Doctor Who: The Edge of Destruction

by Nigel Robinson

  The Doctor seemed visibly shaken by Barbara’s fierce tirade and for once seemed at a loss for words. Barbara stormed off for the living quarters and Ian followed her. As she passed the Doctor’s ormolu clock she stopped. A terrified scream burst from her lips and she turned her face away.

  The framework of the Doctor’s ormolu clock had remained unchanged and as beautifully ornate as over. But the face itself on which the hours and minutes were displayed was now distorted, almost unreadable, a mass of molten metal, which strangely radiated no heat. Even the Doctor caught his breath in shock as he wondered at the enormity of whatever power could have caused this.

  Fearing what they might find, Ian, Barbara and Susan looked down at their wristwatches in grim expectation.

  The faces of these too had melted away; it was as though time had stopped for them.

  Susan gave an involuntary shudder. ‘We’re somewhere where time doesn’t exist,’ she said, ‘where nothing exists except us..

  ‘Oh, don’t be stupid, Susan!’

  Hysterically Barbara tore the watch off her own wrist and flung it across the control room, where the glass shattered into a hundred tiny pieces. Sobbing, she threw herself down into a chair. Susan went instantly to her side to comfort her.

  ‘You can’t blame us for this, Doctor,’ said Ian evenly and then turned around. The Doctor had disappeared. ‘Where is he now for heaven’s sake?’ he asked irritably.

  As if on cue the Doctor entered the room from the passageway which led to the living quarters. He had a beaming smile on his face and in his hands he carried a tray upon which were four plastic cups.

  ‘I’ve decided we’re all somewhat overwrought,’ he said genially as he handed out the cups. ‘We all need more time to think instead of throwing insults at each other.’

  Ian looked at the old man, amazed at his sudden apparent volte-face. ‘I wish I could understand you, Doctor,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘One minute you’re abusing us and the next you’re acting like the perfect butler.’

  ‘We must all calm down and look at the situation logically, my dear boy,’ the Doctor said pleasantly. He shot Ian a crafty look which the schoolteacher did not seem to notice.

  Ian eyed the liquid in his cup uncertainly and sniffed it: its smell reminded him of apricots and honey. ‘What is this?’ he asked warily.

  ‘Merely a little nightcap,’ answered the Doctor cheerily. ‘Something to help us relax and sleep. In the morning things may look a lot clearer.’

  ‘That is, if it is night now,’ pointed out Ian and gestured over to the melted clockface. ‘We’ve no longer any way of telling.’

  Over in the corner Barbara had calmed down a little, encouraged by Susan. She stood up determinedly and drained her cup. ‘Well, whatever time it is, I’m going to bed,’ she said, secretly hoping that in sleep she might find some release from the nightmare into which they had all been thrown.

  She walked over to the door. Before she left Ian drew her aside. ‘Keep your door locked - just in case,’ he whispered.

  Barbara was about to ask him what he was talking about when he nodded over to the Doctor. On their way from Susan’s room back to the control chamber Ian had told her what had happened in the power rooms. He had no way of telling whether the Doctor had indeed tried to kill him. But after that experience Ian wasn’t prepared to trust the old man as far as he could throw him.

  Over at the other end of the control room the Doctor glared at them suspiciously, and strained to overhear their conversation. Barbara glared back at him and then, saying goodnight to Ian and Susan, she made her way to the sleeping quarters.

  Susan approached the Doctor. ‘Make it up with her, Grandfather—please,’ she said softly.

  The Doctor looked down at his granddaughter and snorted indignantly. There was no way he was going to make amends with Barbara; to do so would be to admit some weakness and culpability on his part—and that the Doctor would never allow himself to do. Indeed, it would be tantamount to admitting he was wrong—and the Doctor stubbornly believed that he was never wrong about anything.

  Susan shrugged her shoulders in defeat and followed Barbara out of the room.

