Doctor Who_ Logopolis Part 11

But the dismal wasted world of Logopolis presented the Doctor's sometimes facile optimism with one small ray of hope. He thought - though the calculations to confirm his theory would have taken several days - that a dematerialising TARDIS would have to create a major disturbance to the unstable landscape, something they were bound to notice. Apart from the constant cracking and shifting of the ground beneath their feet there had been nothing on that scale since the landslide Tegan had caused. If the Doctor's guess was right, the Master was still on Logopolis!

On the basis of this long shot they were trekking the dangerous territory, hoping to run into the man the Doctor hated most in the whole universe. Tegan's dark doubts grew with every precarious ruin they explored. But she was the one who found the glove.

'Doctor! Over here!' She knelt and peered at the shiny black object. It was lying palm up, partly covered by a mound of pink dust that had piled up around the base of a flat fluted pillar lying horizontally along the back of the cell.

The Doctor seemed a long time coming; perhaps he had missed the cave. With the idea of going to the entrance to cal again, she reached out to pick up the glove.

The black leather fingers closed tightly around her hand.

The Doctor heard Tegan's screams and arrived at a stumbling trot. In struggling to escape she had pulled the hand out of the ground, revealing a flailing length of arm.

She was also in danger of bringing down what remained of the roof. The Doctor clapped one hand firmly over her mouth and grabbing the disembodied arm with the other heaved backwards with all his strength.

The Master's face emerged from the sand beneath the pillar. 'Just in time, Doctor,' he said, spitting out dust. 'I have almost had my fill of Logopolis.'

The Master had stumbled through a mult.i.tude of ruins before finding the fat fluted column jammed tightly into one corner of the cell, supporting the sagging roof. In the geological upheaval it had shifted too close to the wall for him to be able to open the door.

At first he had tugged at it impatiently, and then with violence. Powdered rock plummeted from the roof, the pillar teetered and then crashed down towards him, bringing with it a fresh cascade of rubble. The settling dust had brought an uneasy silence to the cell. Trapped under the immense weight of his own TARDIS there was nothing to do but wait.

Patience had brought its reward. Scrabbling with their hands at the loose ground Tegan and the Doctor finally managed to prise the Master from under the pillar and pull him to his feet.

The Master dusted himself down as best he could. 'I'm grateful, Doctor.'

'Splendid,' said the Doctor, 'because now it's your turn to help us.' He glanced down at the pillar, and noticed that the door, normally concealed by the fluting, had come ajar, hinting at the inky vastness of the interior. As the three of them hauled the column upright, the Doctor added, 'One good lift deserves another, don't you think? Next stop Earth.'

Adric had come to think of him as 'the Watcher', this strange friend of the Doctor's who came and went like pictures in the fire, and never spoke. The Watcher seemed to prefer solitude; now he wasn't even allowing them to share the console room with him. It reminded Adric of the time the Doctor had put him outside the door while he answered the cloister bell, except that now instead of Milton, Adric had Nyssa to share the corridor with him. 'But the Doctor usually lets me help him.' The boy's protest went unheeded and the door closed.

'I don't think he needs our help,' Nyssa said. 'He seems to know what he's doing.' When he had fetched her from Traken he hadn't said anything, just beckoned. But there was something oddly familiar about the strange figure that had stopped her feeling afraid. He seemed very like the Doctor in many ways, but so solemn, as if he carried all the troubles of the world on his shoulders. 'It's as if he was watching over me,' Nyssa said.

So Nyssa had that same feeling! Adric told her about the name he had privately given him. 'I'm not afraid of the Watcher either,' the boy added. 'But I would like to know who he is.'

Adric slowly turned the handle to peep into the console room. Through the narrow crack in the door he could see the Watcher's hands drifting over the console controls. 'He's setting the co-ordinates . . . no, he's . . .'

Adric had to stand on tiptoe to see better.

Nyssa hadn't approved of the idea of spying on the Watcher, but now she said impatiently, 'Wel ? What is he doing?'

Adric caught his breath. 'He's unsetting the co-ordinates! He's disconnecting the co-ordinate sub-system . . . But he can't do that. Not in mid-flight!'

'What is it? What's the matter?'

The boy slammed the door shut, and by way of answer to Nyssa's question grabbed her and threw her roughly to the floor. At the same moment the TARDIS rocked violently.

