Read Online Doctor Who: Mawdryn Undead by Peter Grimwade - Free Book Online Page A

induced a regeneration.’
    ‘What!’
    ‘Don’t worry, I know all about regeneration.’ The Brigadier, striding purposefully up behind Tegan, spoke like a midwife reassuring a nervous father-to-be. ‘I’ve seen it all before.’
    ‘So have we, and the Doctor almost died.’
    ‘Come on,’ said the Brigadier, and disappeared into the TARDIS.
     
    ‘Who is that person?’ asked Nyssa, registering Lethbridge-Stewart for the first time.
    ‘Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, of course. Come on!’
    The Brigadier stood in the doorway of the control room and smiled; it was good to be on board again.
    A figure in a familiar red coat stood watching the screen on the far side of the console.
    ‘Doctor!’ The Brigadier held out his hand.
    The man in the Doctor’s red coat turned slowly. Tegan and Nyssa, running in behind the Brigadier, screamed.
    The injured creature from the transmat capsule had recuperated amazingly. But he was nothing like the Doctor as any of them had ever known him, with his bulging reptilian eyes, his high domed forehead and slimy flesh that crept and quivered like a stranded fish.
    They confronted an alien.
     
    5

Return to the Ship
    It was one of the hottest days of 1983 and the Brigadier was sorely in need of a rest. But the Doctor urged him faster and faster up the hill to the obelisk.
    ‘Don’t you see, Brigadier? The TARDIS came to Earth in 1977, and so did the transmat capsule, carrying someone
    — or something — from the ship in space.’
    ‘And Tegan and the other girl think — or thought —
    that it was you?’
    The Doctor was losing patience. After all, the man had been in contact with Tegan and Nyssa in 1977 when the alien arrived on the first visit to Earth of the transmat capsule. ‘You were there, Brigadier!’ He spoke as calmly as he could. ‘You tell me!’
    The Brigadier recoiled, like a child presented with the dentist’s drill. ‘No, Doctor! Please don’t make me remember!’
    ‘You must! I need to know what happened so I can protect Tegan and Nyssa!’
    The Brigadier knew he had failed his old colleague.
    ‘Even if I wanted to I couldn’t recall any more.’ He wished he could explain the inpenetrable barrier that walled off part of his mind.
    The Doctor put a friendly arm on his shoulder. ‘We could have reached the cause of your nervous breakdown.’
    ‘Good heavens! Do you think so?’
    The Doctor was thinking that an experience which had been traumatic enough to give Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart a nervous breakdown must have been terrible indeed. ‘Come on! We’ve got to get to the capsule before Turlough works out how to operate it. It’s the only way I can contact the TARDIS!’
    It was beyond the Brigadier’s comprehension how a boy from the sixth form could understand the mechanism of a transmat capsule (whatever that might be). But, what was more to the point, neither did he know how he was going to make it to the top of the hill without collapsing in an undignified heap. He struggled to keep up with the Doctor.
    The Doctor could already see Turlough kneeling beside the transmitter. They were just in time. He increased the pace, leaving the asthmatic Brigadier behind him.
    Turlough had been relieved to discover that the transmitter was not as badly damaged as he had feared. It would be quite possible to cross-patch one or two back-up circuits, substitute components from the camouflage function for those damaged in the location transmission section and...
    ‘Where did you learn about transmat radiology?’
    Turlough had been too engrossed to notice the approach of the Doctor who now stood behind him. He spun guiltily round. But the Doctor was already opening his tool-box from which he selected several pieces of equipment.
    The Doctor explained how the police box had materialised in the wrong time-zone as he started work on the broken cylinder. Turlough was amazed that anyone should have such an intuitive understanding of the complex microcircuitry and