Doctor Who: The Mark of the Rani (9 page)

A scuffle roused him from his introspection.

Belligerently, Ward was straining at his bonds. To think this was the father of Luke; that gentle, reliable youth whose aspirations he’d so encouraged.

Totally subjugated to the Master’s will, Luke impassively entered the workshop. Stephenson looked up from the iron flange he was heating in the furnace.

‘Tha’s delivered note?’

‘Aye.’ The deceit came without hesitation.

‘What did his lordship say?’

‘Nowt.’ The second lie.

Stephenson, interpreting Luke’s dull tone as being the result of a wigging from the boss, suffered a twinge of conscience. ‘’Appen I should’ve gone meself. Explained.’

He rested the flange on the anvil. ‘In’t office, is he?’

‘Nay!’ The first stir of emotion from Luke. He dare not let the two men get together; his subterfuge would be discovered. ‘Tha’ll stay put. I’ll fetch him to thee. ’Tis safer that way.’

The proposal placated Stephenson who had no cause to believe Luke was other than the considerate apprentice he had always been. ‘Thanks, Luke. Tha’s a real thoughtful lad...

In the yard, there were further complications.

‘Ah, Luke. I want a word with Stephenson. About this meeting.’ Lord Ravensworth was en route for the workshop.

Luke had to stop him. ‘He’s nay in’t workshop.’

‘No?’ Ravensworth was surprised. ‘Where is he?’

‘Down pit.’ Mendacity was no longer foreign to Luke’s nature. ‘Wanted to arrange for visitors to see demonstration.’ A plausible explanation. ‘What about meeting, m’lord?’

‘In my opinion it should be called off.’

Luke’s face betrayed none of the emotion this assertion triggered. Surging through his head came the Master’s mandate: ‘If anyone tries to prevent the meeting, you destroy them!’ Surreptitiously, his fingers closed over a crowbar lodged on a crate.

‘All this rampant brutality. We’ve no right to subject these people to such danger.’ Lord Ravensworth was oblivious of his own proximity to danger.

‘Mr Stephenson don’t see any danger.’ Despite the urge to kill, Luke continued to opt for persuasion. Perhaps there remained a spark of the original young man who rejected violence. ‘Going to be fair disappointed he is if meeting doesn’t take place. Eager to show off latest engine.’ The crowbar was firmly grasped ready to strike.

‘Somewhat selfish reasoning.’ The censorious Ravensworth had no inkling of the dark forces haunting his protégé.

‘Not if he’s convinced they’ll come to nay harm, your lordship.’

As he awaited a decision, Luke’s muscles tensed... his patron’s life hung in the balance...

‘Convinced, you say? Ah well, George Stephenson has always enjoyed my complete trust.’ A reluctant shrug. ‘On his head be it.’

The fingers relaxed.

Ravensworth turned to leave, then changed his mind.

‘However...’

The grip on the crowbar tightened again.

‘Be sure to tell him what I’ve said.’

‘Aye. I will.’

This time his lordship did depart.

If Ravensworth, albeit unwittingly, was distancing himself from danger, the Doctor was doing the opposite. At least, that was Peri’s vociferous conclusion.

‘You can’t be serious! You’ve only just escaped from there!’

The Doctor was advancing on the bath house. ‘The victim returns to the scene of the crime.’

His gallows humour failed to amuse Peri. ‘Look, let’s be sensible about this.’ She was terrified. ‘Concentrate on getting the TARDIS out of that pit shaft.’ Unbelievably, the Doctor unlocked the door and nipped in! Trailing after him, Peri’s voice lowered to a whisper. ‘Instead of shoving our necks into the noose again!’

Her forebodings carried no weight. The Doctor made straight for the bath chamber. He did at least stuff a towel into the gas pipe before examining the wall that partitioned off the laboratory.

‘What if the Master and that awful Rani are inside?’

‘They won’t be.’ Was the Doctor as confident as he sounded? He certainly seemed sure of himself as he went into the hallway again.

With his usual lack of explanation, he began investigating his surroundings. ’ "Cowards die many times before their deaths",’ he quoted as he traced an indentation in the woodwork. ’ "The valiant never taste of death but once". William Shakespeare.’

‘What about that other piece you’re so fond of spouting?

"Discretion is the better part of valour." That’s Shakespeare too!’

Absently, the Doctor conceded she had a point.

‘Interesting fellow, the Bard. Must see him again – aaaah!’

