DOCTOR WHO.

THE MARK OF THE RANI.

by Pip and Jane Baker.

Prologue.

Evil cannot be tasted, seen, or touched. Yet in Killingworth, a mining community in the north east of the British Isles, the perception of evil was so overwhelming that even the fabric of the modest terraced dwellings seemed saturated with it.

Famine, earthquake and plague would all sink into insignificance if the contamination afflicting the area were not contained. Like a virus, evil would spread; national barriers, mountain ranges and oceans would be unable to offer protection. If allowed to flourish, the poisonous epidemic could reduce humankind to a harrowing role that would give a dung beetle superior status...

1.

House of Evil.

In a swirl of dust, a small avalanche of coal was being tipped from a truck on an overhead track. Simultaneously a bell pealed, clangorously signalling the end of a shift.

Flexing his shoulders, the begrimed miner manning the tipping operation, straightened, easing his aching spine.

No sophisticated machinery existed to lighten his burden.

No lifts or mechanical loaders. No pithead showers or automated equipment. For this was England at the beginning of the nineteenth century, prior to the age of the machine.

As the miner, Jack Ward, descended from the track, he was joined by others coming off shift. Dirty, dragging weary feet, they made for the tavern to wash the coal dust from their throats before trudging the muddy roads to the tiny, stone-built cottages that were their homes.

But Jack Ward did not enter the tavern.

'Not coming in, Jack?' Tim Ba.s.s, the creases in his jovial features lined black, blinked with astonishment.

'Nay, lad, don't think I've strength to lift a Toby.'

Jack's two mates, Edwin Green and Sam Rudge, fell into step beside him. He gave them a tired grin of greeting.

'I were thinking of trying bath house!'

Rudge and Green exchanged quizzical looks. They had never been to the bath house. It was an innovation; an idea an old woman started in a derelict building not far from the pit.

'Costs though.' Sam Rudge was always money conscious.

They all were, come to that; had to be.

'Aye. T'will. Even so. Just this once.' Fatal words. For as the brawny, round-faced Jack led his two friends up the hill towards the bath house, he little knew that he was leading them into a macabre and horrendous trap that would completely change their lives...

Little did the Doctor know of the trap he was heading for either.

The TARDIS was performing impeccably. Not an unknown phenomenon. In fact, just what was expected from a time-machine by the Doctor anyway. So far, no aberrations. He didn't want there to be. His young companion was excited about this trip.

Peri had expressed a wish to see Kew Gardens at the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the horticultural extravaganza was in its infancy. The Doctor, never loath to visit his favourite planet and curious to see the reactions of this twentieth-century botanist to the endeavours of her British forebears, was checking the console. He had set the time and s.p.a.ce co-ordinates so that they would arrive beneath the famous lilac trees on a Royal Open Day.

'Must get the co-ordinates spot on,' he mused. 'Don't want to land the wrong side of the English Channel. Smack in Napoleon's lap!' A pause for thought. The prospect had some appeal. The Doctor placed an arm across his chest, tucking the hand under his lapel a typical Napoleonic stance.

'Wonder why he always posed like this? Could ask him.'

He rumpled his unruly mop of fair curls. Be infinitely more interesting than traipsing round a lot of greenhouses!'

Before he could yield to temptation, Peri came sashaying into the control room, her trim young figure decked in a becoming ankle-length gown. Yellow with red tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, it had shoes and parasol to match. Her dark, shiny hair, usually worn short and straight, was fashioned into a bun with bobbing ringlets. She looked good and felt good.

'Hey, Doctor, this is great.'

'The costume is too large?' His mind was still with Napoleon.

'Large?' She was puzzled. The fit was perfect.

'Isn't that a synonym for "great"?'

Antic.i.p.ating an inevitable lecture on the purity of the language, Peri pirouetted towards him. She wasn't about to get into an argument. Any minute now given nothing went wrong with the temperamental TARDIS she'd be in Kew Gardens. Mixing with royalty! The Doctor seemed a big hit wherever he appeared, so maybe she'd get an audience with King George the Third and his Queen!

Great! Reflected glory, sure, but some honour for her, just plain Perpugilliam Brown of New England, USA.

The Doctor was still artlessly absorbed in his theme. 'Of course, "great" can also be used for high degree of magnitude. Someone elevated to supremacy. Like Napoleon !'

A judder!

A tremendous lurch!

