Doctor Who: Shada (26 page)

He stopped, as if surprised by his own words. ‘That’s very odd.’

‘What is?’ asked Chris.

‘Why did I say that? It’s as if my subconscious mind was trying to push something up to the surface.’ He blinked. ‘Now it’s gone.’

‘Don’t think about it,’ Chris advised him. ‘Then maybe it’ll come back to you.’

‘I should know the answer!’ said the Doctor loudly in one of his sudden explosions. He tapped his head. ‘Perhaps, somewhere in the back of my mind, I do know the answer…’

The ship rumbled along the side of the hull.

A hidden doorway in the long corridor outside the command deck swung smoothly open.

The Kraag emerged.

It heard voices from the command deck.

‘It’s about time I worked out the answer!’ one of the voices was saying.

It turned and trod slowly and heavily towards the source of the voices.

Chapter 44

ROMANA STOOD ENCIRCLED by her Kraag guardians. Skagra was at the control console, accessing the Doctor’s mind. The holo-screen showed rapidly flickering images of the book and recent events. She saw herself, Chris, K-9, the Professor, a young woman who must have been Chris’s friend Clare.

Romana rubbed her cheek. It was still tender from Skagra’s attack. She looked sadly at the screen, and saw herself and the Professor sipping tea in his warm, comfortable study. It seemed inconceivable that that had been only a few hours ago. Now the Professor, and possibly the Doctor too, were dead.

‘Concentrate,’ said Skagra, his hand on the sphere. ‘Your great minds can discover the answer. Let your minds be guided. Concentrate.’

The holo-screen fixed on an image of the open book as the Doctor flicked through it.

‘What’s so important about the book anyway?’ asked Romana.

Skagra shot her an impassive glance. ‘It is
The Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey
. What does a Gallifreyan judge say when passing sentence?’

Romana thought. ‘“We but administer. You are imprisoned not by this Court but by the power of the Law.”’

Skagra reached inside his tunic and held up the book in his white-gloved hands. ‘That used to be quite literally true.’

Romana frowned. She was trying to formulate a response when the sphere burbled and Skagra’s interest returned to the screen. The image had frozen on the open pages of the book, and a single word was flashing at the bottom of the picture again and again:

INSOLUBLE.

INSOLUBLE.

INSOLUBLE.

Skagra thumped his fist on the console. ‘No!’ he cried. ‘The code is insoluble!’

He stepped back from the console, looking shattered and drained. Sweat poured from his forehead. ‘My plan cannot proceed,’ he said at last, seemingly suddenly like a lost little boy.

‘I’m glad you realise it,’ said Romana. ‘It’s about time.’

Skagra turned on her. ‘You are a Time Lord,’ he said, a cunning glint coming into his eye. ‘Somewhere in your mind you know the answer. I shall not use the sphere this time. I shall dissect your living consciousness, pluck it apart. Cell by cell—’

Romana stood firm. ‘You’ve lost, Skagra. It’s all over.’

But Skagra did not reply. Instead he pointed to her, his lips moving silently.

‘What did you say? “About time”?’ he said at last. He swung back to the console. ‘Time! Yes, I should have seen that. A Gallifreyan code would have to include the dimension of time!’

Skagra replaced his hand on the sphere. ‘Concentrate,’ he ordered, fixing all his attention on the screen. ‘Find me the Doctor’s last reference to time!’

Chapter 45

‘OH COME ON, Ship!’ called the Doctor. ‘What’s taking you so long?’

‘These docking safety procedures are very important,’ said the Ship haughtily. ‘Though frankly, I don’t know why I’m being so careful as we’ve all long since shuffled from this mortal coil. Habit, I suppose.’

There was a loud clang as the ship finally docked with the space station.

Chris’s attention was elsewhere. He sniffed the air. ‘Can you smell burning?’

‘Of course not,’ said the Doctor. ‘Right, let’s go.’

He hurried over to the door and pressed the panel marked OPEN. The door opened.