For several sickening oscillations the two companions rolled back and forth across the pitching corridor. Then, as the movement stabilised, the solid walls around them appeared to melt and glow, and everything within vision began to merge into a single featureless field of brilliant white. A roaring sound filled the corridor. Over it Adric heard Nyssa's voice. 'Adric? What's happening?'

He had to shout to be heard above the mounting noise. 'It's the Watcher. He's taking us out of time and s.p.a.ce altogether!'

Adric remained conscious, but for a long time he seemed to hover on the very edge of existence, like a thought in search of a mind to think it. From time to time he caught the sound of Nyssa's voice amidst the rush and roar that filled his head, but the words were indistinct and may have been in his imagination, or perhaps in hers. His mind brimmed over with the whiteness that had no boundary in s.p.a.ce or time. And then, slowly at first, the shapes came back. The twisting line where one corridor wall met the floor, the horizontal plane of the door, the perfect circles of the roundels inlaid into the panels, appeared one by one like fresh pencil-marks on blank paper. Eventually the roaring died, leaving them in a silent, airy brightness that was unmistakably the TARDIS corridor, but somehow infinitely more s.p.a.cious between its insubstantial bounds.

Nyssa was sitting beside him on the floor, 'Is that where we are?' she asked, as though nothing had interrupted the conversation. 'Outside s.p.a.ce and time?'

'Yes,' said Adric. 'And hovering. The TARDIS isn't supposed to do that.'

Nyssa stood up. 'We seem to be safe.'

Adric scrambled to his feet beside her. 'Safe, yes. That's the point, I suppose. The Doctor's told the Watcher to look after us.'

'I'd rather be with the Doctor,' said Nyssa.

'Me too,' Adric said. 'What are we going to do?' The boy knew, even as he asked, that it was an empty question. Guided by the Watcher, the TARDIS had made the only possible escape from the deadly collapse that was spreading out from Logopolis. But the Doctor was in the middle of it, and now there was nothing they could do to help.

Nyssa's reply was calm and practical. 'Well, if the Watcher won't let us in the console room, you'd better show me round the rest of the TARDIS.'

The technician reached out for the paper cup that stood somewhat incongruously in front of the high-technology switches and LED indicators of the computer console. He had been trying to crack the problem since starting his six o'clock shift that evening, and here he was on the other side of midnight and range errors of two of the global variables were still slipping through the compiler.

That was typical of the Pharos Project - month after month of no data coming in from the antenna meant you filled in the time chasing petty errors out of the software until your eyes popped. The moment he lifted the paper cup he realised it was empty. The strains of Tchaikovsky's 'Nutcracker Suite' pouring into his ears through the lightweight headphones were no subst.i.tute, coffee was what he needed. He got up, stowing the ca.s.sette recorder into the pocket of his white lab coat, and, crushing the cup and lobbing it expertly into the wastepaper basket, went out into the corridor to wring fresh inspiration from the beverage dispenser.

The Pharos Project computer room was illuminated by a single lighting bar over the console, which left pools of shadow in the remoter areas where the tape and disk drives hummed on stand-by. No sooner had the technician moved out into the corridor than a new voice joined the gentle chorus: a kind of chugging noise emanating from a rapidly thickening patch of yellow that stained the gloom in one corner. The shape congealed into a stubby pillar, Ionic in proportion, but with a leafy capital and base reminiscent of the Corinthian order. A door, not a usual feature of its Ancient Greek antecedents, opened up on one side, and the Master stepped into the room.

'You see,' he said quietly to the Doctor, who followed him, 'we have materialised exactly on the co-ordinates.'

'Spot on,' the Doctor conceded. 'I envy you your TARDIS, Master.'

'Excellent, Doctor. You're improving. Envy is the beginning of all true greatness.'

Tegan followed the two Time Lords out of the TARDIS, and found herself in a room so like the Monitor's Central Register, as it was before the disaster, that at first she thought the destruction of Logopolis had only been a bad dream. And then from the corridor she heard the jingle of coins in the automat; unmistakably an Earth sound.

The Doctor pul ed her back against the wall. The Master was on the other side of the door when the technician came back into the room, sipping at his coffee. As the door swung shut behind him, Tegan saw the Master taking an unpleasant-looking piece of technology from his coat. He seemed to be levelling it at the technician.

The Doctor was beside him in an instant. 'No!' he said in a fierce whisper, pulling the Master down behind a disk drive cabinet.

