Doctor Who: Time Flight (7 page)

But the menacing smile soon froze on his lips. His pockmarked features spasmed with pain. He pressed a

hand to his temple, and moved to the crystal where he began a desperate chant.

'Arogogorah abrao abelatha...'

The Doctor crept up behind Kalid so that he too could see into the crystal ball. He was surprised at the cause of Kalid's discomforture.

Tegan and Nyssa had entered the Citadel.

Tegan wished heartily they had done what the Doctor said and gone back to Concorde. She was ill at ease in this dark and sinister place.

'But where are we going? she asked Nyssa as they walked down the gloomy corridor.

To help the Doctor.'

'Is this your intuition again?'

'Yes. Can't you feel it too?'

'No!'

'We must find the centre.' Nyssa was strangely confident. Her sense of authority disturbed Tegan. 'Trust me,' she added, aware of her companion's anxiety.

But Nyssa's inspired sense of direction appeared to have brought them into a cul-de-sac.

'It's a dead end,' said Tegan, running her hand over the bland rock face that barred their way.

'We must continue.' Nyssa moved resolutely forward.

To Tegan's amazement the wall opened up, revealing a narrow passage beyond.

The two girls passed through the divide.

Kalid was appalled. "Not even I have dared penetrate the heart of the Citadel!' he gasped.

'You mean you've not been able to!' cried the Doctor, encouraged by the evidence that there was a force not entirely under Kalid's control.

'The power must prevent all mortal advance,' protested Kalid.

But the Doctor knew that a greater power protected Tegan and Nyssa and urged them forward.

'You will watch them suffer for this!' Kalid screamed at the Doctor, and began a demonic incantation.

Tegan and Nyssa heard nothing of Kalid's vile litany, although they both sensed the invisible eddy and flow of mighty forces. But there would be no turning back; their progress was inexorable.

The young boy who stepped out of the shadows to bar their way was a timid unthreatening figure. But he stopped the two girls in their tracks.

'Adric!' gasped Tegan in disbelief, as she gazed at their brave friend who had sacrificed his life to prevent the destruction of Earth by the Cybermen.

'No! Adric's dead!' But for all her steely assurance, Nyssa was disturbed by the presence of the pale wraith in front of them.

'Go back, or you will destroy me.' The boy spoke with immeasurable sadness.

Grief, uncertainty, longing conflicted with the resolution of the girls.

But despite the distress she felt at this sudden confrontation, Nyssa knew that their old companion existed merely in their shared imagination. 'It's the only power Kalid has left to stop us,' she whispered.

'How can we be sure?' Tegan was in an agony of indecision. Her doubts were instantly exploited.

'Go back, or you will destroy me,' pleaded the boy.

Tegan dared not move forward, terrified lest a miraculously ressurected Adric should die a second death.

The young man turned to Nyssa who was plucking up courage to continue. 'If you advance you will kill me, Nyssa.'

'We can't take that risk!' Tegan had grabbed Nyssa's arm.

Nyssa didn't know what to do. Then she saw the badge. 'Adric's wearing his badge!' she cried.

'It was shattered when the Doctor destroyed the Cyber Leader.'

'Exactly!'

'Come on!'

Sure now of his unreality, Tegan and Nyssa closed in on Adric. The boy watched them accusingly. They reached out their hands to thrust him aside, only to feel the empty air.

There was an unnatural scream and Adric vanished.

Shaken but undeterred they continued.

The girls needed all their courage as more nightmare emanations, drawn from the dark of their own minds, surprised them. But neither Melkur from Traken nor a roaring Terileptil could stop them.

They continued. All sense of time and space abandoned them. The unknown centre drew them towards itself like a lodestone.

There was another barrier. They waited before it like two postulants.

Groaning as if it were a living thing, the stone split apart. A cold luminance whitened their faces.

They stepped forward into the light.

'They have entered the Sanctum!' Kalid could no longer see the girls in the crystal. He trembled with rage. Nyssa and Tegan had been granted access to the centre of the power while he, Kalid, must remain at a distance.

He turned away from the sphere. 'Doctor, you will give me the key of the TARDIS!' He was desperate now.

The Doctor shook his head.

'Then you will see your friends destroyed and you yourself annihilated!'

The Doctor stood his ground. 'I don't think so,' he answered defiantly.

'We've all got rather good at resisting your sorcery.'

'You will not resist my combatant!' There was something ominously convincing about Kalid's voice. 'Sotou monduru, sotous abraou, phil thao thiaf!' The diabolical invocation summoned the very essence of darkness.

A thin skein of ectoplasm formed in the air. As Kalid continued his evil mantra, the hovering matter dilated.

Unperturbed, Captain Stapley seized a metal rod. 'Just a ball of cotton wool.'

'I'm not so sure,' cautioned the Doctor. There was something frighteningly different about this new manifestation.

As the metal in Stapley's hand impacted with the nascent shape there was an explosion. The Captain felt as if a thousand volts coursed through his body. He staggered back towards Bilton and Scobie.

'Kalid is drawing on deeper reserves of power,' warned the Doctor.

'That thing is bonding itself into something far more dangerous than a Plasmaton!'

The writhing intumescence grew larger and larger. It bifurcated. At the end of each trunk a serpent's head appeared: a head with eyes, mouth, fangs and forked tongue. Each mouth hissed like a whole pit full of vipers.

'Well, Doctor?'

'The answer is still no, Kalid.'

'The TARDIS key, Doctor!'

The hissing expanded to a roar. Bilton, Scobie, Stapley and the Professor cowered in the corner as the beast lunged.

'Do you really want to see your friends die!' shouted Kalid, above the bellowing of the creature and the cries of the terrified men.

