Doctor Who_ The Awakening - Eric Pringle [5]
That was why Turlough was now sprawled on his back, probing at an illuminated panel on the underside of the console. A red light flashed in his eyes and bleeps from the console whined in his ears. He prodded the panel again and looked out to where the Doctor was performing his own bit of maintenance on some circuit boards.
‘Is that any better?’ he asked.
The Doctor examined the monitor screen. He frowned, and flicked a bank of switches. Immediately the console screamed, making it high-pitched whining, warbling noise like an animal in pain.
‘No.’ he replied. He watched the time rotor jerk erratically up and down: things were definitely not any better. ‘There’s some time distortion,’ he added.
Tegan, who had been watching their efforts with amused curiosity, knew the TARDIS’s tricks of old, and references to distortions of any kind were enough to set alarm bells ringing in her heart. Fully attentive now, she eyed the twitching time rotor suspiciously, detected a suppressed anxiety in the Doctor’s manner and snapped,
‘Is there a problem? We are going to Earth?’
The Doctor gave her a pained look to show how much he deplored her lack of faith. ‘The place, date and time asked for,’ he confirmed, as he moved on to examine another set of instruments. ‘How else could you visit your grandfather?’
How else indeed, Tegan wondered. She marvelled at the Doctor’s ability to clear his mind of past mistakes and broken promises. His latest promise, to take her to visit her grandfather at his home in Little Hodcombe, England in the Earth year of 1984, demanded a precision of timing and placing which she sometimes believed to be quite beyond the TARDIS’s capacity.
Now, though, Turlough echoed the Doctor’s confidence.
He crawled out from his cramped working quarters to check the monitor dials. ‘We’re nearly there,’ he confirmed.
‘You see?’ The Doctor glared at her. But there was no time for him to enjoy his little triumph, because there was a sudden remarkable increase in the agitation of the time rotor. That in turn heralded an extreme turbulence which buffeted and shook the TARDIS like an earthquake.
Lights flashed, the rotor shuddered, the room swayed and jolted, and its occupants had to cling to the console to avoid being clashed to the floor. For a moment or two they were shaken about like puppets and then, as suddenly as it began, the disturbance ceased.
The time rotor slowed, sank and became still. Its lights dimmed and extinguished. Where all had been noise and violent quivering there was now stillness and peace.
Feeling their feet steady on the floor, they let go of the console.
‘Well.’ the Doctor gasped. ‘We’ve arrived!’
‘We hit an energy field.’ Turlough’s face was grim.
The Doctor nodded agreement. An unexpected aura for a quiet English village.’
Tegan was uncertain whether that remark was intended as a question, a suggestion or a hint that yet again plans had gone wrong. Despairing, she wanted to scream.
‘Goodbye Grandfather,’ she thought.
As if to confirm her suspicions the Doctor operated the scanner screen and the shield rose to reveal a scene outside of far more violent upheaval than the shaking the TARDIS had suffered.
They seemed to have landed inside some kind of wide cellar, or possibly a crypt: all was gloom and shadow.
Whatever it was, it was falling apart. They gained an impression of pillars and arches stretching away, and an earth floor heaped with rubble, but it was only a fleeting glimpse before everything was obscured by an avalanche of masonry which tumbled down and raised a plume of dust.
This had only just begun to settle when the place shook again; blocks of stone cascaded down and rolling clouds of