Even then, though, a cure was by no means guaranteed.
Some Time Lords recovered, but others wandered off into the Outlands and were never seen again.
The treatment of last resort was a forced regeneration, in the hope that the melancholia would be left behind in the discarded form...
The Doctor knew that he ought to go back to Gallifrey. But he had left the place in a gesture of independence and it stuck in his craw to go crawling back for help now.
'Not yet; he muttered. 'Later, if I must, but not yet. 'Doctor, heal thyself!'
So what could he do? The Doctor knew that sometimes the condition simply lifted as mysteriously as it had come, but he couldn't just sit around drinking tea in the TARDIS and waiting to feel better...
'The Brigadier would say I needed a holiday,' he said to himself. 'Been overdoing it, Doctor,' the Brigadier would bark. 'Get away somewhere for a rest. Try Cromer.
The opposite choice, of course, was to deliberately court danger. Nothing made you appreciate life like nearly losing it. Why not try both?
'A holiday with danger,' muttered the Doctor, and laughed for the first time in weeks. 'I know the perfect place. I've been there twice and both times it nearly killed me. Well, let's give it another chance. Maybe this will be a case of third time lucky! Come on, Doctor, kill or cure!'
The Seventh Doctor got up, went over to the control console, and punched in the coordinates for that well-known beauty spot Metebelis IIl, famous blue planet of the Acteon Galaxy.
***
While the Doctor was battling depression, his greatest enemy, the Master, was teetering on the verge of madness.
His descent into savagery on the Cheetah planet after his last encounter with the Doctor had tipped the balance of a mind always prone to paranoia over into uncontrollable obsession.
Having now regained enough control to make his escape, the Master was determined to destroy the Doctor once and for all, even if it meant he had to die in the process.
He was sitting by a dying camp-fire on a distant desert planet on the remote fringes of Mutters Spiral. This planet was inhabited by a handful of ferocious lifefbrms and an equally ferocious humanoid species, the Morgs.
It was midnight and he was surrounded by savages, wrapped in skins.
Skeletally thin with warped, bony faces, the Morgs lived on roots and insects and fruit, and the flesh of such small animals as they could catch. In fact, they would eat anything that didn't eat them.
They were a miserable tribe of half-starved barbarians but they had one great secret, something that was worth coming all this way to find: they could cheat death.
The Master threw open the treasure chest he had brought from his TARDIS.
There were silver goblets, gold trinkets, priceless gems, a necklace of diamonds, a sapphire tiara - the casual loot of a thousand crimes. It meant nothing to him - he had even offered it to Sabalom Glitz once as a bribe, not that he'd ever have handed it over, of course.
Despite, or perhaps because of, their poverty, the Morgs had a love of jewels and precious metals that amounted to worship. They probably did worship them, thought the
Master, carrying them off to some hidden altar. He lifted a diamond necklace from the chest and turned it in his hands, making it sparkle in the firelight. As the Old Chief reached out a bony hand, the Master dropped the necklace back into the chest and slammed it shut.
'You know what I want.'
The Old Chief in turn took the lid from
a crude clay pot at his feet. Inside there writhed a duster of dark and slimy creatures, half hidden in a bed of leaves.
He replaced the lid and offered the pot to the Master, who shook his head.
'First I must have proof.'
The Old Chief pointed to one of the Morgs around the fire.
'Kill him.'
Suspecting a trap the Master drew back.
'I'm not your butcher. Kill him yourself.'
With terrifying speed the Old Chief whipped a long knife from beneath his skins and thrust it deep into the tribesman's heart. The man fell, twitched for a moment and then died in silence.
'Watch!' said the Old Chief.
For several minutes, nothing happened. Then something black, slimy and snake-like slid from the dead man's mouth. It reared up, showing two red eyes and a slit of a mouth, and seemed to look round the silent circle of tribesmen, as if searching. Suddenly it flashed through the air and one of the Morgs fell back choking. For a moment he writhed, clutching at his throat, and then he became calm, resuming his place by the fire. The Old Chief jabbed the man he had killed with his foot.
'His spirit now lives in him'.
He pointed to the Morg now sitting peacefully by the fire.
'How does it work?' asked the Master eagerly.
'You swallow the deathworm before you go into danger. It becomes dormant and lives inside your body. If you are killed it absorbs your essence, body and spirit. It lives on in your remains - in the ashes even, if the body is burned. As soon as it can, it seeks a new host. It takes over the host and then it dies, but you live again in a new body!'
Eyes gleaming, the Master picked up the clay pot and clasped it to him.
Leaving the treasure chest behind, he strode towards hisTARDIS, which now looked like a pillar of red sandstone.
