Doctor Who: The Edge of Destruction (10 page)

‘The column!’ cried Susan and pointed to the centre of the control console.

All eyes looked at the time rotor which throughout their ordeal had remained motionless. The complex circuitry within it flashed momentarily and the column itself slowly rose, and then fell back jerkily, stationary again.

‘Impossible!’ murmured the Doctor to himself. He was visibly shaken.

‘Doctor, I thought the column moved when the power was on and we were in flight,’ said Ian.

The Doctor nodded. ‘That is correct. The very heart of the TARDIS lies directly beneath that column.’

‘So what made it move?’

‘The source of power,’ explained the Doctor. ‘The column serves to weigh down and hold that power in check. When the column rises it proves the extent of the power thrust.’

‘Then what would have happened if the column had come out completely?’ asked Barbara nervously.

‘The power would be free to escape...’ said Susan slowly, as she realised the horrific implications. The Doctor stared fascinated at the now motionless column. Compared to this, all the other malfunctions of the TARDIS were just minor irritations. This was much more serious. If the power beneath the column was indeed trying to escape...

‘Can it be possible that this is the end?’ he said aloud to himself.

‘The end?
What are you talking about?’ asked Ian.

The Doctor turned and looked sombrely at his three companions. He put a protective arm around Susan’s shoulder.

‘I believe that the power which drives my machine is attempting to escape.’

‘But that’s impossible!’ protested Ian fiercely, willing himself not to believe the Doctor. ‘We checked the power rooms; everything there was fine.’

The Doctor nodded. ‘Nevertheless that is the only explanation,’ he said, and continued as if he were addressing a lecture hall of disinterested students: ‘The build-up of power will swiftly increase until the surge will be so great that the weight of the time rotor will not be able to contain it.’

‘Can you be certain?’ asked Barbara weakly.

‘As certain as I can be about anything,’ said the Doctor.

He looked meaningfully at each of his companions, and announced: ‘According to the readings from the Fault Locator we have precisely fifteen minutes in which to survive, or to find an escape from our situation.’

‘Fifteen minutes...’ echoed Ian disbelievingly. He felt oddly detached, as though he were somewhere else, looking down on himself being delivered this cruel sentence of death. ‘As little as that?’

‘Maybe less...’ replied the Doctor. ‘And now I suggest that we do not waste any more time.’

Leaving his companions standing shocked and speechless, the Doctor crossed over to the control console.

‘Be careful, Doctor,’ urged Ian, fearful lest the Doctor should receive a shock or something even worse. ‘Remember what happened last time.’

The Doctor waved the schoolmaster’s concern aside. ‘It’s quite safe, Chesterton,’ he reassured him. ‘This is where I stood when I tried the scanner switch.’

Barbara
who had moved a little way off from her fellow travellers and had been examining the melted clockface thoughtfully, suddenly spoke up. ‘Yes... the rest of the control console is electrified. Only that one control panel is perfectly safe. Why should that be?’

‘Is that really so important just now, Miss Wright?’ asked the Doctor, a little of his former impatience returning.

‘Barbara, what do you mean?’ asked Ian and looked curiously over at her. He recognised the expression on Barbara’s face. It was the same look on many of his pupils’ faces when a particularly difficult physics equation suddenly became clear for them: that peculiar mixture of understanding, delight, and amazement that they could have been so stupid for so long.

But Barbara heard neither Ian nor the Doctor. Instead she looked wonderingly around the control room, and for the first time noticed that the solitary shaft of light which bathed the control console did not, in fact, shine centrally down onto the console. Rather it slanted down onto that one particular panel, the panel which contained the scanner switch.

The two major sources of illumination in the control chamber were that beam, and the maddeningly flashing lights from the Fault Locator. She sniffed incredulously to herself and then, frowning, looked at the melted clockface and the shattered remains of her own wristwatch in the corner of the room. She remembered the sequence of images on the scanner, the opening of the exit doors, the strange, poltergeist-like events in the laboratory which prevented her from destroying herself...

In the darkness of the control room a light was beginning slowly to dawn in Barbara’s mind. She told herself not to be so silly. To apply some logic to the situation.

But things aren’t always logical, are they?

Surely it couldn’t be? But yes! It was almost as if someone was trying to tell them something...

