Doctor Who: Mawdryn Undead by Peter Grimwade Page B

wiser.
    ‘Somewhere on this ship, Brigadier, there are seven more creatures!’
    Turlough could never explain what had prompted him to linger in the Hall of the Likenesses. He stood in the side gallery, mesmerised by the bland faces. As he moved a step forward, he could have sworn the eyes of the central icon blinked. He gazed at the portrait... And back at Turlough stared the Black Guardian. Turlough gasped at the sudden transformation.
    ‘While the Doctor is alive, I am never far from you, Turlough.’
    ‘I’m sorry. I wasn’t to know the Doctor had a homing device.’ He began to tremble.
    ‘Whimpering boy! Do you not understand! Everything now works towards the total humiliation of the Time Lord.’ The Black Guardian smiled. ‘You have done well.’
    Turlough tried to stop himself shaking.
    ‘Give me your hand.’
    The boy would as willingly have offered his arm to a hooded cobra.
    ‘Give me your hand. There is nothing to fear.’
    The Black Guardian vanished the moment his fingers touched the likeness, and the whole frame swung back to reveal a hidden room. Turlough stepped into the chamber.
    It felt as though he had entered a charnel-house. As his eyes grew accustomed to the light he became aware of seven shadowy figures, like corpses in their winding sheets, laid out against the walls. He peered at the sepulchral shapes; each shroud he saw to be a set of rich clothes, as sumptuous as the fabric of the ship itself. Each of the robes, he supposed, must enclose a dead man. But why had the Black Guardian sent him to open up a tomb?
    There was a soft wheezing, as if an old man had began to snore. It came again; and again. Turlough realised that each cadaverous occupant of the chamber was struggling to draw air into his lungs; somehow the opening of the door had brought the creatures to life. He was paralysed with fear.
    The hooded things began to stir. Bodies flexed under velvet cloaks; twisted arms started to tear off their sheaths and flail in the empty air around the terrified boy. The creature nearest Turlough lifted a claw-like hand and tore the cloth from his face. For a full five seconds, Turlough faced the hideous, gasping mutant, then screamed, and fled.
    The resurrected corpse that had sent Turlough scuttling away down the corridor focused its sunken eyes on the open door. ‘Mawdryn has returned,’ it announced to its fellow sleepers.
    ‘Does he bring hope of our ending?’ came the reply.
    The Brigadier couldn’t wait to get out of the laboratory.
    There was something very disturbing about all those sterile, white panels with their inset dials and switches, and those tortuous electrodes.
    But the Doctor was still examining the regenerator.
    ‘There’ve been some very cunning modifications.. A vicious buzzing emanated from the centre of the machine as the Doctor moved one of the switches.
    ‘That all looks highly dangerous,’ warned the Brigadier.
     
    ‘Quite right,’ agreed the Doctor. ‘It could do very nasty things to a genuine Time Lord.’
    ‘Listen!’ The Brigadier had heard the sound of a voice in the corridor. Or was it only the echo of the machinery the Doctor had set in motion? He moved quietly into the connecting passage to investigate, leaving the Doctor alone with the regenerator.
    ‘Doctor? Doctor?’ A younger, sprucer Lethbridge-Stewart advanced slowly along the main companionway. He was fairly confident, now, that the wounded man he was searching for was an imposter, but it would do no harm to give him the benefit of a little more doubt. ‘Doctor!’ he called again, pausing beside the small passage to the laboratory.
    It was odd for someone as observant as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart not to notice the narrow entrance, but he was distracted by the increase in static electricity; the tingling on the back of his neck had returned.
    Mawdryn moved silently as he writhed and wriggled towards the laboratory. As soon as he regained consciousness he had sensed the presence of