by Gary Russell
‘Have I any choice, Doctor? I want... I need to solve this and get things back to normal. I have to take whatever opportunities offer themselves up.’
The Doctor smiled at him. ‘Which is why you are the commander,’ he said quietly.
The doors to the bridge slid open, disgorging Paladopous, Adric, Nyssa and an albino female medic called Dieter, who joined the Doctor beside Tegan.
‘I need my team with me,’ the Doctor said. ‘Particularly Tegan.’
‘Is that wise?’
‘Possibly not, but whoever that was, it used Tegan as a medium. It may need to do so again. And I’m sure she won’t mind.’
‘I’m not,’ muttered Adric, evidently taking in what had happened as quickly as usual.
‘Niki, the station is yours until we get back,’ Oakwood said.
‘Adric.’ The Doctor put an arm around the boy’s shoulders.
‘Oh no...’ Adric started, but the Doctor cut him off.
‘No, Adric. You’re staying here. I need someone to look after the TARDIS.’
‘Leave Nyssa, then’
‘If Tegan is possessed again, I may need Nyssa’s knowledge of bioelectronics to help her.’
Adric almost stamped in frustration. ‘Tegan’s always being possessed! She just wants attention.’
The Doctor took a deep breath, then spoke softly in the boy’s ear. ‘I need someone here I trust. Implicitly. If for any reason something goes wrong, you are far more capable of persuading Lieutenant Paladopous to keep hunting for us than Nyssa is. Agreed?’
Adric threw him a look - he knew he was being sidelined, but also knew the Doctor was right. It was a sort of compliment, but the old Doctor would have handled things far better. ‘Oh, all right,’ he said eventually.
‘Thank you,’ the Doctor smiled. ‘It’s always good to know I can count on you.’
‘Doctor?’ called Oakwood from the exit. ‘The shuttle bay is this way.’ He hurried over and took the comatose Tegan’s weight from Dieter, sharing it with Braune.
‘Commander,’ Townsend thought she was whispering, but the Doctor could hear her. ‘Commander, does it strike you as odd that one minute the Doctor’s talking about wanting to go to Dymok, you say no, and then the girl throws this fit. It could all be an elaborate hoax.’
Oakwood nodded. ‘Could be, but that’s why I went close up to her. It was a very convincing act, if that is what it was. But just in case, your job, Sarah, is to keep a close eye on the Doctor.
Keep Braune up to speed at all times.’
She nodded and they continued walking.
The Doctor paused briefly, clicked his tongue in despair and continued towards the shuttle bay.
This was going to be a very difficult expedition.
Adric watched bitterly as the shuttle departed, tracing its course towards Dymok on the station’s vast holographic image screen.
As he stared he became aware that Paladopous was standing behind him.
‘I know how you feel,’ said the human.
‘Do you? I doubt it.’
‘It’s not easy always being the one left behind. I should know. The commander and Sarah are just like every other captain and exec I’ve ever served under. Do it all themselves. There’s a special bond between them and no amount of pointing out that I might be better suited or more experienced, the team sticks together. I can see it’s the same with you.’
Adric shrugged. ‘I’ve got used to it’ He turned away from the screen and looked at Paladopous. Anything I can do?’
He could see the lieutenant’s initial instinct was to say no, but the human seemed to stop himself and then smile. ‘Yeah.
Yeah, how good are you at astrometrics?’
Adric shrugged. ‘Probably better than most here.’ He briefly wondered if that sounded conceited but then decided it didn’t matter. It was, after all, true.
‘OK,’ said Paladopous, unflustered. ‘I want you to check the surrounding area. See if there’s anything out there we can’t detect yet that could be causing problems to Dymok. If the commander needs a hand sourcing information, I’d like to have it at my... our fingertips.’
Adric nodded and crossed over to the astrometrics console and began working.
Well, it was something to do.
Martyn D’arcy was an engineer assigned to Little Boy II three months previously, and due to return to his assignment aboard a cruiser ship in four weeks.
