AND THEN, JUST as Romana closed her eyes and tried to summon all the dignity befitting a Time Lord facing death, something quite extraordinary happened.
She heard the sound of a relative dimensional stabiliser – an old one by the sound of it, chuffing and groaning, almost coughing its guts out.
And suddenly she and the Doctor were falling.
Forgetting all thoughts of dignity, Romana screamed. She was extremely relieved to hear the Doctor doing much the same thing alongside her.
She only had a moment to feel that relief as the fall was suddenly ended by a muffled whoomf as she and the Doctor made an incredibly soft landing.
She opened her eyes and found herself totally speechless. She was sitting on a sofa. Next to her on the sofa sat the Doctor. The sofa itself sat facing the just-slammed door of Professor Chronotis’s rooms.
A rather pretty young girl, human by the look of it, was standing in front of a rather battered old control console, Gallifreyan by the look of it, her hands adjusting its switches and levers, expertly by the look of it. On a bracket hung a faded, blinking scanner screen showing a view of the prison chamber, Skagra and all his ghastly company.
‘Thank you, Clare,’ said the Doctor.
The girl said nothing. She was staring in horror at the image on the screen.
Skagra pushed angrily through his crowd of mind-slaves. ‘What is this?’ he demanded, pointing at the wooden door that had suddenly materialised in the floor of the chamber. It had swung open, swallowing up the Doctor and Romana like a trapdoor, and then slammed itself very firmly shut again.
The Kraag Commander, as the only other being present left with a mind of its own, such as it was, replied, ‘The Doctor is in there, my lord.’
Skagra smiled. He realised he already knew the answer. Through the matrix of the spheres he had access to the mind of Salyavin, aka the kindly old Professor Chronotis, and that told him everything he needed to know about the no-longer-mysterious door.
The Kraag Commander pointed to the door, its arm glowing red. ‘Shall I blast it, my lord?’
Skagra shook his head. ‘You will not be able to penetrate the outer plasmic shell of a TARDIS, even a TARDIS as ancient and obsolete as this one.’
A wave of anger and disappointment at the Doctor’s escape threatened to overwhelm him. But new thoughts, from within the spheres’ matrix, calmed him at once.
He never even bothers to have a plan, came a thought from the human Parsons. Doctor-Master’s chances of success in defeating the Universal Mind less than 0.000000000000013 per cent, came a thought from the computer mind of K-9. The Time Lord would pose no threat.
‘The Doctor,’ Skagra mused aloud to the Kraag Commander. ‘A poor little man. A pinprick of an irrelevancy. Let him amuse himself with his tricks. They are merely the tiny antics of an insect threatened with inevitable extinction. We will return to the command station!’
He led the way from the chamber and back towards the Doctor’s TARDIS. His words of command were for the Kraag only. His mind-slaves followed calmly and automatically, K-9 bringing up the rear.
Clare still stared intently at the scanner screen in the corner of the Professor’s study. ‘They’re leaving,’ she told the Doctor and Romana as she watched Skagra and his slaves, including the black-eyed Chris Parsons, depart.
‘Don’t you worry, Clare,’ the Doctor called from the sofa. ‘We’ll get Chris and the others back safely.’
Clare caught Romana shooting the Doctor a warning look, as if to say Don’t make rash promises. Then Romana caught Clare catching sight of that look and converted it into a reassuring smile. Clare wasn’t sure what to make of Romana. She had the manner of a person who thinks they are cleverer than you, and that you don’t realise they think they’re cleverer than you. But it was a minor concern. At the moment, Clare couldn’t stop thinking of Chris.
The Doctor had brought Romana quickly up to speed with all the incredible events she had missed out on while a prisoner of Skagra.
Clare wanted to join in the discussion, and after the Professor – or Salyavin, or whoever he was – had implanted the science of time mechanics into her head, she felt she was perfectly capable of it. But the human part of her was shaking inside at the thought of Chris’s kindly, silly face made blank and his soft brown eyes turned pitch black. So instead she dematerialised the Professor’s TARDIS away from Shada, and kept a close watch on the time-path indicator for any sign of Skagra and the Doctor’s TARDIS on its way back to the command station.
Romana shook her head and took another sip of tea. ‘Professor Chronotis was Salyavin all along,’ she said. ‘Of all the things you’ve told me, why do I find that one so hard to believe?’
‘Well, naturally,’ said the Doctor. ‘He’s a nice old man. You like him, I like him. He’s certainly not the villain the Time Lords painted him.’
