Doctor Who: The Mark of the Rani Read Online Free PDF

volcanic picture, painted in fiery-oranges and scarlets, formed a paradoxical backing to the two muscular humans positioned before it. The masks now fastened at their waists, they stared unseeingly into space; mortal robots, programmed and waiting.
    ‘Take him through. Bring the other one!’
    Activated, moving in unison, they lifted the miner from the trolley.
    But who had spoken?
    Surely not the rheumaticky old crone. The voice was vigorous and firm. Yet it was she hunched over the keyboard. The cursor began a steady decline. An irascible huff as she realigned Tim’s extractor clamp.
    The huff would have expressed more than irascibility had the old crone known who was spying on the activity of her human slaves in the chamber.
     
    With the Doctor temporarily out of his malignant reach, the Master was exploring fresh avenues of mischief. Using his electronic magnet, he had slid the door bolt from its socket and stolen into the bath house. Intrigued, he watched as the muscular humans humped the next donor through the parted wall.
    Unaware of the intruder, the old crone was meticulously pouring a meagre amount of fluid into a phial. Sealing the phial, she glanced at the now empty flagon... reflected in the crystal surface was the Master’s mocking smile.
    ‘No welcome?’
    ‘You’re not!’ Her hostility was unequivocal.
    ‘Fascinating!’ The Master surveyed the laboratory and all its intricate apparatus. ‘But then, anything connected with you would undoubtedly be fascinating, my dear Rani.’
    Rani? He knew her? This withered old crone?
    Old crone? The shoulders were no longer hunched. The infirm spine was erect. And as the shawl slipped from her head, she ripped off the latex facial disguise to reveal the unblemished skin and sculptured beauty of a woman in her prime. Her most striking feature was her eyes; two glittering sapphires, they projected an icy calculation unflawed by compassion.
    ‘I thought that last mad scheme of yours had finished you for good!’
    ‘You jest, of course.’ Conceit reverberated from every syllable. ‘I am indestructible! The whole Universe knows that!’
    ‘What happened?’ Detached scientific curiosity.
    ‘The extreme heat generated sufficient numismaton gas for me to return to my usual healthy size and self.’
    ‘Pity.’ The Rani meant it.
    ‘Really, my dear Rani, you and I should be friends. I am one of your greatest admirers.’
    ‘Don’t bother with flattery.’ She was too shrewd to be taken in by such an obvious ploy. ‘I know why you’re here.
     
    I saw the Doctor.’ She had. When he passed on the dray and his tracer had let out its erratic bleeps.
    ‘Then you know why I need your co-operation.’
    ‘Co-operation! I want nothing to do with you!’ She was adamant.
    ‘You may change your mind when you hear my proposition.’
    ‘I’m not concerned with your pathetic vendetta, one way or the other.’ She checked the seal on the phial. ‘Now clear off and let me get on with my work.’
    Her obduracy was not unexpected, but coercion came easily to the Master. ‘Either you collaborate or I bring this little venture to an extremely untimely end!’ Deliberately, he jiggled Tim Bass’s catheter tube, causing the skull image on the monitor screen to flutter.
    ‘Josh! Tom! Kill!’
    Her two muscular assistants reacted immediately.
    But so did the Master.
    A rapid blast from the TCE – and Tom disintegrated in the enveloping red haze.
    Unerringly, the TCE set Josh in its sights.
    ‘No, Josh! Stand still!’
    With life-saving subservience, Josh obeyed the Rani’s imperative command.
    Another woman, someone quite unlike the Rani, was also interested in Josh’s welfare. Cradling their baby son in her arms, Josh’s wife had sought an appointment with Lord Ravensworth.
    ‘My Josh, your lordship. He’s been missing for days.’
    ‘It’s not just her Josh that’s missing. Our Tom’s gone too.’ This was from an older woman. Both had come to the office in the