He missed his old job, his colleagues and everything. On his last night on the ship, they’d thrown a small party for him
- everyone had been there. Even the captain. It was a sign of his popularity that so many people wanted to say au revoir, even though he’d only be away for a short time. Here, he felt rather out of place. There wasn’t much for the engineering staff to do
- no engines as such to maintain, just stabilisers and a few routine gyroscopes. More than anything, the engineers found themselves doubling up as computer technicians and maintenance men. Not that Martyn objected - sometimes it was fun, but it wasn’t really a challenge. It wasn’t bringing him into contact with alien races and new phenomena.
Until today.
The first thing that struck him was that rectangular blue boxes were not commonplace in cargo bays.
The second thing that struck him was that tall, bizarrely dressed men were an equally rare occurrence, especially when they were accompanied by a rather antiquated idea of a robot, complete with red-flashing LEDs and hydraulic pumps on its leg and arm joints, that hissed as it moved. The third thing that struck him was a medieval dagger which embedded itself between his shoulders, just below the neck, severing his spinal column and cutting off his brain stem.
Of course, Martyn had no idea about this last thing - only that he suddenly felt very tired and momentarily very annoyed that something was wrong and he couldn’t focus.
Stefan plucked the dagger out of the man’s back, and wiped the blood on the corpse’s crisp, white uniform, leaving a red streak. With a smile he bisected the line with another, forming a red cross against the white - the flag of the English crusaders from his own time whom he so despised. Smiling at his own dark humour, he walked over to the Toymaker.
‘Master?’
‘We must find a way to take this marvellous craft back with us, Stefan. The Doctor will play hard to retrieve it. Or rather, his young friends will on his behalf. Such is the way of things.’ The Toymaker closed his eyes and began an incantation.
Stefan took a step back - there was always something frightening about his master doing this sort of trick.
The Toymaker’s face seemed to shimmer, to dissolve, and was replaced by a head-shaped image of stars, planets and space.
Then the blue box he wanted so much began similarly to shimmer, growing indistinct around the edges and blurring.
At the centre of the box, what the Toymaker had referred to as a ‘swirling vortex of energy’ on previous occasions when he had performed this trick, manifested. Once, Stefan would have called it the work of demons, spirits of evil. Now he knew it was just the science of the Toymaker - the magicks of the Great Old Ones.
The vortex flowed outwards - it was as if the blue box were no longer a solid object, but a metallic liquid. It momentarily held its shape then, slowly, from the centre, poured upwards and into the Toymaker’s visage, as if he was sucking the liquefied box into himself.
A moment later the Toymaker’s face returned and he smiled at the space where the box, this TARDIS, had stood.
Gesturing expansively, he drew up his robes. The robot walked obediently into their folds and Stefan did likewise, feeling a momentary sickness as he travelled back out of time and space and into the eerie whiteness of the Toymaker’s realm.
Recovering himself, he was about to return to another of the tasks set him by his master when he felt the Toymaker’s hand on his shoulder.
Touch was rare - Stefan was either very popular today, or in severe trouble.
‘Neither, my loya
l one,’ the Toymaker purred. ‘But the casual brutality of the murder you committed on the space station was perhaps misjudged. We could have temporarily incapacitated and convinced the man he was seeing things.
Now, I fear, the humans will begin games of their own, searching for a murderer.’
‘Master, surely they cannot find us here?’
‘No, but they have tools that will recognise the energies I used to transport the TARDIS and ourselves. It alert the Doctor.’
The Toymaker stopped, then laughed. ‘Mayhaps, loyal one, you have done right after all. It cannot hurt to give the Doctor more pieces of the puzzle.’ He looked behind Stefan, who turned to see a huge ornately-framed jigsaw puzzle suspended in mid-air. On it was the Doctor.
‘Four
thousand
pieces,
Stefan.
Four
thousand
opportunities to get it wrong’
The Toymaker clicked his fingers and the puzzle rotated, showing Stefan that the same picture was on the reverse, but backwards and upside down.
‘I shall enjoy watching the Doctor put this together. And of course the last thing he will expect will be that, when he does, he will be mine.’
