Part 10 (2/2)

The boy would as willingly have offered his arm to a hooded cobra.

'Give me your hand. There is nothing to fear.'

The Black Guardian vanished the moment his fingers touched the likeness, and the whole frame swung back to reveal a hidden room. Turlough stepped into the chamber.

It felt as though he had entered a charnel-house. As his eyes grew accustomed to the light he became aware of seven shadowy figures, like corpses in their winding sheets, laid out against the walls. He peered at the sepulchral shapes; each shroud he saw to be a set of rich clothes, as sumptuous as the fabric of the s.h.i.+p itself. Each of the robes, he supposed, must enclose a dead man. But why had the Black Guardian sent him to open up a tomb?

There was a soft wheezing, as if an old man had began to snore. It came again; and again. Turlough realised that each cadaverous occupant of the chamber was struggling to draw air into his lungs; somehow the opening of the door had brought the creatures to life. He was paralysed with fear.

The hooded things began to stir. Bodies flexed under velvet cloaks; twisted arms started to tear off their sheaths and flail in the empty air around the terrified boy. The creature nearest Turlough lifted a claw-like hand and tore the cloth from his face. For a full five seconds, Turlough faced the hideous, gasping mutant, then screamed, and fled.

The resurrected corpse that had sent Turlough scuttling away down the corridor focused its sunken eyes on the open door. 'Mawdryn has returned,' it announced to its fellow sleepers.

'Does he bring hope of our ending?' came the reply.

The Brigadier couldn't wait to get out of the laboratory.

There was something very disturbing about all those sterile, white panels with their inset dials and switches, and those tortuous electrodes.

But the Doctor was still examining the regenerator.

'There've been some very cunning modifications.. A vicious buzzing emanated from the centre of the machine as the Doctor moved one of the switches.

'That all looks highly dangerous,' warned the Brigadier.

'Quite right,' agreed the Doctor. 'It could do very nasty things to a genuine Time Lord.'

'Listen!' The Brigadier had heard the sound of a voice in the corridor. Or was it only the echo of the machinery the Doctor had set in motion? He moved quietly into the connecting pa.s.sage to investigate, leaving the Doctor alone with the regenerator.

'Doctor? Doctor?' A younger, sprucer Lethbridge-Stewart advanced slowly along the main companionway. He was fairly confident, now, that the wounded man he was searching for was an imposter, but it would do no harm to give him the benefit of a little more doubt. 'Doctor!' he called again, pausing beside the small pa.s.sage to the laboratory.

It was odd for someone as observant as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart not to notice the narrow entrance, but he was distracted by the increase in static electricity; the tingling on the back of his neck had returned.

Mawdryn moved silently as he writhed and wriggled towards the laboratory. As soon as he regained consciousness he had sensed the presence of more outsiders. Perhaps the Time Lord had come in search of his TARDIS.

Without the help of his fellow mutants, his progress was desperately slow, but he was not far now from the regenerator.

Had Mawdryn arrived a moment sooner at the approach to the laboratory, he would have been amazed to see two two Brigadiers: one dressed in military blazer and tie who stood ma.s.saging his neck; the other a fatter, older man in a tweed jacket who appeared from the direction of the lab, a split second too late to catch sight of his other self at the junction, as the younger Lethbridge-Stewart moved off along the main corridor. Brigadiers: one dressed in military blazer and tie who stood ma.s.saging his neck; the other a fatter, older man in a tweed jacket who appeared from the direction of the lab, a split second too late to catch sight of his other self at the junction, as the younger Lethbridge-Stewart moved off along the main corridor.

The senior Brigadier scratched his wrists which had begun to tingle again. He stepped forward and looked up and down the main companionway. The old soldier was sure someone was calling, further along the corridor. He followed the sound.

'Are you there, Brigadier?' The Doctor hurried from the narrow side-pa.s.sage and peered into the corridor. How annoying of old Lethbridge-Stewart to wander off. He must have gone ahead to look for the TARDIS. The Doctor checked his bearings; the police box must be somewhere down there...

As Mawdryn squirmed forward he sensed the aura of the Time Lord whom he could dimly see hurrying away down the corridor. He dragged himself, like a slug, into the side pa.s.sage and towards the laboratory.

One of the memories that had come flooding back to the old Brigadier was that UNIT's former scientific advisor should not be trusted on his own. Lethbridge-Stewart was therefore reluctant to leave the Doctor tinkering with that diabolical machine, and since there was no way he could follow the mystery voice without getting hopelessly lost, he retraced his steps to the laboratory.

'Doctor, we must move on!'

The regenerator was humming even more ferociously than before, but there was no sign of the Doctor. 'Now where's he gone?'

'Brigadier!'

The Brigadier was on the point of leaving when he heard the guttural whisper from the floor behind the machine. He took a step forward. There was another croak, and he looked down.

'Help me, Brigadier!'

The Brigadier's stomach heaved. He had never seen so mutilated and deformed a face that was part of a living creature. But he had seen the coat before, stained though it was with gore and suppuration. It belonged to the Doctor.

6.

Rising of the Undead Tegan and Nyssa were bored with waiting in the TARDIS.

'I'm going after the Brigadier,' decided Tegan. 'But he told us to stay here.'

'We're not in the Army!'

'You could get lost.'

'Stay here if you want to. I want to find the Doctor. The real Doctor.'

'Does this one qualify?'

The two girls spun round, amazed and delighted at the familiar figure in the doorway.

'Where's Turlough?' asked the Doctor, who had expected to find him already in the TARDIS.

'You brought that boy with you?'

'And the Brigadier, but it seems I've lost both of them.'

'How could the Brigadier have been with you. He came with us?'

The Doctor looked at Tegan, unable to believe what he had just heard. 'How could you be so stupid!' he shouted.

The worst had happened. Two Lethbridge-Stewarts, the same man but drawn concurrently from 1977 and 1983, were both at large on the s.h.i.+p. At any moment they risked the appalling and unpredictable consequences of the Blinovitch Limitation Effect.

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