Doctor Who: The Leisure Hive (8 page)

Hardin looked blank for a moment, then with an effort of will he brought his mind back to ner Question. He mumbled something about the divider circuit automatically dephasing. But in the end the thought of what was happening in the boardroom was too much for him. 'Mena's dying!' he suddenly blurted out. 'There's no way to stop cellular degeneration.' K

'First things first,' Romana replied. She was still studying the apparatus. 'Come on now. Tell me how you lock the phase.'

'I don't!' cried Hardin, 'Don't you understand, I can't! The whole contraption doesn't work.'

'Oh, I know that,' said Romana calmly. 'But what I don't understand is why it doesn't. You see, I think it ought to work.'

Stimson stopped an Argolin Holiday guide in the corridor to enquire about shuttles from the planet.

'All fully booked I'm afraid,' said the Argolin, once he had consulted his wrist computer which carried a permanent update on all shuttle flights and bookings.

'But I must get off Argolis now,' insisted the Terran. 'I have urgent business elsewhere. Isn't there any way—?'

The guide was sorry, but only a priority clearance from the Heresiarch herself could wangle him as an extra passenger aboard a shuttle. 'What do I do then?'

The guide pointed out that it was sometimes possible to take over the booking of another off-worlder who had no use for it.

'Like who?' asked Stimson. Surely all the holidaymakers are booked on specific flights.'

'Indeed,' agreed the guide. 'But we have other visitors, too. Experts of different kinds. Like the Terran accountant, Mr Brock and his friend. They're booked on the shuttle for every flight next week. They just want to make sure they can leave the planet as soon as their work here is complete. Perhaps if you asked him, he would let you use one of his bookings.' Stimson thanked the guide and set about finding his fellow Earthling. He decided it was probably safest to wait for Brock in his room.

Eventually Stimson found a cabin which bore on its door the names of Brock and Klout. He knocked. There was no answer. He tried the handle. It was unlocked. He entered.

The cabin was empty. It was quite palatial. But there was no sign of its occupants. No doubt they were still in the boardroom with Mena.

Having found himself a temporary bolthole, Stimson was loath to leave. He was safe here - for the time being, at any rate. Then an idea occurred to him. Perhaps Brock or Klout had left behind some papers, some kind of authorization he could use to get off this damned planet. Stimson decided to search the place. Brock's room revealed nothing. There were no papers at all. He entered Klout's room, which was even more spartan. Stimson threw open the wardrobe. What he saw brought a scream to his lips. Hanging from a hook in the roof of the wardrobe was a human being. A man.

Or at least the skin of one. The face, the skin covering the skull, and the rest of the body hung in the wardrobe, like an overcoat waiting to be put on. Gingerly Stimson touched the thing. It crackled to the touch as if alive with static electricity. Yet the skin seemed to be made of some soft, plastic material.

It was the skin of Klout the lawyer. And yet it wasn't from any dead body. This skin had never covered a human being. It was merely an envelope. A disguise. But for what?

Stimson didn't wait to find out. He backed out of Klout's room and left the cabin immediately. He decided that he would rather face the Argolin than the creature that used that thing hanging in the wardrobe. He could not imagine what kind of creature it might be.

He was soon to find out.

Once in the lines between the cabins Stimson took to his heels, determined to put as much distance as he could between Brock's cabin and himself. The creature saw him leave the cabin and pursued him swiftly on green, scaly feet. The creature ran down the corridor parallel to Stimson. It could see its prey between the cabins and tents. It moved faster than the Terran, and therefore entered the Great Recreation Hall before him.

It saw, wrapped around on the crystal statues of Argolin heroes, a long woollen object. It was the Doctor's scarf. It was ideal for its purpose. The creature took the scarf betwen two clawed hands and waited, poised behind a pillar.

As Stimson emerged into the Great Hall, the creature launched itself at him. It wrapped the scarf round the Terran's throat and pulled tighter and tighter. One bony knee was thrust into the small of Stimson's back. Desperately, with weakening fingers, the man tore at the scarf which was choking him.

The hourglass was placed in the centre of the six tachyon projectors. The sand was running from the upper vessel of the glass into the lower vessel. 'All right,' said Romana. 'Switch on.'