  When the girls had gone, Ian turned back to the Doctor, who was now relaxing in a chair. He seemed purposely to ignore Ian’s continued presence in the room.

  ‘Doctor, some very strange things are happening here,’ Ian began. ‘I feel we are in a very dangerous situation.’

  The Doctor raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh, do you now?’ he asked haughtily.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ replied Ian, his tone hardening slightly in automatic response to the Doctor’s supercilious manner. ‘I think it’s time to forget whatever personal quarrels we may have with each other.’

  ‘Really?’

  For the sake of us all, stop being so damn superior and acting like a spoilt brat! thought Ian. ‘I think you should go and apologise to Barbara,’ he said sternly.

  ‘Oh, should I, young man?’ the Doctor said. ‘Chesterton, the tone you take with me seems to suggest that you consider me as one of your pupils at that preposterous school of yours—’

  ‘That’s not fair,’ Ian interrupted him.

  The Doctor stood up and drew himself up to his full height.

  ‘Young man, I’m afraid we have no time for codes and manners,’ he declared loftily, treating Ian exactly as many of his former colleagues would treat a dim-witted pupil. ‘I don’t underestimate the dangers—if they do indeed exist. But I must have time to think! I have found that rash action is worse than no action at all.’

  ‘I don’t see anything rash in apologising to Barbara,’ said Ian, and sipped at his drink.

  The Doctor merely laughed off-handedly.

  ‘Frankly, Doctor, I find it very difficult to understand you or even to keep pace with you at times,’ Ian admitted.

  The Doctor’s eyes sparkled with conceit. ‘You mean to keep one jump ahead of me, Chesterton, and that you will never do. You need my knowledge and my ability to apply that knowledge; and then you need my experience to gain the fullest results.’

  ‘Results?’ said lan, realising how little he knew the old man and remembering the incident in the power rooms. ‘Results for good—or for evil?’

  ‘One man’s law is another man’s crime,’ replied the Doctor enigmatically. ‘Sleep on it, Chesterton, sleep on it.’

  Ian looked curiously at the old man and then drained his cup. He was already feeling very sleepy. Perhaps the Doctor was right after all: perhaps in the morning things would indeed seem clearer. But he would still lock his door—just in case.

  The Doctor watched him go and allowed himself a self-satisfied smirk. He chuckled; he really was immensely superior to everyone else on board the Ship, he thought.

  On the floor by his side his cup of beverage was left untouched. He was the only one who had not drunk it...

  ‘Who’s there?’ asked Barbara nervously as she heard a faint tapping at her door.

  ‘It’s only me—Susan,’ was the reply. ‘Can I come in?’ Barbara sighed with relief, thankful for any company, and got up out of bed to unlock the door. Susan was standing there in her nightgown.

  Susan looked down, trying hard to avoid Barbara’s eyes. ‘I just came to say I’m sorry for what Grandfather said to you...’

  Barbara smiled weakly. ‘It’s all right, Susan,’ she lied. ‘It’s not your fault.’

  ‘I know... but you must try and understand him. He’s an old man; he’s very set in his ways... Whatever you might think of him right now he is a good man—and a very kind one too, so kind and generous you wouldn’t believe. He’s looked after me so well...’

  ‘He has a strange way of showing his kindness, Susan,’ said Barbara. There was no resentment in the statement; Barbara was merely pointing out a fact.

  ‘Maybe so,’ agreed Susan. ‘But you don’t know the terrible sort of life he’s had. He’s never had any reason to trust strangers before when even old friends have turned against hi
m in the past; it’s so difficult for him to start now... But you and Ian are both good people; please, try and forgive him.’

  ‘Strangers? Is that still all we are to you, Susan—after all we’ve gone through?’ asked Barbara.

  Susan seemed embarrassed. ‘No, you know that isn’t true... but Grandfather... please be patient with him...’

  Barbara was silent for a moment, wondering whether to pursue the matter further tonight.

