Doctor.
Professor Hayter wondered why the Captain took such egregious nonsense seriously. The Doctor was a crank.
'I've never heard such an extravagant explanation,' he snorted derisively.
Captain Stapley was irritated by the Professor's reflex scepticism.
Granted the strange forces at work in the place, what the Doctor said made good sense. 'Then how do you explain what happened to Nyssa?'
he challenged the old man.
It was really beneath Professor Hayter's dignity to contribute to such an unscientific debate, but that ridiculous young man needed putting in his place.
'Some form of projection. Maybe part hallucination,' he suggested airily. 'Scientifically speaking ...'
But the Doctor cut him short. 'Scientifically speaking, I'd like you to show me where we can find the others.'
Nyssa felt no fear. There was a womb-like peace within the shield. She could dimly see the face of Tegan, peering forward like an eager child -
nose against the glass of a toyshop window.
'Can you hear me?' Tegan mouthed. 'Are you all right?' '
But Nyssa was a world apart.
'Nyssa ... Nyssa ...' The voice that came to her was inside the shield itself. 'Resistance ... resistance,' it pleaded. 'Kalid shall be resisted!'
'Who are you?' asked Nyssa.
It grew brighter as they turned the corner and saw the end of the tunnel. Captain Stapley led the way forward. Hugging the walls, they tiptoed towards the source of the light.
The corridor ended in a great hall from which radiated several other passages. In the centre of the hall was a large rotunda, forming a room within a room, constructed with much greater precision and of smoother blocks than the surrounding walls.
A large group of men and women were chiselling with crude implements at the tight mesh of stones which concealed the inner room.
'There's Bilton and Scobie!' The Captain had spotted his crew members, mindlessly labouring with the crew and passengers from the 192.
The Doctor's first thought was that Andrew and Roger could lead them to the hiding place of the TARDIS. But he didn't need Professor Hayter to tell him that they had lapsed into a deep, though active, state of trance. It would be quicker to look for it himself. He started to walk round the circular hall.
'If we could separate Bilton and Scobie ...' began Stapley, thinking aloud that it would be relatively easy to bring his copilot and engineer to their senses and, with their help, work on the others.
'Look out for the guards,' cautioned the Professor, who was not a man for heroic gestures.
The Captain tried to reassure him. 'If the Doctor's theory is right ...' He looked round. 'Where is the Doctor?' The Doctor had vanished.
It was the tracks of some heavily loaded sledge or barrow that brought the Doctor into one of the side corridors. If the grooves on the floor had indeed been left by the TARDIS, he needed only to follow the tramlines to the terminal...
One corridor led to another and intersected a third. The Doctor kept going. He finally came to an archway in which was set a door of stone.
Some hidden mechanism swung aside the heavy portal, and the Doctor stepped into Kalid's chamber.
At first he saw nothing of the pedestal in the centre of the room, or the great globe of crystal which rested on it, or the necromantic trappings around the walls. His eyes went straight to the far corner of the chamber -and the TARDIS. He hurried over to it.
'So you are here at last, Doctor.'
The Doctor spun round. The sinister magician had stepped from the shadows behind him.
Captain Stapley walked right round the rotunda inside the great hall looking anxiously for the Doctor.
The Professor bore the Doctor's disappearance with more equanimity.
'I don't know what this Doctor's qualifications are,' - he adopted a tone of voice heard frequently in the senior common room of Darlington University - 'but if you