Free Doctor Who: Mawdryn Undead by Peter Grimwade Page A

hesitated.
    ‘Time is running out. We must leave this place at once.’
    The gentle Nyssa could no longer endure the distress of a man who might be the Doctor. Her hand moved to the lever that would activate the TARDIS.
    ‘No!’ Tegan dragged Nyssa away from the console, but already the slow rise and fall had begun.
    The journey to the ship did not take long; within minutes of real time, they had entered the warp ellipse and the old police box made a second incongruous appearance inside the sombre vessel.
    Nyssa opened the scanner.
    ‘The ship!’ cried Mawdryn.
    ‘Is it indeed,’ muttered the Brigadier suspiciously. The marble hall he could see on the scanner was not his idea of the inside of a spacecraft.
    Mawdryn prepared to leave. ‘You will stay in the TARDIS,’ he informed the Brigadier and the girls.
    Tegan quickly placed herself between Mawdryn and the double doors. ‘If you’re in a regeneration crisis you’ll need all the help you can get.’
    ‘No!’ He was surprised at her continuing defiance.
    ‘She’s right, Doctor,’ said the Brigadier, trying at the same time to show respect for a possible Time Lord, yet still support the plucky Australian.
    ‘I must go into the ship alone.’
    Tegan stood her ground. She was not going to let the creature from the transmat capsule out of her sight.
     
    Mawdryn staggered giddily. The atmosphere of the TARDIS had helped restore his strength, but his conflict with the Earthchild had dissipated that new-found energy. In a weary, broken voice he began to plead with her. ‘You do not understand the nature of the transmogrification. The unique restorative conditions of that vessel’ – he indicated the screen, then turned to his three fellow passengers — ‘the presence of other life-forms would inhibit the reparation.’
    The Brigadier and Nyssa glanced uncertainly at each other, while Tegan glared implacably at Mawdryn. ‘We’ve all seen the Doctor regenerate before and the evidence suggests that without the presence of other life-forms he could die.’
    Mawdryn abandoned reasoned argument. ‘Open the doors,’ he screamed.
    Nyssa moved to the console, but Tegan pulled her out of the way. ‘You’re not going out into the ship!’
    Mawdryn began to groan with pain and rage.
    ‘Either you stay here or we go with you.’
    The creature was fighting for air. He clawed and twisted like a drowning cat. Tegan willed herself not to relent, but Nyssa was less resilient. She edged towards the door control lever.
    ‘Nyssa! He could reactivate the beam and the TARDIS
    would be trapped on the ship for ever.’
    ‘But if he is the Doctor...’
    ‘I don’t believe it.’
    ‘The doors!’ howled Mawdryn.
    ‘No!’
    ‘You are destroying me!’ He collapsed exhausted on the floor and began to sob. ‘Spare me the endurance of endless time, the torture of perpetuity.’ He was now at their mercy.
    ‘For pity’s sake, release me!’ he begged.
    Tegan could hold out no longer. She turned to the Brigadier. The Brigadier was a professional fighter, but even he could not willingly inflict suffering on a defenceless man. ‘Let him go,’ he ordered.
    Nyssa opened the doors and Mawdryn stumbled out of the TARDIS.
    Tegan was trembling from the strain of the confrontation. ‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ she said quietly.
    ‘Keeping him in the TARDIS might have killed him,’
    answered the Brigadier.
    ‘And we can’t be certain he isn’t the Doctor.’
    ‘Can’t we?’
    They all looked at the scanner to see Mawdryn drag himself from the time machine and merge into the shadows of the alien ship.
    The Doctor stood beside the obelisk staring disconsolately down into the valley. Earth was certainly an attractive planet — his favourite in fact — but there is nowhere in the Universe, however beautiful, that does not lose its charms when it becomes a place of exile. ‘If only I had some sort of equipment for tracking the TARDIS,’ he muttered to