Part 9 (2/2)

For the Doctor it was the only chance of making contact with his TARDIS. 'Brigadier, where is it?' he shouted, losing all patience.

'Back in the hut.'

The Doctor was already off down the hill. 'Hurry, man.

We haven't a moment to lose!'

There were bits of used string, pitted with sealing wax, carefully unravelled and rewound; a broken alarm clock; a b.u.t.ton stick; an old penknife; some clothes coupons; a twisted tube of moustache wax; a gas mask; a pair of nut-crackers; a patent self-stropping razor... and there at the very bottom of a perfectly useless collection of bits and bobs in the rusty ammunition box: the Doctor's homing device.

The Doctor held it lovingly in his hands. As he made contact with the activator the plaintive bleep brought a boyish grin to his face.

It was a puzzle to the Brigadier how he could so completely have forgotten that on Jubilee Day the same little box of tricks had directed Tegan to the TARDIS on top of the hill.

Once more the sensor was indicating the location of the Doctor's time-machine.

'I should have known.' The Doctor had stopped smiling.

'You've located the TARDIS?' Till then Turlough had been silent.

'It's gone back to the s.h.i.+p.'

The Doctor now had a far clearer picture than the Brigadier of what had happened on 7 June 1977. The wounded creature from the sphere, unable to endure a second journey in the capsule, had needed the TARDIS to return to his s.h.i.+p. Tegan and Nyssa must have gone with him, believing him to be himself the Doctor.

The Brigadier was equally grim-faced as the Doctor explained the predicament. 'So Tegan and her friend are marooned in s.p.a.ce at the mercy of this thing thing.'

The Doctor wondered fearfully what sort of creature his impersonator could be, who voyaged for so long in such a strange s.h.i.+p.

'Travelling in a warp ellipse', he explained to the Brigadier and Turlough, 'is a form of infinity.'

'You make him sound like some kind of Flying Dutchman.'

The Doctor stared at the Brigadier. 'Condemned to sail the Universe for all eternity?' It was an interesting idea.

'Nonsense. No one is immortal...' The Brigadier s.h.i.+vered. 'Are they?'

But the Doctor had already turned his attention to getting on board the alien's s.p.a.cecraft.

'You can't use the capsule!' protested Turlough.

'There's no beam.' If he felt any guilt about the damage to the cylinder, he concealed it from the Doctor.

'You're forgetting this.' The Doctor held up his homing device. 'The TARDIS is on board the s.h.i.+p, and this will home in on the TARDIS.'

The Brigadier groaned. Back to the obelisk again!

Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart was the last to reach the top of the hill. Helped by Turlough, the Doctor was already installing the homing device in the navigational unit of the transmat capsule as his exhausted friend stumbled breathlessly through the door of the silver sphere. 'This is the third time today I have yomped up this wretched hill!'

he grumbled.

The Doctor finished his work. 'Good of you to see me off, Brigadier.'

But Lethbridge-Stewart had no intention of letting the Doctor out of his sight. Heaven knows what trouble the man would get into, left to his own devices.

For reasons far more devious than those of the Brigadier, Turlough was determined to stick with the Doctor as well.

'Don't be ridiculous!' protested the Brigadier, who had had quite enough of the precocious young man for one day.

'The Doctor needs my help.'

The Brigadier grunted. There was no denying it, the boy had remarkable skills. He wondered what Mr Sellick was going to say about it all.

The Doctor closed the capsule door.

'How long will the journey take?' The Brigadier braced himself, expecting at any moment to be blasted off the hill like a cannon ball.

The Doctor opened the door again.

The old soldier blinked as he looked out into the control centre of Mawdryn's s.h.i.+p.

As Mawdryn left the unique atmosphere of the TARDIS he felt the strength go out of him. He clawed at the hard, smooth walls of his s.h.i.+p, but there was no resilience to his limbs. He grasped at a pillar, but on contact with the faceted marble his flesh crumbled like fly-blown fungus.

He collapsed slowly to the floor. The Doctor's red coat was already sodden with pus and liquified flesh. Mawdryn moaned at the pain of his dissolution and longed for oblivion. But now he needed the laboratory. He must reach the apparatus. He must go on.

He undulated what remained of his body, and his viscous torso slid slowly forward along the corridor. Every inch of the way was the most appalling agony. He began to fear that time was running out. The girl, Tegan, might take the TARDIS back to Earth, to be reunited with the genuine Time Lord. Never again would there be the chance of an ending. Mawdryn needed help. He turned off the main companionway,.

The unearthly faces gazed haughtily down as Mawdryn slithered into the hall of likenesses. He stopped below the central icon that had so disturbed the Doctor on his first exploration of the s.h.i.+p. With a supreme effort of will he raised himself up towards the frame. 'Mawdryn has returned!' he cried. 'It is time for the awakening. Help me!'

But neither help nor answer came.

Fearing that his frail voice had not reached his comrades in the dormition chamber, Mawdryn called more loudly. 'My brothers, awake. Mawdryn has returned. I have brought to our s.h.i.+p a TARDIS...'

He felt himself weakening. Hope alone gave him the strength to continue. 'The time of our ending is near!' he called.

But the news fell upon deaf ears.

'Help me!' Mawdryn strained again to reach the chamber release, but the effort was beyond him, and with a cry of despair he fell back to the floor.

In the TARDIS control room, the Brigadier, Tegan and Nyssa stared at the screen. There was no sign of any activity in the s.h.i.+p. The Brigadier began to suspect that Tegan had been right about the 'Doctor'. But he could never have imagined that the greatest danger, out there in the s.h.i.+p, was himself; for it would have been beyond the comprehension of the common-sense military man in the control room that he could ever meet up with his own person - some six years older.

'Right!' The Brigadier turned to the doors. 'Time for a recce. I think we should keep an eye on this character.'

'I'm coming with you.'

'You girls are staying here.'

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