Doctor Who_ The Edge of Destruction Part 8

'Yes,' said Barbara slowly as she tried to sort out into some sort of sense the crazy thoughts which were whirring around in her head. 'But the clock is the most important of all-it made us aware of time.'

'By taking time away from us?' asked Susan excitedly, remembering her grandfather's words and strangely intrigued by Barbara's theory.

The schoolteacher nodded. 'And it replaced time by the regular flas.h.i.+ng light on the Fault Locator...'

'Yes, it did...' said Ian, slowly beginning to see what Barbara was getting at. He felt a thrill of excitement down his spine.

'It? It?' snapped the Doctor irritably. 'What do you mean? Who is giving us all these clues?'

'The TARDIS?' ventured Barbara.

'My machine cannot think,' countered the Doctor automatically.

The truth was that the Doctor was so convinced of his own superiority he had never before even considered the matter.

Barbara, who realised how absurd the proposition would sound to someone as logically-minded as the Doctor, tried to soften the idea. 'But the s.h.i.+p does have a built-in defence mechanism, doesn't it?' she asked reasonably.

'Yes.'

'Well, that's where we've all been wrong all this time. Originally it wasn't the TARDIS that was at fault, it was us us. We've all been so busy accusing each other, and defending ourselves from each other, that we were ignorant of the real danger. And the TARDIS-or the defence mechanism, whichever you like to call it-has been trying to tell us so ever since!'

The possibility fascinated Ian. 'A machine that can observe, and think for itself... Is that feasible, Doctor?'

'Think, as you or I think, Chesterton, that is certainly impossible,' maintained the Doctor. 'But to think as a machine... yes, that is a fascinating theory. I must admit to you that there are aspects of my machine which I still don't yet fully understand... Yes, yes, it is possible!'

'We didn't know it but the TARDIS has, of all things, been looking after us!' said Barbara. 'When Ian got lost in the corridors the TARDIS guided him to the Doctor: when he was trapped in that airless room, it was the TARDIS who unlocked the door for him. It even frightened me half out of my wits in the laboratory and in doing so saved my life!'

'But even if that is so, how can it help us out of our predicament?' the Doctor asked eagerly, for the first time in his life asking someone else's advice.

'You said that the power is stored underneath the column,' continued Barbara. 'What would want to make it escape?'

The Doctor shrugged. 'I've been racking my brains. I simply do not know.'

'Something outside?' suggested Ian.

'Possibly.'

'A magnetic forcer 'It would have to be a strong one to affect the TARDIS,' said the Doctor, 'one at least as strong as that of an entire solar system, probably even a galaxy-'

As if in affirmation the lights of the control chamber flashed up once more, momentarily blinding them, and the same sonorous clang they had heard before resounded throughout the control room.

'You see!' cried Barbara triumphantly. 'The TARDIS has been trying to warn us all along! The lights in Ian's room waking him up when the Doctor was about to operate the electrified controls. His door being unlocked when he had locked it... All those blackouts we had!'

'Yes! But only if we went near the control column!' said Susan.

'They could have been the result of the power escaping,' reasoned Ian.

'No, they couldn't,' stated the Doctor definitely. 'If you had felt the full force of the TARDIS's power, dear boy, you wouldn't be here now to speak of it. So great is the power that you would have been blown to atoms in seconds. Besides, a part of the console is safe...'

'But why should just that one panel be safe, and nowhere else?' wondered Barbara. 'What's so special about it? And what did those pictures we saw on the scanner mean? Could it have been some kind of message? Was the TARDIS actually trying to tell as something in the only way it could?'

Again the lights of the control room flashed, and the chamber resounded with a clang of affirmation. The Doctor was silent for a moment and looked around, not at Susan, Ian and Barbara but rather at the walls and the instrumentation of the TARDIS. There was a look of wonderment in his steel-blue eyes.

'Very well,' he said finally, 'we will try the scanner again-but I warn you, we're clutching at straws.' He turned to Barbara and Susan. 'Now, I want you two to stand by the doors. Should they open again I want you to tell me whatever it is you can see outside. Do you understand?'

The girls nodded and crossed over to the large double doors. The Doctor beckoned Ian surrept.i.tiously over to his side by the control console. There was a worried frown on his face. He drew Ian close to him so that only he would hear what he was about to say.

'I lied deliberately so they won't know,' he confided to Ian in a hushed whisper.

'Won't know what?'

'We do not have fifteen minutes left to us; we only have ten. When the end does come Susan and Miss Wright won't know anything about it.'

Ian nodded approvingly. Strangely he no longer felt any panic or fear, merely a calm and resigned acceptance of the facts. 'There's no hope then?' he asked.

