Part 5 (2/2)

Half an hour at Astroville traffic control and some honeyed words had produced a list of all the craft that left Astroville during the twenty-four-hour period following Hok's murder.

If we encounter any of these where we're going,' the Doctor said, scanning the list rapidly, 'we shall know who to watch out for. Ah, and here's our pseudo-Falstaff's vessel I suspect.

Peri looked at the name he was indicating. ' The Merry Wife The Merry Wife?

Oh, I get it: from The Merry Wives of Windsor The Merry Wives of Windsor, right?'

'Yes. A jolly little play, but Bill dashed it off too quickly, I always thought. I told him it could do with another revision, but the Queen wanted to see it performed as soon as possible and...

well, never mind.'

'Sometime, Doctor,' Peri said sincerely, 'you are going to tell me all about meeting W. Shakespeare. Meantime, can we get going?'

The official police seal had gone from the TARDIS door. Peri was glad to be back inside the familiar console room, with its dimpled walls and subdued hum of power. Even though she had known it only a few days, she felt there was something strangely homely about the TARDIS, almost as though it cared for her.

Seeing the way the Doctor beamed paternally as he circled the hexagonal main console, checking the systems and feeding Hok's coordinates into the navigational unit, it was certainly easy to believe it was alive.

'I just wish Falstaff hadn't got such a big lead on us,' Peri said anxiously. 'Those crooks might also be out there by now. We don't know what they got out of Hok before we b.u.t.ted in.'

'Remember,' said the Doctor, 'a journey that may take them days we can make in a few minutes of our time.'

'Will that get us there first?'

'By a few hours, I should think.'

'Can't we go back a few days and get a proper head start?'

'No. Crossing your own timeline puts the fabric of time and s.p.a.ce under great strain. It can be dangerous.'

'Uh, how dangerous, exactly?'

'Terminally.'

'Oh, well I guess we'll give that a miss.'

The Doctor called local traffic control and informed them they were ready to leave, closed the airlock and checked that the docking tube had retracted. He smiled as they were given a s.p.a.cial departure corridor to follow, and let his fingers flicker across a series of contacts. Peri felt a little thrill of antic.i.p.ation.

She'd consciously experienced this moment only once before.

The transparent cylinder containing a complex glittering mechanism mounted at the centre of the console began to rise and fall. At the same time a deep pulsing whirr reverberated throughout the s.h.i.+p, gradually rising in tone and frequency. As it faded out into a shrill note beyond human hearing, the incongruous blue box, whose external appearance had so puzzled Inspector Jaharnus, vanished from the vicinity of the Astroville docking tower.

The TARDIS was on its way.

'How long will we be in flight, or whatever you call it?' she asked the Doctor as he studied the displays with a satisfied expression.

'About eight minutes, relatively speaking.'

'Just time to freshen up then.'

Bag slung over her shoulder, she had taken a dozen steps down the corridor towards her room, when a sudden urgent beeping sound emanating from the console brought her running back.

'What is it? Something wrong?'

The Doctor was working the controls rapidly, his face set and intent. The beeping faded and died in a burst of static, then grew stronger again. 'A hypers.p.a.ce distress beacon on minimal power.

Somebody's in trouble. Interestingly enough it seems to be in normal s.p.a.ce on a line between Astroville and our destination.

I'm trying to get an exact fix on it... ah.' He touched another sequence of switches and the descending tones of rematerialisation sounded.

The scanner screen, which had a moment before been filled with the grey of the deep interdimensional void, now swirled with colour that resolved into a hard image. It was the interior of a s.p.a.cecraft cabin, dimly lit by green-tinted emergency lights.

Trailing wires were strung about the walls, and several gaping splits in the bulkhead were patched over with strips of glistening transparent plastic. In one corner was a discarded pile of emergency-ration-pack wrappers and several oxygen cylinders, while in the other was a large chair. Looking up in astonishment from it, a section of disa.s.sembled control panel resting across his knees, was the man who called himself Sir John Falstaff.

'A remarkable contrivance you have here, Doctor,' Falstaff said five minutes later, after they had taken him and his few salvageable belongings on board. He had recovered his composure with remarkable speed.

”T'was most fortunate that you heard my hails, for I was beginning to give up hope of salvation, and commend my soul to G.o.d and beg his understanding for any trifling transgressions I may have committed over the years. But now I can rest easy once more. Have you any decent food aboard? I am a shadow of my former self. Bad enough to be so disabled by a device planted in such a knavish manner, but the blast destroyed my source of fresh victuals, since when I have had to survive on morsels that would not keep a church mouse alive.'

Peri, however, was in no mood to play along with his fantasy.

'You can drop the act. We know you're a phoney,' she said scathingly.

Falstaff looked affronted and hitched his belt a little higher over his ma.s.sive belly. You accuse Falstaff of being an imposter, Mistress Brown? What, old Jack? Never.'

'I think you should know, we are familiar with the work of William Shakespeare,' the Doctor said helpfully. 'Even if he is currently out of fas.h.i.+on in this part of the galaxy.'

To their surprise this did not appear to trouble Falstaff. 'Ah, so you have heard of my chronicler.'

'Chronicler?' Peri exclaimed.

'Certainly. Thou didst not think such a man as Jack Falstaff could be conjured out of nothing by some pen scratcher? The fellow used some licence with my adventures, I grant you, but Falstaff was cut from whole cloth.

'Falstaff was a fictional character,' Peri insisted.

'No, you have it turned about. The fiction came after the fact.

'Well if you are the real Falstaff, that would make you about fifteen hundred years old. Unless you've also got a -'

'Another means of travel,' the Doctor cut in. He looked at Falstaff narrowly for a moment, then said a few words in a flowing tongue, to which their guest stared back at him blankly.

'No, I didn't think you were Gallifreyan. So how do you claim to have lived so long?'

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