Part 8 (1/2)

'Nyssa... that man in the TARDIS...' She paused to get her breath back. 'I don't think he is the Doctor.'

'But he is is! The transmat process induced a regeneration.'

'What!'

'Don't worry, I know all about regeneration.' The Brigadier, striding purposefully up behind Tegan, spoke like a midwife rea.s.suring a nervous father-to-be. 'I've seen it all before.'

'So have we, and the Doctor almost died.'

'Come on,' said the Brigadier, and disappeared into the TARDIS.

'Who is that person?' asked Nyssa, registering Lethbridge-Stewart for the first time.

'Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, of course. Come on!'

The Brigadier stood in the doorway of the control room and smiled; it was good to be on board again.

A figure in a familiar red coat stood watching the screen on the far side of the console.

'Doctor!' The Brigadier held out his hand.

The man in the Doctor's red coat turned slowly. Tegan and Nyssa, running in behind the Brigadier, screamed.

The injured creature from the transmat capsule had recuperated amazingly. But he was nothing like the Doctor as any of them had ever known him, with his bulging reptilian eyes, his high domed forehead and slimy flesh that crept and quivered like a stranded fish.

They confronted an alien.

5.

Return to the s.h.i.+p It was one of the hottest days of 1983 and the Brigadier was sorely in need of a rest. But the Doctor urged him faster and faster up the hill to the obelisk.

'Don't you see, Brigadier? The TARDIS came to Earth in 1977, and so did the transmat capsule, carrying someone - or something - from the s.h.i.+p in s.p.a.ce.'

'And Tegan and the other girl think - or thought - that it was you?'

The Doctor was losing patience. After all, the man had been in contact with Tegan and Nyssa in 1977 when the alien arrived on the first visit to Earth of the transmat capsule. 'You were there, Brigadier!' He spoke as calmly as he could. 'You tell me!'

The Brigadier recoiled, like a child presented with the dentist's drill. 'No, Doctor! Please don't make me remember!'

'You must! I need to know what happened so I can protect Tegan and Nyssa!'

The Brigadier knew he had failed his old colleague.

'Even if I wanted to I couldn't recall any more.' He wished he could explain the inpenetrable barrier that walled off part of his mind.

The Doctor put a friendly arm on his shoulder. 'We could have reached the cause of your nervous breakdown.'

'Good heavens! Do you think so?'

The Doctor was thinking that an experience which had been traumatic enough to give Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart a nervous breakdown must have been terrible indeed. 'Come on! We've got to get to the capsule before Turlough works out how to operate it. It's the only way I can contact the TARDIS!'

It was beyond the Brigadier's comprehension how a boy from the sixth form could understand the mechanism of a transmat capsule (whatever that might be). But, what was more to the point, neither did he know how he was going to make it to the top of the hill without collapsing in an undignified heap. He struggled to keep up with the Doctor.

The Doctor could already see Turlough kneeling beside the transmitter. They were just in time. He increased the pace, leaving the asthmatic Brigadier behind him.

Turlough had been relieved to discover that the transmitter was not as badly damaged as he had feared. It would be quite possible to cross-patch one or two back-up circuits, subst.i.tute components from the camouflage function for those damaged in the location transmission section and...

'Where did you learn about transmat radiology?'

Turlough had been too engrossed to notice the approach of the Doctor who now stood behind him. He spun guiltily round. But the Doctor was already opening his tool-box from which he selected several pieces of equipment.

The Doctor explained how the police box had materialised in the wrong time-zone as he started work on the broken cylinder. Turlough was amazed that anyone should have such an intuitive understanding of the complex microcircuitry and was fascinated by the Doctor's modifications. Of course, he was trying to contact his TARDIS which was within a few yards of where they were standing, but six years in the past. Surely, contact was impossible? And yet...

Neither Turlough nor the Doctor noticed a panting Brigadier beside them. In normal circ.u.mstances Lethbridge-Stewart would have sent Turlough back to school with a flea in his ear. In fact he said nothing, but stared at the silver sphere between the two trees; it would seem Ibbotson deserved an apology.

Turlough was impressed. The Doctor had arranged for the beam to be reflected off the s.h.i.+p in such a way that, with the warp ellipse absorbing the time differential, it would activate the communications system of the TARDIS in 1977.

'Will it work?' asked the Brigadier bluntly.

'Always the optimist,' sighed the Doctor without looking up.

Turlough grinned. The Doctor went even higher in his estimation.

'By the way, I think this is yours.' The Doctor had been fis.h.i.+ng in his pocket for another tool and the crystal cube had fallen to the ground. He picked it up and threw it at Turlough, who caught it as if it were a red-hot coal.

As he stared compulsively into the translucence, he felt a surge of pa.s.sionate hatred for the young man kneeling in front of the transmitter. The Doctor must be destroyed The Doctor must be destroyed!

'You're not the Doctor!' Tegan challenged the alien in the TARDIS control room.

'You travel with a Time Lord and know nothing of metamorphosis?' Mawdryn was playing a deadly game of bluff. At all costs he must convince the tall Earthman and the two girls that he was the Time Lord.

'It wasn't like this before.' Tegan glared disbelievingly across the console. 'When the Doctor changed, he was human!'

'Is a Gallifreyan human?'

'He was... normal!' She looked in disgust at the features of the creature from the capsule.

Mawdryn had nothing but scorn for the purblind Earthwoman. 'What do you know, prattling child, of the endless changing!' he sneered.

'I know that when the Doctor regenerated he didn't turn into an alien.'