Part 3 (2/2)

The two policemen began to steer their shambling suspect towards their car, and Adric had to back round a corner of the police box to stay out of sight. He didn't know that the thing he had stumbled over was called a bicycle, but it was portable, bulky and would provide a step up to the top of the TARDIS. It gave him an idea.

The two policemen had a firm grip on the Doctor by the time they got to the car. When the constable stopped to open the door the Doctor allowed himself to be surprised by the sight of the police box, and said, as if the thought had just struck him, 'Would you mind awfully if I just phoned my solicitor?'

'That's not for this sort of thing, sir. It's a police call box.'

'That's what I like about this country!' The Doctor exclaimed, mustering up an authoritative enthusiasm that heightened the two officers' bafflement.

'A place for everything and everything in its place!'

Whatever the Doctor was planning to do next, he was obviously not about to get into the car willingly. The inspector had a way of dealing with difficult cases. 'If you're asking for a formal arrest, sir . . .' The inspector had already made up his mind that the tall tousle-headed man in the absurd red coat was dangerous, a lunatic perhaps. The big toothy grin he got from the Doctor in response to the official warning was further confirmation of this suspicion. In consequence the inspector was ready for anything - except the thing that actually happened. No reasonable person could have antic.i.p.ated that a bicycle would come arching through the air above them, to land with a clatter on the police car roof. The Doctor was not a reasonable person in that sense, and in any case he had the advantage of glimpsing Adric the moment before, perched up on top of the police box with the bicycle held high over his head.

When the two startled officers turned to their vehicle, the Doctor detached himself quickly from their company and sprinted towards the police box.

'Quick! Get him, Davis!' The inspector's shouted command came too late. By then Adric had jumped down from the roof, almost tumbling onto the Doctor, and the pair of them had bundled in through the blue double doors.

Constable Davis and the inspector squelched across the gra.s.s to the police box, to arrive there just as the lock snicked shut. The constable put his shoulder to the doors, and when they refused to budge he shouted and hammered on the panel with his fist, which gave the inspector a chance to demonstrate the superior intelligence that had earned him his rank.

'No problem, Davis. He's in there, and we're out here. He can't stay cooped up forever.'

'What do we do, sir? Sit it out?'

'Can't waste the taxpayer's time, Davis. There's a key in the car. Get it.'

Intelligence misleads. The inspector reasonably mistook the police box for a police box, but if he had known as much as the Doctor about the thing he was planning to unlock he would hardly have been so confident. Knowledge of that kind, however, would have involved certificates in time flow mechanics, not easily come by on Earth.

The Doctor's own certificates were hanging on a wall in one of the TARDIS's rooms, although he couldn't remember which. That was the trouble with infinitely reconfigurable living quarters - to avoid confusion you tend to keep to a few favourite well-lived-in areas and leave the rest to the dust and silence. Certificates, in the Doctor's view, were historical evidence of having been taught something - not guarantees of present knowledge. They belonged in long-abandoned rooms.

Even if they had been impressively decorating the console room walls, no amount of certificates would have told the Doctor why the TARDIS seemed at that critical moment to have forgotten all it knew about time flow mechanics, and was behaving as if it were nothing more than the inspector's plain and simple police box.

It might have been the cloister bell. Adric had drawn the Doctor's attention to the sinister chime the moment they got through the doors.

'It's ringing again, Doctor. Shouldn't we do something about it.'

The Doctor was busy at the console. 'A choice of emergencies. In a moment. Better dematerialise first.'

The police box - or whatever it was they had materialised around was gone, and the Doctor very much hoped it had taken the gravity bubble with it. The console seemed to think otherwise. Adric knew little about the workings of the mechanism, but it wasn't hard to detect the laboured noise emanating from the time column, which flashed in a half-hearted way and resolutely failed to move.

'It should be oscillating by now, Doctor.'

The Doctor glanced down at the weak force indicator. The needle was lower now, but still well inside the red zone. 'The gravity bubble's still very close. It's dragging us back.'

'What about the cloister bell?'

'Shut the door.'

Adric did so, but was uneasy about it. 'We can't just ignore it.'