Susan at her grandfather’s side was finding it difficult to hold back the tears. ‘We’re not going to stop it in time, are we, Grandfather?’ she moaned disconsolately.

The Doctor shook his head as he cast despairing eves over the controls and hugged his granddaughter closer. ‘I don’t even know where to begin, child,’ he admitted disarmingly. ‘I wish I could offer you more hope but I am at a complete loss. The problem seems to he beyond all logical argument...’ He clicked his tongue in irritation. ‘If only I had some sort of clue...’

‘Perhaps we’ve been given nothing else
but
clues...’

Everyone turned to look at Barbara.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Ian. ‘Like the food machine registering empty when it wasn’t?’

‘Yes,’ said Barbara slowly as she tried to sort out into some sort of sense the crazy thoughts which were whirring around in her head. ‘But the clock is the most important of all—it made us aware of time.’

‘By taking time away from us?’ asked Susan excitedly, remembering her grandfather’s words and strangely intrigued by Barbara’s theory.

The schoolteacher nodded. ‘And it replaced time by the regular flashing light on the Fault Locator...’

‘Yes, it did...’ said Ian, slowly beginning to see what Barbara was getting at. He felt a thrill of excitement down his spine.

‘It?
It?’ snapped the Doctor irritably. ‘What do you mean? Who is giving us all these clues?’

‘The TARDIS?’ ventured Barbara.

‘My machine cannot think,’ countered the Doctor automatically.

The truth was that the Doctor was so convinced of his own superiority he had never before even considered the matter.

Barbara, who realised how absurd the proposition would sound to someone as logically-minded as the Doctor, tried to soften the idea. ‘But the Ship does have a built-in defence mechanism, doesn’t it?’ she asked reasonably.

‘Yes.’

‘Well, that’s where we’ve all been wrong all this time. Originally it wasn’t the TARDIS that was at fault, it was
us
. We’ve all been so busy accusing each other, and defending ourselves from each other, that we were ignorant of the real danger. And the TARDIS—or the defence mechanism, whichever you like to call it—has been trying to tell us so ever since!’

The possibility fascinated Ian. ‘A machine that can observe, and think for itself... Is that feasible, Doctor?’

‘Think, as you or I think, Chesterton, that is certainly impossible,’ maintained the Doctor. ‘But to think as a machine... yes, that is a fascinating theory. I must admit to you that there are aspects of my machine which I still don’t yet fully understand... Yes, yes, it is possible!’

‘We didn’t know it but the TARDIS has, of all things, been looking after us!’ said Barbara. ‘When Ian got lost in the corridors the TARDIS guided him to the Doctor: when he was trapped in that airless room, it was the TARDIS who unlocked the door for him. It even frightened me half out of my wits in the laboratory and in doing so saved my life!’

‘But even if that is so, how can it help us out of our predicament?’ the Doctor asked eagerly, for the first time in his life asking someone else’s advice.

‘You said that the power is stored underneath the column,’ continued Barbara. ‘What would want to make it escape?’

The Doctor shrugged. ‘I’ve been racking my brains. I simply do not know.’

‘Something outside?’ suggested Ian.

‘Possibly.’

‘A magnetic forcer

‘It would have to be a strong one to affect the TARDIS,’ said the Doctor, ‘one at least as strong as that of an entire solar system, probably even a galaxy—’

As if in affirmation the lights of the control chamber flashed up once more, momentarily blinding them, and the same sonorous clang they had heard before resounded throughout the control room.

‘You see!’ cried Barbara triumphantly. ‘The TARDIS has been trying to warn us all along! The lights in Ian’s room waking him up when the Doctor was about to operate the electrified controls. His door being unlocked when he had locked it... All those blackouts we had!’

‘Yes! But only if we went near the control column!’ said Susan.

‘They could have been the result of the power escaping,’ reasoned Ian.

‘No, they couldn’t,’ stated the Doctor definitely. ‘If you had felt the full force of the TARDIS’s power, dear boy, you wouldn’t be here now to speak of it. So great is the power that you would have been blown to atoms in seconds. Besides, a part of the console is safe...’