Taken by surprise, the Doctor and Peri were thrown off balance. He clung to the console, but she, in the midst of a graceful pirouette, was sent reeling...

The old crone running the bath house squinted myopically at the approaching miners. She was swathed in a voluminous, coa.r.s.e, grey dress that brushed the cobble-stones. A shawl, draped over her straggly tresses, practically concealed her gnarled and wizened features.

'Tha's the wise ones. First here, when water's hot and clean.' She extended a mittened hand for payment.

'Nay, not wise, Granma. Just fair wore out.' Jack gave her a coin, little dreaming that his hard-earned cash was about to buy him the worst experience of his life...

A final tremendous shudder then the TARDIS settled onto an even keel.

'What is it? What's happening?' Despite her frequent exposure to the machine's eccentricities, Peri was scared.

Already at battle-stations, the Doctor scrutinised the stabilising unit.

'Well?' Peri's anxiety made her sound aggressive.

'I've never felt better.' The Doctor's quip was not what she wanted to hear, right now.

'Mm. Cracks like that tell me just one thing!'

'What?' Concentrating on the display, the Doctor was patently equivocating.

'Frankly, that you haven't a clue what's going on!'

She was wrong. The Doctor did know what was going on. The TARDIS was being manoeuvred off course. At least, not entirely off course. Closer study of the panel showed that the date co-ordinates remained the same. It was the location that had been changed.

'Been changed?' responded Peri when he explained.

'Who by?'

'Whom!' The Doctor jabbed at the controls, trying to persuade the locator back to the setting for Kew. 'To use your vernacular, Peri, I haven't a clue!'

Not absolutely true. He had. They were suffering a navigational distortion; from a source situated on Earth.

'Well well, er what could cause a navigational distortion? Don't you know?'

'A very potent force. Equal to that of the TARDIS.

Another time-machine, maybe.'

A time-machine? Overriding their controls? Pulling them off course? Why? Questions tumbled over each other in Peri's mind. Her response though, when it came, had some merit.

'I don't quite get it, Doctor. I mean if this is caused by a time-machine, then someone has to be operating it.'

'Logical.'

'Then who? Not the Daleks! Surely not them!'

'Possible, but reason tells me not probable.'

'A distress call?'

'Could be.' He promptly torpedoed her relief. 'If so, why not communicate with us?'

'Insufficient power?'

'There was enough to neutralise our time and s.p.a.ce continuum.'

Which, for Peri, meant the abduction was not benign.

This was no congenial invitation. They were being shanghaied.

Exactly what the Doctor was thinking.

The old crone ushered the fatigued miners into the bath chamber. Formerly two rooms of a village house, the makeshift chamber's only furniture consisted of four wooden hip baths.

As Jack Wood tested the inviting warm water, he pulled off his neckerchief and tossed it towards a hook. It missed and fell.

'Oh, stay there. I've hardly energy to wash, let alone bend to pick thee up!'

The slim-built Edwin Green, although just as weary, reclaimed the sweat-soiled neckerchief and hung it on the hook. Jack mustered a smile of thanks for his friend.

Discarding his frayed, hopsack jacket, the brawny Sam Rudge worried about the money he had wasted. 'Wasted?

It would save missus hauling tin bath into kitchen. Save stoking t'fire to heat water.' In summer he could dowse himself under the pump in the yard. But this was not summer and the only warmth in Sam's scanty cottage was from an all-purpose grate where his wife baked the bread and cooked the stews that formed the mainstay of their diet. 'Wasted? Nay, t'were money well spent.'

Was it?

None of them noticed a small pipe in the corner... or the jet of crimson steam infiltrating the atmosphere ...

'Eh, this feels grand!' Green, clothes dumped in a jumble on a reed mat, was immersing himself in the soothing water.

The jet puffed into a fluffy cloud.

'Hey up! What's this? Fireworks?' said Rudge, stifling a yawn.

'Well, 'tis not smoke from fire, I'll tell thee that.'

'Dost know where's coming from, Jack?' Green, dripping suds, clambered out of the bath.

'Pipe in't corner, looks like.'

''appen us could stuff it up.'

'Aye.' Rolling a sock into a ball, Rudge plunged into a crimson mist. 'Best call old woman. 'Tis her '

A strangled sigh.

'Can't breathe ' He slumped to the floor.

'Sam!'

Before the dumbfounded Ward and Green could render a.s.sistance to their friend, the spreading cloud enveloped them. Lungs polluted, they succ.u.mbed to the contaminating steam.