Part 12 (1/2)

13.

Taken For A Ride 'Dichlorodiethyl sulphide!'

Sniffing, the Doctor retreated.

'Dio what?'

'Mustard gas! Don't breathe it in, Peri! Whatever you do, don't breathe it in!'

The advice was unnecessary. She had heard of the lethal gas: a killer that had paved the battlefields with corpses in the First Great War of the twentieth century.

The noxious yellow cloud was swooping rapidly towards the Doctor's side of the laboratory. He charged for an uncontaminated gap.

Simultaneously, the volcano erupted again, belching out more acrid fumes and blocking the escape route.

From the comparatively unaffected entrance, Peri watched impotently as he retreated.

His back thudded into the wall. He was cornered. The gas hemmed him in. Smothering his nose and mouth in a capacious handkerchief, he bawled to Peri.'M...s...s!'

'I didn't get that!' The fumes were beginning to spread to her side now.

The Doctor removed the handkerchief briefly. 'Masks!'

'Masks?' The word was clear but the intention was not.

'The Rani's a.s.sistants!' Wisps of the gas seeped into his nostrils. The effect was immediate. He retched and spluttered.

But the message had got through. The masks the a.s.sistants had worn were hitched to their waist belts.

However, their bodies were already being licked by the deadly vapour.

Turning away, Peri inhaled deeply then dashed for the nearest body. Holding her breath, eyes smarting and streaming, Peri fumbled to unclip the mask.

The volcano belched again.

The Doctor's cheeks bulged with the effort of keeping his nose and mouth plugged. Everything depended on Peri.

Adrenalin pumped into her veins inducing a clarity in the perception of events and time that enabled Peri to steady her trembling fingers. In a whirlwind of continuous action, she unhitched the mask, slipped it on, filled her lungs with the purified air, rushed to Josh, yanked the mask from his belt and hurled it across the laboratory to the Doctor.

He caught it and pulled it on.

'Thank you, Peri.' His gasped grat.i.tude, filtered by the snout, was a muted ba.s.s. 'Street door.'

'Street door?' Her vowels were also a couple of registers lower.

'Open it! Ventilation! Quickly!'

She scampered into the hallway and flung the front door wide. The yellow fumes began dispersing.

Returning, she found the Doctor no longer hunched in the corner. Instead, he was prowling the screen. At least, he was prowling a wardrobe which the s.h.i.+fted screen had revealed.

An unprepossessing piece of slate grey bedroom furniture in a laboratory? Peri was puzzled.

The Doctor did not seem to be. The symbolic rings carved on its panels had a significance for him. His next move startled Peri. He tugged at the green fob-chain looped across his plaid waistcoat.

'Hey, that's the key to the TARDIS!'

Confidently, he inserted the key in the lock and the wardrobe door swung open.

A TARDIS.

Peri made the connection. The Rani's TARDIS! But, oh no! The Doctor was about to step inside!

'Suppose she's in there !' He had disappeared! Afraid of being left behind, she forgot her fears and nipped in after him.

Similar in design to the Doctor's TARDIS, the predominate colour of the Rani's time-machine was silver.

Gla.s.s shelves and cabinets crammed with flasks, syringes, pipettes and bottles of all descriptions lined the silver walls.

In the centre was the control console crowned with a thin, tubular, steel maze of concentric rings floating in s.p.a.ce. But what aroused the Doctor's curiosity as he ripped off his mask were the five large specimen jars supported by five pillars arranged in a circle about the central dais. The jars contained embryos, curled foetuses preserved in glutinous liquid and in a state of suspended animation.

'Ah, embryos of the Tyrannosaurus Rex.'

Peri grimaced at the revolting semi-formed dinosaurs, their sharp teeth already protruding from elongated jaws.

She knew the Tyrannosaurus Rex was extinct. So how could the Rani have got these five embryos?

'She's been back to the Cretaceous Age to collect them.'

The Doctor tapped a container. The baby monster did not move. 'Nasty creatures. Vicious teeth. Bite your leg off and chew it up. Bones and all.'

Peri could well believe that!

'Ah!' His mercurial attention b.u.t.terflied to the neat rows of chemicals and toxic substances. 'The Rani's a magpie. D'you realise, through these, we could tell just where in the cosmos she's visited?' He was reading the labels on the containers.

'How about where she is right now? Will they tell us that?' Hugging the masks the Doctor had dumped his on her Peri nervously eyed the alien interior.

An array of dials, calibrated scales and interwoven gla.s.s piping that serviced a perforated turntable dotted with test-tubes, took the Doctor's roving attention. 'Novel approach to chromatography, utilising pi-mesons '

Without warning, the maze of tubular rings began to rotate... to whirl round each other, corks.c.r.e.w.i.n.g, winding up and down.

'Peri, run!'