Doctor Who: The Edge of Destruction (4 page)

‘You must surely have some idea where we are, Doctor,’ he said gently.

‘
Where
isn’t as important as
why
, young man,’ the old man said, neatly sidestepping the question. ‘I have to confess that I am somewhat at a loss in this situation. Something like this has never affected the TARDIS before. But every problem has its solution. There must be an answer, there must be!’

‘Perhaps the Fault Locator can tell us?’ suggested Ian. He was referring to a large bank of computers in the control room which monitored and regulated every performance of the TARDIS. If any part of the time-machine was damaged in any way, the Fault Locator would point out the area to be repaired.

The Doctor nodded approvingly and led the way out of the rest room, clicking his fingers as he would if he were calling a pet poodle to heel. Ian bit his lip in an effort to control his temper and followed.

When the two men reached the control chamber Barbara was already there, standing stiffly in the shadows by the Doctor’s ormolu clock, her arms folded in barely concealed irritation. She looked venomously at the Doctor and then turned sulkily away.

The Doctor ignored her, and turned to Ian. You didn’t touch the controls, did you?’ he asked.

‘No,’ said Ian. ‘Something seemed to happen every time we tried to approach one of the control panels. Some sort of electrical discharge, I imagine.’

‘Did you?’ the Doctor asked Barbara. Her stony silence was answer enough.

The Doctor tapped his fingers together. ‘I know Susan wouldn’t touch the controls without my permission...’ He shook his head. ‘I worry about that girl,’ he said, almost talking to himself. ‘This temporary lapse of memory is most disturbing... it’s never happened before. She’s always been a very sensitive child; the shock of the explosion must have been much more traumatic than we thought..

Barbara, who had been staring into space, looked over at Ian. ‘I was thinking...’ she began tentatively. His recent
contretemps
with the schoolteacher already forgotten, the Doctor seized eagerly on her words. ‘Yes. what is it? Anything may help.’

Barbara lowered her eyes to avoid the Doctor’s stare as she said, ‘Well... do you think something might have got inside the Ship?’

‘Pschaw!’ said the Doctor scornfully, responding exactly as Barbara had feared he would. ‘My ship is inviolable, sacrosanct! Nothing, physical or mental can penetrate its exterior defences without my express permission.’

Barbara looked up at the old man, and stared him straight in the eyes. ‘The doors were open,’ she stated flatly.

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ The Doctor’s temper was rising again. ‘Susan said that too when I talked to her; but she must have been hallucinating. The doors cannot open unless the controls are operated. The very idea that they can be forced open by an outside power is preposterous!’

Intrigued by Barbara’s theory, Ian ignored the Doctor, much to the latter’s indignation. ‘What do you mean, something might have got into the Ship?’ he asked her. ‘A man or something?’

Barbara nodded.

‘It’s not very logical, is it?’ chided the Doctor, as though he were berating a rather dull student. ‘Really, Miss Wright...’

‘Or something else...’ continued Barbara. ‘Another intelligence perhaps...’

The Doctor snorted scornfully. ‘As I said, Miss Wright, it’s not very logical, is it?’

‘No, it isn’t—but does it have to be!’ burst out Barbara, angered once again by the Doctor’s lofty attitude. ‘Perhaps I am overreacting to the situation; perhaps I am letting my imagination run away with me. But at least I am trying to come up with some answers. And anyway, what if it isn’t logical? Why don’t you admit that things aren’t always logical? After all we’ve been through—’

The Doctor wagged an admonishing finger at Barbara. ‘Really, Miss Wright,’ he said patronisingly, ‘if you can’t contribute anything useful to our discussions I suggest you—’

‘Well, what do you suggest? You’re being so very high and mighty. You’re supposed to have all the answers. So
you
tell us what’s happening around here. Go on—tell us!’

The Doctor turned away from her. Barbara had touched a raw nerve. ‘I have been very patient with you, Miss Wright,’ he prevaricated. ‘But really, there is no more time for any of your absurd theories.’

Ian attempted to calm the tension which was building up between the Doctor and Barbara. ‘It’s probably only a mechanical fault,’ he said reasonably.

