Inscrutable

And of Course, Vice-versa.

The technicians in the data room were silent now. They knelt on one knee, bowed in homage to their Lord. The Mandarin drank it all in, the glint still in his eye as he surveyed them. The monster stood, motionless, massive, in the centre of the room, next to the deadly video game that had spawned it. 

In a modest voice belied by his imperial manner, the Mandarin spoke: ‘Come now, no need for that, we aren’t in the Dark Ages now, not for a while anyway.’ He smiled and gestured for them to rise. 

‘But the time is coming,’ he added softly, too softly for any but Stefan to hear. ‘The time is coming...’ Stefan grinned his wolfish grin. 

The Mandarin watched idly as the technician’s assistants cleared away the debris of the previous game in much the same way as the Caesars must have watched the bestiarii clear up after the lions. 

‘After tonight,’ he relayed to Stefan, ‘I think we should move to our centre of production. There really is too much distraction here, and it’s possible that we may soon attract the attention of the local militia... America, in any case, will be the best place to watch the Great Game.’ 

‘I will make the necessary arrangements,’ muttered Stefan. He half-bowed and made to go, but stopped short as he realised that to skirt round the Mandarin and make for the door would lead him perilously close to the electronic monster. 

‘Afraid, Stefan?’ he taunted mildly. ‘You?’ 

‘A Man would be foolish to fight that which he cannot kill,’ muttered the henchman, darkly, eyeing the monster with a mixture of fear and admiration. 

‘Very wise, Stefan,’ taunted the Mandarin again, pleased at the further demonstration of a lesson well learned. Now to press it home further... 

He crossed to the electronic monster and, taking care not to touch it, reached up and placed a hand on either side of the monster’s head. He closed his eyes, and the ignorant would have assumed he was saying his prayer. Stefan was ignorant... 

A thin blue spark ran between his hands, passing through the monster’s head. In much the same way as the cell door had, but much more quickly, the monster faded away and was gone into nothingness. 

Stefan’s eyes widened to black, staring pools. ‘You need be afraid of nothing of which you are the master, Stefan.’ 

‘No, Lord,’ replied the henchman, hoarsely, as he bowed his head sharply until his chin touched his chest, and the Mandarin was left in no doubt whatsoever as to who was Master in Stefan’s eyes. He positively gleamed with satisfaction. 

‘All is prepared, Lord,’ announced Stefan, as he entered the data room and crossed to the Mandarin’s side. The room had indeed been returned to its former orderly status, and only one or two of the technicians were tending The Machines. 

‘Good,’ approved the Mandarin, shortly. He delicately beckoned Stefan a little closer. ‘When the final phase is completed tonight, we shall have to reconsider our... employment policy. Those who do not accompany us to America...’ 

‘I beg you, do not concern yourself with details, Lord,’ replied Stefan, softly. ‘Their contracts of employment will be properly... terminated.’ 

The Mandarin beamed. ‘Excellent, Stefan. I knew I could rely on your... discretion.’ 

‘Always, Lord.’ He bowed his head in homage once again. 

‘Go now,’ instructed the Mandarin. ‘Anticipation might be half the pleasure, but I have waited long enough. 

Bring The Doctor to me. We shall Play a Game, he and I...’ 

The Doctor continued tapping out his message, nut-crackers in hand, but now using the metal bedstead as his transmitter. The Claw replied with what sounded like hysterical snapping of his mandible, tied in with a couple of bursts on the bedstead when it seemed words failed him. 

‘It’s not as though The Toymaker is short on resources,’ said The Doctor, in between sentences. ‘He doesn’t need to save on building costs, so why does he build a high-tech barrier, when bricks and mortar would do fine?’ 

He waved his hand at the once-existent walls and door to demonstrate his point. The Claw’s response seemed to satisfy him, for he handed the antennae over, and watched fascinated as the terrible jaws closed over it as gentle as a summer’s breeze. 

There being no reply to his rhetorical question, The Doctor supplied his own answer. ‘Because that’s what he knows, and that’s what he controls the easiest.’ 

‘You said he was telepathic,’ pointed out Peri. 

‘Yeah, and summat else,’ added Kevin, somewhat unhelpfully. 

‘Telekinetic,’ supplied Peri. 

‘Yeah,’ added Kevin, none the wiser. 

‘That’s right,’ encouraged The Doctor. 

‘So the barrier was made up from his mind?’ speculated Peri. 

The Doctor nodded at the seemingly empty doorway. ‘I’m sure it is. But the inconvenience of having to sustain the mental effort bored him. He made it a simple electro-mechanical device which he could switch on and off with a flick of his mind.’ 

‘If he’s telepathic,’ mused Kevin, reaching a conclusion with the speed of a glacier, ‘he can hear everything we’re thinking...’ 

‘Only if he’s listening all the time,’ insisted The Doctor. ‘Think of it yourself,’ he invited, ever the optimist. ‘If you could receive every thought of every person within say, what – five miles? You’d go mad. 

You’d have to discipline your mind absolutely to filter out the thoughts you don’t want to hear. And you’d have to be able to turn them off altogether if you wanted to do some thinking yourself. 

I’m gambling that The Toymaker’s "Great Work" is of much more interest to him than anything we might be chatting about down here.’ He looked around him. ‘ Particularly what we have been chatting about down here... 

Now I’ve been talking it over with my friend the Mechanic here, and he thinks it’ll work. He’ll need a hand, though. Rather literally, I’m afraid,’ he added, looking at SB, who looked as cheerful and as mystified as ever. 

A voice stopped the conversation in its tracks. 

‘Doctor...’ The Doctor spun round to see Stefan standing in the doorway, his grin never more wolfish. 

