Part 10 (1/2)

'We girls,' bristled Tegan, 'are perfectly capable of...'

'You will both remain in the TARDIS! And that is an order, Miss Jovanka,' he added as he left the control room, in case Tegan had forgotten that both Brigadiers and schoolmasters should be obeyed without question.

'Chauvinist pig!' muttered Tegan under her breath.

'Good Heavens!' muttered the Brigadier as he stepped out of the TARDIS; he had never seen such luxury in a s.h.i.+p before.

'Good heavens!' exclaimed an older Lethbridge-Stewart as he walked with the Doctor and Turlough along the corridor from the control centre. 'Such luxury!'

'It's not an ordinary s.h.i.+p, Brigadier.'

The old soldier snorted. Ostentation of this sort did not meet with his approval.

As they continued into the body of the vessel, the Brigadier felt a p.r.i.c.kling sensation on his wrists and the back of his neck. Static electricity, he concluded, without inquiring whether the other two had also experienced the phenomenon.

He was not to know that his younger self was, at that same moment, exploring a parallel corridor. As the younger Brigadier moved away into a side pa.s.sage, the Doctor's gruff companion from 1983 noticed that the tingling had stopped.

So had the Doctor. He looked round as if admiring the decor.

'Doctor, we're supposed to be looking for the TARDIS.

Your friends could be in danger.'

The Doctor shook his head. 'The creature will have left the TARDIS. He'll need his own life-support systems.' He continued to examine the walls. 'Somewhere there must be...' He caught sight of a small companionway leading off the main corridor. 'I don't remember that!' He turned back to Turlough. 'Find the TARDIS and stay with Tegan and Nyssa. Brigadier, I want you to come with me.' He hurried the older man into the narrow side-pa.s.sage, leaving Turlough alone again on the alien s.h.i.+p.

Turlough hoped that the Doctor was not walking into a trap... But that was ridiculous. The Doctor must be destroyed The Doctor must be destroyed.

Yet without the Doctor's help, how could he ever free the s.h.i.+p from the warp ellipse? He felt very confused.

He reached for the cube. Since his purpose was now evil, his guide must be the Black Guardian. As he held the crystal he cringed at his own weakness and inadequacy in the service of his new master. 'It's not my fault the Doctor was able to home in on the TARDIS,' he pleaded.

The crystal was lifeless in his hand.

'Can you hear me?'

There was no stinging rebuke or diabolical resa.s.surance.

'There's not much I can do with the Brigadier around...

Answer me!' he cried.

But there was no answer. Rejected and afraid, Turlough moved into the darkness.

A bulkhead sealed the end of the side pa.s.sage. 'A dead end,' thought the Brigadier. But the Doctor was already fingering the ornamentation around the edge of the door.

There was a click and the door slid sideways.

The room they entered was unlike anywhere else in the s.h.i.+p; functional, unembellished, cold as a mortuary.

'Some kind of a laboratory,' muttered the Brigadier. 'Or could it be an operating theatre?' He could make nothing of the sinister machinery.

Not so the Doctor. 'A metamorphic symbiosis regenerator!' He moved excitedly to a large piece of apparatus in the centre of the room.

The Brigadier thought longingly of the safe, comfortable technology of his old Humber; but he was far from the world of vintage cars and A-level maths.

'Used by the Time Lords in cases of acute regenerative crisis,' continued the Doctor after a cursory examination of the machine.

'Then what's it doing there?'

The same question was worrying the Doctor. 'It must have been stolen from Gallifrey!' He turned, grim-faced, to the Brigadier. 'Someone on this s.h.i.+p has been trying to regenerate.'

'The injured creature that Tegan thought was you?'

The Doctor leaned over the regenerator. 'This would explain the mutation.'

'Where is he now?' The Brigadier looked anxiously out into the empty pa.s.sage. 'Perhaps he didn't make it in time.

Collapsed somewhere. Even dead?'

'Or undead undead, Brigadier!'

In the course of his military career the Brigadier had faced danger many times, but as he pictured that deformed creature at large on the s.h.i.+p a potential enemy that could never be killed his blood ran cold. He thought once again of the legend of the Flying Dutchman.

'Look at this, Brigadier!' The Doctor indicated several pieces of trunking, each terminating in a frame mounted with a complicated set of electrodes, that connected with the metamorphosis machine. 'Eight of them!' he whispered ominously.

The old soldier was none the wiser.

'Somewhere on this s.h.i.+p, Brigadier, there are seven more creatures!'

Turlough could never explain what had prompted him to linger in the Hall of the Likenesses. He stood in the side gallery, mesmerised by the bland faces. As he moved a step forward, he could have sworn the eyes of the central icon blinked. He gazed at the portrait... And back at Turlough stared the Black Guardian. Turlough gasped at the sudden transformation.

'While the Doctor is alive, I am never far from you, Turlough.'

'I'm sorry. I wasn't to know the Doctor had a homing device.' He began to tremble.

'Whimpering boy! Do you not understand! Everything now works towards the total humiliation of the Time Lord.' The Black Guardian smiled. 'You have done well.'

Turlough tried to stop himself shaking.

'Give me your hand.'