A huge burning figure stood before him, eyes glowing like a furnace. It spoke with a deep rumbling voice, forming words as if for the first time. ‘Who… are… you?’

‘Oh,’ said the Doctor. ‘No cold callers thank you!’

He reached for the button marked CLOSE. As the door started to slide back into place, the creature strode forward and ripped the door apart with its powerful claws, as if it were made of polystyrene.

The creature stalked through the door. Chris could feel the intense aura of heat radiating from it. He dashed to join the Doctor as he attempted to sidle past the creature.

‘What on earth is it?’

‘How am I supposed to know?’ said the Doctor. ‘And what’s Earth got to do with it? Ship, what is it?’

‘It is a Kraag,’ said the Ship. ‘It was formed automatically when I took off without my great lord Skagra aboard. Standard emergency procedure.’

‘Why didn’t you tell us?’ exploded the Doctor.

‘You didn’t ask,’ said the Ship with what it obviously considered sweet reason. ‘Anyway, it hardly matters, does it? It can’t do us any more harm. We’re dead, and it must be too.’

‘You are… intruders…’ said the Kraag.

The Doctor shrugged. ‘Well actually, I’m the Doctor and this is Bristol.’ He gestured to the smoking trail left by the Kraag. ‘That’s what I call a carbon footprint.’

‘You trespass on my lord’s ship,’ said the Kraag. ‘You shall die!’ It raised one arm which ended in grotesque lumpy claws. The tips of the claws glowed red hot.

‘So there are some aliens that don’t look like us,’ said Chris. It was the only thing he could think of to say, and even as he was saying them he realised what incredibly rubbish last words they were.

‘K-9, what’s keeping you?’ shouted the Doctor.

K-9 shot forward, nose blaster extruded. The powerful red laser beam shot from it, blasting the Kraag square in the centre of its chest.

The Kraag reeled back. Chris had a moment of relief. Then the Kraag growled terribly and raised its arm again. ‘You – shall – die!’

‘Silly thing, we’re already dead,’ said the Ship. ‘I always thought those Kraags were a little slow on the uptake.’

‘K-9, continuous fire!’ shouted the Doctor.

K-9 blasted his laser again, and this time the bright red beam was sustained, beating the Kraag back.

‘Good boy, K-9!’ called the Doctor.

The laser beam started to sputter and weaken. The Kraag roared, flailing its arms in anger.

‘Master!’ called K-9 urgently. ‘This unit cannot contain Kraag creature with blaster at maximum power – battery depleting!’

‘Hold on K-9!’ The Doctor knelt down and ripped off the side casing of the robot dog. ‘We need a power feed,’ he shouted to Chris over the roar of the laser. ‘Any power feed!’

Chris grabbed at the tangle of fibres from the exposed panelling. ‘Will these do?’

The Doctor grabbed them and shoved the bundle roughly into a small socket inside K-9. ‘He’s supposed to be universally compatible – but let’s find out!’ He called upwards, ‘Ship, channel power to K-9, please!’

There was a crackle of energy along the length of the tangled fibres. With a whining, buzzing noise K-9’s blaster beam returned to full strength. The Kraag was held frozen, its powerful form trapped in the red glare.

‘There we are,’ said the Doctor. ‘All better.’ He turned to Chris and indicated the door. ‘We’d better get on.’

‘But we can’t just leave it like this,’ protested Chris. ‘Poor K-9.’

‘Oh, he’ll be fine,’ said the Doctor airily, ‘won’t you, K-9?’

‘Master,’ groaned K-9.

‘But what are we going to do about it?’ spluttered Chris.

‘I’m sure I’ll work something out,’ said the Doctor, ‘when we get back.’

‘Shouldn’t we work something out now?’ asked Chris.

The Doctor coughed. ‘Listen, I have a way of dealing with such situations, it’s very complicated and very impressive and I can’t go into it now, will you just trust me?’

Chris nodded. ‘OK.’

