Part 4 (1/2)

'Really! Do I look like a man who would wreck machines?'

Wincing, Peri offered up a silent prayer at this hostage to fortune!

Sourly, Ravensworth eyed the Doctor's flamboyant attire. Abruptly, he took the Doctor's hands and inspected the palms. 'Certainly you've never done a day's labour in your life!' Disregarding the Doctor's affronted look, he continued. 'It's possible you may even be a gentleman.'

Although sharing his employer's doubts about the interloper's status, the guard had other worries. 'Shall us get searching for them two who attacked this er gentleman, m'lord?'

'Leave them. They'll have gone to ground.'

'Leave them!' Peri was indignant. 'They wanted to kill the Doctor!'

'I'm not disputing that, young woman. A brutal attack...

Over thirty years Jack Ward's worked for me. In all that while I've never seen him raise his fist to another man.'

'Well, he's undergone a change now!'

The brittle exchange had been used by the Doctor to a.s.sess the mine owner. Could the tall, elegant aristocrat be a party to whatever was affecting this area? Were the paramilitary security arrangements there as a deterrent? Or were they protecting a secret?

'The disruptions only started recently?'

The fine-boned features framed in grey whiskers, puckered with concern. 'Disruption's a tardy description.'

He lifted the tail of his brown frock-coat as he sat on the Windsor chair. 'There've been Luddite riots all over the country. But here...' He shrugged.

'It's been more extreme?' The Doctor finished the sentence.

'The violence has been atrocious!'

'Murderous would be more apt!'

'Peri!' The Doctor's reproval was sharp.

'No, the young lady's right. I don't understand what's going on. I've always had an excellent relations.h.i.+p with the men. Flattered myself I enjoyed their trust and respect.

Now this nightmare...'

'It's just the men who are affected?'

Lord Ravensworth nodded. 'Yes. Just the men. They become savage. Go berserk. Seem to suffer an utter change of personality.'

Even as he spoke, in the bath house, happy-go-lucky Tim Ba.s.s was undergoing the sinister process which would change him too...

5.

Enter the Rani A cleaved skull was ill.u.s.trated on a computer screen.

Encased in the skeleton's ivory sh.e.l.l, the bisected brain was depicted in sickly shades of saffron. Like a pulsating caterpillar, a catheter tube snaked from the computer to Tim Ba.s.s.

Comatose, he was lying full stretch on a trolley. The tube was clamped to the left side of his neck. A separate link led to a crystal flagon into which dripped miniscule globules of fluid. On an identical trolley, his brain already plundered, lay another miner.

The muscular humans in their serpentine masks, had carried the victims through from the bath chamber after the crimson steam had rendered them unconscious. This sophisticated laboratory was the secret cavity beyond the mysterious wall.

A note of incongruity in the clinical setting was the room divider-c.u.m-mural. The volcanic picture, painted in fiery-oranges and scarlets, formed a paradoxical backing to the two muscular humans positioned before it. The masks now fastened at their waists, they stared unseeingly into s.p.a.ce; mortal robots, programmed and waiting.

'Take him through. Bring the other one!'

Activated, moving in unison, they lifted the miner from the trolley.

But who had spoken?

Surely not the rheumaticky old crone. The voice was vigorous and firm. Yet it was she hunched over the keyboard. The cursor began a steady decline. An irascible huff as she realigned Tim's extractor clamp.

The huff would have expressed more than irascibility had the old crone known who was spying on the activity of her human slaves in the chamber.

With the Doctor temporarily out of his malignant reach, the Master was exploring fresh avenues of mischief. Using his electronic magnet, he had slid the door bolt from its socket and stolen into the bath house. Intrigued, he watched as the muscular humans humped the next donor through the parted wall.

Unaware of the intruder, the old crone was meticulously pouring a meagre amount of fluid into a phial. Sealing the phial, she glanced at the now empty flagon... reflected in the crystal surface was the Master's mocking smile.

'No welcome?'

'You're not!' Her hostility was unequivocal.

'Fascinating!' The Master surveyed the laboratory and all its intricate apparatus. 'But then, anything connected with you would undoubtedly be fascinating, my dear Rani.'

Rani? He knew her? This withered old crone?

Old crone? The shoulders were no longer hunched. The infirm spine was erect. And as the shawl slipped from her head, she ripped off the latex facial disguise to reveal the unblemished skin and sculptured beauty of a woman in her prime. Her most striking feature was her eyes; two glittering sapphires, they projected an icy calculation unflawed by compa.s.sion.

'I thought that last mad scheme of yours had finished you for good!'

'You jest, of course.' Conceit reverberated from every syllable. 'I am indestructible! The whole Universe knows that!'

'What happened?' Detached scientific curiosity.

'The extreme heat generated sufficient numismaton gas for me to return to my usual healthy size and self.'

'Pity.' The Rani meant it.