Doctor Who_ The Awakening - Eric Pringle [47]
Joseph Willow and the trooper moved quietly through the rubble of the crypt towards a strange blue shape which loomed out of the shadows ahead of them. They picked their way slowly and warily, taking great care to make no sound.
When they reached it they stood and gaped in disbelief.
‘A police box?’ Willow grunted. How could they all have crowded into a police box? He looked around uneasily, to make sure his quarry was not hiding somewhere else in the crypt. Then he drew his sword; holding it in readiness, he nodded to the trooper to open the door.
Obediently the man approached the TARDIS and tried unsuccessfully to make the door move so much as a fraction of an inch. He rattled the handle helplessly, then turned to his Sergeant. ‘It’s locked,’ he said.
This was the last straw for Willow, the final frustration which snapped his patience. With a head near to bursting because of the humiliations and disappointments of the afternoon, he screamed furiously at the trooper: ‘Well, don’t just stand there! Break it open!’
The man looked uncertainly at him, then removed his helmet, tossed it down among the fallen masonry and searched for a door-breaking implement. Soon he found a heavy piece of timber to use as a battering ram. He staggered with it to the TARDIS, held it in front of him and charged against the door.
9
Servant of the Malus
Inside the TARDIS, that noise became a dull, monotonous, ceaseless thudding. The reverberations were ominous and hypnotic, and with the exception of the Doctor all the occupants stared at the scanner screen, watching with bated breath the progress of their enemies outside.
The Doctor was puzzling over monitors and switches and levers. He moved from one set of controls and dials to another, making adjustments and corrections, setting up sequences in a complicated and ingenious program which only he could understand.
All at once there came a weird elephantine trumpeting noise. It vibrated through the console room, and seemed to Tegan to be like the roaring of the Mains heard through a long tunnel. Instinctively she glanced away from the scanner screen and up at the image clinging to the wall beside the door, and gasped at what she saw.
‘Doctor!’ she cried, ‘the Malus!’
They all looked and shuddered. The image had not only grown suddenly; it was lifting itself off the wall now, as if making itself ready to leap at them. Its head jerked sideways and half turned towards them. Energy surged through the flickering lights, which crackled and pumped strength into its ugly body. Soon it would be strong enough to support independent movement, the Doctor saw
– and then what? The prospect was unwholesome, and frightening.
The Doctor took in the situation at a glance. His movements at the console, already hurried, became feverish. He pulled a lever, hammered a switch with his fist
– and waited, tapping his fingers with frustration at the delayed reaction. He was hopping about on his toes like a runner dying to launch himself into a race. Every split second counted now.
Wolsey, who had been watching him closely, felt the Doctor’s increasing anxiety. ‘Won’t it work?’ he asked.
The Doctor fairly shouted at him. ‘It takes time!’ he cried. ‘Excuse me, Colonel.’ He pushed the farmer aside in his eagerness to reach another set of switches at the far end of the console. He’d forgotten those; no wonder there was a delay. He glared at Jane; she was in his way, although she moved out of it quickly when she saw that impatient look on his face.
The trumpeting increased in volume and rose in pitch.
It transferred their attention away from the Doctor, leaving him free to get on with his complex programming, to the hypnotically ugly growth above their heads. It was moving constantly now, shaking its head, lilting itself from the wall. It was nursing its energy for the moment when, with its parent in the church, it would truly be born again, and they could he released to take over the TARDIS and the village, and