Doctor Who: Time Flight (6 page)

The professorial features contracted into a sneer.

'This isn't the Soviet Union, Professor,' the Captain battled on. 'The Doctor ...'

'This Doctor needs his head examined,' announced Professor Hayter.

The Doctor stood between Kalid and the TARDIS. 'So you're the conjuror?' he finally spoke.

'I am Kalid,' the oriental replied grandly.

'You say that as if you expected a round of applause.' The Doctor answered with a lack of respect that obviously displeased the magician.

'Have a care, Doctor. You are not summoned to my domain to play the clown.'

'Your domain?' The Doctor's flippant tone changed to one of assumed interest.

'Here Kalid rules!'

'Then I apologise for my levity.' The Doctor bowed with exaggerated politeness. Kalid, however, failed to spot the irony of the gesture and inclined his head in return. 'Not to mention my curiosity,' added the Doctor, hoping for some sort of explanation.

'What troubles your mind?' 'What you're doing in this time zone for a start.' 'Shall Kalid not travel where the spirit leads him?' The Doctor was silent for a moment. He glanced round the chamber before turning back to Kalid. 'Would the spirit have anything to do with the ruin of that spaceship outside the Citadel?' There was no response to the Doctor's probing. 'Spaceship?' asked Kalid blandly. 'Yes,' said the Doctor, unconvinced by the other's assumed ignorance. 'Space is within us,'

Kalid persisted enigmatically. 'Then how exactly do you travel?' 'By the power of the Great One.' Kalid narrowed his eyes. 'In the deserts of Arabia I learned all the magic

arts.'

The Doctor had had enough of this play-acting. 'Seven league boots, eh? Magic carpet? I suppose it makes for convenience.' He jeered at the artful pomposity of the grotesque figure before him.

Kalid's anger was very real. 'You mock me, Doctor!' His sunken eyes burned like live coals and he uttered a terrible warning. 'Do not doubt that I could summon furies and cacodaemons, a company of cherubim, or Lucifer himself!'

The Doctor knew this was no idle threat. 'Yes, you're surrounded by a lot of powerful bioenergetics,' he agreed. But there was more - or perhaps less - to Kalid than that. 'I can't help feeling, Kalid,' he continued 'that there's something a great deal more mechanistic about all this.'

'Mechanistic?' Again the innocence.

'What are you doing sitting at the end of a time contour, like a spider in a web? And what do you want with my TARDIS?'

Kalid smiled. 'My familiar spirits have told me of your miraculous cabinet. The spirits have told me you would come.'

'Your spirits are certainly well informed,' said the Doctor, irritated by the inscrutability of the man.

'I hold the whole genius of Night bound to my will,' Kalid ranted on, puffing himself up like a great toad. 'And now the Great Elemental has summoned you, Doctor. Destiny has brought you to me.' He continued to talk in riddles.

'But not just me, Kalid.' The Doctor was determined to get some sense out of him. 'What do you want with all those passengers?'

'Slaves are required in my domain.'

'You have the Plasmatons.'

'They have other uses.'

Just as the Doctor thought: the power that controlled those manifestations was limited.

'You mean you need that psychotronic energy for something else!' The Doctor was thinking of Nyssa trapped in the bioplasmic shield.

'The power must be used for the great work we shall do together.'

'We?' The Doctor had no intention of co-operating with this inflated poseur.

'Together we shall scourge the entirety of time and space!' proclaimed Kalid.

The Doctor had heard it all so many times before. These vainglorious tyrants with their dreams of absolute power. 'You can exclude me from your wizardry,' he replied sharply.

But Kalid was not offering the Doctor any choice. 'You cannot resist, Doctor. In this place all things obey Kalid. Come!' He led the Doctor to the crystal in the centre of the room, and began to chant. 'Vizaan, vizaan, zanoor minaz...'

The crystal clouded. Out of the mists appeared the image of Tegan and Nyssa. 'You see your friends?' He called a second time: 'Vizaan! Vizaan!'

