Part 1 (2/2)

Faster and faster they roared along the narrow country lane, Ibbotson gibbering with anxiety, Turlough laughing from sheer exuberance.

'Turlough, slow down!' pleaded Ibbotson.

Turlough accelerated.

'You're on the wrong side of the road!' screamed his friend.

With total disregard for what lay ahead, Turlough turned to relish the terror of his pa.s.senger. 'This car's a cla.s.sic. Isn't that what you said, Hippo?' he shouted mockingly.

'Look out!'

Had he been watching ahead, Turlough would have spotted the van sooner. As Ibbotson cried out, the van driver hooted and Turlough realised he was on the verge of a head-on collision.

The van driver jammed on his brakes, veering sharply to his right, but not in time to avoid giving the Humber a sharp blow, which sent it helplessly out of control, straight towards the hedge.

Turlough was wide awake, confused by the unearthly light that surrounded him. He was floating in an enormous candyfloss of cloud. It was all strangely comforting. Even when he looked down and saw the improbable panorama below, he felt a detached sense of curiosity rather than surprise or alarm.

Turlough looked more closely. There was no doubt about it; the boy lying on the ground below him was undoubtedly himself.

He had a birds-eye view of the field where the car had crashed. He could see it now, half on its side, oil seeping from the broken sump. His body lay a few feet away, unconscious, obviously thrown clear by the impact.

Ibbotson stood near-by looking pretty sick, and being talked at by the Head. Trust Ibbotson to escape without a scratch.

He looked further afield. A panda car had pulled up in the lane and a policeman was taking a statement from the van driver. A battered Range Rover screeched to a halt. He recognised the man scrambling out as Doctor Runciman, who hurried across the field to the unconscious figure beside the Humber.

But, if the boy being examined by the school doctor was Turlough, what was he he - who was also Turlough - doing up in the clouds? - who was also Turlough - doing up in the clouds?

He turned away from the view below. Beside him stood a man in black. 'Who are you?' said Turlough.

'Your Guardian,' said the man.

Turlough looked down once more at the scene below and then again at the stranger. 'What is this place?'

The stranger smiled.

'Am I dead?'

'No,' said the dark stranger.

Turlough thought for a moment. 'I don't think I would really care if I were dead. I hate Earth.'

The man in black smiled again. 'You wish to leave?'

'Is it possible?'

'All things are possible.'

'Then get me away from here!'

The man in black, who called himself Guardian of the boy, was well pleased. But there was no love in the smile that he now gave his protege. 'First we have to discuss terms.'

Turlough could never remember exactly what then transpired in that strange nowhere. He knew only that a terrible pact was made between himself and the man in black, and that when he felt drawn back again to the Earth below and had despaired in his heart at the prospect of life again on that planet, the man who called himself his Guardian had cried out, 'Do you agree?' and he, Turlough, had answered, 'Yes!'

The boy lying unconscious beside the twisted wreckage of the old car groaned.

'He's been lucky,' said Doctor Runciman, turning to the Headmaster as he finished his examination. 'No bones broken. Just slight concussion.'

'It's a wonder they weren't both killed.'

Turlough groaned again.

'He's coming round.'

Turlough opened his eyes. The faces of Doctor Runciman and the Headmaster swam mistily into view. He felt a paralysing sense of doom. He began to mutter deliriously.

'Steady on, old chap. You've had a bit of a knock.'

But it was no fear of Runciman or Mr Sellick that chilled the boy's heart; he had just vowed to kill one of the most evil creatures in the Universe.

As soon as Turlough had been carried to Doctor Runciman's Range Rover and was on his way back to school, the Headmaster turned his attention to the crashed car. 'What's the damage your end, Brigadier?'

Two brogue shoes and legs clad in cavalry twill protruded from under the twisted Humber. Their owner continued his unseen examination of the car, though not without casting certain aspersions on the inmates of Brendon School. 'In thirty years of soldiering I have never encountered such destructive power...' There was a glimpse of harris tweed as the speaker began to crawl from under the cha.s.sis, '... as I have seen displayed in a mere six years of teaching, by the British Schoolboy!' A greying, military figure drew himself up to his full height. 'It's occasions like this that justify the return of capital punishment,' growled the old soldier.

It was Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart.

2.

A New Enemy.

To the boys of Brendon School, the Brigadier was just part of the fixtures and fittings, like Matron's dreaded cascara or the Headmaster's smelly Dobermann. They knew nothing of his distinguished career with UNIT, the top-secret security organisation, and would certainly have been amazed, had they known, that the blimpish but kindly a.s.sistant master was for many years the friend and colleague of a Time Lord from Gallifrey.

It was a long time now since the Doctor and the Brigadier had met. Yet, on that summer's day in 1983, there was one thing that united them. While, at Brendon School, the Brigadier surveyed the wreckage of his beloved Humber, far out in s.p.a.ce the Doctor was a.s.sessing the damage to a broken-down TARDIS (of which he was equally fond).

Without warning a savage and unfamiliar alarm had sounded on the console, at which moment all temporal and spatial progress had come to a shuddering halt.

Tegan and Nyssa picked themselves up from the corner of the control room where they had been thrown by the violence of the emergency stop. They both felt in need of rea.s.surance after the sudden jolting, but there was no point in talking to the Doctor - already at work on the console as the continuing shriek of the claxon made communication impossible.

The silence, when the alarm was finally switched off, was a relief in itself. The Doctor turned from the systems panel. 'Warp ellipse cut-out,' he announced casually, and began to pull the whole circuit board apart.

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