Doctor Who_ Enlightenment - Barbara Clegg [39]
‘The Doctor will never stop her now!’ Striker almost groaned the words.
The TARDIS materialised right by the ‘Danger’ door.
‘Perfect placing,’ the Doctor thought briefly, as he hurried out. ‘The stay in my mind doesn’t seem to have done her any harm. With one quick glance, he took in the ‘full power’ position of the vacuum shield gauge, and then he opened the door. Wrack was standing in the middle of the grid, facing him. She smiled as she saw him and slowly raised her arms and looked up at the ‘eye’ above her.
‘No! No, wait –’ the Doctor called. He did not look to right or left, his whole attention was on Wrack, all his energy concentrated on stopping her before it was too late.
Without a second thought he stepped onto the grid and started balancing his way towards her, still talking.
‘The power you’re tapping – you think it’s under your control... it isn’t... it will control you...’
Wrack slowly shook her head.
‘You don’t understand what it is!’ the Doctor went on desperately. He had almost reached her, when there was a clang, as the door was slammed behind him. He turned.
Turlough stood in front of it. Mansell was advancing from the other corner.
‘Throw him into the void,’ Wrack commanded, her eyes alight with a deadly anticipation.
‘Turlough -’ The Doctor said the one word and then no more. He stood, swaying precariously over the grid as the two men closed in on him. Wrack watched gloatingly.
‘What is the Doctor doing!’ The exclamation was wrenched from Tegan, as she watched the screen, practically biting her nails in frenzy. Striker’s face was dark and closed, Marriner’s held no hope. And then a brief flare of light seemed to shoot from the side of the ship ahead of them. It died in the darkness of space, and another followed.
‘What was that?’ Tegan asked.
‘Man overboard,’. Marriner answered, heavily.
It took a second for it to sink in, and then the realisation hit Tegan like a tidal wave. If someone had been thrown from the deck of that ship –
‘Not the Doctor! Her voice sounded thin and strange in her own ears. All the objects in the room seemed on a different plane. Reality changed. ‘It couldn’t be the Doctor!’ she heard someone saying, pathetically and she recognised it as her own voice, speaking from miles away.
‘The
Buccaneer is still moving.’ Marriner’s pronouncement was final, like a mathematician writing Q.E.D. at the end of a problem.
If the Doctor had not succeeded in stopping Wrack, then it must – of necessity – have been his body which was tossed overboard.
‘She has not even slackened speed,’ Striker’s mournful voice added. Proof positive. ‘And the second shooting star,’
Tegan thought to herself, vaguely, ‘Turlough perhaps.
Who knows.’
There was a sudden fountain of lights ahead, like fireworks.
‘The Doctor has failed,’ Marriner said, dully.
‘And Wrack has won,’ came bitterly from the Captain.
Tegan buried her face in her hands. Slowly, all animation seemed to drain from the faces of the two Eternals, and when Marriner spoke again it was in a flat, dead voice. ‘The race is over.’ Tegan did not even look up.
‘Is the Doctor dead?’ she asked, in a mutter thick with tears. ‘I don’t know,’ Striker answered, detachedly.
Marriner turned to Tegan. Stiffly he put a hand out and raised her chin, so that he looked into her tear-stained face.
‘I see... grief,’ he said woodenly. ‘What is grief?’
Tegan stared ahead, almost as frozen as the Eternals.
‘Come, we must cross to Wrack’s ship,’ she heard Striker’s dead voice saying.
‘Why?’ she sobbed. And she hardly heard the answer, as it died away on Striker’s lips.
‘Wrack has won. We must pay homage...’
She was barely conscious of boarding the launch, or of the crew milling about in confusion as they left. Jackson –
Collier – all of them – were like dream figures, and like dreams they suddenly seemed to vanish. As indeed they did, returned to their own times. The same thing happened aboard the Buccaneer, – a mad flurry of activity as the crew