Doctor Who: Time and the Rani (14 page)

'I wish I were coming with you, Mel. . .'

'Nobody will credit this - least of all you - but so do I . . .' She raised her palm inviting him to bid her farewell according to his custom.

'I do have another regret.'

'What's that, Ikona?' asked the Doctor.

'After all the suffering she's caused, the Rani has escaped, unscathed, in her TARDIS!'

Glancing quizzically heavenwards, the Doctor wondered if that were true. The question nagging him since they attacked the laboratory still hadn't been answered.

Where were the Tetraps?

The noisome, hairy bipeds were hanging from the ceiling of the control room in the Rani's TARDIS. Already their rancid odour was impregnating the clinical furnishings.

Suspended upside-down with them was a slim, writhing, scarlet-clad body.

Competently dealing with the instrumentation on the console was the grinning Urak: student had graduated to master! His quadview scanning, he padded to the distraught Rani.

'Mistress . . .' With the callousness he had demonstrated when she had lain stunned beneath his electronic net, Urak brushed the dangling brunette tresses from her upside-down features. 'You have taught . . .us so much . . . When we get to . . .

Tetrapyri. . .arbus,your. . .incredible. . .brain will show us . . . how we conquer . . . our needs . . . There will be . . . plasma in . . . abundance . . .'

'Amsalp . . !'
Slimy rodent lips dribbled in anticipation.

Urak's ivory cuspids gleamed. His forked tongue lasciviously pricked the Rani's cheek . . . and as paralysis stiffened every sinew, the Rani's vision was filled with the celebratory flapping of oily, membraned wings and rolling bloodshot eyes . . .

'Amsalp . . . Amsalp
. . .' The Tetrapyriaban cry echoed. . .

'Oh, memory like a dromedary!' About to go into the TARDIS, the Doctor suddenly smacked the top of his hat. Rummaging in his pocket, he extracted the flask with the rococo stopper he had purloined from the lab.

'Antidote for those killer insects in the globe,' he explained, giving the flask to Ikona.

'The Rani always takes out an insurance policy.'

Ikona accepted the flask, removed the stopper -and emptied the contents on the ground!

'You're impossible!' Mel did not expect the iconoclastic Ikona to show gratitude, but this! 'Why did you do that?'

'Tell her, Faroon,' said the young Lakertyan.

‘Ikona believes our people must meet their own challenges if they are to survive.'

The Doctor did not question the philosophy.

'You know, Mel,' he confided as they turned again to the TARDIS. Tkona reminds me of myself when I was his age.'

'That
I can believe!'

He stood aside for her to enter the TARDIS.

'In you go, Mel. Time and tide melts the snowman.'

'Waits for no man!'

'Who's waiting? I'm ready.'

Mel looked at the mischievous face, the small, wiry frame in its cream coat, flattened straw hat and correspondent shoes. Now the umbrella was destroyed, all outward semblances of the sixth Doctor were lost.

'You're going to take a bit of getting used to,' she groaned.

The final assertion to be heard from the seventh Doctor before the TARDIS

dematerialised were the optimistic words:

'Oh, I'll grow on you, Mel. I'll grow on you!'

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