The Doctor shook his head. 'I can't see any,' he replied. 'If only we had heeded these warnings earlier, or stopped bickering among ourselves perhaps... But now, I'm afraid not. Will you face it with me?'

'What are you two talking about?' Susan called from the other end of the room.

'Oh, just a theory of mine which didn't work,' lied Ian.

'Yes, we must solve this problem, you know.. ' said the Doctor with affected confidence. 'Now you two just watch the doors and we'll be out of this mess in no time...'

10

A Race against Time

With a trembling hand the Doctor operated the scanner control. All eyes were fixed anxiously on the scanner screen.

For a heart-stopping few seconds, which to the four doomed travellers seemed Like hours, nothing happened. Ian and the Doctor looked nervously at each other. Had even the scanner screen with its strange sequence of images broken down too? Then finally-thankfully-the screen on the far wall flickered into life. Once again the picture of the Malvern Hills appeared, accompanined by the sound of birdsong. The Doctor and Ian looked expectantly over at Barbara and Susan by the doors. Slowly the doors opened, and the same searing white light flooded the control room once more.

s.h.i.+elding their eyes from the glare Barbara and Susan peered out through the open doors.

'There's nothing there, Grandfather, nothing at all!' cried Susan, a touch of hysteria in her voice. 'It's just a wide, gaping, empty void!'

Slowly the doors closed again and thudded shut. They all looked at the screen. As they expected, it was now showing a picture of the jungle world of Quinnius. Barbara and Susan came over to join the two men.

'Barbara could be right, Doctor, it could be some sort of messsage,' said Ian.

'I am am right!' retorted Barbara. 'You know I am. When the scanner shows us a good picture like the Malverns the doors open because it should be safe for us to go outside. Then it shows us a terrible picture and the doors close again.' right!' retorted Barbara. 'You know I am. When the scanner shows us a good picture like the Malverns the doors open because it should be safe for us to go outside. Then it shows us a terrible picture and the doors close again.'

'But if it is a message what does this mean?' asked the Doctor and pointed to the scanner, where the picture of Quinnius had faded to be replaced by the unidentified planet turning in s.p.a.ce. 'After Earth and Quinnius we have this sequence: a planet; a planet in a solar system, getting further and further away; and then a blinding flas.h.i.+ng light!'

'And total destruction,' added Barbara, and turned her eyes away from the glare of the scanner screen. 'Unless...' She drew her companions' attentions to the closed double doors. 'If I'm right, the doors are shut because what is outside now is hostile to us... Were the other pictures just clues? Could that picture on the scanner now be what's outside the s.h.i.+p? Could that be the danger?'

The Doctor's eyes suddenly blazed with understanding. He clapped his hands together in satisfaction. 'Of course!' he cried triumphantly. 'It's all clear to me now: the pictures on the screen, everything! It's our journey-our journey to destruction!'

'Hang on,' said Ian. 'You mean to say that we are heading on a course straight to that explosion?' 'Yes,' said Barbara. 'And the TARDIS refused to destroy itself-so the defence mechanism stopped the s.h.i.+p and it's been trying to tell us so ever since!'

'Exactly!' said the Doctor. 'The TARDIS is ultimately unable to resist the overwhelming forces of that explosion; but it has stalled itself in the void, trying to delay for as long as possible that fatal moment when it must be finally and irrevocably destroyed!'

The affirming clang which echoed throughout the room now was almost deafening. The floor beneath their feet shuddered violently, sending the four companions staggering off in all directions.

'I know now,' cried the Doctor, as he leant against the safe part of the control console for support, 'I know!' He turned everyone's gaze towards the scanner screen: the final sequence was repeating itself over and over again.

'I said it would take at the very least the force of an entire solar system to attract the power away from my s.h.i.+p. And that is exactly what is happening! We have arrived at the very beginning of all things!

'Outside the s.h.i.+p, hydrogen atoms are rus.h.i.+ng towards each other, fusing, coalescing, until minute little collections of matter are created. And so the process will go on and on for millions of years until dust is formed. The dust then will eventually become solid ent.i.ty-the birth of new suns and new planets. The mightiest force in the history of creation beyond which the TARDIS cannot pa.s.s!'

'You don't mean the Big Bang?' asked Barbara incredulously.

'No,' said the Doctor. 'I doubt whether even my machine would be capable of withstanding as well as it has done the forces generated by the creation of the entire Universe; but the creation of a galaxy-of your galaxy-of the Milky Way!'

'But, Doctor, how did we get here?' asked Jan. 'When we left the planet Skaro where did you ask the TARDIS to take us?' The Doctor hesitated. 'Think, Doctor, think!' he urged.

The Doctor paused for a moment. 'I had hoped to reach your planet Earth in the twentieth-century; the old man said. 'Skaro was in the future and so I used the Fast Return switch.'

