'Really! Do I look like a man who would wreck machines?'

Wincing, Peri offered up a silent prayer at this hostage to fortune!

Sourly, Ravensworth eyed the Doctor's flamboyant attire. Abruptly, he took the Doctor's hands and inspected the palms. 'Certainly you've never done a day's labour in your life!' Disregarding the Doctor's affronted look, he continued. 'It's possible you may even be a gentleman.'

Although sharing his employer's doubts about the interloper's status, the guard had other worries. 'Shall us get searching for them two who attacked this er gentleman, m'lord?'

'Leave them. They'll have gone to ground.'

'Leave them!' Peri was indignant. 'They wanted to kill the Doctor!'

'I'm not disputing that, young woman. A brutal attack...

Over thirty years Jack Ward's worked for me. In all that while I've never seen him raise his fist to another man.'

'Well, he's undergone a change now!'

The brittle exchange had been used by the Doctor to a.s.sess the mine owner. Could the tall, elegant aristocrat be a party to whatever was affecting this area? Were the paramilitary security arrangements there as a deterrent? Or were they protecting a secret?

'The disruptions only started recently?'

The fine-boned features framed in grey whiskers, puckered with concern. 'Disruption's a tardy description.'

He lifted the tail of his brown frock-coat as he sat on the Windsor chair. 'There've been Luddite riots all over the country. But here...' He shrugged.

'It's been more extreme?' The Doctor finished the sentence.

'The violence has been atrocious!'

'Murderous would be more apt!'

'Peri!' The Doctor's reproval was sharp.

'No, the young lady's right. I don't understand what's going on. I've always had an excellent relationship with the men. Flattered myself I enjoyed their trust and respect.

Now this nightmare...'

'It's just the men who are affected?'

Lord Ravensworth nodded. 'Yes. Just the men. They become savage. Go berserk. Seem to suffer an utter change of personality.'

Even as he spoke, in the bath house, happy-go-lucky Tim Ba.s.s was undergoing the sinister process which would change him too...

5.

Enter the Rani A cleaved skull was ill.u.s.trated on a computer screen.

Encased in the skeleton's ivory sh.e.l.l, the bisected brain was depicted in sickly shades of saffron. Like a pulsating caterpillar, a catheter tube snaked from the computer to Tim Ba.s.s.

Comatose, he was lying full stretch on a trolley. The tube was clamped to the left side of his neck. A separate link led to a crystal flagon into which dripped miniscule globules of fluid. On an identical trolley, his brain already plundered, lay another miner.

The muscular humans in their serpentine masks, had carried the victims through from the bath chamber after the crimson steam had rendered them unconscious. This sophisticated laboratory was the secret cavity beyond the mysterious wall.

A note of incongruity in the clinical setting was the room divider-c.u.m-mural. The volcanic picture, painted in fiery-oranges and scarlets, formed a paradoxical backing to the two muscular humans positioned before it. The masks now fastened at their waists, they stared unseeingly into s.p.a.ce; mortal robots, programmed and waiting.

'Take him through. Bring the other one!'

Activated, moving in unison, they lifted the miner from the trolley.

But who had spoken?

Surely not the rheumaticky old crone. The voice was vigorous and firm. Yet it was she hunched over the keyboard. The cursor began a steady decline. An irascible huff as she realigned Tim's extractor clamp.

The huff would have expressed more than irascibility had the old crone known who was spying on the activity of her human slaves in the chamber.

With the Doctor temporarily out of his malignant reach, the Master was exploring fresh avenues of mischief. Using his electronic magnet, he had slid the door bolt from its socket and stolen into the bath house. Intrigued, he watched as the muscular humans humped the next donor through the parted wall.

Unaware of the intruder, the old crone was meticulously pouring a meagre amount of fluid into a phial. Sealing the phial, she glanced at the now empty flagon... reflected in the crystal surface was the Master's mocking smile.

'No welcome?'

'You're not!' Her hostility was unequivocal.

'Fascinating!' The Master surveyed the laboratory and all its intricate apparatus. 'But then, anything connected with you would undoubtedly be fascinating, my dear Rani.'

Rani? He knew her? This withered old crone?

Old crone? The shoulders were no longer hunched. The infirm spine was erect. And as the shawl slipped from her head, she ripped off the latex facial disguise to reveal the unblemished skin and sculptured beauty of a woman in her prime. Her most striking feature was her eyes; two glittering sapphires, they projected an icy calculation unflawed by compa.s.sion.

