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like. When they read Dante with Mr Sellick he had thought only of this planet of fire. Abandon hope all ye that enter here . The poet might well have been describing this grim prison. ‘There are people from Trion here,’ he said quietly.
    ‘Trion?’
    ‘My home planet.’
    ‘Why didn’t you say so before?’ said the Doctor, wondering why Turlough hadn’t identified the double triangle when he first saw it on the beacon.
    Turlough didn’t answer. He was curious why the beacon had led them to Sarn, and what Kamelion’s part was in it.
    At least there was no sign of the Custodians’ ship. ‘This is an old Trion colony,’ he volunteered blandly.
    ‘Very old and very deserted,’ observed the Doctor, looking out at the empty horizon.
    ‘Someone must still be here.’
    The Doctor shook his head. ‘That distress beacon could have been launched years ago.’
    But Turlough was already running along the path that led from the ruin and out across the desert of ash and solidified lava.
    Peri was trying to make her stepfather explain what had happened while she was asleep. She could see that her rescuer had taken her aboard a very remarkable ship. They had obviously been travelling. But away from the Earth?
    Howard wasn’t the least bit interested in Peri’s questions as he perused the instruments on the control panel. ‘The TARDIS is mine,’ he muttered excitedly.
    ‘Pardon?’ said Peri.
    ‘The TARDIS is mine,’ said Howard more loudly. He operated a switch and the doors closed.
     
    ‘Howard! What are you doing?’ shouted Peri who knew quite well that her stepfather couldn’t work a can-opener, let alone be trusted with machinery like this... ‘Howard!’
    But the man pressing buttons on the control console chose to ignore her protests. Lights flashed and alarms sounded.
    ‘Don’t touch that!’ yelled Peri.
    She screamed. Howard’s face was slowly dissolving. The features of another man began to form in the halo over what had been the professor’s body. The new face was dark, unsmiling, saturnine. It spoke in a new voice. ‘I have succeeded. Contact has been made.’
    ‘Who are you?’ said Peri, frightened out of her wits.
    The man who had materialised in the place of her stepfather chuckled evilly. ‘I am the Master. You will obey me.’
     
    5

A Very Uncivil Servant
    Kamelion had enjoyed being Professor Foster. There was order, logic and (as one would expect from the survivor of so many Faculty purges) a vein of pure ruthlessness in the persona extracted from Peri’s aura, that suited his purposes admirably. With all loyalty to the Doctor suppressed, he had begun to understand the nature of the emergency. As soon as he gained control of the Doctor’s TARDIS he had paralleled the navigation unit with that of the other TARDIS. He could soon feel the now boosted metamorphic projection, and knew that he obeyed the supreme control. He began to think and see, move and feel, plot and plan like the distant Time Lord until the morphic plasma reformed and Kamelion was the Master.
    ‘Is this some kind of trick?’ Peri was stunned.
    ‘Explanations are not necessary for you to help me with my work,’ said the Master’s metal familiar.
    ‘Help you?’ Peri began to feel angry. Like Alice at the bottom of the rabbit hole, she was about to pick herself up, dust herself down, and deal with life in the mad world on its own terms. ‘I never asked to join this crazy outfit in the first place,’ she protested.
    The robotic Master continued to work at the console.
    Peri looked up at the screen and, to her dismay, saw Turlough and the Doctor–her only link with reality–
    disappearing into some desert. She tried to remember the lever Howard had used to work the doors. She edged forward...
    But the Master had eyes in the back of Kamelion’s head.
    Peri winced with pain as the black suited figure snatched her arm in his own steely hand. ‘No, young lady, the doors will remain closed.’
    ‘Don’t touch