Doctor Who: The Leisure Hive by David Fisher Read Free Book Online Page B

flickering light.
    'I can't see anything happening,' grumbled Brock, 'If you ask me, the whole thing's a waste of time. When's it supposed to start?'
    'Watch,' said Mena.
    Unimpressed, Brock watched. Then suddenly he leaned forward unable to believe his eyes.
    The old lady was changing. Her face began to fill out; her white hair gradually darkened; wrinkles vanished; the colour of youth returned to her skin. The woman was growing younger before their eyes. In a matter of minutes she had shed twenty years.
    After a while they saw that an attractive young Terran woman now sat where once the old lady had been. They wore the same clothes. They were unmistakably the same person. Yet one was fifty years younger than the other.
    'Rejuvenation,' said Mena. 'Complete cellular rejuvenation. That's what Hardin has achieved. He's perfected a technique capable of reversing the flow of Time within a relatively small space-a space large enough to encompass one human being. The result is that person grows younger. Put it another way-Hardin seems to have discovered the Fountain of Youth.'
    'I don't believe it,' declared Brock.
    'You saw.'
    'I don't believe what I saw.' Brock was obviously shaken by what he had just witnessed. 'I mean, if it's true—'
    'Can you doubt it?'
    â€”then it's incredible,' he added weakly.
    Mena smiled. 'Think of it,' she said. 'It could revolutionize the future of Argolis. Can't you see the publicity? -come to Argolis-and regain your lost youth. Grow young again on Argolts/'
    'There has to be a snag,' objected Brock.
    'Why?'
    'Because there always is.'
    As if to make a liar out of him, the holography recording kept repeating the two images-the old woman and the young one: before and after. Those in the boardroom watched again and again as fifty years fell from her shoulders.
    It was just at that moment that the three Argolin Security guides ushered the Doctor and Romana into the boardroom.
    'Who are they?' asked Mena. I
    'The scientist Hardin and his assistant, Madam Chairman,' said the senior guide. 'You told us to look out for them, and Pangol was sure—'
    'That isn't Hardin,' cried Mena. 'That man's an impostor!'
    'Not exactly,' objected the Doctor, anxious to keep the record straight. 'That is to say, it is true that I am not this Hardin chap. Whoever he may be. On the other hand, I never claimed to be him. Did I?'
    The Argolin regarded him stonily. They did not reply.
    'No,' said the Doctor. 'I didn't.'
    'We can conclude therefore that a very natural mistake has been made which,' he added genially, I am prepared to overlook.'
    'He was taking notes at Pangol's lecture on the generator,' insisted the senior Argolin Security guide. 'Everyone was sure he was Mr Hardin.'
    'And now he's seen these experiments,' said Brock.
    'Experiments?' queried Romana, trying to brazen it out. 'What experiments? We haven't seen any experiments. Have we, Doctor?'
    But the hologram continued to cut from the old lady to the young one, from before to after. '
    No one spoke.
    One of the video screens on the wall of the boardroom flashed into life. Pangol could be seen in the mortuary. Behind him was an Argolin pathologist who was inspecting the mortal remains of Mr Loman.
    'There's been sabotage at the generator,' announced Pangol. 'One of the visitors has been killed. Murdered. Someone reversed the image function in the generator.'
    'That's all we need,' groaned Brock. 'A murder in the Leisure Hive. You just wait and see the effect it has on the bookings.'
    Mena took charge. She ordered Pangol to have the body prepared for immediate repatriation to Mr Loman's home planet. Which in this case was Earth.
    'And tell our mortician,' she went on, 'that I want his best cosmetic job. The dead visitor must return looking as if he died peacefully in his sleep.'
    While Mena was thus engaged, the Doctor and Romana began to edge towards the door. By the time she was ready to continue her questioning of them, they had slipped away.