Doctor Who_ The Infinity Doctors - Lance Parkin [77]
What’s in that TARDIS, Lord Savar?’
‘A power beyond that of God,’ he said.
Lord Norval’s TARDIS was a plain white obelisk, spinning in space.
Inside its impossibly large control room was a three-sided central console. Beside it stood Norval, altering course every so often, checking that the TARDIS’s scanners were still working at full efficiency and that the communication link with the Station was being maintained. He was a small man, in a collarless jade tunic. The Magistrate had chosen him because he’d run the odd errand for the High Council in his time: delivered messages, acted as an emissary. Chiefly he was an astronomer, though, quite at home in this strange, old universe. This was a place that he’d only read about in academic journals: a storybook land where time ran backwards and the stars were colder than ice.
The Source stood out from the dark background of this dead place. It was only a very few degrees above absolute zero, but it was amongst the hottest, most energetic things still in existence. Even the black holes, emitting nothing but Hawking radiation, counted as hot in this place. Apart from the temperature, there was also the shape. On the scope, each black hole looked like a tiny dot. This object resembled a dash. The TARDIS had automatically alerted him to its presence, and he’d changed course to get a closer look.
Still many light centuries away, the time field sensors had begun to go haywire as the Effect started registering. At that point, Norval knew for certain what he had suspected.
Immediately, he had sent a signal to the station, informing them that he had found the Source.
At this distance, even using Gallifreyan technology, it wasn’t possible to get a very clear image of the object – there were just too many black holes and clouds of dark matter, all squeezing close together as the universe contracted. The Magistrate had suggested that he move his TARDIS to a point where he had a clearer view. Norval decided to keep his distance, and chose to lay in a set of co-ordinates that would place him around ten light years from the object. Even without accurate maps of the area, it had been relatively easy to find a suitable spot.
He opened the shutters of the scanner.
It dominated the screen even at this distance.
When confronted with the infinite – as the Time Lords were ever day – it became banal, somehow, easy to imagine, impossible to understand. Norval’s first impression was that the object looked like knitting needle stuck in a black grape.
The computers sole supplied the information that the object was a light year long and that the black hole had a diameter three times that of Gallifrey. But neither image helped him to comprehend it… even the Gallifreyan language lacked the vocabulary to bring home the sheer scale of what he was seeing.
Every system on the ship started whirring and chattering with new data These finding were relayed on to the Station. It left Norval free to make his observations, to try to come to terms with the Needle He was sure that nothing like it existed in any timezone known to Gallifrey. He conferred with the Magistrate, who checked the data with the matrix itself.
The Magistrate’s voice echoed around the console room from the various speakers.
‘Lord Norval The object is artificial. I repeat: someone built it.’
The Past
I of the Needle
‘I have been a broken man for many years,’ Savar began,
‘but had no idea upon which wheel I had been broken. I had my dreams, brighter and more vivid than before, but upon waking, I couldn’t remember anything more than flashes of colour, or a sense of movement. The truth was there, tantalising me. I felt that there was something watching me, red eyes in the sky, red eyes in the walls and floors and ceilings.
‘The last ten days have been different. At night, I have…
it’s the breach in spacetime. It affects the mind. It has given you both nightmares, or waking dreams. The coming of