'The Fast Return switch? What's that?'

'It's a means whereby the TARDIS is supposed to retrace its previous journeys.'

'What do you mean "supposed to"?' asked Barbara.

'Exactly what I say, young lady,' snapped the Doctor. 'I've never used it before!'

'Don't you see, Doctor, you've sent us back too far! We've gone back past the Earth of 1963, we've even gone on back past prehistoric times!' Ian seized the old man by the shoulders. 'Doctor, show me that switch! Where is it?'

The Doctor peered down at the control console. 'I can't very well see it in this light,' he fl.u.s.tered. 'It's near the scanner switch,' volunteered Susan. 'Of course!' said Barbara. 'The one part of the control console that the TARDIS kept safe for us! Only we were too stupid to realise!'

'Doctor, hurry-we can't have much time left!' Ian reminded him.

'There! That's the one, said the Doctor and pointed down to a small, square-shaped b.u.t.ton on one of the keyboards of the control panel.

'So how does it work?' Ian asked urgently.

'You merely press it down and-' The Doctor caught his breath as he examined the switch. 'It's stuck! I pressed it down and it hasn't released itself !'

'You mean it's been on all this time?'

'Yes, it must have been.'

'Well, don't just stand there! Get it unstuck!'

From out of his pockets the Doctor took a small screwdriver. Frantically he began to unscrew the panel which contained the keyboard. Around him Ian, Barbara and Susan watched with anxious eyes, holding their breath as the Doctor's aged fingers fumbled with the screwdriver.

Finally the Doctor lifted up the panel and poked around in the interior workings of the mechanism. He jerked quickly with the screwdriver at the jammed b.u.t.ton and with the most anxiously awaited click! click! in history, the control released itself. in history, the control released itself.

Like an old, forgotten friend the lights returned to the TARDIS control chamber, dispelling instantly the black shadows and illuminating the drawn and weary faces of the four exhausted time-travellers. The TARDIS hummed almost joyously into life again, and in the centre of the control console the time rotor resumed its stately rise and fall.

Close to collapse, Barbara threw herself gratefully into a chair and Ian clasped her hand firmly in support. By the console Susan hugged her grandfather and finally let flow the tears she had held back for so long.

Released from their terrible nightmare at last everyone breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief.

For a long time no one said a word.

Epilogue.

It was Susan who finally broke the silence. 'Are you sure we're safe now, Grandfather?' she asked.

The Doctor smiled affectionately down at her. 'Yes, we can all relax now. But I must say that it was a very narrow escape, a very narrow escape indeed. We've all been very lucky.'

'So what happened?'

The Doctor explained to her the reason for the TARDIS's disability.

Susan was puzzled. 'But why didn't the Fault Locator tell us what the problem was?'

'Elementary, my child,' said the Doctor. 'The Fault Locator is designed to identify faults in the TARDIS's machinery; the smallest imaginable thing can go wrong with my s.h.i.+p and the Fault Locator will identify it. But the Fast Return switch wasn't broken-it was merely stuck! That's why the Fault Locator couldn't register it. It's as simple as that!

'You know, I should have thought of that myself at the very beginning. I think your old grandfather is going a tiny bit round the bend!' The Doctor chuckled and then his face turned serious. He hugged Susan even tighter. 'And I think you were very brave, Susan. I was proud of you.'

Susan smiled gratefully at the Doctor. 'But what about all these warnings we had?' she asked. 'The lights, the control panels... was it really the TARDIS warning us? Can it really think and act for itself?'

The Doctor smiled and then sighed once more. 'I truly don't know, my child. But as we travel on our journeys I feel I am learning more and more about my machine. There were times on our travels, I don't mind admitting to you now, when I felt that we were never quite alone...'

Susan smiled and then directed her grandfather's attention to Ian and Barbara who were at the other end of the room. Barbara was sitting in the chair, her arms folded and her face set hard. Ian was talking softly to her.

'Grandfather, what about them?' Susan asked in a whisper. 'What about Ian and Barbara?'

'What about them?' asked the Doctor diffidently.

'You said some terrible things about them,' continued Susan. 'When I thought Ian was going to attack you even I was against him... But we misjudged them. All through this terrible thing all they've wanted to do was help us... Don't you think you really ought to apologise to them?'

The Doctor's eyes flashed with anger for a moment at the very idea; apologies were only for people who had been proved wrong, and the Doctor was never wrong. But his granddaughter reminded him of the manner in which he had treated his two human companions and the debt he owed to both of them-especially Barbara. And then he flushed as he realised that he had indeed been proven wrong.

'Please, Grandfather, make it up to them,' she urged once more. 'It's not so much to ask for, is it? And we've all got to live together after all...'