Hardin slowly fed the power into the projectors. At first nothing happened. The projectors began to glow; the sand continued to run through the hourglass. But when power had built up sufficiently, the hourglass was suddenly surrounded by a nimbus of light. Then a curious thing occurred. The sand began to flow more slowly through the neck of the glass. Until at last it fell into the vessel beneath grain by grain. Then it stopped. A few grains of sand were trapped halfway down, falling into the lower vessel. They floated as if riding on an invisible cloud.

'Perfect,' said Romana. 'Hold it there.'

'Stasis,' declared Hardin.

They both studied the phenomenon.

Looks like it,' agreed Romana. 'You see what we've done is brought
that
time-the time within the hourglass-to a stop. That's all. The question is, can we turn back
that
time to the point where the sand was before it began to fall?'

'Let's try,' suggested Hardin.

So they did —and a circuit burned out.

'I don't understand,' complained Romana.

'Neither do 1,' agreed Hardin. 'In theory this whole apparatus should function perfectly. Yet it doesn't. Why not?'

There's only one way to find out, Hardin. Check back. Check it all over again. And then again-if it still doesn't work. That's one thing I've learned from the Doctor - when to check your facts and when to go on faith alone.

'Now,' she went on, 'is the time to check.'

The Doctor meanwhile had left Mena resting in the boardroom surrounded by Argolin medical orderlies. He had come down to the Great Recreation Hall, determined to investigate the generator while everyone else was occupied.

He studied the diagnostic display panel above the computer console and punched a few keys.

On the panel appeared the words: OVER-RIDE FAIL SAFE. OVER-RIDE FAIL SAFE.

Then the words: ELIMINATE INTRUDER ELIMINATE INTRUDER.

'So that's how it was done,' said the Doctor. 'Fascinating. And most ingenious. All pre-planned.'

'Doctor.'

The Doctor turned round to find that a group had gathered behind him-a group consisting of Pangol, Brock and various guides. They carried a stretcher on which lay the body of Stimson. Wound tightly round the Terran's throat, so tightly his eyes bulged out of their sockets, was the Doctor's scarf. Stimson had been strangled with the Doctor's scarf.

'This is your scarf, isn't it?' asked Pangol.

'Yes,' said the Doctor, 'for the umpteenth time it's my scarf. I've never denied that-not once over the past hour or so.'

They had long since moved back inside the boardroom, but in the course of time the atmosphere had deteriorated considerably. The Doctor was on trial, and the Argolin wanted blood. His, preferably.

'Do you deny that your scarf was the one that throttled Henrick Stimson to death?'

'No,' said the Doctor.

'It was found wrapped round the deceased's neck.'

'Then the scarf is guilty,' snapped the Doctor. 'Arrest it.'

No one was amused.

The Doctor looked round the cold, proud, intent faces of the Argolin who stood beside Mena. They gave the impression of waiting, ready, like good soldiers, to go out and do her bidding. The Doctor had the feeling that no matter what her orders they would obey. Without question, almost without thought. No wonder the Argolin had been the greatest warriors in the Galaxy. He glanced uneasily-up at the great Helmet of Theron which dominated the boardroom, like an ancient curse.

'Let us go over the facts of the case once again,' said Mena in a feeble voice.

They had been working for several hours. Romana had checked every item of equipment and suggested various changed in the micro-circuitry. And now the experiment had reached a crucial phase. The sand in the hourglass hung in mid air: frozen. And yet, as Romana knew, each grain was still in motion, still falling but infinitely slowly. In the space within the hourglass, in the space bounded by the six tachyon projectors, time had been slowed to such a point that a second lasted for a day, an hour for nearly nine weeks.

'Ready?' asked Romana.

'Ready,' said Hardin.

In spite of all the improvements they had made he no longer had any confidence in the equipment. Many times in his experiments he had reached this point where it had seemed he was about to make the vital breakthrough. But at the very moment when he had been on the verge of mastering the flow of Time itself, something had always gone wrong.

'Start the recording now.'

Hardin switched on the recorder.

'I thought the Doctor was going to come down and help us,' he said.