The Master smiled in the darkness. What exquisite revenge: to destroy the Doctor by becoming the Doctor -or rather, by forcing the Doctor to become him.
All he had to do now was get himself killed.
***
The Seventh Doctor sat beside his TARDIS on a wide ledge, mountains rising steeply at his back. The ledge overlooked a shimmeringly beautiful blue lake on Metebelis Three. Far below, the countryside was calm and peaceful. A blue moon sailed serenely across the sky, shedding a uniquely beautiful light.
A shadow fell over the Doctor, there was the sound of beating wings and a bird as big as a spaceship flew slowly across the full moon. The Doctor sat very still, not wishing to be snatched up as a late-night snack for the great Roc's nestlings.
He thought back to his last visit. He had destroyed the Great Spider and freed the people of the planet from enslavement by a breed of super spiders.lt had cost him a regeneration, but it had been worth it.
It had been a good idea to come back here, he realised. His earlier visits had been stormy, to say the least, but now at last the planet was living up to its reputation. He could feel his spirits lifting under the influence of its calm beauty... Had the Doctor seen the glowing eyes in the dark mountain crevice behind him, he might have felt differently.
A huge, dark, eight-legged shape appeared. It crept closer, closer...
At last it sprang, landing between his shoulder-blades with a horrid soft plop. The Doctor felt the sting of its fangs in his neck and then darkness swept over him.
***
When the Doctor awoke, he was hanging from a giant web across the mouth of the crevice, wrapped up from head to foot in sticky spider filaments. From inside, the huge spider studied him with her glowing eyes.
'You were rash to come here,' she said in a high clear voice. 'Our rule is broken now and the other two-legs hunt us down, but a few of us survive to take our revenge.'
Leaving him, she disappeared into her crevice.
The Doctor struggled furiously, but he was quite helpless. He wondered how long it would be before the spider returned to start eating him. Perhaps she liked a little nap before supper. Perhaps she had gone to invite her friends round to dinner.
At this point, the Doctor discovered that the second part of the Metebelis holiday cure was working. Now that his life was nearly over, he suddenly realised how desperately he wanted it to continue.
'Late-night supper for a spider,' he muttered. It was such an undignified way for a Time Lord to go.
Suddenly, incredibly, he heard a wheezing, groaning sound.
For a second he thought theTARDIS was leaving him, but by twisting his head he saw anot
her TARDIS appear and blend with his own. The TARDIS
door opened and a tall young man with longish brown hair stepped out -
and stood looking down at his swaddled form with astonishment.
Their eyes met, time froze, and their minds touched. The Eighth Doctor was whole again at last.
All the Seventh Doctor's memories flooded instantly into his mind. But this time there was more. All his own memories returned as well - right up to the moment when he had sprung the Master's trap.
Suddenly he knew the Seventh Doctor's future - what little there was of it.
How could he tell him?
How could he not?
Hastily shielding the knowledge in his mind, the Doctor became aware that his seventh self was talking to him.
'Explanations later,' croaked the strained voice. 'Are you going to stand there gawping or are you going to get me out of this blasted cocoon?'
Hurriedly the Doctor bent down to free his other self. It wasn't easy. The spider's filament was like incredibly strong and sticky string. It couldn't be broken but it could, with care, be unwound.
The process took a considerable time and long before it was finished the time bubble burst and time resumed its normal flow. The Doctor had got most of the Seventh Doctor free and was about to start work on his feet when a high clear voice rang out.
'Another two-legs! I shall feast well tonight.'
The Doctor leaped back, looking around for a weapon, a chunk of loose rock, anything... There was nothing within reach.
Springing past her still-bound first victim the giant spider stalked towards him.
The Doctor began feeling frantically through his pockets. A paper bag - the thing probably didn't care for jelly-babies. What else?
The spider sprang, its huge black shape blocking out the blue moonlight...
The Doctor's hand came out of his pocket holding a squat stubby gun. He fired and the spider gave a high-pitched scream of agony before seeming to vanish. Something quite small dropped at his feet. He looked down and saw the body of an ordinary spider, curled up into a ball in its death agony.
He looked at the Master's Tissue Compression Eliminator with a strange mixture of relief and distaste.
Then he went to the edge of the ledge and hurled it away, watching as it spun shining through the blue moonlight to disappear beneath the waters of the lake far below.
He went back and finished freeing his other self.
Not long afterwards the two Doctors sat in the TARDIS, enjoying a civilised cup of tea.
'Ah, well, thanks,' said the Seventh Doctor, brushing the remains of sticky filaments from his jacket.
'Lucky you had the Master'sTCE handy!'
'I expect he's got a spare.'
