Doctor Who: Mawdryn Undead Read Online Free PDF Page A

puffing and blowing, ‘not only would your body be less disgusting, but you’d enjoy a healthier imagination.’
    ‘I didn’t imagine it, sir!’
    ‘Take it from me,’ the Brigadier growled. ‘A solid object can’t just dematerialise.’
    ‘The TARDIS won’t dematerialise!’ The Doctor wriggled inside the control console of his time-machine and scanned the components for malfunction with as much care as Lethbridge-Stewart had tended his ancient Humber.
    Above him, the column bumped and struggled like a worn-out beam engine, to the accompaniment of another ear-splitting alarm.
    The Doctor crawled out from the console and re-entered the co-ordinates. But still the TARDIS refused to leave the ship.
    Unlike the Doctor and his companions, Turlough was delighted to be aboard the ghostly spacecraft. As he stepped from the transmat capsule, he surveyed the control centre as if it were the promised land.
    He ran to the operations panel. The controls were unfamiliar, but he would soon get the hang of them.
    He winced with sudden pain and his hand went to his side — there was something hard and burning in his pocket. The cube was glowing angrily as he took it out.
    ‘Turlough!’ came the voice of the dark stranger. ‘The controls of this vessel are of no interest to you?’
    ‘But it’s a ship! I can get home!’
    The crystal flared and the voice of the man in black grew more intransigent. ‘I did not bring you here so that you could return home. Your concern is with the Doctor.’
    But Turlough would not be held back now. In his impatience he felt strong enough to destroy the importunate old man. He raised his hand to dash the crystal against the hard floor.
    He screamed. A terrible force issued from the cube, which seered his arm and tormented every nerve in his body. He writhed and twisted but could not dislodge the cube from his grasp. From the now-blinding radiance, the stranger burst, like the genie from the lamp.
    ‘You will obey me in all things, Turlough!’
    ‘Let me go.’ Turlough cowered like an animal.
    ‘Remember the agreement between us.’
    The boy shivered miserably. ‘Yes,’ he stammered.
    ‘You will seek out the Doctor and destroy him.’
    In a tremulous whisper Turlough reaffirmed his allegiance. ‘I will seek out the Doctor and destroy him.’
     
    The light faded. The stranger was gone. And Turlough knew that the man who called himself his Guardian was evil.
    ‘Turlough again!’ muttered the Headmaster as he stood over the empty bed. It seemed that Lethbridge-Stewart had been right about the boy all along. ‘I’m sorry, Headmaster,’
    said Matron. ‘He was missing when I came in with Doctor Runciman. And there’s no sign of Ibbotson either.’
    ‘I must talk to the Brigadier.’
    ‘I’ve already sent a boy round to his quarters. But he’s disappeared too.’
    ‘Turlough!’ shouted the Brigadier. ‘Turlough!’ He stamped moodily round the obelisk. Confounded boys, dragging him up this wretched hill. He wouldn’t be surprised if it was all some practical joke.
    ‘But sir, there was this sphere...’
    ‘Ibbotson!’ the Brigadier roared. But he didn’t want to bring on one of his turns, so he breathed deeply, as Doctor Runciman had told him to, and marched silently off to search the woods.
    It was the sound of grinding machinery that led Turlough to the TARDIS.
    He stared at the police box as it struggled to dematerialise. It looked like an Earth object, but appeared to have dimensionally transcendental properties that no one from that planet could ever have designed.
    The noise stopped as the machine stabilised. Turlough backed quickly into a dark corner as the door opened.
    Could the young man who rushed out, followed by two girls, be the Doctor?
    ‘Might have known,’ muttered the Doctor to himself, as he rushed, like the White Rabbit, down one of the ship’s interminable corridors.
    ‘Where are we going?’ Tegan and Nyssa scurried after him, determined not to let