CLARE’S HEAD WAS spinning again. She had a million pressing questions but didn’t know which one to ask first or how to understand the likely replies. She had established that Chris was probably safe, and probably with the Doctor and this Ramona girl. But the deeper details eluded her.
As far as she could begin to grasp it, the Professor’s suite of rooms was also an alien capsule for travelling through space and time, and the Professor himself was an alien. It seemed Gallifrey was not a Greek island after all but the home planet of a race called the Time Lords. Furthermore, the Professor’s space-time craft, which he called a TARDIS, was at present stuck in something called a temporal orbit, which had sent itself and both of them back to Thursday night, or as the Professor more accurately said, ‘a state of Thursday night-ness.’ She abandoned her last objections to this idea when she looked in a mirror and saw that the perm she had washed out on Friday night was well and truly back. ‘I suppose it’s a time perm,’ she said wistfully.
‘That is the correct technical term, yes,’ said the Professor abstractedly. ‘Unfortunately the temporal orbit did not bring the book back in here. I suppose it must stand outside time, or it couldst have must’ve did has.’
Mention of the book made the Professor rather agitated. ‘We must find Skagra. He’s got the book,’ he kept repeating, looking worriedly between the brass control console of his capsule and the window view that now showed not the neat green lawns sloping down to the Backs but the dazzling infinity of space and time.
‘I thought the book might be dangerous,’ said Clare.
‘It is!’ cried the Professor. ‘Very dangerous, and I have been very careless with it.’ He mopped his brow. ‘I’ve been such a stupid old fool.’
‘But why is it so dangerous?’ asked Clare.
The Professor hesitated. ‘I cannot say.’
Clare put her hands on her hips in a gesture that she had used unconsciously since the age of eight to terrify men. ‘I think I deserve an explanation. I saved your life, didn’t I?’
The Professor stared at her through his spectacles and seemed to reach a decision. ‘Quite right, young lady. What does the secret matter now? It is best that you know before the trials that lie ahead.’
Clare felt a sinking sensation at the mention of danger. But then she remembered the books that had fallen onto the floor earlier. Adventures. Wasn’t that what she’d always wanted?
‘So what is the book’s secret?’ she asked.
The Professor drew himself up and spoke slowly, as if he could not quite believe he was telling her words out loud. ‘It is the key to Shada.’
‘Oh,’ said Clare.
‘The ancient prison of the Time Lords,’ said Chronotis heavily.
‘I see,’ said Clare.
‘Of course the Time Lords have all forgotten about it,’ said Chronotis. ‘All except me.’
‘Oh,’ said Clare again.
The Professor bit a fingernail. Clare was astonished to see that his eyes were beginning to fill with tears. ‘And if this Skagra is meddling with mind transference, he is only going to Shada for one reason, and it is imperative that he be stopped!’
He crossed decisively to the brass control panel. ‘But where to start? How to start?’
Clare followed him over. ‘And what’s in Shada that’s so dangerous?’ she asked.
‘It’s not a matter of what,’ said the Professor, taking off his spectacles and wiping his eyes with a handkerchief. ‘It’s a matter of who.’