DOCTOR WHO AND THE INVISIBLE ENEMY Read online

  The cloned version of Leela stood fully formed inside the booth. Marius was about to release her when he heard a horrified cry from his nurse. 'Professor Marius —look at the Doctor!'

  Marius turned. While they had been busy, the virus had taken over the Doctor's body with horrifying speed. The entire shape seemed twisted and distorted, and a rash of wiry metallic hairs had grown over his hands and face. It was as though the Doctor were turning into some strange deformed beast before their eyes. His entire body was twisting, writhing, convulsing with such force that Marius feared he would break a limb. He fetched heavy plastic restraining webbing from a locker, and he and Parsons fought to strap the struggling figure down.

  As they fought with him the Doctor began to speak, not in his own voice, but in deep, throaty, gurgling inhuman tones, that sounded like someone choking on his own blood. 'Release this body,' gurgled the voice. 'You cannot prevail. I am the One. It is my Purpose. It is my destiny. Let me go, you fools!'

  'Shall we sedate him?' asked Parsons.

  Marius fastened the last buckle with a mighty effort. 'No. Not yet.'

  'What about the danger of contagion?'

  'No, Parsons. If the disease was contagious during this stage, we would all have got it by now.'

  Parsons looked down at the writhing figure. 'If the Doctor's right, sir, and the virus is intelligent, it must have some reason for choosing him.'

  'That's right. In my view, we could be dealing with some kind of leader.'

  The horrifying voice came from the Doctor's twisted mouth once more. 'My Purpose. You must not delay my Purpose. The place of the Hive is ready. Release me!'

  The TARDIS doors opened and the carbon-copy Doctor emerged carrying a complex piece of electronic equipment. Clasping it to his chest, he hurried off down the corridor.

  The visiphone screen in the isolation ward suddenly lit up and Lowe appeared on the screen. The rash had spread all over his face now, and like the Doctor he seemed scarcely human. 'Professor Marius, listen to me,' he said menacingly. 'You must release the Doctor.'

  Marius struggled to hold down the writhing figure on the couch. 'Never,' he gasped defiantly.

  'I warn you, we are in control of the entire Centre. We have made contact with your atomic generator technicians. If you do not do as I say, I shall destroy your Foundation!'

  Waiting in the corridor with K9, Leela saw the Doctor hurrying towards them clutching a heavy piece of equipment, which she recognised as part of the TARDIS console. He marched straight past them and into the isolation ward.

  'That was the Doctor-2,' said Leela definitely.

  'Affirmative!'

  As the second Doctor came into the ward, Lowe was still uttering threats from the visiphone screen. 'You have two minutes in which to decide. Either you give us the Doctor or your Foundation will be wiped out!' The screen went dark.

  The Doctor was carrying his piece of equipment over to the cloning booth.

  Marius followed him. 'What are you doing, Doctor? Didn't you hear? We've just had an ultimatum.'

  'Don't worry, Professor, if this doesn't work the whole place will be wiped out anyway.'

  Marius stared at the machinery. 'What is it?'

  'It's a Relative Dimensional Stabiliser, RDS.' 'What does it do?'

  'It's part of the TARDIS control system, the part that allows me to cross the dimensional barriers.'

  Marius looked blank. The Doctor said, 'It's quite simple, really. It means that I can change size, large or small as I wish.' He opened the door to the booth, and found himself facing an angry carbon-copy Leela. 'Why have I been left here?'

  'Sorry, Leela, shan't keep you a minute.' The new Doctor began setting up the RDS inside the booth. 'Now listen carefully, Professor. I'll operate the RDS. I've set it so that we'll be reduced to micro-dimensions. You then scoop us both up and inject us into my master-print, there.' He nodded briefly at the figure on the couch. 'When we return, you simply throw the RDS in reverse to restore us to normal size. This lever here... Any questions?'

  Marius had only one. 'Why take Leela?'

  'Because she's immune—and because she's a hunter!

  'Yes, of course. Well, we'd better get on with it, there's not much time. Is there anything we can do meanwhile?'

  'Yes, just stay here and hope we come up with the antidote. And Professor, when we emerge, we'll be corning out through the tear duct!'

