Part 4 (2/2)

'To repair the TARDIS.'

'And if we don't have a TARDIS?'

The Doctor began to walk round the console, double-checking that al the switches were off.

'But we've got to have a TARDIS! What are you going to do for transport?'

'They also serve who only stand and wait,' said the Doctor simply, pointing to the works of John Milton that Adric was still holding, 'or haven't you got to that bit yet?'

He approached the screen. 'We're partially materialised and hovering. There's just enough power in the peripheral reserves to keep us up until I short the lines with this lever. We'll drop the TARDIS . . . here.' He pointed to an area where the river widened.

'Drop it?' The more Adric knew about the Doctor's plan the more dangerous it seemed.

'Couldn't we just materialise under water?'

'This way we make sure we land in the right place. A gentle splash-down.' Nevertheless, the Doctor made sure of getting a good handhold on the console and persuaded Adric to do the same. 'Well . . . there may just be a slight jolt. Ready?'

Adric nodded uneasily. 'Yes . . . if you are?'

'That's not very affirmative,' replied the Doctor sourly. 'I'd feel more confident if you just said ”yes”.'

They both held on tightly. The Doctor's hand closed on the lever.

Leaning against the back of the police box, Tegan glowered around the silly courtyard with exasperation. In the absence of anybody to complain to or order about she had begun to talk to herself, addressing herself by name.

'Right, Tegan. This is obviously some kind of elaborate joke, so we've got to find some way of putting a stop to it. The shock's the worst thing, and that's over. So everything's got to get better from here on in.'

What happened next showed that her powers of prophesy were as underdeveloped as her geography, as far as the TARDIS was concerned. Although nothing of her surroundings changed in the few moments that followed, she experienced a sudden, deeply unpleasant sensation that made her heart pound. It was like being in a lift that has taken it into its head to make a violent downward lurch.

She clung to the police box for support, feeling indignation and alarm, in that order.

Then just as everything seemed stabilised again, a ma.s.sive shock wave came up through the floor, cascading loose rubble from the stone walls and sending her flying.

She picked herself up from the flagstones. 'This is just too much. It's unbelievable.'

Apart from the dust her uniform was undamaged, although she could feel numb places on her body that were bound to turn into bruises. 'Crazy idiot of a pilot. Wait till I have a word with him . . .'

And then she froze. From the other side of the police box she heard a sound. If she had been convinced it was human she would have described it as laughter; a hollow, light chuckle.

She remained still. Nothing happened. Without moving from the spot, Tegan called out cautiously, 'Who . . . who is that?'

The same terrifying judder threw Adric up onto the console, and he came to rest against the stationary time column. Not until the reverberations had died down did he open his eyes. The first thing he saw was a sprawling heap of red coat, curls and scarf from which the odd arm and leg jutted out. The heap gathered itself together on the console room floor, and the Doctor's face grinned up at him.

'Adric? Still with us?'

The boy slid down from his perch and helped his companion to his feet. It wasn't his idea of a 'gentle splash-down' and he told the Doctor as much. The Doctor tried to make light of it. 'Must have touched the bottom.' When he had finished brus.h.i.+ng himself down he noticed that the boy was still glowering at him in an unfriendly way. 'Look on the bright side, Adric. We were very lucky the water was there to break our fall.'

Tegan's eyes darted around the cloisters, trying to detect among the stony shadows the figure whose presence she felt as a dank chill. The echo around the walkways made it impossible to locate the low chuckle precisely, but fear was urging her backwards towards the arch that had first brought her into the room.

She touched the flaky masonry of the wall behind her, but what she had mistaken for an archway in the quick glance she had allowed herself turned out to be nothing more than a shallow alcove that rustled with ivy. Still not daring to take her eyes off the danger in front of her, she began to feel her way along the wall.

The echo of that chilling sound floated through the walkway again, closer now. There was still nothing to see - or rather everything to see: darkly moving leaves among the foliage, deeper shadows within the shadows.

The Doctor was standing with his back pressed hard against the doors, and his feet planted firmly on the TARDIS floor, as if getting ready to hold back a battalion of battering rams. Adric was by the console, manning the door lever.

The Doctor went through it briefly once more, to make sure the boy understood. The trick was not to attempt to swim out while the water was rus.h.i.+ng in. They would tread water and breathe while air remained in the console room; then when the influx had steadied they could pull themselves out through the double doors using handholds on the fittings. Until they got out into the open river attempts to swim were bound to end in being swept down by the current into the interior of the craft.

'And be careful,' said the Doctor finally. 'The water pressure could send us both flying.'

Then the Doctor gave the word. As soon as Adric had pulled the lever he ran over to the Doctor to help him with the doors, putting his back up against them and digging in his feet. Now that the security mechanism was released he had imagined it would take all his strength to hold back the flood, letting the water seep in slowly at first, just as the Doctor planned. In fact it was as easy as leaning against a wal .

After a moment of getting the feel of the doors - this too was part of the Doctor's carefully developed plan - the boy looked at the Time Lord. The same question was in both their minds.

'Perhaps,' said the Doctor slowly, 'we're not down very deep.'

'Deep?' replied Adric. 'There's no pressure on these doors at all.'

The Doctor paused, though he still didn't dare to let the doors go. 'I think you're right,' he said at last.

'I am right.'

'Very good, Adric. Very affirmative.'

Together they straightened up and stepped into the middle of the room. There was no less stateliness than usual about the way the ma.s.sive doors steadily opened inwards.

And no torrent followed, not even a trickle. With an embarra.s.sed glance at his young companion, the Doctor walked out of the TARDIS and found himself standing on a wooden floating pontoon moored by the river's edge.

The pontoon had been eroded by the river and woodworm and time - mostly by time. It was a miracle the TARDIS hadn't gone straight through it. As it was, the planking had broken under the impact and the base of the TARDIS had been forced into it for a couple of feet, coming to rest against a metal girder that underpinned the wooden structure.

The Doctor looked around the deserted riverside. On both banks abandoned dockland stretched as far as the eye could see, a landscape of rusty skeleton buildings wreathed in weeds. The water that rocked the pontoon from below was thick with greasy green algae. But for the motion it looked solid enough to walk on.

'There you are, you see,' the Doctor said to the boy, who stepped out behind him. 'I knew there'd be a perfectly simple explanation.'

Adric was glad of the Doctor's a.s.surance that nothing serious had gone wrong with the plan. The initials TARDIS stood for Time And Relative Dimensions In s.p.a.ce machine, and it was a well-doc.u.mented fault in the Type 40 model that sometimes the time dimension was a little less relative to the other dimensions than it should be. According to the Doctor's diagnosis they had arrived at exactly the right spot - but a century or two too late. In the interim the bend in the river had silted up, moving the bank, and with it the pontoon.

Although perfectly satisfactory as an explanation the Doctor seemed unhappy with it, as though the event were hedged about with other quite different - and perhaps unspeakable - possibilities. As the Doctor grew pensive, Adric became aware of the whistle of wind through the girders of a bridge that arched the river a little way upstream. The Doctor was staring at the bridge.

'Wel , we nearly got it right,' Adric said as cheerfully as he could.

The Doctor stepped gingerly along the swaying pontoon for a better view of the bridge.

'Nearly - but not quite right,' he said absently. 'There's something not quite right about all of this. Before the police came, I saw something . . . somebody. Faintly, in the distance.'

Adric's mouth was dry when he came to speak the name. 'The Master?'

<script>