Doctor Who: Festival of Death: 50th Anniversary Edition by Jonathan Morris Page A

passages. Distant explosions rumbled like an approaching storm.
    The Doctor halted and checked the life-detector. ‘We’re the only living souls aboard,’ he announced. ‘Good. How long, K-9?’
    ‘Approximately five minutes twenty-four seconds. Advise immediate relocation to TARDIS. Urgently.’
    ‘All right, all right.’ The Doctor hauled the airlock door open and carried K-9 into the access tube. ‘Romana?’
    Romana glanced down the corridor. In the darkness there was the figure of a child, a girl, smiling in farewell. Romana blinked, and looked again. There was nothing there, just a shape in the blackness.
    She collected her thoughts, and stepped through the airlock.
    The engines of the
Indigo Glow
flared into life. It cycled on its retro boosters and emerged from the mesh of struts and access tubes. The main thrusters fired and the supernova convertible glided into the tranquillity of space.
    The remaining ships launched themselves, taxied into a queue and then, one by one, abandoned the tunnel for ever. With each spacecraft that separated, the G-Lock was diminished, leaving only the
Cerberus
and the other barren wrecks.
    In the hold of the
Montressor
, the TARDIS faded to nothingness. The cobwebbed hooks and piles of junk remained in a withered silence.
    Romana flicked the appropriate switches and the scanner droned open to reveal the G-Lock, wedged at one end of the hyperspace tunnel.
    ‘Ah.’ The Doctor picked through his jelly-baby bag, but it was exhausted. He crumpled it away. ‘Time, K-9?’
    ‘Four seconds, master, and counting. Two seconds. One.’
    Within an instant the entire structure was crushed into a white-hot speck as the tunnel first compacted and then disappeared completely. As the hyperspace conduit reduced to a singularity, an explosion erupted from the breach, hurling a million blazing fragments into real space.
    Romana closed the scanner shutters. She faced the Doctor. He was poised over the controls, staring gloomily at the rising and dipping central column. He looked haunted, stooping under the weight of his troubles.
    For several minutes, no one spoke. Romana edged towards the Doctor. ‘Doctor?’
    ‘Mmm?’ He aimed his bulging eyes at Romana.
    ‘We are going back, aren’t we?’
    The Doctor frowned. ‘Romana, we could go anywhere. Anywhere in space and time. We have the entire universe at our fingertips. But…’
    ‘But?’
    ‘But we have to go back. Because we know that’s what we will do. And we can’t break the second law of time travel, can we?’ said the Doctor bitterly.
    ‘First law.’
    ‘Because it’s in our past now. Our future is in our past, and our past… well, it’s in our future.’ The Doctor drew an angry breath. ‘We have no choice.’
    ‘We don’t have to return immediately. We could travel elsewhere for months. Years, even.’
    ‘Oh, but we can’t, can we?’ said the Doctor. ‘What if I died somewhere else? Where would your precious web of time be then, hmm? And besides, I made a promise to Gallura.’
    ‘To avenge the extinction of the Arboretans?’
    ‘Exactly. Whatever that means. So we might as well get it over with. “If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly.”’
    Romana approached the Doctor hesitantly. ‘How far back are we going to go?’
    ‘One day should do it, I think. I have a rendezvous with death. An appointment with destiny,’ said the Doctor bleakly. ‘“Though I walk through the valley of…”’
    ‘You don’t know that for sure. Evadne could be mistaken, or lying, or…’
    The Doctor would not be lifted from his dark mood. ‘I’d prefer it if you didn’t clutch at straws. Particularly as I’ve already drawn a short one.’ He set the coordinates, and lowered the materialisation lever.
    ‘Doctor, you haven’t activated the analogue osmosis dampener –’
    ‘Never mind the analogue osmosis dampener!’ snapped the Doctor, jutting out his lower teeth.
    ‘Master, advise