  'Right. Good luck! '

  The carbon-copy Doctor stepped inside the booth with the carbon-copy Leela.

  Meanwhile the original Leela, overcome by curiosity, was watching from the doorway. She caught a glimpse of her carbon copy through the open door of the booth. 'K9, do I really look like that?'

  'Aflrmative.'

  There was a hum of power from inside the booth and the dim shapes of the Doctor and Leela dwindled rapidly to nothingness.

  Marius waited a moment longer, then opened the door. The booth was empty except for the little dish of serum in the centre of the floor. Marius picked it up carefully, and his nurse handed him a specially prepared pneumatic syringe. Marius sucked up the few drops of colourless fluid in the dish and carried the syringe over to the couch. He looked at Parsons. 'Well, here they go!' He bent over the couch. 'Pleasant journey, Doctor,' he whispered, and injected the fluid into the back of the Doctor's neck.

  Lowe's face appeared on the visiphone screen. 'Your time is up,' he said harshly. 'Surrender the Doctor!'

  Carbon-copied and miniaturised, the Doctor and Leela found themselves spinning round and round in a rushing crimson whirlpool, as the Doctor's blood-stream carried them along the spinal cord, towards the menace that lurked in his brain...

  7

  Mind Hunt

  Like swimmers carried to the bank of a rushing river, the crimson tide deposited the cloned Doctor and Leela on to a solid, lumpy, blue and pink surface, in a gloomy, echoing tunnel. The Doctor helped Leela to her feet. 'We must be somewhere near the top of the spinal column...' He looked round interestedly. 'Well, what do you think?'

  Leela wasn't quite sure what to say. 'I don't know what to think, I've never been inside anybody's head before.' Politely she added, 'It's very interesting.'

  'Thank you,' said the Doctor, with equal politeness.

  'Why aren't we wet?'

  'Because we're too small to break the surface tension...'

  A kind of abbreviated lightning-flash crackled over their heads and zipped away into the distance. 'What was that?'

  'Oh, just a passing thought,' said the Doctor airily. 'Electrochemical reaction in the synapses. Leg wants to move, probably...'

  The leg of the tied-down Doctor flailed violently, kicking against the restraining straps. Marius looked worried. 'Don't think he can hold out much longer, the virus seems to be strengthening its grip.'

  From the visiphone screen Lowe said angrily, 'Professor Marius! You have not replied to my ultimatum. I can destroy this Centre!'

  Marius swung round, holding up his hand. 'No, wait! I agree to your terms. I have no further use for the Doctor, he's yours whenever you want.'

  'A wise decision,' said Lowe coldly. 'Tell me, Professor, is the reject Leela with you?'

  'No, as you can see, there's simply myself and my assistants. She's somewhere in the Foundation, I've no idea where.'

  'No matter. She will be found and destroyed. Stay where you are—we are on our way.' The visiphone went blank.

  Marius moved to the doorway and called softly, 'Leela?'

  Leela hurried into the room, K9 at her heels.

  'They're coming, Leela,' whispered Marius urgently. 'We've got to hold them off for at least ten minutes. Can you do that?'

  'Can I borrow K9?'

  'Yes, certainly. K9, co-operate with Leela.'

  'Master.'

  Leela looked down at her ally. 'We'll have to wait for them in the corridor. If we could just make some sort of barrier...'

  'Re-check! ' said K9 firmly. 'First we must eliminate the service sh
aft.'

  Leela was pleased to see K9 had good strategic sense. 'Yes, of course, otherwise they can attack us from behind... What we'll do—'

  Marius broke in on their planning session. 'Whatever you're going to do, I should get on with it. We haven't got much time.'

  Leela took command. 'K9, you go and destroy the shaft, and then meet me back here.'

  'Affirmative.'

  They moved off, K9 in one direction, Leela in the other.

  'Suppose they fail?' asked Parsons gloomily. He was beginning to feel that their success depended on increasingly strange allies. First two cloned miniatures, now a savage and a robot dog.

  Marius crossed to a security locker, opened it and took out two hand-blasters. 'Ever used one of these?'