‘Exactly!’ said the Doctor, pleased that at least one of his two ludicrous human companions was showing a little bit of common sense. ‘A mechanical fault, that’s what it must be. But what worries me is that it may be the main power unit. If that is the fault it could cause us quite a bit of trouble. If this is the case I shall have to attend to the TARDIS’s engines.’

He turned back to Ian, once more ill-manneredly ignoring Barbara. ‘Young man, now that Susan is out of action I think that you will have to try and help me with the Fault Locator. It won’t take long.’

Ian nodded but added a word of caution. ‘All right. But I wouldn’t go near the central console if I were you, Doctor. It might give you an electric shock!’

‘What? Oh yes, a very wise piece of advice indeed, Chesterton. Now do come along!’

The Doctor crossed over the floor of the control room towards the unit which held the Fault Locator computer. Before he joined him Ian turned back to Barbara who was standing by the door which led into the other parts of the Ship.

‘I swear I’m going to throttle him one day,’ Barbara said.

Ian smiled. ‘You’ll have to get in the queue.’ he said. ‘Barbara—’

‘Keep an eye on Susan?’

Ian nodded. ‘Don’t tell her about anything being on the Ship,’ he whispered, sounding almost conspiratorial. ‘The less said, the better.’

‘Come along, Chesterton!’ the Doctor called unpatiently from the other end of the control room.

Ian shrugged and went over to join his older companion. Barbara paused for a moment before leaving the room, giving Susan, who had been standing unseen in the doorway, listening, the chance to stride back down the corridor to her room. As she passed through the rest room she quickly picked up the pair of scissors which Ian had relieved her of and placed there earlier. She had heard every word spoken by Ian and Barbara.

Don’t tell her about anything being on the Ship
. So, reasoned Susan in her confused state of mind, something had indeed come aboard the TARDIS. And what was more, Ian and Barbara knew what it was.

The Fault Locator was, in fact, a series of computers and monitors which lined one entire wall of the TARDIS control room. It was separated from the rest of the chamber by a large transparent screen.

Most of the half-light in the control room found its source here; for some reason the strange power loss which affected most of the TARDIS’s instruments did not seem to have influenced the Fault Locator. The only other source of illumination in the room appeared to come from the overhead shaft of light above the time rotor in the centre of the control console.

The Doctor indicated a VDU screen to Ian. ‘Now, young man, what you will see on that screen is a series of letters and numbers. Each one represents a particular piece of instrumentation on board my Ship. Should any of those numbers flash that will mean that that piece of equipment is malfunctioning.’

Ian signalled his understanding and the Doctor punched out a program on the Fault Locator’s computer keyboard. A series of consecutive numbers began to appear before Ian’s eyes.

Ian stared at the digital read-out for ten minutes, his face macabrely illuminated by the emerald green glow of the video screen. Finally every single piece of machinery and instrumentation in the TARDIS had been accounted for. He turned to the Doctor who was expectantly awaiting his report.

‘Well, Chesterton?’ he asked impatiently. ‘What does the Fault Locator say? What’s wrong with my Ship?’

Ian frowned. ‘That’s just the trouble, Doctor,’ he said. ‘According to this nothing at all is wrong with the TARDIS. Every single piece of equipment is functioning perfectly.’

‘Preposterous!’ mocked the Doctor. ‘Our power has been seriously curtailed. According to you and Miss Wright the doors seem to be opening of their own accord. Susan says the Food Machine is malfunctioning. There must be something wrong. Are you sure you’ve read the instruments correctly?’

‘I did exactly what you told me to do, Doctor,’ Ian replied peevishly. ‘Look for yourself if you don’t believe me. I even double-checked the mechanism for opening the doors and for providing food and water. Every single instrument of the TARDIS is in perfect working order—and yet nothing is working. Could there be a malfunction in the Fault Locator itself ?’

The Doctor shook his head.
‘No no no, that’s impossible.
The Fault Locator works on a different system and power source altogether; it has to by its very nature.’ He frowned and scratched his chin. ‘Every single mechanism in the Ship is supposedly functioning perfectly and yet we are suffering this strange power loss. I wonder...’ The Doctor stroked his chin and looked thoughtfully at Ian.

‘Yes, Doctor?’ asked Ian in anticipation.