The mists rolled back. When the crystal cleared again the Doctor could see the great hall and rotunda. 'Your Captain Stapley and his fellow mortals.' The Doctor was very impressed at such a display of clairvoyance. But such power could not come from a mere human being. The incantation was releasing energy from elsewhere.

'You're not in control here,' the Doctor challenged Kalid. 'You're as mortal as anybody else!'

Captain Stapley and the Professor had no idea that the Doctor could see them — albeit fleetingly in the crystal ball.

The Captain would have appreciated a sighting of the Doctor. He wished the man wouldn't just wander off like that.

Hayter, his confidence boosted by the prolonged absence of the guards, was all for making contact with Bilton and Scobie and shepherding thepassengers back to the relative safety of the aircraft. 'Your crew are in front of you,' he urged Captain Stapley. 'Or do you have to ask the Doctor's permission first!'

'Don't provoke me,' growled Stapley. But it did seem a little lacking in initiative not to try and rescue his two officers.

Hayter and Stapley walked up to the group attacking the rotunda.

Hayter selected the young stewardess Andrew Bilton had originally recognised in the party with the TARDIS. Stapley approached his First Officer.

'Andrew!'

'Hello, Skipper.' Andrew Bilton was very matter of fact, totally convinced that the man beside him was sitting in the left-hand seat on the flight deck, preparing to take off. 'I've got the Met. report. We'll clear those

thunder storms by the time we get to the subsonic cruise.' He was absorbed in a waking dream in which he acted out the routine of ordinary life. 'Andrew!' Stapley tried to shake some sense into him.

Angela Clifford, the stewardess, saw Professor Hayter as a particularly obstreperous passenger. But she was trained to deal with the likes of him. 'Will you please sit down, sir, and fasten your seat belt. We're about to take off.'

'Listen to me!'

'The bar will be open as soon as we're airborne,' she retorted in her most cut-glass accent.

'Andrew!' said the Captain. 'We're not on Concorde. Remember the Doctor!'

But nothing seemed to convince the first Officer he wasn't at Heathrow, about to leave for New York.

'Oxygen checked. Flight control inverters on. Anti-stall system on ...' He launched into the pre-flight

checks. To his horror, Captain Stapley felt himself being drawn into Andrew Bilton's fantasy.

'Altimeters checked. Navigation radios set...'

'Stop it, Andrew!'

But the Captain could already hear the whine of engines, and the ghostly outline of the flight deck was taking shape around him. 'We must fight ...' he stammered, forcing his conscious mind to hold back the

illusion.

But the hypnotic rhythm of the calls only stimulated the hallucination.

'Brakes.'

'Checked,' responded the Captain, half-believing he really was in the pilot's seat.

'Throttles.'

'Idle.'

'Throttle masters.'

'On.'

Stapley made another desperate attempt to hold back the images flooding up from his subconscious. 'We must fight...' But the dream was becoming its own reality. 'Speedbird Concorde 193 to tower.

Permission to start engines ...' He made one more supreme effort. '

Professor!'

Hayter rushed to the Captain's help. 'Wake up, man!' The Professor pulled him away from Andrew Bilton. 'Concentrate! What about the Doctor, Captain Stapley!'

The Doctor?' Stapley blinked. His perception reverted like a change of shot in a film. His mind was in control again. 'The Doctor! And my crew!' He was angry with himself for losing control. It wouldn't happen again. 'Bilton!' He turned back to his copilot with renewed determination. 'Mr Bilton, remember what happened at Heathrow!'

'What's that, Skipper?'

'Remember the Doctor. And Nyssa. And Tegan. Remember Tegan?'

The mention of the pretty Australian stewardess seemed to have a positive, though unexpected effect. 'Rope,' he muttered.

'Rope?' said Captain Stapley.