  He pressed one of the weapons into his assistant's hand. 'Here, take it. If by any chance I am taken over by the virus, I hope you won't hesitate to use that blaster on me. Because if you are taken over, I shall certainly use mine on you. Whatever happens, we must give the Doctor his ten minutes.'

  'I understand, sir,' said Parsons loyally, hiding the blaster beneath his gown.

  The cloned Doctor and Leela were trudging through a sort of soft swampy grotto, festooned with hanging veils of tissue and fine, fungoid webs. Everything was enveloped in murky gloom, though from time to time a bright, lightning-like thought-flash zipped by over-head.

  'Doctor,' said Leela reproachfully, 'I do not think you have any idea where we're going.'

  'What do you mean, no idea? We're travelling along my neural pathways, looking for a sort of bridge, a crossover point between left and right lobe.'

  'Is that where the virus will be?'

  'Wells since it seems to be able to control both conscious and unconscious functions, it's a good place to start looking.'

  'Suppose we meet it?'

  'I don't think we will, not just yet. It came through the optic nerve. We're still somewhere between the spinal cord and the cerebellum. But keep your eyes open for tissue degeneration.'

  'Like this?' Leela jabbed her foot at a darker patch of the tissue that surrounded them.

  The Doctor winced. 'Steady, that's me you're kicking!'

  'Sorry,' said Leela penitently. They hurried on.

  Behind them, white formless shapes were gathering, trailing them through the neural pathways. The Doctor's body was preparing to deal with the alien intruders...

  K9 glided back to Leela. 'Mission accomplished,' he announced proudly. 'Service shaft destroyed—Mistress.'

  'Thank you, K9. Now what we need is some sort of barrier.'

  K9's blaster-nozzle protruded and he blasted the opposite wall and ceiling with maximum force. Immediately most of the ceiling crashed down. K9 fired again, and a chunk of wall landed on top of it, making a wall of rubble across the corridor.

  'Acceptable?' enquired K9.

  'Perfect! Thank you, K9.'

  'There is no need for gratitude. I am an automaton.'

  Leela was scanning the corridor ahead. 'Really?'

  'I am without emotional circuits. Only memory and awareness.' All the same, K9's tail antenna was wagging gently. He, too, was scanning the corridor and his sensors picked up the sound of the enemies' approach before they could be seen. 'Attention, hostiles approaching!'

  K9 drew back, and Leela took shelter behind a chunk of rubble.

  Lowe appeared, with Cruickshank and a number of other Centre staff behind him. All had the metallic rash around the eyes, and all were carrying blasters.

  Lowe raised a hand to halt his little army. 'It is the reject.' He moved cautiously forward and peered across the barrier. 'Leela,' he called. 'Leela! Bring me the Doctor!

  'Come and get him,' shouted Leela, and opened fire.

  Lowe and his men fired back, and a fierce blaster-battle raged across the barricade.

  The Doctor moaned and writhed in his bonds. Marius checked his wrist chronometer. 'Less than eight minutes to go. Anything, Parsons?'

  Parsons was studying Leela's tissue sample under a computerised electron microscope, in the desperate hope of finding some explanation of her immunity from the disease. He studied the computer read-out screen. 'It's all here, sir. Leela's tissue profile, adaptation, disease resistance...'

  'Bit of a mongrel, isn't she,' said Marius thoughtfully. 'Probably explains why her race survived. But no sign of any physical immunity.'

  'There's a wide range of possible blood characteristics, sir,' the nurse pointed out. 'It will take hours to check them all.'

  'On the other hand it could be a psychological factor,' mused Marius. 'Something in her mind, her way of looking at things.'

  There was a crackle of blaster-fire from outside the room. and a yell of triumph from Leela as she scored a hit. 'Aggression?' suggested Parsons.

  'Determination, stamina,' said Marius. 'The predator's instinct!'

  Leela ducked instinctively as another thought-flash whizzed over her head.

  The Doctor looked proudly around him. 'You'd never think it was the most advanced computer system ever, would you?'

  Leela pointed to a glowing, knotted mass of tissue hanging just ahead of them. 'Ugh, what's that?'

  '"That is why my brain is so much superior to yours,' said the Doctor huffily. 'It's a super-ganglion.

