There was a crash as the door was flung open, and the Doctor dashed in. Without even pausing, he grabbed the tiara from the bed and hurled it on the floor. When Tegan and Marriner arrived, he was slashing at it with the axe.
They gaped at him, appalled, as the throbbing in the room grew louder and more insistent. And then the Doctor was on target. A blow from the axe caught the crystal and smashed it into fragments. For one moment of blinding relief, he thought he had succeeded. But, to his horror, each of the fragments"seemed to take up the beat, each pulsed darkly, each one became a Focus. The voice became several voices, overlapping, whispering. "Focus... focus..."
In the darkness of the grid room, Turlough stared in terror as Wrack"s face, pale in the gloom, multiplied into many faces, like the heads of a Hydra, all whispering...
"What is it? What"s happening to it?" Tegan gasped appalled.
"I can"t destroy it!" The Doctor was furious with himself.
"I"m a fool! Its power has multiplied!" He glanced frantically around the room, and grabbed the first thing he saw. It was a flimsy scarf of Tegan"s, lying over the back of a chair. Frantically, he started shovelling the pieces of crystal into it.
"Help me!" he panted "I"ve got to get rid of it!"
Tegan and Marriner dropped to their knees, scrabbling urgently for the black fragments pulsing on the floor. The minute they were all collected, the Doctor was on his feet and twisting the scarf into a bundle, he dashed from the room with it clutched in his hand. The other two hurried after him. Along pa.s.sages they ran, up ladders, along more pa.s.sages Tegan thought she was going to collapse.
"Where"s he going?" she gasped, with a st.i.tch in her side.
"The deck!" Marriner answered, grabbing her hand and pulling her along. "All the portholes are sealed "
The top companion-hatch was flung open and the Doctor almost fell through on his last legs. He tried to stagger to the rail, but collapsed, the bundle in his hand buzzing like a swarm of bees. Driven on by desperation, he crawled across the deck. Still holding the bundle, beating now to a crescendo, he dragged himself to his feet, and with one last effort, hurled it over the rail. Out into s.p.a.ce it went, in a great arc. And as Marriner reached the top of the ladder, there was a blinding flash of white light, and it exploded.
12.
The Prize.
The Doctor, Tegan and Marriner lay on the deck, completely winded. Even Marriner"s body had responded to the sprint as though it were human.
"Just in time," the Doctor murmured. The wood of the deck felt warm under his hands and he relaxed. He could even have gone to sleep, if Marriner had not started talking. He was the first of the three to recover, and as he got up, his eyes sparkled with interest.
"Fascinating!" he said. "For an Ephemeral to outwit an Eternal!" He was almost speechless with admiration for a moment. "I would have thought it an impossiblity!"
Rage restored the Doctor, more than any amount of resting would have done. "An impossibility?" he exclaimed, leaping to his feet. "Not at all!"
Marriner looked at him as though he were a clever pet of some sort. "We have complete control over matter," he said, in a voice that practically patted the Doctor on the head.
"Had you merely imagined the Focus as being jettisoned out there in s.p.a.ce, I could have converted the image into reality. We would not have needed to expend so much physical effort."
"Why didn"t didn"t you do it, then!" Tegan snapped. you do it, then!" Tegan snapped.
"Because he didn"t think of it." The Doctor dismissed Marriner with a look, and turned back to Tegan. "They"re far more dependent on us than we are on them," he said.
"Without us, they"re empty nothings!"
His eyes had their old look of self-reliance again. He had found the Eternals" measure. But suddenly he lifted his head, almost like a horse sniffing the air. Marriner seemed to sense something too. They stood motionless for a second, neither of them speaking.
"What is it?" Tegan whispered. She knew there was something different, but she could not quite place what it was. Then she realised. Everything was still. The pennant at the masthead had stopped flapping. The sails hung limp.
"The wind," the Doctor said softly. "It"s dying."
In the ion chamber the beam of darkness had disappeared and the whole room had grown lighter. Wrack still stood at the centre of the grid, but seething with anger. When she spoke again, the voice that came from her lips was her own, but it was venomous.
"Striker"s ship is still whole," she spat.