Only a gentle moaning disturbed the calm of the Sanctum. Tegan and Nyssa trod softly as if on holy ground. They looked round, awed and curious.

They had penetrated a small circular chamber, in the centre of which was a large open sarcophagus.

Nyssa knew what was required of her. Placed against the side of the room was an array of unearthly minerals. She prised off a huge chunk of the alien rock. 'Help me,' she called to Tegan, surprised at its unreasonable weight. 'We must act. The Doctor ...' She staggered towards the sarcophagus.

'What are you doing?' shouted Tegan.

With a vigour that belied her frail body, Nyssa swung back the rock and hurled it into the centre of the sarcophagus.

There was a massive explosion which threw both Tegan and Nyssa senseless to the ground.

The monster twisted its torso upwards for the kill. But even as its fetid jaws parted, the reverberation reached them from the Sanctum.

A rushing wind surged through the chamber. The beast gave an agonising roar. Kalid recoiled against the wall, screaming with pain and tearing at his body.

The creature that had terrorised them crumpled like a paper dragon.

Within seconds it was gone without trace.

'Look at Kalid!'

They turned to where the magician was lying in the corner, his flesh draining to liquefaction.

The Doctor was amazed. Kalid must have been a Plasmaton all the time.

'There's got to be a perfectly simple, orthodox explanation.' The Professor was tired of this masquerade. He delved into the pedestal beneath the crystal ball. 'Bioenergetic powers indeed ...' he muttered to himself. 'Intellectual garbage!'

'You won't find anything,' said the Doctor wearily.

'Won't I!' the Professor positively squawked with triumph.

As the others gathered round he pulled out modules and circuit boards.

'Psychotronics was it?' He turned maliciously to the Doctor. 'I call this electronicsV He dropped an armful of components on the floor.

'I don't understand.' The Doctor stared, nonplussed.

Across the room something stirred.

'No, Doctor. You never do understand.' A voice came from the shadows.

There was something alive inside Kalid's diaphanous robe. Like a pupating beetle it tore itself free from the cloth.

A dark and ominously familiar figure stood up. 'You never do!'

It was the Master.

'As gullible as ever, my dear Doctor.' The Master's eyes gleamed with exultation. The incursion into the Sanctum had been a setback which cost him his disguise, but he had humiliated his rival. Very shortly, using the Doctor's TARDIS, he would penetrate the power centre himself.

'So you did escape from Castrovalva.' The Doctor confronted his old enemy. 'I should have guessed.'

But there was never a moment when the Doctor suspected the prosthetic persona of Kalid concealed the evil Time Lord. Nor could he imagine how the Master had gained control of the unseen power that maintained his disguise in the same way as it controlled the Plasmatons. 'How you love the company of fools.' The Master was watching Hayter dismember the apparatus beneath the crystal ball. Neither the Professor nor the crew had any great interest in the meeting of the two arch adversaries. For a brief moment Professor Hayter held the stage.

'Magic, as in lantern,' he lectured. 'Sophisticated and terrifying, I do not dispute ...' 'Hang on a moment, Professor!' Flight Engineer

Scobie, who knew a great deal more about electronics than Professor Hayter, had been examining the centrepiece of the chamber. He turned to the Professor like a recalcitrant student. 'This crystal,' he objected. 'There's no connection, no radio link ...'

The Doctor joined them. 'That crystal is just a point of focus. The communication is purely telepathic'

"Then what's all this equipment for?' snapped the indomitably sceptical old man.

'What indeed!' said the Doctor, examining with mounting excitement the bits and pieces Hayter had removed. He turned back to the Master.

'These components are from your TARDIS!'

The Master was looking less pleased with himself. The Doctor felt his self-confidence returning as he realised the Master's predicament.

'You're stranded here,' he went on. 'That time contour was a desperate lifeline to the future.'

The Master did not deny it. His eyes narrowed. He spoke softly; he was chillingly polite. 'I need your TARDIS to penetrate the Sanctum.'

Another piece of the jigsaw fell into place. The Master needed the power in the Sanctum as a new energy source for his own time machine. The Doctor wondered again what kind of power it could be.

Perhaps the Master would reveal the information. 'I think you might be too late,' he said provocatively. 'The power seems to have expended itself.'

The Master quickly put him right. "The recuperation will be swift. Your companions have disturbed the neuronic nucleus ...' His face twisted with pleasure. 'But they will have paid for that incursion with their lives.'

There was consternation amongst the young crew members. The Doctor fought back a feeling of panic

with the ruthless logic of his own observations.

'Tegan and Nyssa are as likely to have been protected as destroyed,' he assured the others. 'The power works against you as well as for you,' he reminded the Master.

The Master knew this only too well. It was the reason for his anxiety and haste. He needed the force under his total control. 'The key, Doctor.' He raised the Tissue Compression Eliminator.

The black, twig-like thing with its bulbous end didn't frighten Bilton and Scobie. They stepped forward to defend the Doctor.

The Doctor knew better. 'No heroics, gentlemen,' he interposed. 'The Master will eliminate you without a second thought.' He placed the TARDIS key in the black-gloved hand of the Master.

'Very wise, Doctor.' The Master went straight to the TARDIS.

No one, except the Doctor, had spotted the old police box in the corner of the chamber.

'Good heavens!' exclaimed Professor Hayter. 'That's never the TARDIS.'

'Unfortunately, it is,' the Master deplored as he opened the door. 'So typical of the Doctor's predilection for the third rate.'

It was beyond the Professor's comprehension that grown men should play out an hysterical charade, such as they had just witnessed, for the possession of a telephone booth. He appealed to the Doctor. 'What does the man want with an obsolete Metropolitan ...'