Doctor Who_ The Twin Dilemma - Eric Saward [24]
No-one wanted the enquiries the space plague victims provoked.
On the other hand, the authorities, if they were to maintain their own credibility, couldn't ignore reported illegal activity, and were forced to investigate every allegation. This often necessitated impounding the ship until the enquiry had finished.
It was not long before a sizeable portion of the balk freighter fleet was out of action.
Even those who had managed to keep flying found it difficult to crew their ships. No-one wanted the work unless they could engage in a little smuggling. Their desire wasn't to make a vast fortune, but simply to add a little excitement to the voyage. It was also a game every crew member and custom officer enjoyed.
Then along came Professor Zarn and his team. By developing a flea that could jump three metres, then releasing it aboard the infested freighters, he immediately solved the problem. As the super fleas bred with the ordinary ones, they produced offspring that naturally jumped higher. Those that didn't brain themselves on the ceiling were able to spit to their hearts' content at nothing in particular, being a good half metre above the head of the average humanoid. The plague was soon over and everything could return to how it was before.
As stated, Professor Zarn won the Atral-Freed award for his efforts. Not only did he gain a great deal of prestige, but also a lot of money, which the foolish man insisted on spending on even bigger, longer and more outrageous parties.
One night, while more than usually under the influence of Voxnic, Zarn decided to freshen himself up a little with a session in his revitalising modulator.
Unfortunately, he took into the machine a bottle of Voxnic.
Nowadays the principles governing the modulator are fully understood, but at that time it wasn't known that two things act rather strangely under the influence of Ferrail rays.
The first is Voxnic; the second is glass.
When Zarn had finished his session in the machine, the door opened automatically. But instead of the revitalised Professor, there was nothing to be seen but an enormous bottle of Voxnic.
What had happened was this. When the Professor and Voxnic had been atomised, the Ferrail rays had caused the molecules of the alcoholic beverage to become hostile. Each Voxnic mole'cule had lined up with one of the Professor's, absorbed it and then used the sudden intake of energy to reproduce an exact copy of itself.
Therefore, when the process was completed, there was a great deal of cloned Voxnic and no Zarn.
The bottle had enlarged itself in a similar way.
The saddest thing of all was that the bottle was discovered by a particularly drunken group of the Professor's guests, who drank it dry without a second thought.
This, of course, wouldn't happen to Azmael, partly because he knew about Zarn's unfortunate accident, but mainly because there wasn't any Voxnic in the safe house.
Cautiously, the elderly Time Lord entered the revitalising modulator, sealed the door behind him and set the control for sterilisation. It was vital that the atmosphere in the modulator was free of all foreign bodies, as the presence of an insect, for instance, could prove more devastating than Professor Zarn's liquid experience. To be drunk by your friends is bad enough, but to be ostracised by your social peers because you had suddenly the head and habits of a veedle fly (see Masters and Johnson's Social and Sexual Life of the Veedle Fly for the disgusting details of its behaviour pattern) would be too much.
With the cleansing process complete, Azmael set the timer to four minutes, switched on the master control and listened as the machine purred into life. Then slowly, very slowly, his body began to dissolve into a billion spheres of dancing red and white lights which glittered and sparkled as they swirled around the modulator.
The master control clicked automatically and the bombardment of Ferrail rays began. The relief of Azmael's tired molecules was instant. Although reduced to his component parts, Azmael's conscious mind remained