Part 10 (2/2)

'No thanks, Doc. I'm staying with you. You're the only insurance policy I've got.'

The Doctor dragged her inside, ducking a shower of debris. Above them, through ever increasing gaps in the ceiling, they could see the Monitor treading warily across the roof towards the antenna. At one point he stopped to wave to them. 'There is a CVE close by we might be able to re-open, he called down, pointing to an area of sky.

Tegan held her breath; his progress across the crumbling roof looked suicidal. 'What's he doing?'

The Master snorted by way of answer. 'He can do as he pleases - he's harmless. But you and I, Doctor, we must form a plan. I propose . . . one: withdrawal to a position of temporary security; two: reconfiguration of our two TARDISes into time cone inverters; three: creating a stable safe zone by applying temporal inversion isometry to as much of s.p.a.ce-time as we can isolate . . .'

Tegan had been unable to take her eyes off the Monitor, and now her scream interrupted the Master. He and the Doctor turned to look upwards. Another shower of silt was pouring from the ceiling, caused by loose stonework tumbling from the roof where the Monitor was flailing, as if trying to retain his balance. And then, as if in slow motion, they saw him slip. But the horror of it was that instead of falling heavily, the figure of the Monitor began to float down through the ceiling towards them, like some huge flake of ash blown in the smoke of a fire.

The body hit the floor with scarcely a sound, cracked open like a hollow sh.e.l.l, and powdered away to dust.

Tegan stared at the spot, her hand pressed involuntarily against her mouth. 'Horrible, horrible.' She heard a harsh, dry voice that seemed to speak her thoughts and looked up to see the Master backing away towards the door.

'Hardly more horrible than turning people into shrunken dol s,' she shouted at him.

The Master's eyes were wild and staring in his pallid face. 'No! Anything but that. Do what you like, Doctor. Logopolis is yours!' At the door he turned and ran, disappearing down the stairs with debris cascading after him.

'Doctor! We must stop him!' She ran to the window overlooking the street. 'The Master's getting away.

The Doctor had said nothing for a long time. Now he spoke slowly, as if all sense of urgency had drained from him. 'Which means we can't - as he's got the only TARDIS left on Logopolis.'

'Then we've got to get after him.' She ran to the Doctor, but he gestured to her to let him think for a moment.

'Reconfigure the two TARDISes into time cone inverters,' muttered the Doctor, pensively echoing the Master's proposal. 'Yes, it would have worked - for at least part of the universe. What a waste of a brilliant mind.'

A slab of plaster exploded into fragments at Tegan's feet. 'And a waste of two more brilliant minds if we don't do something soon.'

'You're right. The Monitor's program to re-open the CVE . . . There's a slight chance . . .'

The Doctor's movement towards the Earth computer opened up a rift in the floor, cracking the console. The disk drives juddered to a halt. 'Correction - there was a slight chance.'

The Doctor fell to musing again, infuriating Tegan, who put her lips to his ear and said loudly, as if she were talking to a deaf old man, 'Come on, Doctor. We've got to stop the Master from taking off.'

The Time Lord raised an eyebrow. 'Why? There's no point in running from place to place without a positive approach to take with us. The solution is here . . . somehow . . .

Or somewhere very like this. I had a strange feeling we were very close - before this!'

He tapped the Earth computer emphatically; a panel split and clattered to the floor. The Doctor knelt down, absent-mindedly inspecting the damage. 'I sympathise,' he said, patting the machine. 'I've never felt so close to dissolution before.'

Dissolution? The word sounded so final to Tegan. 'This can't really be the end, Doctor. It can't be.'

The Doctor smiled up at her, as if only then reminded of her presence. 'Of course it can't. There must be something we can do. Some desperate, remote chance. Remote!'

He paused to savour this last word, as if there might be the flavour of salvation in it.

'If it's remote it won't be here, will it, you stupid . . . Doctor!'

Tegan's voice betrayed her panic, but it came out as anger.

The Doctor's eyes flashed back in reply. He clapped his hands together. 'Of course!

Here but not here! That's it.' He suddenly turned on what remained of the computer, and began tearing it to pieces with his hands.

'Doctor! What are you doing?'

'An experiment in optimism. Come on, you can help. I want this thing in pieces.'

Utterly baffled, Tegan threw herself down beside him and helped him tear away the brittle casing.

It seemed to take forever. There were several layers; some could be torn out like damp cardboard, while others were solid and had to be eased out with the Doctor's sonic screwdriver. By the time the interior lay exposed her hands were raw from the effort.

The Doctor said little during the work, and when she had asked him three times what on Earth he meant by 'here and not here' all he said was: 'Precisely - on Earth.' And then he went very quiet, rolled back the voluminous sleeves of his coat and reached into the wreckage.

The thing he eased out was a long rectangle the colour of emerald, to which was attached a neat pattern of small objects that looked like large flat beetles with silver legs. Tegan recognised them as some sort of electronic component.

The Doctor turned the board over in his hand, inspecting it carefully. 'As I thought . . .

Bubble memory.' He handed the device to Tegan with a broad smile. 'Bubble memory . .

. You realise what this means?'

'No, as a matter of fact I don't, Doctor.'

The Doctor reached into the machine again, and produced several more of the flat boards, pa.s.sing each one carefully over to Tegan. 'Bubble memory is non-volatile.

Remove the power - and the bit-patterns are still retained in tiny magnetic domains in these chips.'

So that was the Doctor's idea! The Research Team's last program was still here, in the pile of memory boards Tegan held in her hands. 'Which would be great if we had a computer to run it on,' she said.

'But there is! Exactly like this one.' The Doctor grinned as the light began to dawn in her eyes. 'On Earth, as you suggested.'

'The Pharos Project!' Tegan exclaimed.

'Exactly,' said the Doctor. 'Now al we have to do . . . is get there.'

11.

'Master! Wait! There may be one last chance. Master!'

The Doctor's voice was hoa.r.s.e with calling. Tegan took her turn, giving her loud Aussie voice full rein. 'Master! Don't take off. Please . . . The Doc thinks he's got the answer.'

Inwardly Tegan was close to despair. s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up their eyes against the gusts of fine pink dust, she and the Doctor had trudged out from the ruins of the Central Register in a wide sweep of the flattened landscape. It seemed to her that even if there were something in the Doctor's crazy plan for the fragile memory boards she was carrying, the chances were that the Master was long gone.

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