Part 3 (1/2)

And there it was! Aunt Vanessa was so delighted to find Fate giving Luck a small push in her direction during the course of the afternoon's rigmarole that she forgot to be careful where she trod. She was within reach of the police box when her feet skidded from under her, toppling her against the double doors.

They opened under the impact. When she scrambled painfully to her feet again she was standing on solid ground, astonished to find herself inside a large . . . laboratory, was it?

She heard a light chuckle and turned round, still a little dazed from her fall. 'Tegan . . .?

What on earth have you . . .! Goodness me . . .'

The sight was so terrifying that before the threat had fully formed in her mind she was stumbling back towards the double doors. She struggled with them; they seemed to be closing on her, trapping her in with that . . . evil!

And then her feet were skidding in mud again. She backed away from the monstrous presence that lurched towards her across the gra.s.s in slow-motion pursuit. Still it stayed with her, this chuckling thing for which she couldn't form a name, piercing her with a gaze that froze the thoughts in her brain.

Somehow Aunt Vanessa found herself beside the tyre. She reached for it, hoping to use it for a s.h.i.+eld, and despite its surprising weight managed to lift it from the ground. The chuckle that came from the pursuing figure was frankly derisive.

The traffic on the road pa.s.sed by unheeding. No one heard the throttled cry, the chuckle of triumph, or smelled the ozone left in the air by the sizzling discharge of the electronic device.

Even the spare tyre that rolled out from the verge and wound its way between the stream of pa.s.sing cars remained unnoticed for several minutes.

The yellow light was so dense around them now that Adric could only make out the Doctor as a lumbering shape beside him. The boy's fingers were blue with cold and the locks were becoming harder to manage. With each door his heart sank deeper, and he could tell from the Doctor's voice that even a Time Lord's sense of proportion is not proof against all disasters.

'Careful!' the Doctor whispered when the wire coathanger missed the lock and sc.r.a.ped across the face of the door that the dingy light had transformed from blue to a deep oily green. 'We're getting closer into the nucleus of the bubble . . . if it has a nucleus.'

'It is a gravity bubble, then?'

'With this many images there's only one thing it could be.'

'What can be causing it, Doctor?'

The Doctor hesitated, as if reluctant to share his thoughts with the boy. 'When we materialised round the police box - someone had been here before us.'

Someone? The lock was stiff, and as the Doctor's low whisper continued in his ear Adric had to concentrate to keep his mind on the position of the tumblers he could feel at the end of the wire. He understood what the Doctor was trying to say, but it was hardly thinkable. Another TARDIS, materialising round the police box before they arrived?

Someone must have antic.i.p.ated what he and the Doctor had planned to do!

The lock clicked open. Adric turned his head towards the Doctor and his voice came huskily. 'But who?'

The Doctor put his finger to his lips, and moving Adric gently to one side reached out to push open the door.

The light of the sky rushed into their eyes. They were both astonished to find themselves in the open air, standing beside a police box on the by-pa.s.s.

The police inspector had spotted the illegally parked sports car and instructed the constable to pull over. While the police inspector crossed the verge to investigate, the constable identified a hazard to traffic in the fast lane and nipped out between the pa.s.sing cars with a due regard to safety to roll the tyre out of harm's way.

The constable was gratified to see the inspector running towards him with a view to giving him a hand dragging the tyre onto the verge. Or so he thought, until the inspector reached him.

What the inspector had to report was brief, breathless and, as far as the constable was concerned, utterly incomprehensible. The inspector was on the point of steering the constable over to the car to corroborate the story with the evidence of his own eyes, when they spotted the suspect.

The constable knew at once from the gentlemen's attire that they'd got an odd one here.

Your average member of the public does not wander abroad in a long red coat and even longer scarf.

Despite the shock, from which he had clearly not properly recovered, the inspector was able to muster a professional tone as he addressed the tousel-haired newcomer. 'Good morning, sir. Would that be your vehicle over there?'

The Doctor must have sensed unwanted complications. He signalled to Adric behind his back to stay under cover of the police box. 'Not mine, inspector,' said the Doctor, tactfully identifying the man's rank from the silver pips on his shoulder. 'No, I haven't driven for ages. Not a car, that is.'

The inspector maintained a respectful tone, though his suspicions were hardening fast.

'I wonder how you come to be here, then. There's not much else here but the road.'

'I . . . well, I admit that might be a little difficult to explain.'

The Doctor found himself being steered by the elbow in the direction of the abandoned sports car. 'And while you're working that one out, sir, perhaps you could also have a go at explaining this.'

The Doctor stared into the back seat, his face frozen into an expression of horror. What he saw confirmed his worse fears: somehow the Master must have escaped from Traken. When he spoke again the Doctor's voice was urgent.

'He's still around here somewhere!'

'He, sir?' The inspector glanced at the constable with a silent warning to be ready in case of trouble.

'The Master, of course,' said the Doctor, pointing to the gruesome evidence in the back seat of the car.

In the dreadful transformation every detail had been perfectly preserved. There was no mistaking the smart blue uniform of Constable Seagrave, who had last been heard of putting in a cal down a bad line from the nearby police box.

The other body was unknown to any of those present. But if Tegan had been there she would have been able to tell them that the inert shape, shrunken like the constable down to the size of a doll, was all that remained of her Aunt Vanessa.

4.

The Doctor was trying to explain something to the two official-looking men in blue uniforms. From behind the police box, Adric caught a few words: 'Now just a minute, Officer. You don't realise what's going on here . . .'

The inspector's face was a grey wall of officialdom. 'No, sir, but I'll take the details when we get back to the station. Lucky for you, it's not up to me to judge.'

'Lucky? Oh, now surely you don't think . . .' The Doctor tailed off. He knew from past experience that jumping to conclusions was a favourite exercise on Earth. And people in uniforms were much the same all over the universe.

The inspector glanced across at the constable. 'We're not paid to have opinions, sir.

Just to do our duty.'

'Wel , I have opinions,' the Doctor retorted, gesturing towards the ghastly evidence in the back seat: 'This is the calling card of one of the most evil creatures in this universe, and I don't intend to stand here and debate the issue with you.'

This last remark was as much for Adric's benefit as anything else. 'I'm afraid, gentlemen,' the Doctor went on, 'that I'm going to have to get after him.' So far the Doctor had been careful to avoid looking in the boy's direction. But now he threw the briefest glance towards the TARDIS, and momentarily caught Adric's eye. 'So, if you can help me create a diversion . . .'

The inspector's eyebrows went up a notch further. 'Yes, I see, sir. You'd better come straight along with us.'

'Of course, I'd love to. But . . .'

With tact, but firmly, the constable took the Doctor's arm. 'To a.s.sist us with our enquiries.'

Adric pressed back against the TARDIS, thinking furiously. Here was a chance to repay the Doctor for . . . wel , for just being the Doctor. He remembered their first meeting on Alzarius, when the Time Lord and Romana had taken him in and tended his wounds, and how subsequently the Doctor hadn't minded all that much to discover the boy stowing away on the TARDIS.