Doctor Who_ Father Time Part 46

'Where's Debbie?'

The Doctor looked him in the eye. 'Ferran killed her.'

Mather nodded, suddenly subdued. 'I'm sorry.'

They all started walking towards the door.

Miranda shook Mather's hand. 'It's good to finally meet you.'

'You're his daughter? Yeah, I can see that.'

The Doctor and Miranda shared a smile.

Mordak was looking at the door.

'How thick is it?' the Doctor asked, knowing he wasn't going to like the answer.

'About forty metres.'

'Forty metres?' the Doctor echoed.

'Tarvin?' Miranda asked.

A man in slave's clothes looked up from the control panel. 'Long time no see. Anything happened since we last saw each other?' He chuckled.

Miranda smiled. 'How's that looking?'

'It's looking impenetrable.'

Miranda banged a fist against the door. 'We're not going to get this open...'

There was a mechanical sound from all around them, and the door slowly began to grind back, into the wall.

'I didn't do that...' Miranda said, her voice trailing away.

'Fall back!' Mather warned. 'Get that cannon ready. Anyone with guns, take up positions!'

The Doctor pulled Miranda away from the door, almost carrying her until they were safely behind the cannon.

With a screech, the door ground to a halt, well before it was fully open. The c.h.i.n.k in the door was perhaps four feet across.

No one was saying anything, everyone was waiting.

There was a scrabbling sound, getting louder.

Miranda held on to her father, eyes wide.

Mather and Tarvin looked at each other and shrugged.

The sound was footsteps echoing and amplified by the metal corridor.

A clawed hand emerged, grabbed the doorframe.

A few rifles were raised, and there were high-pitched hums, like camera flashes powering up, as the guns were readied.

'Don't shoot!' the Doctor shouted.

He headed forward. The hand was pale, with thick, dark veins standing out. The Doctor frowned. It reminded him of something.

Miranda and Mordak were a few feet behind him.

'Stay back,' he said, but his voice lacked conviction.

The hand was slipping down. The Doctor took it, gently and pulled its owner clear of the gap.

An old man, wearing a frayed and faded technician's uniform. He looked at the Doctor with uncomprehending grat.i.tude.

'Chann,' the Doctor said, reading from the name tag on the man's sleeve.

Mordak stepped forward. 'It can't be: Chann was a cla.s.smate of mine. This man is ninety years old.'

Miranda peered into the tunnel formed by the half-open door. 'I don't understand.'

Then she looked at her father.

'The time engines,' they said together.

'Mordak, could Ferran have done this?'

'Start a deliberate time spillage? That would be madness. It would throw the time engines out of phase.'

'They are all dead,' the old man croaked. 'We could see it was hopeless. We told him we were going to surrender, and open the doors, and he killed us all. He's decoupling the engine. Everything in there is carefully balanced, it's exquisite. He's thrown everything out of phase.'

Mather and Tarvin had run forward with a medical kit. Mather moved over to the gap.

The Doctor grabbed the sleeve of his s.p.a.cesuit. 'No. You'll be killed.'

Mordak gave a dry laugh. 'If the time engines have been tampered with, we're all dead. The s.h.i.+p will explode, the time spillage will be unstoppable.'

'Earth...' Mather said.

'By tomorrow morning, the Earth will be a desert,' Mordak said. 'Tomorrow afternoon, the sun will be a red giant, and will destroy it.'

'Miranda,' the Doctor said, 'we have to stop him.'

She stood, s.h.i.+vered a little. 'We don't know that we are immune.'

'We know that we're the only two people who may may stand a chance. That has to be enough.' stand a chance. That has to be enough.'

She nodded.

'I'll go first,' he told her, easing himself into the gap.

It was dark the walls were solid metal.

There was forty metres to walk forty paces, about twenty seconds.

There was blue light at the other end, harsh, like neon.

And about halfway along Miranda realised that if Ferran was at the other end, and saw them coming, all he would have to do would be to close the door again and there would be nothing they could do to stop themselves being crushed.