‘I think that you and I, young man, should go down to the TARDIS’s engine and power rooms,’ he said finally. ‘The Fault Locator is not registering a malfunction on board my Ship, so it will be necessary for us to examine the Ship’s drive mechanisms for ourselves. Are you in agreement?’

Ian frowned, oddly disturbed by the almost eager manner in which the Doctor asked the question. But nevertheless he nodded his head in agreement.

‘Where are the power rooms, Doctor?’ he asked. ‘You’ve never spoken of them before.’

‘Deep down in the very heart of my Ship, Chesterton,’ said the Doctor. ‘They form the very nerve centre of my machine.’

The Doctor left the area of the Fault Locator and crossed the floor of the control chamber. He opened up one of the roundels on the wall to reveal a small storage unit from out of which he took two small oil lamps, similar to the one in Susan’s bedroom. He lit them and passed one to Ian.

‘It will be very dark down there,’ explained the Doctor. ‘These will afford us some light.’

‘Oil lamps?’ asked Ian quizzically. ‘Surely that’s a little primitive?’

‘We have no way of knowing what manner of force is draining away the power from my Ship,’ replied the Doctor. ‘But whatever it is I doubt very much that it can effect something as primitive and simple as the combustion of oil.’

Smiling in spite of himself, Ian followed the Doctor through the open doorway and into the interior of the TARDIS.

The path the Doctor took Ian led him down through long winding narrow corridors, the existence of which he had never before suspected. These passages were even darker than the rest of the Ship, and the light from the oil lamps allowed them to see only a few feet in front of them.

In the darkness, the rhythmic in-out in-out breathing of the life support system seemed even more eerily alive. Ian shuddered, but resisted the urge to share his fears with the Doctor who would only delight in ridiculing his irrational notions.

The Doctor walked down the corridors at a brisk trot, stopping only occasionally to check his way. To Ian it seemed as if the Doctor was trying to lose him in the darkness; for an old man his pace was surprisingly quick and Ian often found himself having to increase his step to catch up with him.

The walls of the corridors were covered with the roundels common to all parts of the TARDIS, and every ten feet or so were interrupted by a closed door. Sometimes they would open one of these doors and enter the corridor beyond it. Ian asked the Doctor where the other doors led to but the Doctor’s only response was a muttered suggestion that he mind his own business. Ian wondered whether the Doctor really did know what lay behind all these locked doors, or for that matter exactly where he was going.

‘Just how far does the TARDIS go on for, Doctor?’ Ian asked after they had been following the same interminable corridor for ten minutes.‘Surely it most have an end somewhere?’

‘The interior dimensions in the Ship are merely relative to the exterior universe, Chesterton,’ said the Doctor as if that explained everything.

Ian shrugged and continued to follow the old man; if the Doctor didn’t want to admit that he didn’t have the faintest idea of what he was talking about, then that was his own affair.

The Doctor was, in fact, being unusually silent, as though he were wrestling with some important issue in his mind. Finally despairing of ever getting any intelligent conversation out of him, Ian contented himself with examining in the flickering light of the oil lamp some of the many items and
objets d’art
which lined the walls.

The Doctor, it seemed, was an avid collector of antiques from every period of history; there were delicate Ming vases from
China
and finely carved baroque chairs from
England
, as well as weird-looking futuristic items which Ian didn’t recognise but supposed came from one of the alien planets the Doctor had visited with his granddaughter. Many were obviously placed there for decoration, but as the two men descended deeper into the TARDIS and the corridors became sparser it was apparent that many others had been left there a long time ago and simply forgotten.

They came to an intersection of four corridors and the Doctor paused, as if he was unsure of which direction to take. While the Doctor deliberated, Ian’s attention was drawn to a pile of five dusty paintings which had been dumped unceremoniously on an old threadbare sofa by the wall.

He bent down to examine them more closely in the light from the oil lamp. Four of them were Italian pastoral scenes, pleasant to look at but showing no great talent. But the fifth one made Ian catch his breath.

It was an arresting portrait of a young handsome courtier; in the bottom right-hand corner was signed the name‘Leonardo’.

Ian whistled with appreciation.‘Doctor, do you realise what you’ve got here?’ he asked incredulously.‘A lost Leonardo like this is absolutely priceless—Doctor? Doctor?’