'Nonsense! Of course we can,' snapped the Doctor. Adric didn't know that the First Law of Crisis is to panic about one thing at a time. The Doctor was too busy with the console, checking the displays and making quick calculations in his head, to give lessons in the fundamentals. 'There must be something we can simplify here,' Adric heard him mutter to himself. Suddenly his bony index finger, which had been scanning the rows of dials and switches, descended on a small panel, stabbing at it accusingly.

'Architectural configuration . . . that's the one!'

Adric leaned closer to see what he was doing. The panel was labelled Interior s.p.a.ce Interior s.p.a.ce Allocation Allocation, and at the touch of a few b.u.t.tons was displaying what looked like a series of graphs with whole areas beneath the curves filled in with colour.

Antic.i.p.ating the question on Adric's lips, the Doctor said, 'We'll have to find some more power from somewhere. All this s.p.a.ce,' he waved a loose hand at the panel, 'takes up energy. I'm going to jettison Romana's room.'

'Are you sure?' asked Adric, very upset by the idea.

Uncharacteristically the Doctor's temper flared up. 'Why do you expect me to be sure?

This is life! Nothing is sure!' The boy couldn't remember ever seeing him so angry.

The Doctor returned to the panel, and for a moment his finger wavered over the red b.u.t.ton marked Execute. Adric held his breath. He knew the ominous tri-syllable only referred to the routine to jettison Romana's room, but from the tension in the air the word Execute Execute might have applied to Romana herself. His mouth was dry. He felt he should say something to rea.s.sure the Doctor, but all that came out was, 'I'm sorry. I just wondered . . .' might have applied to Romana herself. His mouth was dry. He felt he should say something to rea.s.sure the Doctor, but all that came out was, 'I'm sorry. I just wondered . . .'

'This needs a quick decision, not a debate,' the Doctor snapped, as much to himself as to Adric. Then he pressed the b.u.t.ton.

Instantly the illumination in the console room flashed brighter. Adric breathed again, and the Doctor turned to him and nodded, as if some profound truth had been demonstrated. 'You see!' The time column began to wheeze into action. They had lost Romana's room, and regained access to the s.p.a.ce/time vortex.

The constable returned from the car and handed the key over to the inspector.

On inserting it into the lock the two officers witnessed an unusual chuffing sound. Both raised their heads, mentally noting that the light on top of the box had begun to flash.

The constable didn't think much about it, but the inspector voiced the speculation that it must be some sort of new security arrangement. He found it harder to explain what he saw next.

The inspector pushed the doors open while the constable stood back, ready to help in the event of trouble. The first he knew of it was the expression on the face of his superior. The inspector turned to him and hissed: 'There's some trick to this. Davis - I want a ful report.' The constable followed the other's gaze towards the police box. His mouth slowly sank open, as if in silent mimicry of its compact empty interior.

They were in flight. The oscillations of the flas.h.i.+ng column that was the central feature of the console were regular now, riding the time waves like a ping-pong ball bobbing on the open sea. The Doctor was patching some hasty co-ordinates into the panel to fill the forward reference he had to file for take-off - Adric understood that much about programming the console - and some of the old liveliness had come back into his eyes.

Adric was glad to be able to say something cheerful. 'We've done it, Doctor! That other thing - if it was a TARDIS - must have gone.'

The Doctor turned from the console to face the boy: the light in his eyes had been a trick of the twinkling reflections from the panel lights.

'Somehow I rather doubt it.'

He cast a second look at the oscillating column, then, a.s.sured that all was well with the mechanism, took Adric by the arm and steered him towards the door that lead to the TARDIS interior.

Adric found himself being ushered out into the corridor. 'What's the matter, Doctor?' the boy asked, confused. 'Aren't you going to answer the bell?'

'This won't take a minute.'

'What won't?'

'Answering the bell,' said the Doctor as his head disappeared back into the console room.

Adric blinked at the closed door. But before he had time to realise how hurt and puzzled he was by the Doctor's behaviour, the door opened again. The Doctor put something into his hand. 'Company while you're waiting. He's very strong on patience.' The door closed.

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