Doctor Who: Mawdryn Undead (8 page)

Turlough grinned. The Doctor went even higher in his estimation.

‘By the way, I think this is yours.’ The Doctor had been fishing in his pocket for another tool and the crystal cube had fallen to the ground. He picked it up and threw it at Turlough, who caught it as if it were a red-hot coal.

As he stared compulsively into the translucence, he felt a surge of passionate hatred for the young man kneeling in front of the transmitter.
The Doctor must be destroyed
!

‘You’re not the Doctor!’ Tegan challenged the alien in the TARDIS control room.

‘You travel with a Time Lord and know nothing of metamorphosis?’ Mawdryn was playing a deadly game of bluff. At all costs he must convince the tall Earthman and the two girls that he was the Time Lord.

‘It wasn’t like this before.’ Tegan glared disbelievingly across the console. ‘When the Doctor changed, he was human!’

‘Is a Gallifreyan human?’

‘He was... normal!’ She looked in disgust at the features of the creature from the capsule.

Mawdryn had nothing but scorn for the purblind Earthwoman. ‘What do you know, prattling child, of the endless changing!’ he sneered.

‘I know that when the Doctor regenerated he didn’t turn into an alien.’

‘The transmatting induced a mutative catalysis.’

Tegan felt less sure of herself and turned to Nyssa. ‘Is that possible?’

‘I don’t know... it could be.’

Tegan appealed to the Brigadier who was as confused as Nyssa. ‘I’ve seen this happen twice before — different each time.’ He shook his head, reluctant to believe that such an unattractive creature was the latest incarnation of his old friend. But he had to agree that, logically, it could be the Doctor.

‘The condition will remain unstable,’ continued Mawdryn. ‘The transmutation can be modified, but not in the TARDIS.’

This sounded very plausible to Nyssa who, mistakenly, assumed he was referring to the zero room, the healing central chamber of the TARDIS, that had had to be jettisoned on the way to Castrovalva.

‘We return to the ship,’ Mawdryn announced.

‘The ship? But we can’t leave Turlough,’ protested Tegan. ‘He doesn’t belong in this time-zone.’

‘Turlough?’

The boy who came with you in the capsule.’

‘There was no boy,’ replied Mawdryn, irritated at this sudden irrelevance. He instantly regretted such impatience.

His answer made Tegan suspicious. ‘If you’re the Doctor you should have transmatted to Earth in 1983. This is 1977!’ she challenged.

‘Any escape from a warp ellipse can cause temporal anomalies,’ countered Mawdryn.

‘It’s true,’ whispered Nyssa to Tegan. ‘That’s what must have happened to the TARDIS.’

Tegan was not in a position to argue and Mawdryn was grateful the Earthchild was as ignorant as she was aggressive. He tried to smile, though such a contortion of his hideous features produced only a frightening leer. ‘I need your assistance to return the TARDIS to the ship.’ He strove to keep the tension from his voice.

But no one moved to prepare the time machine for dematerialisation. Nyssa, Tegan and the Brigadier were stranded in a no-man’s-land of uncertainty, half-believing that the mutated being was the Doctor, desperately in need of their help, and half-convinced that he was a dangerous imposter.

Mawdryn trembled; so much was at stake. If only he could get the TARDIS to the ship. If only the genuine Time Lord would follow in pursuit. He struggled hard to remember the names he had heard the man and the two girls use to each other. ‘Tegan! Nyssa! Brigadier! My old friends!’ he pleaded. ‘Please help me!’ He leaned, exhausted, against the console. Tears of frustration flooded his eyes.

Tegan and Nyssa looked helplessly towards the Brigadier, who had already made up his mind. If there was the remotest chance that this fellow was the Doctor, he had to be given the benefit of the doubt. Nyssa moved to the control panel.

‘Do not enter new co-ordinates. Activate sequential regression,’ ordered Mawdryn.

Nyssa obeyed. ‘We’re ready to leave, Brigadier.’ She hesitated to close the doors.

‘I’m coming with you.’

‘But Brigadier...’

‘Don’t argue!’ He silenced the two civilians, both of whom were only too glad of his company.’

The double doors were shut, the co-ordinate settings reconfirmed, all checks completed and Nyssa’s hand poised over the dematerialisation control, when the drone began.

It was a sound they had never heard before.

‘Not another alarm?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Nyssa moving round the console. I think it’s from the communications system.’