'He was. I don't know where he's got to. I expect .he'll turn up when all the hard work's been done.'

She studied the sand in the hourglass. 'Increase the power slowly,' she ordered. 'And stop when I tell you, A sudden surge might blow everything to pieces.'

Hardin called out the readings on the dials, waiting each time for the figures to stabilize themselves, and then gradually increasing the power flow. The sand in the hourglass remained static, frozen in the act of flowing into the lower vessel of the glass.

At one point Romana noticed a faint blurring of the grains of sand, almost a double image, as if for a fraction of a second there were two flows of sand attempting to occupy the same space.

'Hold it steady,' she called to Hardin while she checked the tachyon projectors.

When she looked again, the blurring had ceased. Each grain of sand hung poised in the throat of the glass, falling with infinite slowness.

Gradually Hardin built up the power.

'Reverse phase!' ordered Romana. 'Now!'

At first there was a slight flurry in the falling sand, as if someone was blowing upon it. Then something very strange occurred. The sand began to flow upwards. It was being sucked into the upper vessel of the glass.

Hardin and Romana watched the hourglass closely.

'We've done it,' he whispered. 'We've turned Time back on itself.'

'You see,' said Romana. 'Your theory's correct, your equipment works, your-experiment is a success. And you haven't had to cheat.'

Hardin grinned. 'Let's go and tell Mena,' he said.

Laughing, they switched off the equipment and left the laboratory. Hardin paused at the door and looked back. The sand still remained in the upper vessel of the hourglass, unaffected by the normal laws of gravity.

'What's wrong?' asked Romana.

'Nothing,' he said. 'Not a thing.'

He closed the door behind them.

Ten minutes after they had gone something happened inside the hourglass. Gravity reasserted itself: the sand suddenly flowed downwards into the lower vessel. In slow motion the upper part of the glass then buckled inwards. As the upper vessel imploded, the lower exploded, scattering sand and shards of glass over the laboratory.

The Doctor was annoyed-and, moreover, bored. Everyone knows the law is an ass. But Argolin justice seemed to have longer ears than most. Certainly it was quite remarkably tedious. As far as the Doctor could see, every Argolin had the right to offer comment, opinion or even actual evidence on the case in question. And it seemed to the Doctor that practically everyone on Argolis was eager to avail him or herself of the opportunity.

'Evidence?' snapped the Doctor irritably as an Argolin worthy offered some particularly tendentious peice of hearsay. 'You surely don't call that evidence, do you? Just a collection of uncorroborated rubbish. Purely circumstantial. Not enough to hang a hat on -let alone me.'

Mena reproved him. 'A murder has been committed,' she said.

'And the murderer found,' observed Brock.

'That has yet to be decided,' said Mena.

Pangol had a suggestion. 'In ancient times,' he announced, 'when the great Theron was alive, he threw a man into a fiery furnace or a lake, and let the elements decide his guilt or innocence.'

But the Doctor wasn't impressed. 'They used to do that on Earth once,' he declared. 'With witches.

Didn't prove anything though-except that some women could swim better than others.

'However if you're absolutely set on that sort of thing,' he added, 'there's an odd-looking blue box parked in the Great Recreation Hall. You could lock me and Romana in it-and see what happens. If it vanishes, we're innocent; if it doesn't we're guilty.'

But unfortunately no one seemed to be interested in the proposition.

By the time Romana and Hardin returned to the boardroom the Doctor's legal position was still no clearer. As owner of the scarf that had strangled Stimson, he still remained chief suspect. But since no one had seen him do the deed and since no one could offer a convincing motive as to why he should want to throttle the Terran to death, the case-such as it was-remained unproven.

Mena greeted the arrival of Romana and Hardin with some relief. Now the ageing process had begun she found it harder and harder to concentrate for any length of time on one subject.

' Romana's solved the wave equations for all four dimensions,' he declared.

Mena looked at him blankly.

'It means that the machine actually can reverse the time flow,' he explained. 'Which means that it can rejuvenate tissue. It could rejuvenate you.'

'Probably,' added Romana, aware that Hardin was making as yet unsubstantiated claims. After all they had not tested the machine with a living organism.