Doctor Who_ The Gallifrey Chronicles - Lance Parkin [68]
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Except the one he found himself in now. This corridor led to nowhere but a blank wall. The Doctor quickened his pace. He’d wanted to come back here.
No evidence of Fitz’s cigarette stubs remained.
The wall had been blasted and was cracked, some hairlines, some half an inch thick. The only part of the ship’s structure – that he knew of, at any rate –
that had been damaged in the explosion. Standing here he couldn’t see what was on the other side, but if he got closer, and peered in, he might be able to get a look.
Some instinct warned him not to.
He’d cheerfully walk under ladders or break a mirror. He wouldn’t throw a pinch of salt over his shoulder if he spilt any, he firmly believed a rabbit’s foot should stay attached to its rabbit whenever possible, he’d never passed on a chain letter. This made him suspect that, whatever he was feeling, it wasn’t superstition. He didn’t need to stick his hand in a fire to realise it would be a bad idea. The world would have been a better place if Pandora hadn’t opened that jar, as he distinctly remembered saying the time he met her.
Now that he knew he was at the back wall, it was easy enough to find his way to the control room.
What was done was done, though, wasn’t it? Gallifrey was gone.
He’d seen what had happened. At the crucial moment he’d had limited choices, and he’d spelled them out. Those choices hadn’t changed. Run or submit? Choosing either would have been worse. Better that no one had the power of the Time Lords than it fell into the hands of those who would use it to destroy, or those who couldn’t fully control or understand the forces they’d unleash. It wasn’t a question of coming up with the brilliant, lateral solution with hindsight. He’d come up with the ‘neither of the above’ option straight away.
There was always another way, wasn’t there?
That one time, no, there hadn’t been.
It wasn’t a very satisfying answer, but there didn’t seem much purpose in picking away at it. What was done was done. If there was a better way, even with hindsight and time to mull over the problem, he still couldn’t think of one.
The Doctor was back in the control room. He stepped up to the console.
The room had a damp smell, but a fresh one. He was in no mood to leave the TARDIS and go back to the garage. Marnal had got into the TARDIS before, and the Doctor wasn’t sure he couldn’t repeat the trick.
The power levels were nominal. The Doctor dialled in the dematerialisation codes. The central column started rising and falling, sluggishly, and the time engines engaged. The TARDIS slipped into the time vortex, heading away from Earth but not towards a specific destination at the moment. He needed 141
somewhere to get a bit of peace, not to mention some help in finding answers.
It needed to be somewhere quiet for the TARDIS to recuperate.
‘Klist,’ the Doctor said out loud.
It was in the North Constellations, between Anquar and the Santine Rift. It was a planetary string, home to an immeasurably ancient civilisation. The Ruling Mind wasn’t expecting visitors, but the Doctor was sure the Mind wouldn’t. . . mind. He programmed the coordinates. The TARDIS was moving, but very slowly. It would take far longer than normal to get anywhere.
Everything was working – everything that usually worked, anyway – but at reduced power. Checking the instruments, it was clear that there was still some power getting to the repair circuits.
‘You’ll have good care once we get to Klist,’ the Doctor told the TARDIS.
He was going to have some time to think.
‘Perhaps I’ll write that novel,’ the Doctor joked to himself.
Then the thought struck him that this would actually be a very good idea.
He patted his pockets, but didn’t have anything to write with. It didn’t take him long to locate a fountain pen in one of the nearby rooms. A blank notebook took a little longer. He sat himself down at a desk in one of the surviving libraries.
‘Right,’ said the Doctor.
‘Instead