  ‘Try and get some sleep, Susan,’ she advised. ‘In the morning it will all seem different.’

  ‘Yes, maybe you’re right,’ the girl said and yawned. ‘I’m feeling quite sleepy already.’

  ‘Can you find your way back to your room in the dark?’

  Susan nodded. ‘Yes; I know the TARDIS as well as you’d know your own house—it’s my home.’

  With that she wished Barbara goodnight and went off down the corridor to her bedroom.

  Barbara closed and locked the door. realising once again how tittle she knew of the Doctor and Susan’s past. Susan’s vague references to it just then troubled her. Why indeed should Susan and the Doctor trust her and Ian? And why, for that matter, should they trust the Doctor and Susan? Despite superficial similarities, she reminded herself once again that they belonged to two entirely different species. Apart from being trapped together in the Ship they had nothing whatsoever in common with each other.

  Banishing such doubts from her mind she returned to her bed. She was already feeling very, very sleepy...

  The Doctor sat in his chair for over an hour, muttering quietly to himself and carefully going over recent events in his head. The drug he had administered to his three companions would give him ample time to think and come up with a way out of this dilemma; and, more importantly, it would keep Ian and Barbara safely out of the way.

  The doors had opened, letting in a brilliant white light. Appearances suggested that the doors had opened during flight. Those of the TARDIS’s controls which still seemed to be functioning normally certainly appeared to support this supposition. But if that was so why hadn’t they been immediately sucked out into the raging time vortex through which they were travelling? And if they were indeed still travelling, why was the central time rotor, which normally rose and fell during flight, motionless?

  Therefore, logic decreed that the TARDIS had landed. But things aren’t always very logical, are they? Barbara had said. The Doctor, whose entire life had been ruled by the application of cold, hard logic and emotionless scientific observation wondered whether the schoolteacher’s disturbing proposition was, in fact, a valid one.

  But for the moment, he decided, it would be best to follow the path of logical deduction and reasoning, the path he could follow best.

  So the TARDIS had landed somewhere. But where? The multiple images on the scanner did nothing to help; the last one, the one of the exploding star system, was in fact distinctly disquieting.

  For a moment the Doctor allowed himself the indulgence of thinking that the sequence of images might be some sort of coded message. But a message from whom? No sooner had the idea crossed his mind than he dismissed it. It was a preposterous notion: nothing could so interfere with the TARDIS without his knowledge and permission.

  The Doctor finally eased himself out of his chair. There was only one way to find out where they were. He would not bring himself to admit that it was what Barbara had suggested all along. He would open the doors and venture out of the Ship!

  In his bed, Ian tossed and turned, unable to get to sleep. Even the Doctor’s drugged drink was having no effect on him. Just as he was about to drop off, the concealed lighting in his room would suddenly flash and rise to a painful brilliance, shocking him out of his drowsiness. Then the lights would fade until his room was as dark and gloomy as the rest of the Ship.

  This continued for almost an hour before Ian decided he had had enough. Dragging himself out of bed, he put on a dressing gown and staggered over to the door which he had locked before retiring. Frowning, he noticed that it was now unlocked.

  Warily, he opened the door and looked down the corridor. Seeing that no one was out there waiting for him in the shadows, he staggered off to the control room.

  Back in his bedroom the lights slowly dimmed and then went out altogether.

  7: The Haunting

  Back in her room Barbara was experiencing the same difficulties as Ian in getting to sleep. Although Barbara was not aware that she had been drugged, it was as if the pulsing lights which kept her awake were fighting a furious battle with the effects of the Doctor’s sleeping drug, intent on keeping her awake.

  Finally she resolved to give up the struggle to fall asleep, and got up out of bed. She decided to go down to the rest room and pick up a book to read from the Doctor’s wide-ranging library. If she was lucky she would find something by Trollope; if anything could put her to sleep that would.

