Doctor Who_ Warlock - Andrew Cartmel [11]
‘These were picked in Russia in the late 1930s.’ With the manner of a conjuror the Doctor turned back to the workbench, opened the metal clam shell. He crumbled the mushrooms in the sealed bag, rolling it between his lingers. Then he opened the bag and spilled the powdery fragments into the metal clam shell. Ace noticed he was careful not to inhale any of the powder.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Watch this.’ He closed the clam shell and sealed it carefully before pushing a button on the lid. ‘Don’t touch it,’ said the Doctor.
‘No fear,’ said Ace.
‘It’s getting very hot.’
‘I can see,’ said Benny. The clam shell was indeed glowing cherry red.
‘What’s it doing?’ said Ace.
‘Quiet,’ said the Doctor, leaning over the computer. There was a sudden flash of activity on the screen. A graph was being traced on it, a sharply spiked green line.
‘Very interesting,’ said the Doctor. ‘Now can you pass me the oven glove please, Benny?’ Bernice handed the Doctor the smiling camel glove and he pulled it on over his left hand and went back to the workbench. Using the glove he carefully popped open the red‐hot metal clam shell. Inside there was no trace of the mushroom powder, no ash. Just gleaming metal, still glowing a faint orange.
‘That is annoying.’ The Doctor was frowning.
‘What?’ said Ace.
‘I’ve never seen that happen before.’ The Doctor bent closer to the clam shell device, peering into it.
‘What?’ said Benny.
‘It’s supposed to leave a residue for further analysis. But as you can see the mushroom has oxidized completely. Maybe it’s a system malfunction.’ He checked the wiring then shrugged. ‘No. Everything seems to be fine. It must just be an anomaly. A one‐in‐a‐million occurrence. Oh well, that’s Cybertechnology for you.’ He set the clam shell back on the bench and picked something up between his fingers.
‘Now this,’ said the Doctor, ‘this is the tablet our friends at the gate so kindly provided.’ He put it into the clam shell and repeated the procedure. A new graph was being traced on it, just above the jagged line. The new graph was bright red. It flashed into existence over the other line, precisely following its profile, matching the highs and lows almost exactly. ‘Very interesting. And this time we should have a residue for further analysis.’ The Doctor picked up the oven glove and opened the clam shell again, hunching over it. Ace heard him sigh.
‘This really is most irritating.’ Ace and Benny came and peered over his shoulder. The glowing metal bowl was completely clean and empty. The Doctor sighed again. ‘Something isn’t right here,’ he said. ‘Still, never mind. We should be getting the printout in a minute and that will tell us a lot of what we need to know.’
In a distant corner of the garage there was a sizzling sound as an ancient dot matrix printer started up.
The Doctor continued checking the clam shell until it had finished printing, then went over and tore off a sheet of perforated paper. He showed it to Ace and Benny. The printout was covered in small squares like graph paper. On it, in ancient cubist computer type it said:
CHEMICAL ANALYSIS
0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
ANALYSIS BOUNDARY VIOLATION
NO TRACE POSSIBLE
NO TRACE POSSIBLE
ANALYSIS COMPLETE.
‘What’s going on, Doctor?’ said Benny, studying the printout. But the Doctor didn’t reply. He had turned back to the computer on the workbench. ‘Very strange,’ he muttered.
On the screen the graph traces were still glowing but the image had begun to distort. The tall green trace near the top of the screen was sinking and growing more rounded, stretching along the horizontal axis, as if it was being pulled at either end. Below it the red trace was becoming distorted in an almost identical way.
As they watched, both the