'I thought that last mad scheme of yours had finished you for good!'

'You jest, of course.' Conceit reverberated from every syllable. 'I am indestructible! The whole Universe knows that!'

'What happened?' Detached scientific curiosity.

'The extreme heat generated sufficient numismaton gas for me to return to my usual healthy size and self.'

'Pity.' The Rani meant it.

'Really, my dear Rani, you and I should be friends. I am one of your greatest admirers.'

'Don't bother with flattery.' She was too shrewd to be taken in by such an obvious ploy. 'I know why you're here.

I saw the Doctor.' She had. When he pa.s.sed on the dray and his tracer had let out its erratic bleeps.

'Then you know why I need your co-operation.'

'Co-operation! I want nothing to do with you!' She was adamant.

'You may change your mind when you hear my proposition.'

'I'm not concerned with your pathetic vendetta, one way or the other.' She checked the seal on the phial. 'Now clear off and let me get on with my work.'

Her obduracy was not unexpected, but coercion came easily to the Master. 'Either you collaborate or I bring this little venture to an extremely untimely end!' Deliberately, he jiggled Tim Ba.s.s's catheter tube, causing the skull image on the monitor screen to flutter.

'Josh! Tom! Kill!'

Her two muscular a.s.sistants reacted immediately.

But so did the Master.

A rapid blast from the TCE and Tom disintegrated in the enveloping red haze.

Unerringly, the TCE set Josh in its sights.

'No, Josh! Stand still!'

With life-saving subservience, Josh obeyed the Rani's imperative command.

Another woman, someone quite unlike the Rani, was also interested in Josh's welfare. Cradling their baby son in her arms, Josh's wife had sought an appointment with Lord Ravensworth.

'My Josh, your lordship. He's been missing for days.'

'It's not just her Josh that's missing. Our Tom's gone too.' This was from an older woman. Both had come to the office in the forlorn hope that the mine owner could offer an explanation.

Before he had a chance to answer, the Doctor b.u.t.ted in.

'When?'

Neither woman replied; his lordship's frown indicated his annoyance at the Doctor's interjection.

'Forgive me, Ravensworth. It is important.' He elaborated his question. 'When did they go missing?'

The older woman replied. 'Nowt's been seen of them since they come off shift together.'

'Perhaps they've joined those Luddites?' Peri's contribution distressed the women.

'Joined that mob of lunatics,' the older woman retorted.

'Smashing and rampaging day and night! Frightening folks out of us beds!'

The younger woman was equally vehement. 'My Josh wouldn't join them. My Josh wouldn't harm anyone. He's gentle as a lamb is my Josh.'

If she could have seen her Josh at that moment, she would not have spoken with such certainty.

Acting on the Rani's instructions, he was in the bath chamber where, unceremoniously, he rolled the still unconscious miner onto his back.

'You and the Doctor are a well matched pair of pests!

Now I need a new a.s.sistant!' Directed at the Master, the Rani's ill-tempered remark confirmed that saving Josh's life had nothing to do with kindness; she simply did not want to be inconvenienced. She unscrewed the ventilated lid of a small oval container. Inside, wriggling and glowing fluorescently, was a colony of sickly-green maggots.

Selecting a plump specimen, she held it to the miner's lips and forced his mouth open. The maggot, squirming, was popped onto his tongue.

Even the Master shuddered as the miner, his Adam's Apple bobbing, chewed, then swallowed the revolting morsel.

His eyelids blinked wide.

The pupils became suffused with a blue glow. Gradually the blue faded and the eyes stared fixedly into s.p.a.ce. Just like Josh's eyes.

The Master's admiration for the Rani soared. 'I wasn't wrong. I knew with you as controller it wouldn't be hypnotism. Not from a chemist of your calibre! What are they? Parasites you've specially impregnated?'

'There's an easy way to find out. Try some.' She offered the container with its slimy, squiggling grubs, not expecting him to accept.

He didn't. Make a selection, that is. He grabbed the lot!

Furious, she tried to retrieve them. No chance. The Master was never going to surrender such a valuable acquisition.

'Brilliant! Quite brilliant!' The tribute was sincere.

'When the Time Lords exiled you they made a cardinal error.'

'Yes. They did. And they'll learn to regret it!' There was no doubting the Rani's threat. 'So will anyone else who interferes!'

6.