Doctor Who: Mawdryn Undead by Peter Grimwade

the man would get into, left to his own devices.
    For reasons far more devious than those of the Brigadier, Turlough was determined to stick with the Doctor as well.
    ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ protested the Brigadier, who had had quite enough of the precocious young man for one day.
    ‘The Doctor needs my help.’
    The Brigadier grunted. There was no denying it, the boy had remarkable skills. He wondered what Mr Sellick was going to say about it all.
    The Doctor closed the capsule door.
    ‘How long will the journey take?’ The Brigadier braced himself, expecting at any moment to be blasted off the hill like a cannon ball.
    The Doctor opened the door again.
    The old soldier blinked as he looked out into the control centre of Mawdryn’s ship.
    As Mawdryn left the unique atmosphere of the TARDIS he felt the strength go out of him. He clawed at the hard, smooth walls of his ship, but there was no resilience to his limbs. He grasped at a pillar, but on contact with the faceted marble his flesh crumbled like fly-blown fungus.
    He collapsed slowly to the floor. The Doctor’s red coat was already sodden with pus and liquified flesh. Mawdryn moaned at the pain of his dissolution and longed for oblivion. But now he needed the laboratory. He must reach the apparatus. He must go on.
    He undulated what remained of his body, and his viscous torso slid slowly forward along the corridor. Every inch of the way was the most appalling agony. He began to fear that time was running out. The girl, Tegan, might take the TARDIS back to Earth, to be reunited with the genuine Time Lord. Never again would there be the chance of an ending. Mawdryn needed help. He turned off the main companionway,.
    The unearthly faces gazed haughtily down as Mawdryn slithered into the hall of likenesses. He stopped below the central icon that had so disturbed the Doctor on his first exploration of the ship. With a supreme effort of will he raised himself up towards the frame. ‘Mawdryn has returned!’ he cried. ‘It is time for the awakening. Help me!’
    But neither help nor answer came.
    Fearing that his frail voice had not reached his comrades in the dormition chamber, Mawdryn called more loudly. ‘My brothers, awake. Mawdryn has returned. I have brought to our ship a TARDIS...’
    He felt himself weakening. Hope alone gave him the strength to continue. ‘The time of our ending is near!’ he called.
    But the news fell upon deaf ears.
    ‘Help me!’ Mawdryn strained again to reach the chamber release, but the effort was beyond him, and with a cry of despair he fell back to the floor.
    In the TARDIS control room, the Brigadier, Tegan and Nyssa stared at the screen. There was no sign of any activity in the ship. The Brigadier began to suspect that Tegan had been right about the ‘Doctor’. But he could never have imagined that the greatest danger, out there in the ship, was himself; for it would have been beyond the comprehension of the common-sense military man in the control room that he could ever meet up with his own person — some six years older.
    ‘Right!’ The Brigadier turned to the doors. ‘Time for a recce. I think we should keep an eye on this character.’
    ‘I’m coming with you.’
    ‘You girls are staying here.’
    ‘We girls,’ bristled Tegan, ‘are perfectly capable of...’
    ‘You will both remain in the TARDIS! And that is an order, Miss Jovanka,’ he added as he left the control room, in case Tegan had forgotten that both Brigadiers and schoolmasters should be obeyed without question.
    ‘Chauvinist pig!’ muttered Tegan under her breath.
    ‘Good Heavens!’ muttered the Brigadier as he stepped out of the TARDIS; he had never seen such luxury in a ship before.
     
    ‘Good heavens!’ exclaimed an older Lethbridge-Stewart as he walked with the Doctor and Turlough along the corridor from the control centre. ‘Such luxury!’
    ‘It’s not an ordinary ship, Brigadier.’
    The old soldier snorted. Ostentation of this