He pressed a concealed button. The wall slid apart.

Expecting trouble to emerge, Peri shied away.

‘Control panel. Very unsophisticated. Not worthy of the Rani.’ Despite his bravado, the Doctor was circumspect as he entered the laboratory.

The sight that greeted him dispelled all thoughts of his own safety. The two assistants were spread-eagled on the floor.

‘Josh!’ exclaimed the Doctor as he hurried to the pathetic corpse and felt its pulse.

‘Is he...?’

He shook a grim negative. Sadly Peri stared at Josh’s body and remembered his young wife and their baby. The Master had a lot to answer for!

The Doctor’s verdict was different. ‘Some of the Rani’s handiwork, I imagine. Don’t come any farther, Peri.’

Tentatively, she had stepped over the threshold. ‘The Rani’s quite capable of leaving behind some very unpleasant surprises.’

Crouching, he settled onto his heels. The wanton assassination had staunched his reckless streak. Soberly, he commenced a rigorous visual scan of the laboratory.

‘Why the devil have you brought us to this miserable dump?’

The Master’s querulous complaint echoed in the darkness. Bent almost double, the Rani was penetrating the low tunnels of the disused mine.

‘I didn’t bring you. You chose to come!’

‘Why here?’

‘It was my original base before I set up operations in the bath house.’

Cobwebs brushed her shawl and coal dust scrunched beneath her shoes. In the interest of self preservation, the Master lingered near the entrance.

‘Did we have to walk? Couldn’t we have used your TARDIS?’

She paused at an intersection. ‘My TARDIS is performing a more important function.’

The Rani’s arrogance in keeping her own counsel rankled. He glared after her. ‘Is it too much to ask what that function might be?’

Resuming her progress, she was monosyllabic: ‘Yes.’

Still crouched on his heels, the Doctor was pondering the same question the Master had posed. That the Rani would be nearby, he was certain; the Master’s possession of the brain fluid would guarantee that. The price for its restitution? The Doctor’s death? How?

‘The red mark,’ Peri indicated the crimson band that had garrotted Josh. ‘The Rani?’

He nodded.

‘What was she going to do to me?’

‘Drain the substance from your brain that enables you to sleep.’

‘But the results! Those other men! Hasn’t she any conscience?’

‘Like so many scientists, she believes we’re simply walking heaps of chemicals. There’s no place for the soul in her scheme of things.’ He rose and began to patrol the laboratory.

‘Why? I mean – what would she want it for?’

‘That’s an aspect I haven’t fathomed.’

‘I knew the substance existed. Drug companies in the States and Switzerland are trying to reproduce it. Sleeping pills and tranquillisers would become obsolete if they could. People wouldn’t need them any more.’

The Doctor was positive that alleviating human suffering couldn’t be the Rani’s objective!

‘How come you know her?’ asked Peri.

‘The same way I know the Master.’

‘But he’s an exiled Time Lord.’ ‘Quite. Two of a kind.’

Carefully avoiding contact with the ornate room-divider, he studied the turbulent volcanic landscape. ‘Odd... Very odd...’

‘What is?’

‘This screen. I’d’ve said Turner’s too passionate for the Rani’s sterile taste.’

A forage in the cornucopian pocket of his coat yielded a ball of twine with a hook on the end.

‘I guess she thought so too, since she’s not taken it with her.’

Peri moistened her lips as, gingerly, with the dexterity of a bomb disposal expert, the Doctor fastened the hook onto the screen. Then, playing out the line, he withdrew to a far corner.

‘Shall we?’

‘Shall we what?’

‘See if I’ve misjudged the Rani.’ He jerked the line.

Instantly, the picture came alive.

The volcano erupted.

Yellow fumes spewed into the laboratory and billowed towards the Doctor...

13

‘Dichlorodiethyl sulphide!’

Sniffing, the Doctor retreated.

‘Dio – what?’

‘Mustard gas! Don’t breathe it in, Peri! Whatever you do, don’t breathe it in!’

The advice was unnecessary. She had heard of the lethal gas: a killer that had paved the battlefields with corpses in the First Great War of the twentieth century.

The noxious yellow cloud was swooping rapidly towards the Doctor’s side of the laboratory. He charged for an uncontaminated gap.

Simultaneously, the volcano erupted again, belching out more acrid fumes and blocking the escape route.

From the comparatively unaffected entrance, Peri watched impotently as he retreated.

