Doctor Who: The Trial of a Time Lord : The Ultimate Foe by Pip Baker, Jane Baker Page B

zigzagged along vacuum tubes and the countdown digital clock remorselessly registered each micro second.
    ‘If you could compile this monstrosity – it follows that I should be able to unravel it!’
    With the delicacy of a brain surgeon, he inserted a wafer-thin probe into the labyrinthine circuit...
    A splutter of static forced him to jerk away... but not before the tips of his fingers were singed.
    Mel’s guess was correct.
    The archway did provide access to the Seventh Door and the sealed corridor.
    Clattering up the steps, she barged into the Trial Room.
    ‘Disconnect the Matrix!’
    Already distracted by the Limbo Atrophied bodies on the screen, the Inquisitor took refuge in protocol. ‘Your lack of decorum, young woman, is really beyond–’
    ‘Forget the high-flown etiquette! Disconnect the Matrix and get out of this place!’
    ‘We cannot switch off without the Keeper. And he is not present.’
    True. She had despatched him to gather the latest reports from Gallifrey.
    ‘Then send for him! Quickly!’
     
    ‘Guard –’ The request was belated. Infected by the panic Mel was engendering, the guard had not waited to receive the order!
    Sucking his scorched fingers, the Doctor glared at the multivolt circuit. He had no technical knowledge of Particle Disseminators – and yet, as he had intimated, if the Valeyard had constructed it...
    Similar conclusions were badgering the Valeyard.
    Should the Doctor dig deep enough into his subconscious, he might excavate the formula..
    Regardless of a rawness caused by the chafing, he strained at the loosened bonds.
    ‘Stay calm... stay calm...’ The Doctor lectured himself.
    ‘Think... think...’ Easier said than done. The lives of all those in the Trial Room depended on him.
    Including Mel’s.
    For it was entirely at his instigation that she was there...
    The petrified images of Glitz and the Master began to decompose.
    ‘We’ll have to get out!’ Mel didn’t understand the degenerative collapse happening on the screen, but she knew that’s where the danger lay. ‘If it’s not already too late!’
    Neither guard nor Keeper had arrived. Presumably the bearer of the Key could not be found, Or the guard had panicked and fled!
    ‘Too late.. ?’
    ‘Get out.. ?’
    ‘Why is she shouting.. ?’
    ‘What shall we do.. ?’
    General indecision and confusion spread.
    ‘Unhand me, woman!’ This from an elderly sage whom Mel was attempting to usher along the narrow aisle.
    ‘Move! If you don’t want that to happen to you!’ She pointed at the disintegration underway on the screen.
     
    In confirmation of her dire prediction, flowing tentacles of ions swirled from the screen and advanced into the Courtroom...
    ‘The Ion Avalanche Diode! That’s the clue!’ The Doctor sounded far more confident than he felt. ‘If I increase the particle velocity by a factor of ten...’ he twirled a tiny ratchet –’... that should overload to destruction this obscenity you’ve devised.’
    Standing clear, he waited for the de-acceleratory whine...
    The Particle Disseminator did not even hiccup.. !
    Multi-layered ghosting caused the factorising images on the screen ominously to lose definition as the build-up of ions invading the Court broadcast the malaise.
    Already several Time Lords were slumped over and inert, their aged physiques unable to resist the corrosive onslaught.
    Fit and young as Mel was, her legs lacked co-ordination too. In a despairing bid for safety, she attempted to reach the exit.
    But every step was like walking in an ocean of treacle...
    she wasn’t going to make it...
    – then the screen imploded..
    ‘Eureka!’
    The Doctor pranced out of the alcove.
    ‘So it couldn’t be immobilised!’
    The triumphant declaration spurred the Valeyard into straining harder at the bonds. He, above all people, recognised the Doctor’s questing intelligence: had he mustered that intellectual prowess sufficiently to abort the debacle? ‘What’ve you