargil into the rocket and blow up the asteroid. Or try to stop her. Believe me, reducing every Lakertyan to dust is an unimportant side-effect in her book!'

'A precise precis of what I've just said,' agreed the Doctor.

'And for pity's sake stir yourselves!' Ikona castigated the throng in the plaza. 'The Solstice is almost upon us! Either your take action now, or you perish!'

Molten Loyhargil poured into the mould.

Tinted by the magenta light of the spherical chamber, the Rani's face was animated with excitement.

Urak, grudgingly released by Beyus, had unlocked the panel. Still debilitated, he was propped against the wall.

'The Doctor should . . .be apprehen . . . ded . . .'

'He's irrelevant. I have the Loyhargil. Nothing can stop me now!'

A cloud of steam spumed as the mould was dunked into a tub of coolant.

'Unless you tell us how to remove these, we can't help you.' Faroon's conversion was achieved but the bangles were a lethal inhibition.