‘And there’s another thing,’ said Romana. ‘Skagra was trying to get Salyavin’s mind. But he’d already drained the Professor’s mind, so if Salyavin was the Professor…’
‘Extraordinary mental control,’ said the Doctor. ‘He let the sphere take the Chronotis part of his mind, but held back the Salyavin part. The effort was what killed him.’ He thought for a moment. ‘I think the Professor himself forgot, or chose to forget, that he was Salyavin. All that forgetfulness and bluster and senility, the perfect cover, for himself as well as everybody else. The clues were all there.’
‘When did you realise, Doctor?’ asked Clare.
‘The moment I stepped into this TARDIS and realised it was a TARDIS, after Bristol and I escaped from the asteroid,’ said the Doctor breezily. ‘I pretended I hadn’t, of course, but it was obvious from that point, if not before.’
‘It wasn’t obvious to me,’ said Romana.
‘Or me,’ said Clare.
‘Think about it,’ said the Doctor. He nodded to Romana. ‘First of all, the message the Professor sent to us in the TARDIS. He seemed to have forgotten all about it – he even suggested that somebody else must have sent it.’
Romana nodded back. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Somebody else had sent it. Salyavin!’
‘And then the clues kept stacking up,’ continued the Doctor. ‘First of all, he had a secret TARDIS, this one. Second of all, it has an emergency program – a very naughty program, not to mention criminal – that brings him back to life. Then somehow, this charming young lady –’ he smiled at Clare – ‘becomes an expert in time mechanics in less time than you can say Wafer-wave Feedback Field Frame. He left Clare behind with all that knowledge in her head, just in case we needed rescuing. I pretended not to notice any of that, very well, I thought. Let sleeping Salyavins lie, I thought. And don’t forget I know the Professor, whoever he may have been once. I was quite prepared to keep his big secret.’
‘And then Chris marches right in and blows the whole gaffe in front of Skagra,’ said Clare. ‘The idiot! The ruddy idiot! I could kill him!’
‘No you couldn’t, Clare, you love him,’ said the Doctor casually.
‘Does she?’ said Romana, sounding surprised. ‘Why on earth would she want to do that?’
Clare blinked through forming tears. ‘How did you know?’ she asked the Doctor.
The Doctor coughed and lifted a finger. ‘The clues were all there, it was obvious. First, you may not realise it but whenever you mention his name your voice raises one tenth of an octave and your eyes go all gooey—’
Romana coughed. ‘I’m sure this is all very fascinating, but what about Skagra?’
Clare was glad of the subject being changed. ‘Well, what are we going to do about him, then?’ she challenged Romana.
Romana shrugged. ‘He’s beaten us on every point.’
The Doctor nodded gloomily. ‘I was quite enjoying clearing all the other stuff up,’ he protested. ‘Can we get some other less pressing details straightened out, it helps to distract me from the imminent threat to the universe?’
‘No,’ said Romana and Clare at the same time. This time, Clare felt that Romana’s smile to her was warm and genuine.
‘Oh, very well then,’ said the Doctor heavily. He slumped back in the sofa. ‘Let’s sum up. All the minds that Skagra’s stolen are now in the melting pot of the sphere matrix along with his own, all operating as one under his control. And with Salyavin’s mind in there too, Skagra can potentially drain and control anyone else. Everyone else in the entire universe!’
‘The universe is a pretty big place,’ pointed out Clare.
‘And the spheres are infinitely divisible, courtesy of the genius of the late Professor Akrotiri,’ said the Doctor. ‘From that asteroid, Skagra can launch them against the universe en masse, like a virulent, all-powerful disease. His mind will be universal, and invincible.’
There was a terrible silence.
Then Romana said quietly, ‘Doctor?’
‘Yes,’ said the Doctor perfunctorily. ‘I do so hope you’re going to say something wonderful and uplifting, it’s what I keep you girls for.’
‘May I just remind you of something?’ said Romana.
‘Yes,’ said the Doctor cautiously, his eyes slowly turning to meet hers, as if hoping against hope.
‘All the minds that Skagra’s stolen are in the melting pot, the spheres’ matrix,’ said Romana.
The Doctor snorted and flared up. ‘Yes, Romana, I think we’ve established that, in fact I just said it, I don’t need reminding about things that I’ve just said—’
‘That means there’s a copy of your mind in there too,’ said Romana quickly and sweetly, as if laying down a trump card.
‘Well, yes, of course, we’ve established that—’ began the Doctor impatiently.
Then suddenly he went very quiet. Clare watched as a number of expressions passed over his face in less than a second.
He stood up. ‘Romana?’ he said casually.
‘Yes, Doctor?’ said Romana, equally casually.
The Doctor reached into one of his pockets and pulled out a golden medal with a long, multicoloured ribbon. Carefully, almost formally, he pinned it to the front of her dress.
The medal read in big red letters:
I
AM A
GENIUS