The Doctor stood up, looking rather pleased with himself; the transmitter was working. Already the signal should be reaching the TARDIS. ‘Tegan and Nyssa can use the beam as a beacon,’ he explained to the Brigadier. ‘If all goes well the TARDIS will reappear... Oh no!’ He stopped. ‘Quickly, Brigadier!’ He grasped the old soldier by the shoulders.

‘Think! Did you go on board the TARDIS with Tegan and Nyssa?’

‘I can’t remember. Does it really matter?’

‘Of course it matters! Can you imagine what would happen if you walked out of the TARDIS in 1977 and met yourself in 1983?’

‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘Not ridiculous, but almost certainly catastrophic.’

‘You mean I could be two people?’

‘Certainly.’ The Doctor tried to impress upon the bemused Brigadier the seriousness of the Blinovitch Limitation Effect. ‘You could exist twice over, but because you’re basically the same person any close contact would short-circuit the time differential created by the journey in the TARDIS. The energy discharge would be entirely unpredictable.’

The Brigadier struggled hard to remember what had happened when he and Tegan reached the top of the hill in 1977. From the darkness one faint, misty image emerged; a vanishing TARDIS... he was left beside the obelisk... alone!

He tried to explain the distant, curiously upsetting recollection to the Doctor.

Neither of them saw Turlough dart forward to the buzzing transmitter. There was a noise like a firecracker and the Doctor swung round from his conversation with the Brigadier to see a small whisp of smoke over the apparatus. He rushed forward to inspect the damage.

It did not take him long. ‘We won’t be going to the ship,’ he announced.

‘The transmitter is useless. I’ve lost all contact with the TARDIS.’

The Doctor’s dismay was nothing to the relief of Mawdryn when the drone in the TARDIS stopped sounding; any communcation from outside would be disastrous to his plans. ‘Dematerialise!’ He commanded.

Nyssa prepared to obey.

‘Wait!’ Tegan held back her fellow companion. ‘If that sound came from the communications system, someone might be trying to get in touch with us.’

The girl was not as stupid as her brashness suggested.

Mawdryn’s putrid flesh quaked.

‘Perhaps it was the Doctor,’ added Tegan.

‘
I
am the Doctor!’ shrieked Mawdryn. ‘Dematerialise immediately!’

Nyssa hesitated.

‘Time is running out. We must leave this place at once.’

The gentle Nyssa could no longer endure the distress of a man who might be the Doctor. Her hand moved to the lever that would activate the TARDIS.

‘No!’ Tegan dragged Nyssa away from the console, but already the slow rise and fall had begun.

The journey to the ship did not take long; within minutes of real time, they had entered the warp ellipse and the old police box made a second incongruous appearance inside the sombre vessel.

Nyssa opened the scanner.

‘The ship!’ cried Mawdryn.

‘Is it indeed,’ muttered the Brigadier suspiciously. The marble hall he could see on the scanner was not his idea of the inside of a spacecraft.

Mawdryn prepared to leave. ‘You will stay in the TARDIS,’ he informed the Brigadier and the girls.

Tegan quickly placed herself between Mawdryn and the double doors. ‘If you’re in a regeneration crisis you’ll need all the help you can get.’

‘No!’ He was surprised at her continuing defiance.

‘She’s right, Doctor,’ said the Brigadier, trying at the same time to show respect for a possible Time Lord, yet still support the plucky Australian.

‘I must go into the ship alone.’

Tegan stood her ground. She was not going to let the creature from the transmat capsule out of her sight.

Mawdryn staggered giddily. The atmosphere of the TARDIS had helped restore his strength, but his conflict with the Earthchild had dissipated that new-found energy. In a weary, broken voice he began to plead with her. ‘You do not understand the nature of the transmogrification. The unique restorative conditions of that vessel’ – he indicated the screen, then turned to his three fellow passengers — ‘the presence of other life-forms would inhibit the reparation.’

The Brigadier and Nyssa glanced uncertainly at each other, while Tegan glared implacably at Mawdryn. ‘We’ve all seen the Doctor regenerate before and the evidence suggests that without the presence of other life-forms he could die.’

Mawdryn abandoned reasoned argument. ‘Open the doors,’ he screamed.

Nyssa moved to the console, but Tegan pulled her out of the way. ‘You’re not going out into the ship!’

Mawdryn began to groan with pain and rage.

‘Either you stay here or we go with you.’