His back thudded into the wall. He was cornered. The gas hemmed him in. Smothering his nose and mouth in a capacious handkerchief, he bawled to Peri.‘M...s...s!’

‘I didn’t get that!’ The fumes were beginning to spread to her side now.

The Doctor removed the handkerchief briefly. ‘Masks!’

‘Masks?’ The word was clear but the intention was not.

‘The Rani’s assistants!’ Wisps of the gas seeped into his nostrils. The effect was immediate. He retched and spluttered.

But the message had got through. The masks the assistants had worn were hitched to their waist belts.

However, their bodies were already being licked by the deadly vapour.

Turning away, Peri inhaled deeply then dashed for the nearest body. Holding her breath, eyes smarting and streaming, Peri fumbled to unclip the mask.

The volcano belched again.

The Doctor’s cheeks bulged with the effort of keeping his nose and mouth plugged. Everything depended on Peri.

Adrenalin pumped into her veins inducing a clarity in the perception of events and time that enabled Peri to steady her trembling fingers. In a whirlwind of continuous action, she unhitched the mask, slipped it on, filled her lungs with the purified air, rushed to Josh, yanked the mask from his belt and hurled it across the laboratory to the Doctor.

He caught it and pulled it on.

‘Thank you, Peri.’ His gasped gratitude, filtered by the snout, was a muted bass. ‘Street door.’

‘Street door?’ Her vowels were also a couple of registers lower.

‘Open it! Ventilation! Quickly!’

She scampered into the hallway and flung the front door wide. The yellow fumes began dispersing.

Returning, she found the Doctor no longer hunched in the corner. Instead, he was prowling the screen. At least, he was prowling a wardrobe which the shifted screen had revealed.

An unprepossessing piece of slate grey bedroom furniture in a laboratory? Peri was puzzled.

The Doctor did not seem to be. The symbolic rings carved on its panels had a significance for him. His next move startled Peri. He tugged at the green fob-chain looped across his plaid waistcoat.

‘Hey, that’s the key to the TARDIS!’

Confidently, he inserted the key in the lock and the wardrobe door swung open.

A TARDIS.

Peri made the connection. The Rani’s TARDIS! But, oh no! The Doctor was about to step inside!

‘Suppose she’s in there –!’ He had disappeared! Afraid of being left behind, she forgot her fears and nipped in after him.

Similar in design to the Doctor’s TARDIS, the predominate colour of the Rani’s time-machine was silver.

Glass shelves and cabinets crammed with flasks, syringes, pipettes and bottles of all descriptions lined the silver walls.

In the centre was the control console crowned with a thin, tubular, steel maze of concentric rings floating in space. But what aroused the Doctor’s curiosity as he ripped off his mask were the five large specimen jars supported by five pillars arranged in a circle about the central dais. The jars contained embryos, curled foetuses preserved in glutinous liquid and in a state of suspended animation.

‘Ah, embryos of the Tyrannosaurus Rex.’

Peri grimaced at the revolting semi-formed dinosaurs, their sharp teeth already protruding from elongated jaws.

She knew the Tyrannosaurus Rex was extinct. So how could the Rani have got these five embryos?

‘She’s been back to the Cretaceous Age to collect them.’

The Doctor tapped a container. The baby monster did not move. ‘Nasty creatures. Vicious teeth. Bite your leg off and chew it up. Bones and all.’

Peri could well believe that!

‘Ah!’ His mercurial attention butterflied to the neat rows of chemicals and toxic substances. ‘The Rani’s a magpie. D’you realise, through these, we could tell just where in the cosmos she’s visited?’ He was reading the labels on the containers.

‘How about where she is right now? Will they tell us that?’ Hugging the masks – the Doctor had dumped his on her – Peri nervously eyed the alien interior.

An array of dials, calibrated scales and interwoven glass piping that serviced a perforated turntable dotted with test-tubes, took the Doctor’s roving attention. ‘Novel approach to chromatography, utilising pi-mesons –’

Without warning, the maze of tubular rings began to rotate... to whirl round each other, corkscrewing, winding up and down.

‘Peri, run!’

‘Why? Where?’

‘
Run!
’ She ran!

In the laboratory she halted, waiting for the Doctor to emerge.

He didn’t.

What did occur was devastating. Vertical strips of light on the Rani’s TARDIS pulsated once... twice... thrice...

then dematerialisation.