‘Then let’s go!’ The Doctor skirted carefully around the burning Kraag and led the way through the smashed door and into the corridor that led to the airlock.

Chapter 46

‘N
OT ONLY IS
this not a book
,’ said the Doctor’s voice from the holo-screen, ‘
but time is running backwards over it
.’ The screen showed the book in the Doctor’s hand from the Doctor’s point of view, with Clare looking anxiously at him beside the wrecked spectrograph.

In front of the screen, Skagra held the actual book in one hand, the sphere in the other. He turned to Romana. Any hint of his earlier emotional display had been wiped away, and he was as smooth and casual as he had ever been.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘You have helped to give me the answer. It is, of course, about time.’ He indicated the TARDIS. ‘You will enter.’

The Kraags jostled Romana towards the police box. She had never felt so desperate and so alone.

The control room, usually a place of humming warmth and security, now seemed cold and alien, despite the heat emanating from the two Kraags that guarded her.

Skagra followed and stood before the console. He held the book out towards the time column and turned the pages.

Nothing happened.

Romana gave a sigh of relief. ‘Looks like you were wrong again. Time for Plan B? Or is it Plan F by now?’

Skagra paused for a moment. Then he closed the book, and opened it again at the first page.

He turned the page.

The central column wheezed into life, jerking upwards. A cool green light came from deep beneath the column, something Romana had never seen there before.

Skagra turned another page. The exterior doors slammed shut. The lights dimmed, turning the same pale sickly green colour.

Skagra turned another page. The navigation input panel burbled into life, and a lever slammed over by itself.

Skagra smiled. ‘Exactly. The Doctor knew the answer, and so did you, buried deep in your subconsciouses. Time runs backwards over the book. So I turn the pages within the time field of this machine and the machine operates. And turning the last page will take us to Shada!’

Chapter 47

THE AIRLOCK DOOR irised open. From the clean cool interior of Skagra’s ship, Chris looked through into a dank, dingy corridor that matched the shabby exterior of the space station.

The Doctor marched through the door and into the corridor. ‘Come on!

Chris hovered in the doorway. ‘I suppose I ought to say something special. I mean, I am the first human being to travel into outer space.’

The Doctor shook his head.

‘I’m not the first?’

‘Not even close, sorry. Now come on!’

Chris followed him. The corridor was rusted and decayed, illuminated only by dim, caged wall lights and there were occasional creaking noises, like the sound of rending metal, that reminded Chris uncomfortably of just how close he was to millions of miles of vacuum.

‘I suppose it’s safe?’ he asked.

‘Yes, of course it’s totally unsafe,’ said the Doctor, his long legs taking him past doors marked SHUTTLE BAY 1 and SHUTTLE BAY 2 and into the belly of the station, his big booted footsteps thunking on the gridded metal plating of the floor and echoing away into the darkness.

Chris hurried after him. ‘It’s so hard to believe we just travelled hundreds of light years.’

‘Why?’ asked the Doctor.

‘I always understood that you cannot travel faster than light,’ said Chris.

‘Says who?’

‘Says Einstein,’ said Chris.

‘What?’ The Doctor stopped and put an arm around Chris’s shoulder. ‘Do you understand Einstein?’

Chris wasn’t sure where this was going. ‘Yes.’

‘What?’ gasped the Doctor. ‘And quantum theory?’

‘Yes,’ said Chris. He basked in the Doctor’s astonishment, on firmer ground at last.

‘What?’ gasped the Doctor. ‘And Planck?’

‘Yes,’ said Chris.

‘What?’ gasped the Doctor. ‘And Newton?’

‘Yes!’ said Chris.

‘What?’ gasped the Doctor. ‘And Schoenberg?’

Chris paused. Was it a trick question? He recalled reading about the crisis of tonality. He thought he’d caught most of it, so he answered proudly, ‘Yes. Of course.’

The Doctor whistled, apparently impressed. Then he said, ‘You’ve got an awful lot to unlearn, Bristol.’

Chris sagged. Back to normal, then.