The creature was fighting for air. He clawed and twisted like a drowning cat. Tegan willed herself not to relent, but Nyssa was less resilient. She edged towards the door control lever.

‘Nyssa! He could reactivate the beam and the TARDIS

would be trapped on the ship for ever.’

‘But if he is the Doctor...’

‘I don’t believe it.’

‘The doors!’ howled Mawdryn.

‘No!’

‘You are destroying me!’ He collapsed exhausted on the floor and began to sob. ‘Spare me the endurance of endless time, the torture of perpetuity.’ He was now at their mercy.

‘For pity’s sake, release me!’ he begged.

Tegan could hold out no longer. She turned to the Brigadier. The Brigadier was a professional fighter, but even he could not willingly inflict suffering on a defenceless man. ‘Let him go,’ he ordered.

Nyssa opened the doors and Mawdryn stumbled out of the TARDIS.

Tegan was trembling from the strain of the confrontation. ‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ she said quietly.

‘Keeping him in the TARDIS might have killed him,’

answered the Brigadier.

‘And we can’t be certain he isn’t the Doctor.’

‘Can’t we?’

They all looked at the scanner to see Mawdryn drag himself from the time machine and merge into the shadows of the alien ship.

The Doctor stood beside the obelisk staring disconsolately down into the valley. Earth was certainly an attractive planet — his favourite in fact — but there is nowhere in the Universe, however beautiful, that does not lose its charms when it becomes a place of exile. ‘If only I had some sort of equipment for tracking the TARDIS,’ he muttered to himself.

‘What you need is a homing device.’

The Doctor smiled sardonically at his old friend.

‘Thank you, Brigadier. I forgot you had such a remarkable talent for perceiving the obvious.’

‘I have such an object,’ observed the Brigadier, as inconsequentially as if he referred to a boy-scout’s pocket compass.

‘What did you say!’

‘Tegan gave it to me.’

‘Brigadier that was six years ago. Is it too much to hope that...?’

The Brigadier remained infuriatingly unaffected by the Doctor’s excitement. ‘Never know when something’s going to come in useful.’

‘You mean...’

‘No idea what it was or where it came from.’ For the Brigadier, the sudden remembering merely provided an explanation for the glass ball at the bottom of his junk box.

For the Doctor it was the only chance of making contact with his TARDIS. ‘Brigadier, where is it?’ he shouted, losing all patience.

‘Back in the hut.’

The Doctor was already off down the hill. ‘Hurry, man.

We haven’t a moment to lose!’

There were bits of used string, pitted with sealing wax, carefully unravelled and rewound; a broken alarm clock; a button stick; an old penknife; some clothes coupons; a twisted tube of moustache wax; a gas mask; a pair of nut-crackers; a patent self-stropping razor... and there at the very bottom of a perfectly useless collection of bits and bobs in the rusty ammunition box: the Doctor’s homing device.

The Doctor held it lovingly in his hands. As he made contact with the activator the plaintive bleep brought a boyish grin to his face.

It was a puzzle to the Brigadier how he could so completely have forgotten that on Jubilee Day the same little box of tricks had directed Tegan to the TARDIS on top of the hill.

Once more the sensor was indicating the location of the Doctor’s time-machine.

‘I should have known.’ The Doctor had stopped smiling.

‘You’ve located the TARDIS?’ Till then Turlough had been silent.

‘It’s gone back to the ship.’

The Doctor now had a far clearer picture than the Brigadier of what had happened on 7 June 1977. The wounded creature from the sphere, unable to endure a second journey in the capsule, had needed the TARDIS to return to his ship. Tegan and Nyssa must have gone with him, believing him to be himself – the Doctor.

The Brigadier was equally grim-faced as the Doctor explained the predicament. ‘So Tegan and her friend are marooned in space at the mercy of this
thing
.’

The Doctor wondered fearfully what sort of creature his impersonator could be, who voyaged for so long in such a strange ship.

‘Travelling in a warp ellipse’, he explained to the Brigadier and Turlough, ‘is a form of infinity.’

‘You make him sound like some kind of Flying Dutchman.’

The Doctor stared at the Brigadier. ‘Condemned to sail the Universe for all eternity?’ It was an interesting idea.

‘Nonsense. No one is immortal...’ The Brigadier shivered. ‘Are they?’

But the Doctor had already turned his attention to getting on board the alien’s spacecraft.

‘You can’t use the capsule!’ protested Turlough.