It was not until that moment that Turlough realised which ship she had been about to destroy. He should have known, he told himself. Watching her, almost sick with relief, he felt that she could actually sense the other ship"s existence. Just as a moth can detect the presence of a female of its kind up to thirty miles away, from a molecule of its scent in the air, so Wrack was aware of the other minds aboard that ship. If her plan had succeeded, they would have flashed the images of their own destruction to her, and then their messages would have ceased completely. But the living picture-show was still going on, and she knew that she had failed.
The door burst open and Mansell hurried in. "Captain "
was the only word he managed to get out, before she rounded on him.
"I know!" her eyes blazed. "Striker"s ship still exists."
"But becalmed! The wind has dropped." His voice was ingratiating, and it seemed to carry hope, for its effect on Wrack was immediate. With great effort, she relaxed and lifted her head. The poisonous twist of her lips was replaced by a smile.
"Then I must make do with victory," she said triumphantly.
Turlough was nonplussed. "How can you win if there"s no wind?" he stuttered.
She looked at him with gloating power. "My sails can catch the lightest whisper of a breeze. The race is ours.
And the prize."
Striker was beside himself. "Bosun... Bosun..." he shouted down the speaking-tube. The helmsman cringed slightly as the Captain flung away from it in fury and strode towards him. But as he reached the man at the wheel, he turned again, and started to pace backwards and forwards, glaring round the empty room.
"Where is everyone?" he ground out. "Victory is in sight and we idle here! Sails hanging limp!"
The First Mate hurried through the door and he rounded on him explosively. "Get the men aloft, Mr Marriner! And crack on!"
Marriner did not move. The Doctor and Tegan came slowly in and stood beside him.
" I said "crack on", Mr. Mate," Striker repeated with quiet fury.
"There"s no point." Marriner said despairingly. "We just don"t have the sail, Captain."
Striker paced again, this time to look through one of the ports. "Wrack"s pulling away from us!" There was frustration and controlled rage in his voice. "She"s going to win!"
Marriner"s head sank and the life seemed to go out of his face. "We"re beaten " the words died away like an echo.
And he stood frozen and immobile again, as he had when Tegan first saw him. Striker, too, seemed to gaze with empty, fixed eyes that saw nothing, not even the ring of harbour lights ahead.
"Beaten?" the word jarred the silence. "Not quite." The Doctor"s voice was urgent and full of purpose. And as he stepped forward authoritatively, the two Eternals responded, almost as though he had breathed life into them.
"Don"t forget Turlough"s over there," he said encouragingly.
Tegan could hardly believe she had heard correctly.
"Turlough!" she repeated contemptuously. "Him!" How could the Doctor not realise what Turlough was like, she thought. It was pathetic. Turlough was about the last person you could rely on. He was cowardly, selfish, greedy
"I trust him." The Doctor"s quiet voice broke into her mental catalogue of Turlough"s faults. "He"ll stop her." And then he became brisk and practical again. "He may need a hand, though." And turning to Striker and Marriner he went on firmly, "I shall require my TARDIS."
The Eternals looked at each other. In some strange way, it was now the Doctor who was the dominant figure in the room. They were like puppets, hanging on his thoughts.
"Very well," Striker nodded.
Marriner looked into the Doctor"s face. "Concentrate,"
he said. The two pairs of eyes locked together, and the stare between them was unblinking and almost hypnotic. Then slowly their eyes closed. They seemed to be in some sort of trance, but the tension in their faces showed the effort involved.
"Where is is the TARDIS?" Tegan whispered. the TARDIS?" Tegan whispered.
"Hidden in the Doctor"s mind," came softly from the Captain.
And then, with its usual grinding, rumbling noise, the TARDIS slowly materialised, right in the middle of the wheel-house. The Doctor opened his eyes. There was enormous relief in them, and for a second, Tegan had a faint idea of just how much the TARDIS meant to him.
Then he snapped into action. "Quickly now, Tegan," he said briskly. "No time to waste." And he made immediately for the door of the transdimensional machine. Tegan followed him, but before they could reach it, Marriner stepped between, and stood, firmly blocking their path.
"Miss Tegan stays with me," he said.
"No!" the Doctor did not even pause to think.