  Leela wasn't listening. 'Doctor, I can sense danger,' she whispered.

  'Rubbish! If there was any danger about, I'd be the first to sense it. I know this brain like the back of my hand. What do you know about brains anyway?'

  'All right, all right, don't get excited,' said Leela. It was a pity the Doctor's bad temper had been cloned along with the rest of him.

  'I'll get excited if I like, it's my brain! Do you want to know something?'

  'Not particularly!

  'Well, I'll tell you anyway. Somebody once tried to build a machine as efficient as the brain. Trouble was, it would have had to be bigger than London—you remem ber London?—and powered by the entire European grid. And that was only a human brain, mine is much more complex. Left and right side working in unison via these specialised neural ganglia, thus combining data storage retrieval with logical inference and the intuitive leap—' The Doctor broke off. 'Are you listening, Leela?'

  'Yes,' said Leela, though she'd hardly heard a word.

  They'd reached another massive complex of glowing, twisted ganglia. The Doctor pointed, rather like a guide displaying the crown jewels. 'That is the reflex link,' he said impressively. 'With that I can tune myself in to the Time Lord intelligentsia—a thousand superbrains in one!

  'Why don't you do it then?' suggested Leela. She was beginning to get tired of being lectured. As far as she was concerned, they needed all the help they could get.

  The Doctor coughed. 'Ah well, as it happens, I lost that particular faculty when they kicked me out...'

  'They kicked you out?' asked Leela, intrigued. She knew little of the Doctor's past history.

  The Doctor was studying another tangle of ganglia further down the tunnel. 'Come and look here, Leela, these connections have been severed.' The Doctor studied the rent. 'Hullo...'

  Leela popped her head through the other side of the gap. 'Hullo!'

  'Don't be funny,' said the Doctor disapprovingly.

  'Doctor, you're wasting time, we've got to keep moving in.'

  'No, don't you see, this is recent damage, Leela.'

  'The virus?'

  'What else? We must be getting close!

  A white blob dropped from nowhere to land on Leela's shoulders. She screamed and tried to throw it off, but another followed, and then another, until she was covered in the billowing globular shapes. 'Doctor, help me,' she screamed.

  'I can't! It's my body's defence mechanisms, my own phagocytes. Use your knife!'

  Leela drew her knife and slashed desperately about her, but the number of attacking phagocytes seemed limitless, and soon she disappeared from view buried beneath the seething white forms.

  With sudden inspiration, the Docto
r dashed to the opposite side of the tunnel, grabbed two dangling nerve-ends and thrust them together. There was a crackle and a flash, and suddenly the army of phagocytes began moving away from Leela, disappearing down the tunnel as if summoned by some distant alarm.

  The Doctor helped her to her feet.

  'What did you do?'

  'Gave them a faked alarm call. I think I told them my liver was disintegrating!'

  'That's very clever, Doctor! '

  'I know it's very clever,' agreed the Doctor. 'Come on!'

  In the isolation ward the Doctor struggled to reach the small of his back. His whole body arched and he gave a groan.

  'What's happening?'

  Marius shrugged. 'No idea. But it proves they're in there... some sensitive area...'

  They heard more blaster-fire from the corridor out-side. It was closer now, as though K9 and Leela were being driven back.

  Marius looked at the chronometer. 'Seven and a half minutes to go.' He sighed..'Not much chance of success now...'

  Lowe's attacking army seemed to be unlimited. Between them Leela and K9 had shot a good many down, but there were always others who stepped forward to take their place. Lowe and his aides seemed to have managed to infect most of the staff of the Centre between them.

  Cruickshank, more infected and more fanatical than the rest, hurtled over the barrier in a desperate leap—and K9 shot him down. Cruickshank fell dying directly in front of K9—and a sudden lightning-flash crackled between his eyes and K9's eye-screen.

  In a slurred, dragging voice K9 said, 'Contact has been made—Master...'

  From the other side of the barrier Lowe screamed, 'Kill her, K9! Kill the reject!'

  'Affirmative. Kill the reject,' droned K9 obediently. He swung round. Leela was moving about further along the barricade, ducking from one piece of cover to another, returning the fire of Lowe and his men.