Doctor Who_ The Infinity Doctors - Lance Parkin [92]
Giant galaxies, such as Gallifrey’s, would exert gravitational pull over their satellite galaxies and draw them inexorably in.
It was a process so slow that the civilisations rising and falling there wouldn’t even notice it happen. In the Doctor’s timezone, the Sagittarius Galaxy had already been absorbed.
Perhaps– he was in the realms of speculation now– the fate of the giant galaxies was to be absorbed into ever larger groups of stars, the galactic groups merging into vast clusters, the clusters into ultraclusters, the ultraclusters into just one vast monogalaxy.
There was a definite moment when the Doctor realised that he had changed direction The universe had stopped expanding, the energy of the Big Bang finally spent. The cosmos drifted onwards for a little while, then began collapsing, much faster than it had expanded. It began to feel a little cold, too, like being caught in an autumn breeze, but that sensation must have been purely psychological.
There were red eyes, watching him.
And then he was standing on the deck of the Station, catching his breath.
The power room was an almost identical copy of the one he had left. But it felt emptier. There was something here all around him. Evil. What else could have compelled him to kill Larna? For the first time he allowed himself to think about her death, to examine his emotions and state of mind. It shocked the Doctor to realise that he felt nothing other than numb.
Larna was part of the past, and the past didn’t change. She was gone, and no amount of introspection would change that.
He knew then that nothing from without had influenced him, that he’d taken the knife himself and made the choice all for himself.
The door slid open, revealing the Magistrate and a couple of Watchmen. The Doctor dusted down his jacket, straightened his scarf.
‘Hello there,’ he said, trying to sound cheerful.
The Magistrate grabbed him by the lapels and slammed him against the nearest bulkhead, fixing him with dark eyes.
‘You’ve killed us,’ he shouted, making the Doctor wince.
‘You’ve cut off our power, left us stranded here. It will be hours before Gallifrey can re-establish the link.’
‘At least a day,’ the Doctor said. The Magistrate slammed him against the wall again and then let go of him, let him slide down the wall, turned his back on him.
‘If I hadn’t done it, you’d be dead,’ the Doctor called after him.
‘Without power we are dead.’
‘You’ve still got battery power.’
‘For an hour, perhaps an hour and a half.’
The Doctor beamed. ‘Then why not use what power you have to capture one of the local black holes and use that as an energy source? It’s not as though there’s a shortage of them around here.’
The Magistrate stopped in his tracks, hesitating. Finally he nodded to one of the Watchmen, who hurried off to the control deck to organise it.
‘There you go. What would you do without me?’
‘Spare me, Doctor, I am not in the mood. A Time Lord has died, we face an enemy of unknown origins and powers, one capable of destroying a TARDIS. By killing our power and cutting off our links with the Council and the Matrix, you are hardly helping matters.’
‘The High Council were planning to attack the Needle. If they had done that, there’s no telling what would have happened. We might have wiped out whatever is down there, but there was no guarantee of it. Whatever’s down there could be in control of the Effect, and if that’s the case then I have just prevented a war that Gallifrey couldn’t possibly have won.’
‘If they are in control of the Effect then they may destroy us anyway.’
‘I don’t think they are. They clearly have access to technology in advance of our own, though, and this Station has to be considered at risk.’
There was a mechanical thunk all around them, and the flickered, before returning to their previous brilliance. ‘My crew harnessed a local black hole; the Magistrate informed him. ‘Good. Good.’ The Doctor looked around, unsure what to do. ‘I to get across there. Down to the Needle.’
‘Lord Norval was killed trying to