"She stays. Or you both stay." There was strength and determination in the young man"s face. And, even in her panic, Tegan wondered for a brief minute where the idea had sprung from. Was it from Marriner"s own mind? Was he learning again to produce thoughts of his own? But her conjecture was cut short by the Captain"s voice.
"Wrack"s running running away from us." away from us."
He stood, staring through the port at the Buccaneer Buccaneer, as she crept ahead and the gap between the two ships slowly widened. Tegan felt the same frustration as he did. More than that, she thought suddenly of the White Guardian, and of how important his message had seemed to be.
"Go, Doctor! she said emphatically.
He looked at her, still reluctant, but that simply increased Tegan"s determination. She thought of how the Doctor trusted her, of how he had made her co-ordinator once. "We came here to stop the race. Remember?" she said even more vehemently. "It"d be silly to fail now!" and she almost pushed the Time Lord towards the TARDIS.
Marriner stepped aside immediately. The Doctor opened the door and went in. Just before it closed, he gave Tegan one last long worried look, and then the TARDIS was going going gone.
"She"s almost won!" Striker shouted despairingly. Tegan and Marriner rushed to stare at the screen with him, and the three of thern watched with sinking hearts as the Buccaneer Buccaneer edged nearer and nearer to the ring of welcoming lights. edged nearer and nearer to the ring of welcoming lights.
"The Doctor will never stop her now!" Striker almost groaned the words.
The TARDIS materialised right by the "Danger" door.
"Perfect placing," the Doctor thought briefly, as he hurried out. "The stay in my mind doesn"t seem to have done her any harm. With one quick glance, he took in the "full power" position of the vacuum shield gauge, and then he opened the door. Wrack was standing in the middle of the grid, facing him. She smiled as she saw him and slowly raised her arms and looked up at the "eye" above her.
"No! No, wait " the Doctor called. He did not look to right or left, his whole attention was on Wrack, all his energy concentrated on stopping her before it was too late.
Without a second thought he stepped onto the grid and started balancing his way towards her, still talking.
"The power you"re tapping you think it"s under your control... it isn"t... it will control you you..."
Wrack slowly shook her head.
"You don"t understand what it is!" the Doctor went on desperately. He had almost reached her, when there was a clang, as the door was slammed behind him. He turned.
Turlough stood in front of it. Mansell was advancing from the other corner.
"Throw him into the void," Wrack commanded, her eyes alight with a deadly antic.i.p.ation.
"Turlough -" The Doctor said the one word and then no more. He stood, swaying precariously over the grid as the two men closed in on him. Wrack watched gloatingly.
"What is the Doctor doing!" The exclamation was wrenched from Tegan, as she watched the screen, practically biting her nails in frenzy. Striker"s face was dark and closed, Marriner"s held no hope. And then a brief flare of light seemed to shoot from the side of the ship ahead of them. It died in the darkness of s.p.a.ce, and another followed.
"What was that?" Tegan asked.
"Man overboard,". Marriner answered, heavily.
It took a second for it to sink in, and then the realisation hit Tegan like a tidal wave. If someone had been thrown from the deck of that ship "Not the Doctor! Her voice sounded thin and strange in her own ears. All the objects in the room seemed on a different plane. Reality changed. "It couldn"t be the Doctor!" she heard someone saying, pathetically and she recognised it as her own voice, speaking from miles away.
"The Buccaneer is still moving." Marriner"s p.r.o.nouncement was final, like a mathematician writing Q.E.D. at the end of a problem. is still moving." Marriner"s p.r.o.nouncement was final, like a mathematician writing Q.E.D. at the end of a problem.
If the Doctor had not succeeded in stopping Wrack, then it must of necessity have been his body which was tossed overboard.
"She has not even slackened speed," Striker"s mournful voice added. Proof positive. "And the second shooting star,"
Tegan thought to herself, vaguely, "Turlough perhaps.
Who knows."
There was a sudden fountain of lights ahead, like fireworks.
"The Doctor has failed," Marriner said, dully.
"And Wrack has won," came bitterly from the Captain.
Tegan buried her face in her hands. Slowly, all animation seemed to drain from the faces of the two Eternals, and when Marriner spoke again it was in a flat, dead voice. "The race is over." Tegan did not even look up.
"Is the Doctor dead?" she asked, in a mutter thick with tears. "I don"t know," Striker answered, detachedly.