Doctor Who: The Trial of a Time Lord : The Ultimate Foe by Pip Baker, Jane Baker

the lid – fractionally missing Glitz’s hurriedly withdrawn hands!
     
    16

Point and Counterpoint
    The junior Mr Popplewick was absent.
    Desk, single candle and other accoutrements of the fusty, Dickensian office were still in place. Only the diligent clerk was missing.
    The Doctor poked and pried. Mel, trailing behind, was more circumspect in what was for her an antediluvian reconstruction of bygone days.
    ‘I still reckon we’d be better off outside the Matrix,’ she said.
    ‘You do?’ A hypothetical question. He was riffling through the leather-bound ledger.
    ‘Seems to me we should try to entice the Valeyard to where the odds would be more even.’
    ‘How do we do that?’ He flipped open the lid of the desk. Empty.
    ‘Well, since you’re obviously determined to stay in-side the Matrix...’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘I hate to say this.’
    ‘Force yourself.’
    ‘Why don’t we use you as bait.’
    ‘Assuming it is me he’s after,’ responded the Doctor, jostling her into the second office.
    This, too, was deserted. No senior Mr Popplewick.
    ‘Oh come on,’ continued Mel, scathingly. ‘Look at the elaborate lengths he’s gone to already.’
    The Doctor recommenced his prying. ‘Yes. They have been elaborate. Maybe too elaborate.’
    Obscure remarks from the Time Lord were par for the course, but the straightforward Mel rebelled against ambiguity. ‘There are occasions in our relationship when I feel an interpreter wouldn’t come amiss!’ She stomped to the door labelled WAITING ROOM...
    ‘Don’t go through there –!’
    Too late!
    A voracious Tyrannosaurus Rex reared towards her from the midst of a curtain of fire!
    Peeping through the keyhole, Glitz saw the primeval apparition fractionally before Mel slammed shut the door.
    He almost suffered a cardiac arrest!
    What had he landed himself in now! When he and the Doc had gone into that waiting room, they’d ended up on the sand dunes. That was grim enough, what with the Doc sinking in the mud and then them being hounded by a cloud of asphyxiating gas! But it seemed there were nastier surprises in store!
    Never keen on surprises anyway, he tiptoed across the junior Mr Popplewick’s office towards the exit.
    Half a mo! What about those jewels.. ? He’d stand no chance of getting them if he disobeyed orders...
    Hesitating in mid room, he found himself level with the desk... Ever the opportunist, a firm advocate of ‘not looking a gift horse in the mouth’, he lifted the desk top.
    Nestling in the previously empty desk was a black oblong box.. !
    A frisson of ecstasy raised a rash of goose-pimples as he purloined the priceless cassette –
    ‘Sticky fingers, Mister Glitz?’
    The thief almost vacated his skin! Half-rimmed spectacles resting on his retrousse nose, quill pen lodged behind his left ear, Mr Popplewick senior had entered the office!
    Despite the veiled threat in the steely accusation, Glitz clung onto the cassette. He read the inscription. ‘ "Matrix Memory Bank". I thought this was destroyed on Ravolox.’
    An understandable comment. He had stolen the cassette himself, only to have it snatched from his grasp in the holocaust that overtook his enterprise.
     
    ‘That was a duplicate. This is the master tape.’
    ‘ "Phase Three, Four, Five, Six"!’ Overawed, he hugged the cassette to his well-protected bosom. ‘All the secrets of the Matrix!’
    ‘Not all. The primitive phases one and two have been relegated to the archives.’ The precise, civil servant diction was out of sync with the authoritative manner. ‘Now will you kindly put it back.’
    ‘Mr Popplewick... I’d give my soul for this...’
    ‘You would?’ Popplewick calmly extracted an old-fashioned flintlock from his frock-coat pocket. Cocked it.
    ‘Would you indeed...’
    His soul he may be prepared to sacrifice, his life never!
    Gulping, bewitched by the barrel of the gun but still nursing the cassette, Glitz made one last bid. ‘Ah, you want to negotiate, Mr