Doctor Who: The Mark of the Rani by Pip Baker, Jane Baker Read Free Book Online Page A

he’d have eliminated this crew there and then! However, not quite yet...
    ‘Trust me.’ The voice was ingratiating. ‘I give you my word. Destroying that box will divest him of all his power.’
    ‘Where is machine? Dost know?’
    ‘At the slag heap. Off you go. Fetch it to the pit.’
    ‘Fetch it?’ Jack wasn’t having that. He was no dim-wit.
    ‘Fetch it? Nay, tha’s coming with us.’ He wasn’t altogether sure he trusted this glib stranger. Anyway, the left side of his neck was irritating him, making him feel tetchy.
    The Master, though, had his excuse ready. ‘That box is only the bait. I have to return to the village to set the trap.’
    The irony was, that while he had been contriving his elaborate plot, the Doctor was straying into a trap of his own making.
    Shawl draped over her head, shoulders hunched, spine bent almost double, impersonating the old crone, the Rani opened the bath house door.
    ‘Get on in. Get on in,’ she cackled. ‘Towels are already there.’ Four miners trooped in and slouched into the bath chamber. Three of them began to undress. The fourth commenced a tour of inspection. Unfortunately, by the time he discovered the pipe, crimson steam was already billowing into the room. As his comrades collapsed, he tried to fan away the fumes, but the anaesthetic was too potent. Resistance grew feeble... and the Doctor sunk protestingly into oblivion...
     
    8

Face to Face
    Titanium hoops shackled the Doctor’s wrists. A blanket covered his torso. Only his head was exposed as he lay on the trolley. Unconscious. Vulnerable.
    Having connected the miner on the other trolley to the computer and the extractor so that the fluid from his brain would drip into the crystal flagon, the Rani crossed to the Doctor.
    Thinking he was just another human, she brushed the tendrils of fair curly hair from behind his left ear, ready to attach the nozzle of the extracting tube.
    Stopped.
    Touched his skin. It felt too cool.
    Perplexed, she picked up a spontaneous thermometer bracelet: a sensor of her own design. She placed it on the Doctor’s forehead. Sixty, flashed on its read-out. She shook it, tested again. Sixty degrees, the temperature of a Time Lord, not that of a human.
    Still not wholly convinced, she bent to listen on the left side of his chest where the human heart is found. Then she listened on the right side. There, too, was the steady beat of a heart. Two hearts! This had to be a Time Lord. And she knew who!
    Brusquely she swabbed the coal dust from his face with a wet sponge. The icy dowsing brought the Doctor round.
    The blue eyes widened with dawning recognition as he saw the figure crouching over him.
    ‘Well, well, well. The Rani.’
    ‘You were expecting to see the Master?’ Annoyed though she was with the Doctor’s encroachment, she could not suppress a glacial glint of satisfaction at his futile attempts to release the clamped wrists.
    ‘See? Not exactly. Not unless he’s grown a little larger since I last saw him!’ On that last encounter, the Master, hoist by his own petard, was being reduced to the size of a microbe!
    ‘Your smugness is misplaced. He’s here. He’s normal size. And he wants you dead – curse the pair of you!’
    Despite his struggles, the Doctor failed to loosen the straps. A change of tack. A critical appraisal of the Rani’s costume.
    ‘Can’t say I approve of your taste in clothes. Doesn’t do a thing for you, that outfit.’
    ‘Your regeneration’s not too attractive either!’
    ‘Brain regeneration’s what I need!’ The Doctor meant what he said. He should have been able to pin this down to the Rani. Personality changes probably due to the imbalance of body chemicals ought to have led him to suspect the Rani. Her knowledge of chemistry was second to none. What’s more, he knew she’d been banished from Gallifrey and was roaming the Universe. But what was she doing here? Pointless to ask. She’d never tell him. He was going to have to elicit