Part 4 (1/2)

The Matrona scrambled to do his bidding. Though the pulse imput increased markedly and the Alpha waves decreased, still the warrior struggled against the power that surged through his brain cells.

'Samcnanz... Cruz... Craz... Crome... die...!'

Worriedly the Matrona watched the muscles knot in the bulky arms.

'Why is the pacification not working?'

Crozier reached for an auxiliary power circuit and made a fine adjustment.

'It will now.' His dry voice was crisp and confident.

'Yrcanos is a barbarian King. He knows only one thing how to fight. Therefore he is trying to resist our attempts to bring him to peace and tranquillity.'

'Sc.u.m!' the Warlord spat out, then succ.u.mbed to the process that Crozier had devoted his life to perfecting the control and manipulation of behaviour.

Seeing the King at last made quiet, the scientist stretched his thin lips into a contemptuous half-smile.

'The stupider the subject, the longer it takes. Now, Matrona...' Crozier pointed to where an alien brain, the size of a water melon, lay open for dissection. Taking a slim stylus from the top pocket of his lemon-coloured coat he pointed to a stem of the opalescent ma.s.s. 'The ganglions have not yet recovered from the lesions of our last operation.'

The Matrona was an interested pupil. 'Why detach both junctions...?' The sound of the laboratory door opening interrupted her question. Angrily she turned to berate the intruders.

'You are forbidden!' she began, then broke off as she saw the lifeless creature held between the guards. 'What...

what's happened...?'

The Matrona moved across the floor of the laboratory but Crozier was quicker. 'An accident?' His voice was calm, detached, though the Matrona knew the disappointment the scientist must be feeling. The Raak represented one of Crozier's most notable experiments in alien brain enhancement.

'Answer!' the Matrona's voice was a whiplash that made Frax blurt out. 'Not an accident, murder!'

Crozier took in the word. It altered a lot of things.

'Whoever is responsible,' he said evenly, 'I expect their living brains to be delivered to me as recompense.'

Five.

The junction of tunnels looked vaguely familiar to the Doctor as he edged round a comer warily. The red light glaring out above the door of Crozier's laboratory confirmed his impression that they were headed back in the same direction taken previously. Peri urged the Doctor forward.

'We're going in the right direction for the TARDIS, Doctor, keep going!'

'Wait...' the Doctor warned.

'What?' Peri started to say, her voice bristling with impatience. 'Oh...'

From out of the doorway of the lab came a funeral party bearing the body of the Raak. The group, comprising Frax, two guards, Matrona and a sad-faced Crozier, came towards the junction of pa.s.sages where Peri and the Doctor were sheltering.

Already it was too late to run away with Frax and his guards almost upon them. Just as discovery seemed inevitable, Frax led his group away down the adjoining pa.s.sageway.

'Let's get on,' Peri said with relief.

'No, not yet.' The Doctor paused looking down at the red light that seemed to draw his attention.

Soon the Doctor and his reluctant companion were outside the laboratory. The Doctor pushed the circular steel door, which opened.

'Pooh!' Peri wrinlded her nose at the pungent smell that hung about the interior of the rectangular lab s.p.a.ce.

'What's that, old socks?'

'Formaldyhyde, among other things,' the Doctor said as he stepped inside.

Peri followed. 'Wow -- what's this, a pickle factory?'

'No...' the Doctor chuckled as they looked at the wall opposite where hundreds of brains, large and small, floated in jars of ethyl alcohol.

'Look!' Peri pointed to an operating table on which the Warlord, Yrcanos, lay. Strapped to his head was a helmet dotted with an agglomeration of sensors and electrodes and a profusion of wiring that led to an a.s.sorted ma.s.s of technological paraphernalia.

While Peri moved to examine the unconscious warrior, her companion went to an oscilloscope on which an intertwining wiggle of amplification lines waved across the screen, tracing the electricity being sent through the patient's brain. Fascinated, the Doctor examined an array of neurotransmitters, nerve structure models, synapse locators.

'What is is all this, Doctor?' all this, Doctor?'

'Isn't it obvious?'

'No...!' Peri gasped at the arrogance of the Doctor's question.

On the screen of the Matrix the court watched as the Doctor excitedly began to trace the patterns of circuitry towards the helmet that encased the head of King Yrcanos.

'If I might beg the court's indulgence,' the Valeyard interrupted. The image of the Doctor froze in mid-stride.

'Well?' the Inquisitor turned from the screen as the scene dissolved into neutral grey.

'Sagacity,' the oily tones insinuated. 'May I be so bold as to suggest we have already seen enough.'

'I second that. The sight of that Sil creature would turn anyone's stomach,' the Doctor said flippantly.

A frown of annoyance flicked across the brow of the Prosecutor. 'We have now seen many examples of the Doctor's interference. We have heard the pleas of his companion to be taken away from danger. Yet again the Doctor has ignored her and gone blindly forward on his misguided mission.'

The Doctor spread his hands. 'Minor misdemeanours...'

The look on the Inquisitor's face became forbidding.

'You have asked for the penalty of death, Valeyard. You will have to show firm evidence as to why I should take such allegations seriously.'

'As you wish.' The Valeyard sat down, huffily.