But the Professor knew they were winning. 'You've triggered a rational association,' he cried to the

Captain. To Andrew Bilton he spoke gently but persistently. 'That's it! Rope, rope, rope ...'

'The Indian rope trick!' exclaimed Bilton. He blinked, and looked around in amazement at the bizarre activity in the great hall.

'Together with your box, the power will be absolute,' shrieked Kalid.

'We shall command the whole universe!' he climaxed in a manic falsetto.

'I've always found domination such an unattractive prospect,' replied the Doctor, concealing his disgust in urbane understatement.

'Shall I be forced to compel you, Doctor,' said Kalid quietly, with the reassuring charm of a rattlesnake.

'There is no power that will give you control over the TARDIS!'

Kalid's body stiffened.

The Doctor thought the sorcerer was about to attack him. Then he realised the man was in some sort of pain.

Kalid moved swiftly to the crystal. Of course. Part of his mind was on another plain. Like a wild animal, he felt danger.

The Doctor looked over Kalid's shoulder. In the nebula he could see the great hall where Stapley, Andrew Bilton and the Professor, like a group of subversive pickets, were persuading the passengers to down tools. Kalid was angry. He chanted urgently. 'Shiraaz shiraaz kazaan ...' As if a door had opened, chilling the room, the Doctor felt the flux of energy.

'Shiraa, shiraa, kazaan ...'

The Doctor watched helplessly as Plasmaton shapes formed in the hall.

The amorphous things soon engorged the rebels.

'Iznamin ... Iznamin ...' The crisis over, Kalid's voice was soft and coaxing.

But the danger had been great enough to impress his servitors; which meant, thought the Doctor, that Nyssa would now be free. At least the two girls would be safe in the plane.

The suddenness with which the shield evaporated, voiding Nyssa on the ground, took Tegan by surprise.

'Nyssa! Are you all right?' She knelt beside her fellow companion.

'Of course.'

'What happened!'

Tegan's question was rhetorical, but Nyssa answered confidently. 'The power dissolved. It was needed elsewhere.'

'What are you talking about?'

'I don't know.' She was as surprised as Tegan at her sudden intuitions.

'I promised the Doctor we would go back to Concorde.

'No!' The same oracular voice.

'But, Nyssa...'

'We must go to the Citadel!' Some dreadful imperative urged her forward.

'We'll only get caught.'

Nyssa shivered. 'The Doctor's in danger!' she gasped - then gave a cry:

'Kalid!'

'Eevaneraagh!' cried out Kalid, as the Plasmaton cumulation entered his chamber.

The massive discharge of energy as the protoplasmic matter unbonded was quite terrifying in the enclosed

space, like an explosion of steam from a boiler. In seconds, all trace of the Plasmatons was gone, leaving Hayter and the Concorde crew on the floor.

Captain Stapley was the first to his feet, delighted to see the Doctor.

Then they all became aware of the extravagant figure that stood beside them.

'Who is this man?' asked Professor Hayter.

'The oriental gentleman calls himself Kalid,' said the Doctor.

Captain Stapley turned indignantly on the magician. 'Are you responsible for the abduction of the Concorde passengers and crew?'

'Is it you who authorised mass hallucination?'

challenged the Professor.

Kalid regarded them all with leering disdain. 'Your questions are irrelevant.'

'I don't think so.' The Captain stepped aggressively towards him. Bilton and Scobie moved in alongside, confident now that they faced a tangible enemy.

'No!' cautioned the Doctor.

'Sheraz aazoor,' hissed Kalid.

The air shimmered. The three officers stopped dead as if they had walked into a plate-glass window.

'What's happening?'

'He's thrown up a barrier. I did try and warn you.'

Kalid turned away from his would-be assailants. He had some unfinished business with the Doctor. 'I require the TARDIS,' he announced unequivocally.

'You're wasting your time, Kalid.'

Kalid said nothing. His evil face inclined towards his captives; he knew how to put pressure on the Doctor.