DOCTOR WHO.
THE TIME MONSTER.
by TERRANCE d.i.c.kS.
1.
The Nightmare
The tall, thin man with the young-old face and the mane of prematurely white hair was sleeping uneasily. Suddenly he awoke - to a nightmare.
He was still on the battered leather chaise-longue upon which he had dropped off to sleep but instead of being in his laboratory he was at the centre of a barren, burning landscape.
All around him volcanoes erupted, sending out streams of burning lava. Lurid jets of flame flared up in smoky dust-laden air.
He sat up - and found himself staring at . . . at what?
A row of strange symbols, looking rather like double headed axes. Suspended before them was a huge, glowing crystal, pulsing with light, shaped like the head of a three-p.r.o.nged spear, or like Neptune"s trident.
Suddenly a sinister black-clad figure loomed up before him.
"Welcome! Welcome to your new Master!"
Volcanoes rumbled, lightning flashed and the figure gave a peal of mocking, triumphant laughter.
More strange and threatening shapes swam up before the dreamer"s eyes. Strangely carved statues, demonic face-masks with long, slanting eyes . . .
Suddenly everything erupted in flame. Somewhere, someone was calling him.
Doctor! Doctor!"
The Doctor awoke, really awoke this time, and found himself back in his laboratory at UNIT HQ. A very small, very pretty fair-haired girl in high boots and a striped woollen mini-dress was shaking his shoulder.
For a moment the Doctor stared at his a.s.sistant as if he had no idea who she was.
Then he said delightedly, "Jo! Jo Grant!"
"Are you all right, Doctor?"
"Yes, I think so. I must have been having a nightmare."
"I"ll say you were - a real pippin. Here, I"ve brought you a cup of tea. Do you want it?"
The Doctor took the cup and saucer. "Volcanoes . . . earthquakes. . . " Suddenly he leaped up. He handed Jo the untouched cup of tea. "Thank you. I enjoyed that."
He wandered over to a lab bench, picked up small but complicated piece of electronic circuit and stared absorbedly at it.
"Doctor, have you been working on that thing all all night again?" asked Jo accusingly. night again?" asked Jo accusingly.
"What is it anyway - a super dematerialisation circuit?"
(At this time in his lives, the Doctor, now in third incarnation, had been exiled to Earth by his Time Lord superiors. The TARDIS, his s.p.a.ce-ti machine, no longer worked properly. Much of his time was spent in an attempt to get it working again, and resume his wanderings through time and s.p.a.ce.) "No, no, the dematerialisation circuit will have to wait. This is something far more important. It might make all the difference the next time he he turns up." turns up."
"The next time who turns up?"
"The Master, of course."
The Master, like the Doctor, was a sort of renegade Time Lord, though of a very different kind. The Doctor"s wanderings through the cosmos were a result of simple curiosity. Such interventions as he made in the affairs of the planets he visited were motivated always by his concern to defeat evil and a.s.sist good.
The Master, on the other hand, was dedicated to evil; his his schemes had always had conquest and self-aggrandis.e.m.e.nt as their goals. schemes had always had conquest and self-aggrandis.e.m.e.nt as their goals.
Once good friends, the Doctor and the Master had long been deadly enemies. The Master"s sudden arrival on the planet Earth had led to a resumption of the long-standing feud between them.
The Master"s desire to defeat and destroy the Doctor, preferably in the most agonising and humiliating fashion possible, was quite as strong as his desire to rule the Universe.
And the Master had been part of the Doctor"s nightmare . . . Perhaps the Doctor"s subconscious mind, or that now-dormant telepathic facility that was part of his Time Lord make-up, was attempting to deliver some kind of warning. Perhaps he had somehow picked up a hint of the Master"s latest, and no doubt diabolical, scheme . . .
The Doctor swung round. "Now Jo, listen carefully. I want you to go and find out, as quickly as you can, if there have been any volcanic eruptions or severe earthquakes recently - anywhere in the world."
"You"re joking of course!"
"Believe me, Jo, this is no joking matter."
"But I read it all out to you last night," said Jo indignantly. "It just shows, you never listen to a word I say." She went over to a side table, picked up a folded copy of The The Times Times and perched on the edge of the Doctor"s desk. "Here we are. New eruptions in the Thera group of islands, somewhere off Greece. and perched on the edge of the Doctor"s desk. "Here we are. New eruptions in the Thera group of islands, somewhere off Greece.
"Does it say anything about a crystal?"
"What crystal? Look, Doctor, I know I"m exceedingly dim, but please explain."
"It was in my dream," said the Doctor slowly. "A big crystal, shaped something like a trident . . ."
Not far away, in his attic laboratory at the Newton Inst.i.tute, Professor Thascalos held a trident-shape crystal aloft. "Observe - a simple piece of quart nothing more."
Carefully he fitted the crystal into the centre of a cabinet packed with electronic equipment. He placed a transparent protective cover over the apparatus and stepped back.
