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

was fascinated by the Doctor’s modifications. Of course, he was trying to contact his TARDIS which was within a few yards of where they were standing, but six years in the past. Surely, contact was impossible? And yet...
    Neither Turlough nor the Doctor noticed a panting Brigadier beside them. In normal circumstances Lethbridge-Stewart would have sent Turlough back to school with a flea in his ear. In fact he said nothing, but stared at the silver sphere between the two trees; it would seem Ibbotson deserved an apology.
    Turlough was impressed. The Doctor had arranged for the beam to be reflected off the ship in such a way that, with the warp ellipse absorbing the time differential, it would activate the communications system of the TARDIS
    in 1977.
    ‘Will it work?’ asked the Brigadier bluntly.
    ‘Always the optimist,’ sighed the Doctor without looking up.
    Turlough grinned. The Doctor went even higher in his estimation.
    ‘By the way, I think this is yours.’ The Doctor had been fishing in his pocket for another tool and the crystal cube had fallen to the ground. He picked it up and threw it at Turlough, who caught it as if it were a red-hot coal.
    As he stared compulsively into the translucence, he felt a surge of passionate hatred for the young man kneeling in front of the transmitter. The Doctor must be destroyed !
    ‘You’re not the Doctor!’ Tegan challenged the alien in the TARDIS control room.
    ‘You travel with a Time Lord and know nothing of metamorphosis?’ Mawdryn was playing a deadly game of bluff. At all costs he must convince the tall Earthman and the two girls that he was the Time Lord.
    ‘It wasn’t like this before.’ Tegan glared disbelievingly across the console. ‘When the Doctor changed, he was human!’
    ‘Is a Gallifreyan human?’
    ‘He was... normal!’ She looked in disgust at the features of the creature from the capsule.
    Mawdryn had nothing but scorn for the purblind Earthwoman. ‘What do you know, prattling child, of the endless changing!’ he sneered.
    ‘I know that when the Doctor regenerated he didn’t turn into an alien.’
    ‘The transmatting induced a mutative catalysis.’
    Tegan felt less sure of herself and turned to Nyssa. ‘Is that possible?’
    ‘I don’t know... it could be.’
     
    Tegan appealed to the Brigadier who was as confused as Nyssa. ‘I’ve seen this happen twice before — different each time.’ He shook his head, reluctant to believe that such an unattractive creature was the latest incarnation of his old friend. But he had to agree that, logically, it could be the Doctor.
    ‘The condition will remain unstable,’ continued Mawdryn. ‘The transmutation can be modified, but not in the TARDIS.’
    This sounded very plausible to Nyssa who, mistakenly, assumed he was referring to the zero room, the healing central chamber of the TARDIS, that had had to be jettisoned on the way to Castrovalva.
    ‘We return to the ship,’ Mawdryn announced.
    ‘The ship? But we can’t leave Turlough,’ protested Tegan. ‘He doesn’t belong in this time-zone.’
    ‘Turlough?’
    The boy who came with you in the capsule.’
    ‘There was no boy,’ replied Mawdryn, irritated at this sudden irrelevance. He instantly regretted such impatience.
    His answer made Tegan suspicious. ‘If you’re the Doctor you should have transmatted to Earth in 1983. This is 1977!’ she challenged.
    ‘Any escape from a warp ellipse can cause temporal anomalies,’ countered Mawdryn.
    ‘It’s true,’ whispered Nyssa to Tegan. ‘That’s what must have happened to the TARDIS.’
    Tegan was not in a position to argue and Mawdryn was grateful the Earthchild was as ignorant as she was aggressive. He tried to smile, though such a contortion of his hideous features produced only a frightening leer. ‘I need your assistance to return the TARDIS to the ship.’ He strove to keep the tension from his voice.
    But no one moved to prepare the time machine for dematerialisation.