Stefan drew his dagger. ‘Master, if this creature vexes you so, why not allow a loyal servant to dispatch him?’
‘A man would be foolish to fight that which he cannot kill, Stefan. Remember that. It is not the flesh and blood of the Doctor which I seek, my friend. It is his soul - his indomitable spirit that I... require in my service. To destroy him would be unrewarding.’
The Toymaker suddenly smashed the jigsaw, sending the pieces in four thousand different directions. His face screwed up in anger, his eyes darker than ever, and Stefan felt a chill sweep the realm. ‘But to own him,’ the Toymaker spat out harshly, ‘to manipulate him for eternity, to make him pay for the wrong he did unto me aeons ago... that, Stefan that is what drives me.’
Stefan took a step back at the Toymaker’s sudden intensity.
He had never seen him like this and for just a brief second, the result of a strange flicker of light perhaps, there seemed to be another face in place of his master’s.
Twisted and etched with malevolence, bitterness and sheer, unrestrained evil.
Then it was gone.
The Toymaker was himself again, unfazed, as if nothing had happened. Perhaps it hadn’t - mayhaps, Stefan, you need a rest, he told himself.
The Toymaker was frowning at the destroyed jigsaw but, seemingly realising that Stefan was watching, he assumed his usual calm expression. With another click of his fingers, all the pieces rose up and hovered in the air. From a pocket in his voluminous robes the Toymaker extracted a brightly coloured tin.
‘Ye Olde English mint humbugs,’ he announced, and took off the lid. Silently the hovering puzzle pieces poured themselves into the tin, like bees into a honey pot.
‘Ye Olde English trap,’ he muttered. He held the tin up, turning it one way then another and staring at it proudly as if it were the most beautiful object in all creation. ‘This is going to be such fun, Stefan,’ he laughed. ‘Such fun.’
10
The Place You Fear the Most
The shuttle made an uncomfortable landing - it was as though it had been pulled down from the sky by some vast magnetic force. After a few moments its occupants disembarked quickly, Braune at the front and Desorgher bringing up the rear. Both were well armed.
‘Nice trip, shame about the arrival.’ Tegan addressed Desorgher waspishly, clearly back to her old self. The technician shrugged. ‘Wasn’t my fault. One minute I was in control, the next we were being dragged down here and the shuttle didn’t have enough guts to break free from whatever it was.’
The Doctor eased Tegan back. ‘I’m sure Tegan didn’t mean to be rude, Mr Desorgher. We’re all just a little shaken and surprised. Congratulations on getting us down here in one piece, considering the problems you faced.’
Desorgher shrugged and hoisted his blaster rifle, ready for anything.
‘Although I must say,’ the Doctor admonished, ‘I’m not sure that walking around with guns cocked is exactly going to impress our hosts, you know.’
The look Braune shot back at him told him to shut up.
Nyssa touched his sleeve. ‘What are you worried about, Doctor?’
The Doctor stopped and surveyed the landscape. They were on the top of a mud bowl, literally a huge crater. At its centre was a jet black pyramid.
‘Something very powerful dragged us down to this exact spot, Nyssa. I’d like to know what, bearing in mind this is supposed to be an antisocial planet and, apparently, suddenly very quiet.’ He held a finger up. ‘Slight wind, possible rain soon.’ He sniffed. ‘Good clean air. No pollution.
No industry of any sort I suspect.’
Nyssa was shivering. ‘It’s also extremely cold,’ she said.
‘Oh, you’ll get used to it,’ the Doctor beamed at her enthusiastically.
‘So,’ Tegan said, pointing at the pyramid,’ did they build that with their bare hands?’
‘Good question, Tegan. And looking at it, that seems unlikely.’ He shoved a hand into the inside pocket of his cricketing jacket and retrieved a large set of binoculars. He twirled them in his hand as if surprised to find them there then, with a small shrug, passed them to his youngest companion. ‘Nyssa?’
Nyssa peered down at the pyramid through the binoculars. ‘It’s built from smooth black blocks, Doctor. We have a jewel on Traken that looks like this.’
