Doctor Who_ Time Flight Part 4

'The guards? You mean the Plasmatons?'

'The what?'

'Never mind,' said the Doctor. There was no time for explanations, particularly with a man like Professor Hayter. That was the trouble with scientists; they were so narrow-minded. For the moment the Doctor needed Hayter to show him where his fellow pa.s.sengers had been taken.

The Professor was most reluctant to return to the prison from which he had just escaped.

'You're not serious,' he protested, as the Doctor outlined his plan.

'Hayter, I've got to find my crew and the crew and pa.s.sengers from 192,' insisted Captain Stapley. He sympathised with the old man's fears, but he had a duty to make sure everyone escaped.

'And I've got to find the TARDIS,' added the Doctor.

'TARDIS?' It was not a word in Professor Hayter's vocabulary.

The Doctor did not elucidate. A discussion with the Professor on time and relativity would get them nowhere.

Tegan, as usual, was less discreet. 'Without the TARDIS we'll never get back to the twentieth century,' she blurted out.

'What did you say?' The scientist from Darlington reacted with depressing predictability.

Before the Doctor could change the subject, Nyssa had chipped in.

'She's absolutely right. We've all travelled a hundred and fifty million years down a time contour.'

The Professor didn't bat an eyelid. 'You're both hallucinating!' He dismissed the two girls' explanation.

Tegan obstinately continued with her account of how the 192 had been snared in a time warp. But the Professor was having none of it.

'Unless we get them away from here, this could turn into dementia praec.o.x.' He spoke with the grave authority of a true expert.

The Doctor said nothing. He needed to keep the old boy's confidence; Professor Hayter could lead them to the TARDIS.

'Professor, there's no time to explain.' Captain Stapley was equally pragmatic. 'I need you to show me where I can find the others. And the Doctor has got to get back his ...' He faltered. Let the Doctor convince the old man about the time warp. 'The Doctor must retrieve his equipment,' he concluded with neat circ.u.mlocution.

'If you insist, Captain,' Hayter conceded rather ungraciously. 'The prison centre is somewhere on the other side of that hill.'

The little party moved off down the valley. Their breath misted in the cold air and their footsteps crackled on the frosty earth. They instinctively moved fast to keep warm, though everyone kept a wary eye open for a return of the Plasmatons.

As they progressed, Professor Hayter gravitated to the side of Captain Stapely. He felt he could trust the Concorde pilot. He was not so sure about the Doctor, however. The world was full of Doctors with woefully inadequate qualifications; there were several at his own university.

'What is this equipment of the Doctor's?' he asked suspiciously.

Captain Stapley felt like a schoolboy. He couldn't explain how Golf Alpha Charlie had been used to transport an old police box without making himself sound a complete idiot. 'It's a TARDIS,' he said, with confidence he did not feel.

Professor Hayter signalled them to halt at the end of the valley. On the horizon they saw the great pyramid that Tegan and the Doctor had spotted on their earlier exploration. That was where the TARDIS must have been taken, thought the Doctor. With a bit of luck the Professor could show them the way in without drawing attention to themselves.

'How did that get built in this wilderness?' said Captain Stapley, gazing at the Citadel on the horizon.

'Slave labour I expect,' said Professor Hayter bitterly.

The Captain was just wondering how they would ever convince the Professor they weren't in Russia, when Nyssa cried out: 'Doctor!'

She was rigid with fright and fighting for breath.

'Something's happening ... I can't ...' She could hardly mouth the words.

'No!' she screamed, as if trying to ward off an invisible invader.

' It's the radiation,' shouted the Professor. 'I said we should keep away from this place.'

'Keep still!' The Doctor waved back Stapley and Tegan who had moved to Nyssa's help.

They watched Nyssa carefully. She was suddenly calmer.

'Do not approach the Citadel!' Her voice was deep and resonant and seemed to belong to another person altogether. 'Return to your ship ...

There is great danger.'

The Doctor studied Nyssa for a few moments in silence, then spoke as if she were a stranger. 'Who are you?' he asked.

'What's happening?' whispered Captain Stapley, overwhelmed by the sudden transformation of Nyssa's personality.

'The intelligence is using Nyssa as a medium,' explained the Doctor.

'Hysteria triggered by ultrasonics,' sneered the Professor contemptuously, dismissing the Doctor's observations with his own diagnosis.

'Be quiet!' The Doctor turned back to Nyssa. 'Who are you?' he repeated. 'What do you want?'

'Krishnan, krishnan ...' Kalid could see everything in the crystal ball. He had silenced the voices in the Plasmaton ma.s.s around the Doctor; now he must silence this girl whose mind was attuned to the Great One.

'Krishnan, krishnan xaraa ...'

Nyssa groaned, feeling pain and despair that were not her own. 'We are ... we are ...' She felt another foree that froze the words in her mouth.