She quickened her pace, forcing her father to do the same, and they stepped out into the engine room.

The chamber was smaller and less cluttered than Miranda had expected, but it defied logic.

It was the inside surface of a sphere, but there was no up or down: the whole surface was the floor. She could tell, because it was littered with skeletons and patches of faded uniform. It was disorientating, against all mammal logic. What sort of people could feel at home here?

In the centre of the room was a large sphere, lit from within, the source of the harsh blue light. The sphere was translucent, and full of mechanisms like snapping jaws. As they gnashed together, it reminded Miranda of a tank full of piranhas.

The room was thick with time, filled with it, as it might have been full of poison gas or seawater. There was a sense of movement, like a hurricane, but it wasn't around them, not in s.p.a.ce at any rate.

Ferran was about a hundred yards away, wearing a protective suit, the sort of thing they wore in nuclear power stations. He was kneeling down, and it looked like he was at a control console or similar piece of apparatus.

She looked over to her father.

'You stop Ferran, I'll save the Earth,' he suggested, matter-offactly.

Miranda nodded, and started to stride towards Ferran.

The Doctor hurried over to the huge central sphere.

His mind kept whispering words at him, but they weren't quite audible. The words were the names of the components of the time engine, and explanations of how they worked. He tried to concentrate on them, but he couldn't hear.

He knew what to do.

The sphere was about twenty metres in diameter, and threw out blue light, waves of time and a great surging, grinding noise. But there wasn't any heat.

He reached out to place his palm on the surface of the sphere, and just as he knew it would, he realised the surface parted, forming an oblong hole just large enough to walk into without ducking his head.

The Doctor stepped inside.

'Ferran!'

He looked up, startled by her presence.

'How can you survive in here?' he asked, through a clear visor so thick it refracted his face.

'I'm above all that,' Miranda told him. 'Look at my clothes, though.'

Her clothes were fading and fraying. Nothing too serious yet, but clothes that had been new on yesterday now looked as if they'd been worn and washed dozens of times. She could feel her hairgrip corroding away in her hair.

She wondered what her lifespan was, and when she would start to feel different. So far, there was nothing, no changes at all.

'Stay back!' Ferran shouted. He had to shout to make himself heard.

'I can't let you destroy us,' she told him gently.

The Doctor reached into one of the energy streams.

It talked to him, responded. A machine this sophisticated had to be on the verge of intelligence, he realised with a start. And, as Turing had always said, a computer as intelligent as a man was instantly more intelligent, as it would have a better memory, more efficient control over its own thoughts.

It wasn't alive, not quite: it needed guidance, it needed coaxing.

By him.

Time travel, literally in his hands.

It had been one of his and Debbie's perennial conversations: if they had a time machine, where would they go in it? Debbie always chose the past: the court of Queen Elizabeth, Roman Britain, even the streets of Victorian London, The Doctor had walked those streets, but he had never spoiled Debbie's romantic notions with his memories of them. The Doctor would pick the future, every time. The past fascinated him: he loved to study history, to imagine himself talking to historical figures. But how much better to step on to the first s.p.a.ce station, or stand on the top of a mile-high skysc.r.a.per, or see how the world eventually solved the problems and challenges that faced it in the twentieth century. The future was unwritten anything could happen.

He wanted to travel in time. Debbie had taken him to see Bill and Ted Bill and Ted, and he'd seen their flying telephone box and wished he'd got one of his own. If only Zevron's saucer hadn't been fitted with a self-destruct circuit, that dream might have come true nearly ten years ago.

Show me the future, the Doctor asked.

'Why are you doing this?' Miranda asked.

'To rid the universe of you and your kind.'

'Think about what you're doing. You'll die, too.'

'It's a price worth paying.'

'And who will lead your people?'

'Someone will emerge.'

'You're the last of your family. And I doubt you've endorsed a successor, not if you spend so much time away from home in your Librarinth or on this s.h.i.+p. He might get ideas.'

'My people are strong they are the supreme beings of the universe. They will survive.'