Part 7 (1/2)

Meanwhile, Peri, who had resigned herself to the fact that the dome would be her home for the rest of her natural life, had started to explore.

The first room she had discovered was the kitchen, complete with adjoining storeroom which contained enough food to keep a schoolful of hungry children sated for a millennium.

The delight of discovering that they wouldn't starve to death was somewhat dampened by the sight of the cooker. To say that an honours degree in theoretical engineering was necessary to successfully operate it, would have been an exaggeration. To observe that the controls resembled the flight deck of Concorde would not only have been cliched, but would also have been untrue. But to Peri, who had never even grasped the fundamentals of the microwave oven, learning to fly Concorde would have proved easier than learning how to boil water on such a monster.

Deciding that the Doctor would have to do the cooking, but then remembering how badly he did it, Peri left the kitchen feeling rather depressed.

The sight of the bedrooms, laboratories and greenhouse (the purpose of which was to provide the dome with fresh vegetables) lifted her spirits slightly. The library, considered the best this side of Magna Twenty-eight, lifted her spirits even more.

To die in the dome, she thought, wouldn't be a bad thing after all.

At least she wouldn't die ignorant.

And when she discovered the wine cellar, she also knew she wouldn't die sober.

Peri continued her tour of inspection, pa.s.sing through the power plant, workshops and a compact cinema equipped to show film, video and many other visual mediums she had never seen before.

It wasn't until she entered the last corridor that her heart really sank. Before her was a door with a purple flas.h.i.+ng light above it.

Written on the door was the legend: SELF-DESTRUCT CHAMBER. NO UNAUTHORISED PERSONNEL ALLOWED.

ENTRY.

Not stopping to consider whether she was authorised or not, Peri pushed open the unlocked door. Inside the room she was greeted by a ma.s.sive console, which flashed and winked reminding her whimsically of the last high school prom she had attended.

After examining the console more closely, all humour evaporated from her spirit and she felt sick. The device had been set to explode.

At first the Doctor didn't recognise the sound of Peri calling, being too intent on solving the problem of the lock. But as the calling became more insistent, he abandoned his task and shuffled off.

On arriving at the self-destruct chamber, the Doctor soon confirmed that Peri's panic was fully justified and, if the timer was accurate, it was to explode in the next few minutes.

Quickly, the Time Lord set about trying to deactivate the device, but soon learnt why whoever had set it hadn't bothered to lock the door on leaving. The unit was sealed, safe from interfering fingers, including the Doctor's.

'What do we do now?' said Peri urgently.

'Find another way of getting out of here. And very soon!'

As they entered the main area, the Doctor crossed to the revitalising modulator and started to fiddle with its control unit.

'What are you doing?' demanded Peri.

'You must remain absolutely quiet,' snapped the Doctor. 'I need all my concentration.'

At least he sounded sane. Peri was concerned that the discovery of the self-destruct device might have proved too much and induced another change of personality. So far it hadn't. But how would fiddling with what looked like a gla.s.s box help them to escape?

The Doctor continued to work, rapdily reducing the control to a ma.s.s of wires and printed circuits. With increased speed, he set about removing several modular units from the main console.

After careful examination of the units, his face lit up. 'I can do it, Peri! I can do it!'

'Do what, though?'

'Get us out of here!'

Quickly he carried the units to the revitalisation chamber and started to connect them to the dismembered control panel, using wire Peri was ordered to steal from anywhere she could.

As he worked, the recurring question constantly came into his mind. Why had Azmael, at one time his greatest friend, set the self-destruct unit to explode?

The more he thought, the less sense it seemed to make.

Putting aside their friends.h.i.+p, Azmael must have known it would have taken weeks to break out of the dome. Whatever Azmael had planned, he would have had plenty of time to carry it out with little fear of the Doctor's interference.

The Time Lord worked on, his old energy and presence of mind having returned. He felt a new man. He only hoped that his fresh inner self would have time to mature and mellow. To be atomised on a barren, miserable planet, whose only claim to fame was that its atmosphere-created feelings of melancholia, was not the way he intended to say farewell to the universe.

When not cannibalising machinery for its wire, Peri constantly flitted back and forwards to the self-destruct chamber to check the timer.

Four minutes, it said.

As she returned to the Doctor with this particularly depressing piece of news, he ordered her to enter the revitalising modulator.

'Why?'

'Just get in,' the Doctor insisted.

'But what will happen to me?'

The Doctor paused for thought. He was fairly certain what he had done would work, therefore wasting time explaining the principles of something Peri wouldn't understand seemed unnecessary. On the other hand, if he had been mistaken in any part of his wiring, she would be atomised the moment he pressed the master control.

The Doctor's dilemma was to tell or not to tell.

Under more normal circ.u.mstances he would have been more than happy to explain what was about to happen, but with less than four minutes before the self-destruct device exploded, there wasn't really the time.

There was also the possibility that Peri would resist entering the modulator cabinet if she knew the truth. If she stopped to argue, and they ran out of time, she would die anyway.

So what was the point of an explanation? he thought. But what confused him even more was why he was bothering to convince himself when death was almost imminent.

Quickly, the Doctor pushed the complaining Peri into the machine and slammed the door. He then made some rapid calculations, pressed the master switch and watched his panic-stricken friend dematerialise.

What the Doctor had done was really quite simple. As explained, the function of a revitalising modulator is precisely the same as a matter transporter, only it doesn't send you anywhere. To convert the machine into a transporter requires two things: a directional beam locater (i.e. a way of telling the machine where you want to go) and a transmission sequence (i.e. a way of sending - through time and s.p.a.ce - what you've reduced to molecular globules).