'The control divides us ...' A dual power struggled for supremacy of her consciousness. 'The control shall be resisted,' the unknown voice uttered again. 'There is so little time. You must resist...'

'Veraam, veraam, xarak namaan!' screamed Kalid inside the Citadel.

'Look!' shouted Tegan. 'It's happening again!'

They all looked up. The Plasmaton cloud had formed in the sky above them. It hovered for a moment, a whirling tongue of white fire, over Nyssa, then slowly descended and swaddled her. She stared out helplessly from the blubbery cage.

'A bioplasmic shield,' observed the Doctor. 'Somebody wanted to stop her talking,' he added more ominously.

'We've got to get away from here,' muttered Hayter, noting that the enemy had more than psychological weapons at its disposal.

'We've got to get Nyssa out of there,' said Stapley. But for all his bravery there was nothing he could to to prise the bonded matter apart.

'I'm afraid we don't have the right kind of energy,' said the Doctor.

'We can't just leave her!'

'We must find the source of the power.' The Doctor looked towards the Citadel.

'You go on, Doctor. I'll stay with Nyssa,' urged Stapley.

Tegan, however, knew that the Captain was far more useful helping the Doctor track down the TARDIS. 'I'll stay with Nyssa,' she insisted.

Hayter was near panic with all this talk going on. 'Continuing to the Citadel is madness!' he cried.

'If we don't get the TARDIS back, we'll be trapped here for ever!' Tegan gave the Professor short shrift for his lack of spirit.

The Doctor agreed with Tegan. 'If Nyssa gets free you are both to go back to the Concorde.'

'You bet!'

'Come on, Captain, Professor.'

Professor Hayter couldn't believe such stupidity. 'Don't you realise the effect will only get worse as we near the centre of the radiation!'

Stapley looked at the Professor in disgust.

The Doctor expressed the Captain's feelings precisely. 'Is that a reason for abandoning your fellow pa.s.sengers!'

There was no sign of any activity as they neared the Citadel.

While they walked, Captain Stapely thought about what had just happened to Nyssa. He turned to the Doctor. 'If the intelligence was trying to communicate with us, who was trying to stop it?'

That was just what the Doctor was wondering. 'Something with the same resource of psychokinetic energy,' he suggested.

'Another intelligence?'

The Doctor nodded. Captain Stapley could well be right.

6.

The Doctor and the Magician

'Shamorsherah ... shamorsherom ...'

Though the Doctor and his companions had met with no opposition as they entered the Citadel, Kalid, who saw all things, could observe their approach in the miasmic images that formed and re-formed in the crystal sphere. His face twisted in a horrid smile. Soon they would all be in his power.

The Citadel was a cold, unfriendly place. The dark stone corridors were like tunnels excavated from the bedrock. They crossed and twisted alarmingly. It was as well that Professor Hayter had such an excellent sense of direction.

They advanced deeper and deeper into the Citadel; there was still no sign of anybody.

'The place is deserted,' whispered Captain Stapley.

'Don't you believe it,' answered the Professor. 'Those guards appear from nowhere.'

'Those guards, as you call them,' said the Doctor, 'are fully occupied looking after Nyssa.'

Neither Professor Hayter nor Captain Stapley had any idea what he was talking about.

The Doctor tried to explain. 'Those creatures you saw were particles of protoplasm bonded by psychic energy. The essential protoplasm can take any form.'

'Such as the shield round Nyssa.' Captain Stapley now saw exactly what the Doctor meant.

'Yes. But I suspect that the power and the raw material is limited. So as long as Nyssa is protected ...'

'No Plasmatons!' said Stapley, jumping to the same conclusion as the Doctor.

Professor Hayter wondered why the Captain took such egregious nonsense seriously. The Doctor was a crank.

'I've never heard such an extravagant explanation,' he snorted derisively.

Captain Stapley was irritated by the Professor's reflex scepticism.

Granted the strange forces at work in the place, what the Doctor said made good sense. 'Then how do you explain what happened to Nyssa?'

he challenged the old man.

It was really beneath Professor Hayter's dignity to contribute to such an unscientific debate, but that ridiculous young man needed putting in his place.

'Some form of projection. Maybe part hallucination,' he suggested airily. 'Scientifically speaking ...'

But the Doctor cut him short. 'Scientifically speaking, I'd like you to show me where we can find the others.'

Nyssa felt no fear. There was a womb-like peace within the shield. She could dimly see the face of Tegan, peering forward like an eager child - nose against the gla.s.s of a toyshop window.

'Can you hear me?' Tegan mouthed. 'Are you all right?' '

But Nyssa was a world apart.

'Nyssa ... Nyssa ...' The voice that came to her was inside the shield itself. 'Resistance ... resistance,' it pleaded. 'Kalid shall be resisted!'

'Who are you?' asked Nyssa.

It grew brighter as they turned the corner and saw the end of the tunnel. Captain Stapley led the way forward. Hugging the walls, they tiptoed towards the source of the light.