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AND THE DOOMSDAY WEAPON

By MALCOLM HULKE

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Based on the BBC television serial Doctor Who and the Colony in Space by Malcolm Hulke by arrangement with the British Broadcasting Corporation

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1 A Missing Secret

The young Time Lord sat at the side of the old Keeper of the Time Lords' Files at the control console. The old Keeper of the Files played his spindly fingers across the console's warmth-buttons, by touching the right combination of buttons he could project onto the screen before them any of the Time Lords' most secret files and records.

'These are the working-papers for the very first TARDIS,' the old Keeper said. He touched some warmth-buttons and the picture of a small square box showed on the screen. 'I often like to look at that, and to remember back into time.'

'Time has no meaning for us,' said the young Time Lord. 'It is neither forwards nor backwards.'

'For us as a species, no,' said the old Keeper. 'But for us as individuals there is a beginning, and, I regret, an end.' He spoke with feeling. He was now well over 2,000 years old. Soon this young Time Lord, a mere 573 years of age, would become the new Keeper of the Files.

The young Time Lord quickly changed the subject. 'The first TARDIS was very small,' he said.

'On the outside, yes,' said the old Keeper. 'Inside it could carry up to three persons, four with a squeeze. Later we built much bigger ones. There have been two stolen, you know.'

The young Time Lord didn't know. 'By our enemies?' he asked.

'No. By Time Lords. They both became bored with this place. It was too peaceful for them, not enough happening.' The old Keeper smiled to himself, as though remembering with some glee all the fuss when two TARDISes were stolen. 'One of them nowadays calls himself “the Doctor”. The other says he is “the Master”. The TARDIS stolen by the Doctor has a serious defect. Two defects, to be correct.'

'Then how was he able to get away with it?'

'Oh, it flew all right,' said the old Keeper. 'It could fly through Time and Space, through Matter and anti-Matter. But he can't direct it.'

'So he's lost in Time and Space?' asked the young Time Lord.

'Hardly.' The old Keeper was silent for a moment, and seemed almost about to drop off to sleep. The young Time Lord had become used to this and waited patiently. Suddenly the old Keeper's failing energies returned. 'Still, even if he cannot control it, others sometimes can.'

'I don't understand,' said the young Time Lord, 'what others? Who?'

'Who? No, Who can't control it... not always.' The old Keeper dropped his voice, and there was a faint smile on his 2,000-years-old lips. 'But others sometimes can.'

Obviously the question was not going to be answered. The young Time Lord hoped that eventually, perhaps in another thousand years, he would learn everything about the files and their secrets. For the time being though he had to be content with what the old Keeper cared to tell him.

'The other defect,' said the old Keeper, 'was that that particular TARDIS had lost its chameleon-like quality. It was in for repairs, you see - that's how the Doctor got his hands on it.'

'I don't understand about the chameleon quality,' said the young Time Lord, wishing he had taken over the job of the Files a few hundred years ago when the present Keeper was more lucid and awake and better able to explain things.

'It's a term we borrowed from a small, low-grade species of life on the planet Earth,' said the old Keeper, as though addressing a classroom. 'If a chameleon stands on the branch of a tree, it turns brown like the bark; but if it stands on a leaf, it turns green.'

'You mean TARDISes can change colour?'

'When they are working properly,' said the old Keeper, 'they change colour, shape, everything. From the beginning it was decided that a TARDIS must always look like something at home in its immediate background. You've never travelled, have you?'

'No, not yet.' The young Time Lord was a little ashamed to admit it.

'Pity. It broadens the mind.' The old Keeper seemed to drop off to sleep again