Doctor Who_ The Infinity Doctors - Lance Parkin [87]
‘As you wish,’ Norval said. He had no idea of events on Gallifrey.
‘Castellan, I must be allowed to speak with Lord Norval. I have operational command here. This Station might be needed as back up.’ But the Castellan was ignoring him.
‘Energy burst from the surface of the Needle!’ shouted one of the Technicians.
The Magistrate hurried over to the main display.
‘Heading for Norval’s TARDIS?’ the Magistrate called.
‘I’m just trying to track it. There we are.’
Norval’s TARDIS began arcing towards the Needle, but the strange light was far below.
The main screen switched to an overview of the scene.
Lord Norval’s TARDIS was zooming in on a point on the surface of the Needle. The tiny pinprick of green light was millions of miles away, heading away from Norval.
‘A ball of energy, ten feet in diameter, travelling at just under the speed of light.’
‘A natural phenomenon?’ Hedin asked.
The Magistrate shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’
Hedin nodded. ‘Analysing composition now.’
The Magistrate watched the tactical display. The ball was slow as lightning, but there was something mesmerising about it. On the other side of the Needle, Norval’s TARDIS
was beginning its descent.
‘It’s just light,’ Hedin concluded. ‘Possibly a signal flare of some kind. Limited sentience, perhaps. It could be a probe of some kind?’
‘A weapon?’ the Magistrate asked.
‘Possibly.’ There was no concern in the Technician’s voice. Why would there be?
‘Locate its point of origin,’ the Magistrate suggested. Hedin nodded.
Alarms started ringing all over the console deck.
‘What is it?’ the Magistrate asked calmly.
‘Lord Norval’s TARDIS just crossed a detection beam.’
‘Didn’t he see it?’
‘It was a passive sensor. Now we know where to look we can see that there is blanket coverage of the Needle.
Someone knows that he is there.’
They heard the Castellan’s voice. ‘Norval, change course on a random vector.’
The TARDIS vanished momentarily.
And rematerialised right in the path of the energy ball.
‘Don’t worry,’ the Castellan said. ‘It’s just light. It will pass straight through you.’
‘It might temporarily blind the scanners and cause slight damage to the outer plasmic shell,’ Hedin warned. ‘It might be as well to drop to full defence mode.’
Norval nodded. ‘Five seconds. Four, three, two, one.’
The ball of energy hit the TARDIS. It punctured the forcefield. It went straight through the secondary force field.
When Norval’s TARDIS automatically made an emergency jump five seconds into the future to avoid the impact, the ball of energy followed it. Finally it blew a hole in the outer plasmic shell.
The Magistrate’s screen faded out.
‘What’s happening?’ he asked.
He turned to the main viewer, which was showing an external view of Norval’s TARDIS. Green energy raged through the gap in the out shell, eating through it like acid, making the hole larger and larger.
‘The dimensional barrier might be breached,’ Hedin warned sharply. ‘The infinite interior dimensions might start to pour out.’
But there was no need to worry about the eventuality. The green fire was destroying the interior just as effectively as the exterior.
‘A self-sustaining chain reaction,’ the Magistrate noted.
There was a final flash of light, and then the TARDIS had gone.
There was silence on the bridge of the Station.
There was uproar in the Temporal Monitoring Room.
‘Clear the public galleries!’ one of the ushers was calling.
Larna watched the Councillors, and she was as dumbstruck as they were.
The Castellan was staring down at-the image. ‘How is this possible?’ he asked. ‘How is this possible? Re-establish the voice links.’
The Doctor stared at him. ‘I told you, Castellan, anything is possible now. Someone down there on the Needle used the Effect against us.’
‘No,’ said Larna.
They all turned to her.
‘If they had control of the Effect, then they wouldn’t need to use anything so crude. They could have just wiped Norval from the timestream.’
‘We have run an analysis of the energy ball,’ the Magistrate announced. ‘It was a concoction of energies that seems