The Master calmly handed the device over to the Doctor. 'The light speed overdrive from my TARDIS. You'll need it for transmission.' His eyes twinkled with a mockery of innocence.

'I'm sorry,' said the Doctor. 'I thought . . .'

'That I would kill him, Doctor? Why should I, when you have the time and patience to explain our presence to this gentleman.' There was no mistaking the sarcasm in the Master's voice.

'Yes, well . . . I can try.'

Signalling to Tegan to get the memory boards from the Master's TARDIS the Doctor stood up. The technician was totally immersed in his music and his computations; it was certainly going to be awkward, the Doctor realised, to announce their presence without frightening the life out of him.

Such humane considerations were no hindrance to the Master, crouched behind the cabinet. Unfortunately for his plans he had just aligned the re-dimensioner on the precise site of the posterior cerebellar notch at the back of the technician's skull when Tegan re-emerged from the TARDIS with the printed circuit boards. Instinctively she cried out.

The Doctor's head swivelled round immediately, and at the same time the weapon flashed in the Master's hand. But before the energy beam had time to arrive at its target the Doctor had dived at the technician, sending him skimming across the room on the casters of his chair.

The Doctor turned his fury on the Master. 'There must be no more deaths!'

'Never mind. You've solved our problem, Doctor.' He jerked a thumb towards where the technician lay, a crumpled unconscious heap against the wall. The Master ripped off the headphones and dropped them into the wastepaper basket while the Doctor checked the man's pulse and made him comfortable on the floor.

'I feel we've been spared a very difficult conversation,' said the Master.

Then he turned to Tegan, snapping his fingers. 'Come along, now. Door . . . blinds . . .

lights. If this interesting scheme is to work, there's a great deal to be done before dawn.'

Giving much thought to the task they were about to embark upon, the Doctor absent-mindedly stirred the technician's coffee with a pencil and raised it to his lips.

Despite the confusing new s.p.a.ciousness of the corridors, Adric had managed to find the TARDIS cloister room again. He walked round the perimeter with Nyssa, pointing out the crumbling stonework that had started off the Doctor on his resolve to repair his ship.

It looked particularly shoddy in the over-lit brilliance induced by timelessness and s.p.a.celessness.

'Things in the TARDIS often stop working for no reason,' the boy said. 'The Doctor's very good at coping with it, but it's a terrific strain on him.'

'Entropy again,' Nyssa said. 'You can't get away from it.'

Adric stopped suddenly, looking across to the other side of the cloisters. A white shape was visible through the foliage, pacing restlessly backwards and forwards much as the Doctor had done the day Adric had first discovered the cloister room.

'It's uncanny! From here . . . it might almost be the Doctor.'

The echo of Adric's whispered remark to Nyssa must have carried around the wall to the other side of the cloisters, because at that moment the Watcher stopped pacing and looked in the direction of the two companions. And exactly as the Doctor had done before, the Watcher took a pace forward and beckoned to Adric across the quad.

Nyssa wanted to hear all about what the Watcher had said, but explanations had to wait while Adric hurried her through the white brilliance of the corridors and back to the console room.

'Are we travelling again?' Nyssa asked, closing the door behind her. 'We have to log in the co-ordinate sub-systems first.' Adric waited until the row of yellow lights were al glowing above the set of initiation switches. Then he unlocked the sub-system panel, as he had seen the Doctor do so many times before.

'He actually spoke to you?' asked Nyssa.

'Yes, of course,' said Adric, smoothing out the piece of paper the Watcher had given him. He hesitated. 'At least . . . yes, he must have spoken to me.' He had the distinct impression that it had been a conversation, but when he tried to remember what the Watcher's voice was like he could only hear the Doctor speaking.

'We're going back into s.p.a.ce and time?' asked Nyssa, looking over Adric's shoulder at the writing on the paper. 'What changed his mind?'

'It didn't change,' Adric told her, surprised at his own confidence. It was impossible for him to know the Watcher's thoughts, and yet he felt sure their new companion was in some way part of the future. His mind hadn't changed because he knew - he had always known - what was going to happen.

Nyssa wanted to be shown how the TARDIS worked, but unlike Tegan her scientifically trained mind was not to be thrown into confusion by long words. Adric explained as much as he knew, but had to confess that most of the theory was too complicated even for his mathematical brain.