‘But why should just that one panel be safe, and nowhere else?’ wondered Barbara. ‘What’s so special about it? And what did those pictures we saw on the scanner mean? Could it have been some kind of message? Was the TARDIS actually trying to tell as something in the only way it could?’

Again the lights of the control room flashed, and the chamber resounded with a clang of affirmation. The Doctor was silent for a moment and looked around, not at Susan, Ian and Barbara but rather at the walls and the instrumentation of the TARDIS. There was a look of wonderment in his steel-blue eyes.

‘Very well,’ he said finally, ‘we will try the scanner again—but I warn you, we’re clutching at straws.’ He turned to Barbara and Susan. ‘Now, I want you two to stand by the doors. Should they open again I want you to tell me whatever it is you can see outside. Do you understand?’

The girls nodded and crossed over to the large double doors. The Doctor beckoned Ian surreptitiously over to his side by the control console. There was a worried frown on his face. He drew Ian close to him so that only he would hear what he was about to say.

‘I lied deliberately so they won’t know,’ he confided to Ian in a hushed whisper.

‘Won’t know what?’

‘We do not have fifteen minutes left to us; we only have ten. When the end does come Susan and Miss Wright won’t know anything about it.’

Ian nodded approvingly. Strangely he no longer felt any panic or fear, merely a calm and resigned acceptance of the facts. ‘There’s no hope then?’ he asked.

The Doctor shook his head. ‘I can’t see any,’ he replied. ‘If only we had heeded these warnings earlier, or stopped bickering among ourselves perhaps... But now, I’m afraid not. Will you face it with me?’

‘What are you two talking about?’ Susan called from the other end of the room.

‘Oh, just a theory of mine which didn’t work,’ lied Ian.

‘Yes, we must solve this problem, you know..
‘ said the Doctor with affected confidence. ‘Now you two just watch the doors and we’ll be out of this mess in no time...’

With a trembling hand the Doctor operated the scanner control. All eyes were fixed anxiously on the scanner screen.

For a heart-stopping few seconds, which to the four doomed travellers seemed Like hours, nothing happened. Ian and the Doctor looked nervously at each other. Had even the scanner screen with its strange sequence of images broken down too? Then finally—thankfully—the screen on the far wall flickered into life. Once again the picture of the
Malvern Hills
appeared, accompanined by the sound of birdsong. The Doctor and Ian looked expectantly over at Barbara and Susan by the doors. Slowly the doors opened, and the same searing white light flooded the control room once more.

Shielding their eyes from the glare Barbara and Susan peered out through the open doors.

‘There’s nothing there, Grandfather, nothing at all!’ cried Susan, a touch of hysteria in her voice. ‘It’s just a wide, gaping, empty void!’

Slowly the doors closed again and thudded shut. They all looked at the screen. As they expected, it was now showing a picture of the jungle world of Quinnius. Barbara and Susan came over to join the two men.

‘Barbara could be right, Doctor, it could be some sort of messsage,’ said Ian.

‘I
am
right!’ retorted Barbara. ‘You know I am. When the scanner shows us a good picture like the Malverns the doors open because it should be safe for us to go outside. Then it shows us a terrible picture and the doors close again.’

‘But if it is a message what does this mean?’ asked the Doctor and pointed to the scanner, where the picture of Quinnius had faded to be replaced by the unidentified planet turning in space. ‘After Earth and Quinnius we have this sequence: a planet; a planet in a solar system, getting further and further away; and then a blinding flashing light!’

‘And total destruction,’ added Barbara, and turned her eyes away from the glare of the scanner screen. ‘Unless...’ She drew her companions’ attentions to the closed double doors. ‘If I’m right, the doors are shut because what is outside now is hostile to us... Were the other pictures just clues? Could that picture on the scanner now be what’s outside the Ship? Could that be the danger?’

The Doctor’s eyes suddenly blazed with understanding. He clapped his hands together in satisfaction. ‘Of course!’ he cried triumphantly. ‘It’s all clear to me now: the pictures on the screen, everything! It’s our journey—our journey to destruction!’

‘Hang on,’ said Ian. ‘You mean to say that we are heading on a course straight to that explosion?’ ‘Yes,’ said Barbara. ‘And the TARDIS refused to destroy itself—so the defence mechanism stopped the Ship and it’s been trying to tell us so ever since!’