Part 10 (1/2)

'He do now. a.s.sistant! Traitor more like! Out of road!'

He jostled the slim apprentice aside and bl.u.s.tered on.

Bewildered, Luke stared after him. What had happened to the happy-go-lucky Tim Ba.s.s, a man rarely without a smile? There was a red mark below his ear. Could that have something to do with his ugly mood?

'Excuse me, young man.' Luke was accosted by a gentleman expensively attired in a black velvet suit trimmed with silver. 'I've been invited here by Lord Ravensworth.' The gentleman dangled a medallion between his fingers. 'Can you tell me where I'll find him?'

The medallion was swinging... rhythmically... gleaming hypnotically...

The scene was being observed but, alas for Luke, not by someone who would help him. The Rani was at her scanner.

With bleak disapproval, she saw the Master take out the box of maggots he had filched from her. She had seen enough! Fretfully, she ripped out the plug, blanking the screen. The imbecile had ruined everything!

Venting her spleen on Josh, she ordered him to dismantle the laboratory.

Selecting a fluorescent maggot, the Master tickled Luke's lips with the slimy parasite. It squirmed repulsively yet Luke did not flinch.

'Luke, I want you to swallow this very special sweet-meat.'

Without even a shudder, the hypnotised youth sucked in the wriggling grub, chewed, then swallowed.

A blue glow suffused his pupils.

'Splendid. You have a note I see.'

'Aye. 'Tis for his lords.h.i.+p.'

'Give it to me.'

After reading Stephenson's advice to cancel the meeting, the Master knew the task his newly created acolyte could perform.

'Luke, this meeting is not not to be cancelled. Do you understand?' to be cancelled. Do you understand?'

'I understand.' A slight reserve was the only manifestation of the change in Luke, and that would be interpreted as shyness even by those who were familiar with him.

'If anyone tries to prevent it, you destroy them! Is that clear?'

'That is clear.' His subservience was absolute.

'Anyone, Luke. Anyone at all!'

11.

Fools Rush In 'The key is more power.'

George Stephenson and the Doctor were crawling under the Blucher. 'If I can increase that, speeds of fifteen, maybe twenty miles an hour become possible. Aye, power's t'problem.'

The Doctor longed to he able to enlighten the inventor, but he dared not. That would be influencing history. Could he, he wondered, just give a hint?

'Doctor, there is is a more pressing problem!' chided Peri. a more pressing problem!' chided Peri.

Reluctantly he squeezed out from beneath the engine, scrubbing a patch of oil from his turquoise cravat. 'You're correct, of course. Let's go.'

As he lifted the loosened planks for her to leave the workshop, Peri thought, for once, they were in accord. She was mistaken. Her reference related to the TARDIS stuck at the bottom of that shaft and without which they were stranded. His worry was the crucial matter of Earth's destiny.

Someone else was brooding, but on a less grand scale. Jack Ward blamed the Doctor for his present plight. Using his knowledge of the hotchpotch of sheds, he had managed to evade capture.

'It's nay right having to skulk round like criminals,' he grouched to his mate, Dobbs. 'Guards everywhere!' They were in the bagging compound where they had soughttemporary shelter. 'Just because of that poxy rogue in't yellow trousers!' He whacked the scales in frustration.

Well, he's in't pit somewhere.' All Jack wanted was a chance to square the account.

The chance came. With characteristic imprudence, the Doctor strutted across a quadrangle parallel to the compound. Signalling to Dobbs, Ward began to stalk his unwary adversary.

Hampered by the voluminous skirt, Peri lagged behind in what was, for her, an unappetising sight-seeing tour.

'Hey, less haste, more speed!' Her faith in his sense of direction, literally and metaphorically, was less than a hundred per cent.

She had a point. Antic.i.p.ating the Doctor's more circuitous route, Ward, familiar with every nook and cranny, took a short-cut to the overhead track etched against the skyline. Nimble as a cat, he scaled the framework, then lay in wait.

Still trailing in the rear, Peri was disgruntled. Why the heck had she ever gotten herself into this fix? Adventures were all very well so long as they had a happy ending.

Happy ending! In despair, she cast her gaze up to the heavens and glimpsed a figure easing a tipping bolt from the socket of a stationary loaded truck. Plumb below, having paused to get his bearings, stood the Doctor!

'Doc !' A beefy palm clapped over her mouth killing the warning as Ward braced himself to up the truck.

Eyes boggling over Dobbs's stifling hand, she was a distraught spectator as Ward sent several tons of coal cascading onto his unsuspecting victim.

A more colourful turbulence was depicted on the room-divider screen that remained in the Rani's now denuded laboratory. Painted in the style of Turner's 'Eruption of Souffrier', it portrayed, in sultry ambers and vivid scarlets, a smouldering volcano. A chilling ant.i.thesis, the Rani was arranging the exotic mural with meticulous delicacy. It dominated the bare room; every item of scientific apparatus had been removed.

The click of the latch. 'At last you're back, you incompetent egoist! Give me my phial!' The sour greeting was for the Master.

'And I thought you were waiting for me.' A lie. The Master had no illusions about the Rani.

'If I didn't need that brain fluid desperately, I'd've put light years between us!'

'What better reason could I have for keeping it?'

'You'll play that card once too often! With you on the scene I might be wiser to cut my losses and go!'