Luckily the Watcher had told him exactly what to do. According to the piece of paper, Earth was in sector eighty twenty-five of the third quadrant. 'The temporal settings are laid in on this panel . . .' Adric told her. 'It always looks so easy when the Doctor does it.'

'But where are we going?'

'The Pharos Project. Now just leave me alone for a bit. I have to do some calculations.'

Adric settled in front of a small keyboard set into the console. Nyssa turned to the viewer screen, and saw a starfield, a million glittering diamonds scattered across a cushion of black velvet. From outside s.p.a.ce and time she was looking down on an image of the whole universe.

Adric finished his calculations and came to stand beside her. Curved lines like meteorological isobars were inching across the screen, and as they advanced, the stars they covered dimmed and died. It was as though some black ink blot were spreading across the universe, indelibly staining out the light.

Nyssa pointed to the awesome blackness of the encroaching blot. 'Look at the entropy field. It's huge now.' Then a thought occurred to her. 'Is Earth on this star map?'

Adric pursed his lips for a moment, then indicated the edge of the map furthest from the invading darkness. 'This is Earth's galaxy. Somewhere here. The Earth people have a few hours left.'

'And Traken?' asked Nyssa.

The question took Adric by surprise. He waved his finger vaguely around the middle of the screen and said, 'Traken should be . . . Traken's . . .' And then he realised that it lay directly under the spreading dark stain of entropy.

'That's funny,' said Nyssa. 'I can't even see Mettula Orionsis . . .' And then she tailed off as she saw Adric's face.

'I'm sorry, Nyssa . . . I'll switch it off.'

She stopped him as he was reaching for the switch. 'No! Wait!' She wanted to look a little longer, giving herself time to absorb the knowledge that the death of her father had been fol owed by the destruction of her whole world. She had never hated the Master so much as she did at that moment. 'He killed my step-mother, and then my father . . . and now this! The world I grew up in - blotted out forever!'

Adric took hold of her hands. She looked at him for a moment, her eyes wet with tears.

Then gently releasing herself from him she reached out and flicked off the viewer.

A moment later the time column juddered into life, and the lighting began to whiten again, bleaching out the shapes around them. 'Hold on,' said Adric. 'We're going back now.'

The two companions gripped the console for support as the room filled with the roaring noise that announced the beginning of their re-entry into s.p.a.ce and time.

12.

Tegan helped the Doctor and the Master unscrew the side of the computer cabinet, then she left them with the memory boards and peeped out into the corridor. The echoing darkness hummed faintly with the sound of distant machinery as she tiptoed to a window at the end and pulled down a slat of the Venetian blinds. They were on the second floor of a building that looked down onto a fenced-off area. In the light of the high yellow lamps slung between tall poles below, the long low huts looked like a tangle of barges moored in the black asphalt. Beyond the huts the high wire fencing was interrupted by a main gate, approached by a wide open s.p.a.ce. Tegan deduced from the white markings that it was partially a car park. Over it all a huge skeletal structure rose up into the night sky like the Eiffel Tower; but instead of coming to a point it bloomed into the familiar shape of a vast metal bowl. The Pharos antenna, she thought. The original of the one on Logopolis.

The two Time Lords worked on through the night, and Tegan kept returning to the window, until the dark horizon began to sharpen with an edge of silver. 'The dawn's coming up,' she whispered, coming back into the computer room. 'And they've got security guards out there.' She had noticed dark shapes moving by the main gate.

The collaboration between the two Time Lords was not going entirely smoothly. At the Doctor's signal the Master prodded the console keyboard again. 'It's still not running.

The program is useless.'

'The Monitor gave his life trying to complete it,' the Doctor replied sharply. 'We must try to do him justice.'

'Indeed? And what makes you so sure this is going to work?'

The Doctor smiled pleasantly and took over the keyboard. 'While there's life, it's six of one and half a dozen of the other.'

'Woolly thinking, Doctor,' sneered the Master.

'Very comforting, when worn next to the skin.'

The keyboard clattered under the Doctor's fingers for a moment or two. The Master leaned over to inspect the screen, which had begun to fill with figures. 'It's running,' he said, a note of surprise in his voice. 'If you can call this alien gibberish a program.'

'We'll know once we've managed to download it onto the antenna. Now, in view of the guards out there - or rather, to avoid being in view of the guards - I suggest we pop across in your TARDIS.'

The Master tapped the light speed overdrive, which was sticking out of the Doctor's top pocket. 'Not unless we deplete this, and we'll need it for transmission.'