Cold Fusion - Lance Parkin [40]
The room was full of medical equipment and scientific instruments. Half-covered in shadow, they looked like twisted masses of cables and panelling. There were a dozen readouts glowing in the half-darkness. Adric was moving towards one of them when he stumbled into a metal frame.
It crashed to the floor, there was the sound of glass breaking.
‘Shush, Adric,’ the Doctor insisted. But his companion had found something.
In the centre of the room there was a cylinder, two metres tall, a little less than a metre in diameter. At first it had looked like a supporting column, but it fell just short of the ceiling. It was made from a dull, burnished metal. A control box was connected to the side. Adric was studying the readings. ‘There’s someone inside, but their lifesigns are weak,’ he concluded quietly.
The Doctor ran his fingers along the metal. ‘Well they would be: this is a cryosleep tube. It slows down the metabolic rate of the person inside it. They used to be used for deep space travel, nowadays they mostly have medical applications - if someone is critically injured they can be frozen until they reach a hospital.
‘Whitfield said that the Scientifica had some of the finest medical facilities in the galaxy,’ Adric reminded him.
‘It makes you wonder why he’s still in there and not in a hospital,’ the Doctor said in a low voice.
‘Perhaps he’s beyond help, Adric offered.
The Doctor took his glasses from his coat pocket and unfolded them. ‘Then why keep him alive at all? Why allocate all this equipment, hmm?’ There was, an electronic notebook clipped to the back of the cryogenic tube. The Doctor lifted it off, and it flickered on automatically. He slipped on his glasses and scrolled through the report. ‘Almost a year’s worth of medical data.
And he was only moved here earlier today. Do you know, I think we might have just found out what was onboard that skitrain.’
‘Does it say who it is in there?’ Adric asked.
The Doctor peered at him over his lenses. ‘He’s only referred to as “the Patient”.’
‘There’s only one way to find out who it is, then.’ Before the Doctor could stop him, Adric had touched one of the controls. A low whine started up. Slowly, the lid of the cylinder slid back, and a pale blue light spilled out..
A figure hung inside the tube, suspended in thick blue liquid. It was emaciated, with skeletal limbs and claw-like hands. A tattered cloak hung from angular shoulders, floating in the fluid, caught around the figure’s torso. Skin the colour of rotten fruit was pulled back over the large skull, exposing pearl-white teeth. Its eyes were closed, covered with leathery flaps of skin. It looked like an exhumed corpse. The liquid bubbled. The body was supported by wires, electrodes running from the spine, the chest and the back of the head. It bobbed in the life support fluid like some kind of macabre puppet.
‘It’s the Master!’ Adric exclaimed. The Doctor furrowed his brow. His arch-enemy had reached the end of his natural life long ago. Although long-lived when compared with humans, the Time Lords were not immortal. Their minds and bodies could only withstand the stresses of regeneration twelve times. After that, their fate was inevitable. Most of his race stepped willingly from the red cycle of endless death and rebirth. They spent their last years in meditation, contemplating the state of timelessness that lay ahead. It was a choice that the Doctor knew he would make one day, distant millennia from now, but he was not nearly ready for it yet. Some of his kind sought to prolong their existence. Many of them had succeeded: Gallifreyan science was among the most advanced in the universe, and even the lowliest acolyte possessed the mental resources to keep himself alive by sheer force of will if he so wished.
The Master was one of the Time Lords greedy enough to defy the inevitable, As his last body began to die, he had made his plans. He needed a vast energy source to fuel a new regenerative cycle. Across time and space he had tried to harness such a force: he’d tried to capture the