  Slipping into her dressing gown she opened her bed-room door. Although the strange pulsating lights, presumably another malfunction of the TARDIS, had kept her awake, the Doctor’s drug was still having a potent effect upon her. If she hadn’t been so groggy she would have realised, as Ian had done, that her door had been mysteriously unlocked.

  She looked up and down the darkened corridor, trying to remember the way to the rest room; it was so difficult to establish any sense of direction in this gloom. Which way, which way?

  Still she could hear the in-out in-out breathing of the TARDIS life support system. Crazily she thought she could hear it changing its rhythm and tone, almost as if it was calling out her name: Bar-bar-a... Bar-bar-a...

  She shivered, and then silently scolded herself for behaving like a silly schoolgirl. This was the TARDIS, she reminded herself, a precision-built machine; it was not a Gothic mansion from the latest Hammer horror film.

  Nevertheless she walked smartly off in the direction away from the imaginary ‘voice’—and, in her superstition-derived ignorance, also away from the rest room.

  Barbara first suspected she was lost when she became aware that the corridor in which she was walking seemed to be sloping downwards—and wasn’t the rest room on a slightly higher level than the sleeping quarters? She stopped and looked about her in the half-light.

  She had come to a dead end. Behind her wound the corridor she had travelled down; to her sides were two roundelled walls, in one of which there was a door. Deciding that she couldn’t get any more lost than she was already she hesitated for a second, and then opened the door.

  The door opened out onto a vast laboratory, almost the size of a school assembly hall. Lines of long wooden benches were covered with the most amazing variety of scientific tools Barbara had ever seen in her life. Everything from old Chinese abacuses to futuristic items of equipment, the purposes of which Barbara couldn’t even guess, seemed to be here.

  One entire wall was lined with computers, all of which should have been chattering busily away to each other, but which, like everything else in the TARDIS, were now deathly silent. Another wall was covered with complicated charts and diagrams.

  Barbara gave a silent whistle of appreciation; even she, as unscientific as they came, couldn’t help but be in awe of the size and comprehensiveness of the Doctor’s laboratory.

  She gave herself a little pat on the back when she saw the huge shelves on the far wall, packed to overflowing with files, papers and books. She might not have found the rest room, but surely here she would find something to take her mind off her current situation?

  But when she reached the bookcase she was sorely disappointed. Book after book was merely another dry scientific treatise. Barbara looked despairingly at what to her was merely mumbo-jumbo, much of it written in strange languages and multisyllabic words she didn’t know, or unearthly scripts she couldn’t decipher. Sighing, she replaced a book and turned to go.

  It was then that she noticed the door which, hidden in the shadows cast from the bookcase, she hadn’t seen before. It seemed to be made of some he
avy metal and was opened by a rotating circular handle. Curiosity got the better of the schoolteacher and she reached out to open it.

  And then her heart missed a beat as a short sharp noise echoed throughout the laboratory. Turning around fearfully, she whispered, ‘Who’s there?’

  No reply.

  Barbara looked around and then breathed a sigh of relief as she saw the book on the floor. Obviously she had not replaced all the books carefully enough, and one had dropped to the floor.

  Smiling, and chiding herself for her jumpiness, Barbara bent down to pick up the book. But then another book fell off the shelf. And then another. And another. And another—until every single book on the shelf was seemingly throwing itself through the air at Barbara.

  Box files fell off the shelves and sprang open, sending their contents swirling and scattering in all directions, as though caught up in some eerie, intangible wind.

  Barbara looked on in terror as a whole rack of test tubes swept off a nearby workbench and fell to the floor, smashing into a thousand pieces, their contents giving off noxious fumes.

  Other vials and glass tubes rattled madly away in their containers. By her side a chair upended itself and crashed to the floor. Charts fell off the walls, and the floor began to shudder sickeningly beneath her.

  ‘Who’s there?’ she cried. ‘Why don’t you just leave me alone!’

  But still the nightmarish visitation continued. Finally Barbara snapped and, terrified, ran out of the room—straight into Susan.