Tegan eased the binoculars away from Nyssa to take a look herself. ‘Onyx,’ she said after a moment. ‘We have jewellery on Air Australia flights that looks like that.’ She smiled at Nyssa.
A hand reached over and took the glasses from Tegan - it was Sarah Townsend. After a pause, she handed them back to the Doctor.
‘You’ll notice there are two small stumps on either side of the pyramid,’ she said.
The Doctor looked, and nodded. ‘I recognise this.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I recognise this.’
As he lowered the binoculars he was aware that everyone was staring at him. ‘Yes, well, let’s not waste the daylight,’ he said, and began going down the side of the crater, using a combination of tentative steps and quick leaps that sent up showers of grey mud.
Oakwood and Townsend looked at the Doctor’s splattered form and their own white uniforms, and then at each other.
‘I’m just glad the shuttle didn’t blow up like the Convergence,’ Oakwood said.
Townsend smiled grimly. ‘Glad to know the same thoughts were going through your head as mine, particularly just before we landed.’
They grinned at each other suddenly, and watched the Doctor. ‘Haven’t done this since I was ten,’ the commander said and followed the Doctor, jumping slightly more often.
Only Braune looked irritated at the mess that was about to go all over him. Desorgher and Dieter gave him a friendly push, which resulted in the security man almost falling. He dropped to one knee and shot his comrades a vicious look.
Desorgher shrugged his apology and followed the others.
Finally Braune eased his way down, carefully and precisely, making sure that little else other than his knees got too muddy. When he finally reached the bottom, he was faced by a group who looked as if they had been bathing in mud.
Desorgher, particularly, was caked from his neck down.
‘I fell in to a... er... hole,’ he said.
The Doctor, Nyssa and Oakwood were first to reach the base of the pyramid, while Dieter, Townsend and Desorgher went to look at one of the stumps.
‘What did you mean when you said you recognised it, Doctor?’ asked Oakwood.
The Doctor was crouched down, scraping at the base of the pyramid. ‘To be frank, Commander, I don’t know.’ He straightened up. ‘Pyramids usually exist for a reason, you see. They are either beacons or cemeteries or land markers. One thing they usually ha
ve in common is that they are rarely alone. I would have expected to see the point of another in the distance. Or something else that would imply a method to the placement. But this one is just stuck here. It doesn’t seem to relate particularly to the sun or the stars, it doesn’t cast a shadow pointing at anything significant and it’s situated in the centre of a crater. All very odd, wouldn’t you say?’
Oakwood pursed his lips. I’m no expert on Egyptology,’ he said, and walked away to join his crew.
The Doctor shook his head. ‘Egyptology. Humans are so limited in their perceptions, so insular in their approach. You see, Nyssa, humans believe that the universe revolves around them. That everything must either affect them or be irrelevant.’
‘Ahem,’ coughed Tegan. ‘I am still here, you know.’
The Doctor turned to her and frowned, then smiled and gripped her shoulders. ‘Of course you are, Tegan, I was talking generally not specifics. You are a particularly fine example of humanity and that’s why we travel together.’ He turned away and crouched down to examine the base of the pyramid again.
Tegan looked at Nyssa, trying to work out whether she had been insulted or complimented, or if the Doctor was just being obtuse. Nyssa shrugged, clearly unable to help.
‘What are you doing, Doctor?’ Tegan wanted to know.
‘I’m trying to see how far down the pyramid goes. Whether it has been here for centuries or was placed here recently for our amusement.’ He stopped. ‘Amusement...’
His thoughts were interrupted by Desorgher. ‘Hey, Doctor, look at this.’
He led the others to the left-hand stump. Townsend was pulling wads of mud away from the base. ‘Doctor, it goes a long way down,’ she said between exertions.
‘But has only been put here recently, as I surmised,’ the Doctor concluded.
‘How d’you know that?’ asked Desorgher.
‘Chief Townsend is finding it too easy to get the mud away.
If it had been here for centuries, that mud would be immovable once she got past the top soil’
