Doctor Who_ Island of Death - Barry Letts [13]
She wouldn‟t have found a convenient tree and scrambled up it, crawling along a projecting branch, only to slip off and fall heavily into the bushes on the other side of the fence.
It just wasn‟t fair, he thought, as he pushed his way through the shrubbery into the open. Somebody like him ought to have been given a good room automatically - not the best, necessarily, he wasn‟t unreasonable - but a decent sort of room, with a proper bed and stuff. What was the point of paying out all that lolly otherwise?
His internal grumbling was interrupted by voices. There was the bungalow, different from the rest of the ashram buildings, a remnant perhaps of the prosperous days of the Raj. Sitting on the extensive open veranda, under a lazily turning fan, were three people: a thick-set man who looked too tough to be a Skangite (where had Jeremy seen him before?); next to him, Brother Alex; and on the other side of the bamboo table, a small woman with white hair.
Mother Hilda.
„There‟s only one possible answer,‟ said the Doctor. „The relativity circuit has overcompensated. We‟re on the reciprocal arc of the meridian great circle...‟ He dived back under the control column.
„So where exactly are we? In English.‟
„I just told you. The latitude is Bombay‟s - round about twenty degrees north, but the longitude is one hundred and eighty degrees - exactly opposite the longitude of London.‟
The Brigadier dug deep into his memory. He‟d managed to scrape a pass in Geography, but he hadn‟t had occasion to consider such matters for years. „In the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Right?‟
„Well done,‟ said the Doctor, coming into view and setting the TARDIS on its travels once more. „And because there was no land in sight the TARDIS naturally made the assumption that we wanted to be on the ocean bed.‟
„It doesn‟t seem to want to take us to Bombay,‟ said the Brigadier, „that‟s for sure.‟
„Nearly there,‟ said the Doctor, unruffled. He leaned forward to inspect the dials. „Good grief!‟ he exclaimed, and seizing the signal-red handle of a large lever, he yanked it down to its full extent.
After a short pause, the TARDIS started her song of arrival.
„What‟s up? Are we there?‟ asked the Brigadier.
The Doctor turned from the control console. He didn‟t speak. His face was ashen.
„Are you all right, Doctor?‟ said Sarah, putting a tentative hand on his arm. She‟d never seen him like this before.
The Doctor shuddered. He took a deep breath.
„We‟re safe now,‟ he said.
„What on earth...?‟ said the Brigadier.
The Doctor turned back to the control panel and restored the emergency lever to its normal position. „The temporal governor had cut out completely; and the back-up circuit hadn‟t kicked in. Our acceleration into the past was increasing exponentially. If our speed had reached six and a half googol years per metasecond - and we weren‟t far off it -
it would have been irreversible. We‟d have shot straight through the singularity of the Big Bang and out the other side!‟
The Brigadier cleared his throat. „Before... before Creation, you mean?‟
„Before time itself, if there‟s any meaning in that. No time, no space, no change. We‟d have been stuck in the TARDIS
with nowhere to go for... for eternity? For an infinite number of years? And with no possibility of death... There are no words to express it.‟
Sarah found she was holding her breath.
The Brigadier frowned. „Mm. Beyond me,‟ he said. „So I take it that we‟re not in Bombay?‟
The door of the TARDIS opened. Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart came out, and strode across to the phone on the laboratory desk.
„Switchboard?‟ he said. His voice was tight, controlled. Get me British Airways...‟
CHAPTER FIVE
Now what?
Jeremy‟s plan, if that‟s what it could be called, had been to march straight up to Brother Alex and demand to be given what was clearly his due. He‟d made his way across the billiard-table lawn, which looked as if it had been clipped with nail-scissors, pretending to himself that he was walking round the edge to avoid the spray, but really trying to keep out of sight for