There was a moment of silence. The Doctor seemed preoccupied. He was realising what the Sixth Doctor had meant about it being tricky to meet your previous incarnation. He knew the Seventh Doctor's fate. He knew of the trap in the TARDIS and the hail of bullets in San Francisco.
Yet if he warned the Seventh Doctor, and if the Doctor escaped the perils that lay ahead, he himself might never come to exist.
The Seventh Doctor surveyed him with keen interest, half sensing the turmoil in his successor's mind.
'Well, I must say it's interesting to meet me!' he said.
'It's all become rather complicated...'
'Never mind. I'm just glad you turned up when you did, or I'd have been a spider's supper.'
There was another awkward silence.
Doing his best to make conversation, the Seventh Doctor said, 'Look, whose TARDIS is this, yours or mine?'
'Both! When TARDISes from different time zones coincide very closely in space they seem to - merge.'
'Does that mean we have to share from now on?'
The Doctor smiled. 'Don't worry! The way it seems to work is I leave and you dematerialise. When you've gone, my TARDIS is still there so I can dematerialise in turn.' He stood up, abruptly. 'I'd better go.'
'So soon? I was just getting to know me!'
'It will create a lot of awkward temporal paradoxes if we spend too much time together. Especially since -'
'- we're so closely linked in time,' the little man finished the sentence for him. 'You're the next one, aren't you?'
'Yes, I'm the next. I really must go.'
'Well, if you must.'
They shook hands, then the Seventh Doctor operated the door control and the Doctor moved to the door. He paused for a moment, and seemed to reach a decision.
'Look, you'll be getting a telepathic message soon, from an old enemy...'
'And?'
'You'd do well to ignore it. It's a trap. A
- deadly trap.'
The Seventh Doctor held up his hand.
'Thank you - but don't tell me any more. This meeting puts you in an impossible position, I can see that.'
'I didn't know what to say,' said the Doctor apologetically. 'But I had to say something.
'No one needs to know the hour of his end, not even a Time Lord. Besides, if I don't fulfil my destiny, how can you fulfil yours?'
'I felt I had to warn you.'
'We'll just let things take their destined course, shall we? Time will tell - it always does!'
"Thank you,' the Doctor said. 'And good luck!'
They shook hands and the Doctor went out into the blue moonlight of Metebelis III.
***
Left alone, the Seventh Doctor drew a deep breath.
Then he started to operate the dematerialisation controls, setting them so that the TARDIS would hover for a while in the space-time continuum.
He felt extraordinarily cheerful. His depression had completely vanished.
Life had never seemed sweeter.
Mind you, there was no telling how much of it remained to him. Nice of that young fellow to try to warn him.
However long or short the time that remained, the Seventh Doctor was determined to enjoy every second of it. He'd reconfigure the TARDIS, the way he'd always planned. Something Gothic-looking with redwood panels.
New control switches and a new scanner... He would reread "The Time Machine' in that signed first edition H.G. had presented him with when they had said goodbye last. And when the mysterious message came from an
'old enemy', he'd answer it.
Despite the young fellow's warning, he found it hard to feel too worried.
He idly wondered what kind of mad scheme this enemy would be hatching...
***
In his TARDIS, the Master smiled in triumph, regarding the wriggling creature in the glass dish before him. In his laboratory, using the techniques of accelerated genetic engineering, he had reprogrammed, modified and improved the deathworms, giving them much boosted capabilities.
True, he'd killed all but one of them in the process, but one super-deathworm remained and that was enough.
He was sure his scheme would work. The Doctor never could resist a good sob story.
And once the Doctor was alone with the Master's remains...
He saw by the decrease in the rise and fall of the Time Rotor that he had nearly reached his destination.
It was time.
With a grimace of distaste, the Master picked up the glass dish, tilted his head back, opened his mouth and let the deathworm slither down his throat.
His TARDIS landed.
Opening the doors, the Master stepped out into a metal plain, surrounded by metal towers. Behind him, his TARDIS, obeying pre-set instructions, dematerialised. It would be safe in the space-time continuum until he recovered it.
Alone and unafraid, the Master stood in the centre of the metal plain and watched the metallic creatures gliding towards him. They gathered around him in a menacing circle, still too astonished to speak.
The Master threw back his head and laughed. 'Yes, it's me - your old ally, the Master! What have you got to say for yourselves, you stupid tin boxes!'
Chapter 23
Rassilon's
Game
Bathed in shimmering blue moonlight, the Doctor was watching his seventh self s TARDIS detach itself from his own and dematerialise. He stood for a moment absorbing the beautiful scene, feeling reluctant to leave.
Suddenly a shadow fell over him and he heard the beat of enormous wings.
He looked up and saw a vast dark shape swooping down, claws extended.
'That roc again...!'
Doctor Who: The Eight Doctors Page 25
