Part 5 (1/2)

Tegan and Nyssa knelt beside him. They could hardly hear his desperate whisper.

'Take me... take me...'

'Doctor?'

'Take me into... the TARDIS!'

It was an excruciating journey. Though only a few yards separated the police box from the transmat capsule, it was nearly an hour before the injured man, supported by Tegan and Nyssa, was brought into the control room.

As he pa.s.sed through the doors, he panted like a creature long starved of air that has just been fed pure oxygen, then sunk to the floor, worn out by the pain of the transfer.

'It's too risky to move him again. Go and find some blankets. We must keep him warm,' cried Tegan.

As Nyssa ran into the corridor, Tegan leaned over the body. 'It's all right, Doctor. You're safe inside the TARDIS.' She felt for his hand to comfort him.

'Something must have happened to the transmat capsule,' said Nyssa, returning with some blankets and an a.s.sortment of the Doctor's clothes.

'I told you those things were dangerous,' complained Tegan bitterly as she tried to make the patient comfortable.

'That boy!' cried Nyssa suddenly.

'Turlough!'

In their concern for the Doctor they had both forgotten that he had not gone into the capsule alone.

As Tegan rushed off to search the sphere again, Nyssa knelt beside the injured man who began to regain consciousness.

'Stability not achieved... transmat projection destructive... stability not achieved.' He rambled on deliriously, then cried out like a child in a bad dream. 'No end! No end!' He swooned again.

Nyssa watched over the body until Tegan returned.

'No sign of Turlough.'

Nyssa was very quiet. She realised the boy had none of the resilience of a Time Lord. She looked gravely at her fellow companion. 'He could have been atomised.'

As they walked through the school grounds the Doctor tried to find out from the Brigadier what had happened since they last met that had caused his old friend to treat him like a complete stranger.

'Is this an undercover operation, Brigadier? I mean I hardly expected to find you at a boys' school.'

The Brigadier grunted politely, but no information was forthcoming.

They came to a halt beside a large clapboard shed at the rear of the old stables, which the Doctor a.s.sumed to be the scout hut until the Brigadier indicated they should go inside.

'Oh dear,' thought the Doctor. 'Accommodation, Brigadier, for the use of.' That his old friend should have come to this! 'Your quarters?' he asked, in a voice that suggested they had arrived at Buckingham Palace.

His irony was not lost on the Brigadier. 'Perfectly serviceable,' he grumbled, and led the way in.

The Brigadier's hut was hardly the cosy billet the Doctor would have expected of the old soldier. Even before he saw the disarray, he could smell the damp walls, unaired clothes and abandoned was.h.i.+ng-up. It was the usual self-imposed squalor of a bachelor brought up to believe that domesticity can only be provided by a servile member of the opposite s.e.x; but very untypical of Lethbridge-Stewart.

The Brigadier had let himself go. He had always been such a stickler for neatness, discipline and apple-pie order; yet the present owner of the hut was untidy, disorganised and a stranger to the vacuum-cleaner.

As the Brigadier busied himself making a cup of tea in the tiny kitchenette, the Doctor picked up a photograph from the cluttered desk. It was his former colleague in full dress uniform. How different the spruce, military figure of a mere eight years ago from the ageing eccentric spooning Typhoo into a cracked teapot.

The Brigadier turned from the gas ring. 'So what's all this about UNIT?'

'Brigadier, I need your help. I've lost the TARDIS.'

'I don't know what the TARDIS is. I've already told you.'

'And you don't remember me?'

'Certainly not. But whoever you are, I can't let you wander round blabbing about cla.s.sified operations.'

'There's more at stake than a breach of security.' The Doctor abandoned the tone of good-humoured banter. He spoke urgently to his old friend. 'I've lost my TARDIS and you've lost your memory. I'd be surprised if the two events weren't connected.'

The Brigadier glared defiantly. 'Doctor, I am in full possession of all my faculties.' A raw nerve had been touched. 'If I were suffering from amnesia I'd be the first to know about it!' he snapped.

The Doctor said no more until the Brigadier had brought through the tray of tea things and they were sitting together on the sagging horsehair sofa. 'By the way,'

he asked casually. 'How's Sergeant Benton these days?'

If the Brigadier wondered how his guest knew about UNIT personnel he didn't say so. 'Left the army in '79,' he replied, equally matter-of-fact. 'Sells second-hand cars somewhere.'

'And Harry Sullivan?'

'Seconded to NATO. Last heard of doing something very hush-hush at Porton Down.'

The tea brewed silently.

'Ever see anything of Jo Grant?' said the Doctor in a vague sort of way.

'What?'

'Jo Grant. My a.s.sistant!' The Doctor lobbed the rider like a grenade.

'Jo Grant...' muttered the Brigadier, disturbed and confused.

'Sarah Jane?' The Doctor pressed on. 'Liz Shaw you'll remember, of course.'