He was a medium-sized, compactly but powerful built man, this Professor Thascalos, with sallow skin and a neatly-trimmed pointed beard. His dark burning eyes radiated energy and power.
Beside him stood his a.s.sistant, Doctor Ruth Ingram, an attractive looking woman with short fair hair and an air of brisk no-nonsense efficiency about her. Like the Professor, she wore a crisp white lab coat.
She looked exasperatedly at her superior. "but that"s ridiculous!"
"Of course it is, Doctor Ingram," agreed the Professor. His deep voice had just the faintest tinge of a Greek accent. "Of course it is. There is no for me to prove to you that this crystal is different from any other piece of quartz, yet it is unique. As you say, ridiculous!"
They were standing in the small inner section of the lab, divided from the rest of the lab by a protective wall of specially strengthened gla.s.s.
Slipping off his lab coat to reveal a beautifully tailored dark suit, the Professor moved through into the main laboratory. Like the smaller one, it held an astonishing variety of electronic equipment, crammed into what had once been servants" quarters in a great country house.
Ruth Ingram followed him. "And this crystal is the missing piece of equipment we"ve been waiting for?"
"Exactly!"
Suddenly the door burst open and a tall, gangling young man rushed in, managing in the process to fall over his own feet.
"I swear I switch that alarm off in my sleep!" He had a shock of untidy brown hair and a long straggly moustache - intended to make him look more mature - gave him instead a faintly comic air.
At the sight of the Professor he skidded to a halt. "Oops! Sorry, Prof."
Stuart Hyde was the third member of the Professor"s little research team, a post-graduate student working for a higher degree.
"Simmer down, Stu, for Pete"s sake," said Ruth. But she couldn"t help smiling. There was something endearingly puppyish about Stuart Hyde.
The Professor however was not amused. "Don"t call me Prof!"
Stuart groaned. "In the dog house again!"
The Professor glanced at his watch. "Be quiet and listen to me. I have been summoned to a meeting with our new Director in exactly two and a half minutes. I shall have to leave the final checks for the demonstration to the pair of you."
Ruth was both astonished and alarmed. "At we going to have a trial run first?"
The experimental apparatus on which they had all been working was due to be demonstrated to one of the Inst.i.tute"s directors that very morning a director who also happened to be Chairman of the Grants Committee.
The Professor shook his head decisively. "A trial run? It"s not necessary, my dear."
"That"s marvellous," said Stuart gloomily. "We"re going to look a right bunch of Charlies if something goes wrong when this fellow from the Grants Committee turns up. We"ll be left there with egg our faces."
"Surely, Professor-" began Ruth.
"Now, now, my dear, there"s no need for you to worry your pretty little head."
He could scarcely have said anything calculated to annoy Ruth Ingram more. "And there"s no ne you to be so insufferably patronising, Professor. Just because I"m a woman. . ."
Stuart sighed. "Here we go again!"
The Professor said instantly, "You"re quite right, Doctor Ingram. Please, forgive me."
He paused in the doorway. "Now, will you be so good as to run those checks?"
The door closed behind him.
Ruth stood staring furiously at it. "That man! I don"t know which infuriates me more, his dictatorial att.i.tude or that infernal courtesy of his!" She sighed. "It"s all the same really - a bland a.s.sumption of male superiority!"
Stuart grinned. "May G.o.d bless the good ship Women"s Lib and all who sail in her."
Privately however, Stuart was thinking that Ruth had got it wrong. The Professor didn"t a.s.sume that he was superior just to women.
He was superior to everybody.
Mike Yates spread out the map of the Mediterranean on the Doctor"s table and pointed. "There you are, Jo, the Thera group. Those little islands there."
Jo looked up at the Doctor who was busy at his lab bench. "Doctor, come and look!"
"Not now, Jo, I"m busy."
"But it"s that map you asked for."
A little grumpily the Doctor put down his circuit. "Oh, I see!" He wandered over and looked at the map. "Mmm, Thera..."
Jo waited expectantly.
"Doesn"t mean a thing to me!" The Doctor returned to his bench.
Jo peered at the map. "It says "Santorini" in brackets. Must be another name for it.
What about that?"
The Doctor was immersed in his work. "Forget it, Jo. I had a nightmare, that"s all."
Jo gave Mike Yates an apologetic look. "Sorry, Mike."
He began rolling up the map. "Not to worry! Better than hanging about the Duty Room. If nothing turns up soon I"ll go round the twist."
"That makes two of us. And here I was thinking we were going off on a trip to Atlantis."
The Doctor swung round. "What "What?"
"I was just saying to Mike."
"You said Atlantis Atlantis," interrupted the Doctor. "Why Atlantis?"
"Well, it said so in the paper, didn"t it?"
The Doctor strode over to them. "The map, Captain Yates, the map!"
Hurriedly Mike began unrolling the map again.
Jo picked up the newspaper. "Here it is. . . "Believed by many modern historians to be all that remains of Plato"s Metropolis of Atlantis"."