‘Ah, ready to come out and play, are we?’ he called, drily. He rose, dusted his trousers off and paused to fix Peri with the hardest stare he could muster. ‘When you want me, just give me a yell, will you?’ 

He continued to fix her with that stare as he repeated, ‘Just give me a yell.’ Peri nodded, understandably bemused, and The Doctor, with a half cheery wave, turned and went through the door, obviously with the barrier lowered for that purpose. And obviously only for that purpose, for when Kevin started to follow him, he ran smack into it and was hurled back several feet. 

The Doctor walked off down the corridor and, stopping only to stare at Peri, Stefan walked slowly after him. The corridors and the entire complex seemed strangely silent to The Doctor as he walked along. Or maybe it was his sense of gloom and doom which he’d fought hard to disguise from the others in the eventually overcrowded prison cell. 

Given the state they were in, he thought, maybe the pink cloud had the right idea. It suddenly struck him that the last time he’d looked at the pink cloud, it could easily have been mistaken for an ostrich rather than a three-legged beastie, given that it had only two legs and its head was stuck in the sand... 

‘I understand you play backgammon,’ he threw at Stefan. 

‘A little,’ was the short reply. ‘We must have a game sometime.’ 

‘But there is no more time, Doctor. Not for you. 

Besides, I have played once tonight already.’ 

‘Have you? Have you indeed?’ answered The Doctor grimly. Stefan motioned him forward with his pistol, and The Doctor climbed the stairs before him. 

The corridor at the top was of quite a different style. Once more echoes of the Orient could be detected, and The Doctor was not at all surprised when Stefan motioned him to a halt outside an ornate and deeply carved door, whilst Stefan reached across him and knocked respectfully. There was no reply The Doctor could hear, but Stefan turned the handle and motioned The Doctor through. 

‘Ah, Doctor,’ greeted The Toymaker, ‘good of you to come.’ He rose from behind his desk in an elaborate gesture of courtesy. 

‘Your choice, Toymaker, not mine,’ replied The Doctor shortly. ‘I do admire your taste in furnishings, I must say, but don’t you think that tapestry’s a bit too recherché? 

I mean, I’m very flattered and all, but I did make it in a hurry, and the Han-Sen original was awfully grubby by the time it reached me.’ 

‘During one of your usual meddlings, I take it?’ asked The Toymaker, quite unfazed by The Doctor’s claim. 

‘Not mine,’ replied The Doctor, idly. ‘As I recall, the British Fleet was busy shelling the city at the time. They were the ones doing the meddling.’ 

‘The Opium Wars?’ 

‘Yes. Right up your street, all that, wasn’t it?’ 

‘I wasn’t there.’ 

‘No, or I’m sure we would have met. With your interest in matters Eastern, the downfall of the Chinese Empire was a foregone conclusion anyway.’ 

‘You do me too much honour...’ 

‘Oh, I didn’t mean to,’ replied The Doctor, disingenuously, ‘after all, you lost, didn’t you? It would have suited you far more to keep the corrupt Empire going for another couple of thousand years. Lots of room for games in Imperial China, eh?’ 

‘Lots of room for games anywhere on this planet, Doctor. As you, and I, have remarked, the human race is a very ingenious little species.’ 

‘They can be more than ingenious if they’re pointed in the right direction.’ 

‘How very patronising.’ 

‘That’s another difference between you and me, Toymaker. I’d sooner patronise them than butcher them.’ 

The Mandarin sighed with regret. ‘I am yet again astonished that with such differences between us, we can still enjoy the odd game together.’ 

‘I don’t enjoy them, odd or not. 

I play them because you force me to.’ 

‘And you are confident of winning again this time?’ 

‘Why not? You can’t have got any better.’ 

‘Whilst you have had lot of practice?’ 

‘As much as I wanted.’ 

‘Good. We shall see if you are sufficiently prepared...’ 

The Mandarin crossed to the door, and Stefan stepped forward to open it for him. The Doctor promptly sat in the chair before the desk and once again nonchalantly hooked his leg over the arm and casually swung it to and fro. 

‘Why did you come here, Toymaker,’ he asked lightly. ‘The natives are ingenious, we’re agreed on that, but no more so than a dozen other places I could name in this galaxy alone.’ The Mandarin looked at him, long and hard. Then he crossed slowly to sit in his own chair behind the desk. 

‘But it’s not just ingenuity, Doctor. The local inhabitants have an obsessive interest in games rivalling my own. 

In one of their greatest wars, one that was waged by the entire planet, they stopped fighting one day and played a game of football together – between the barbed wire, can you imagine? 

There’s a tribe to the east who, until very recently, played a game using their fallen enemies’ heads as a ball! My little pranks pale in comparison.’ 

‘There are madmen and cruel children in every society –’ began The Doctor, but The Toymaker leaned forward and cut him off. 

‘But not at every level of that society... No, Doctor, sometimes I think this world was made for me...’ And he leaned back in his chair, relaxing, the glint back in his eye. 

The Doctor looked sharply at The Toymaker. ‘The vortex isn’t running now, is it?’ 

‘It fluctuates,’ answered the Mandarin, disinterestedly. 

‘But you can intensify it?’ 

‘On occasion.. 

‘It doesn’t affect Stefan,’ said The Doctor, almost to himself.

‘Doesn’t it?’ asked the Mandarin, a smile appearing for the first time in several minutes. ‘Nor any of the other people around you.’ 

‘Like a child,’ scoffed The Mandarin, ‘fishing in a dark pool.’ 

‘I must say, you do seem to hang on to your staff for an impressively long time – two hundred years for poor old Shardlow, wasn’t it?’ 

‘I really couldn’t say.’ 

‘And how long has young Stefan been with you?’ ‘Young’ Stefan gave him a look that would have stunned a normal human being into a rigor of apology. 

‘Stefan was my first, and best, recruit,’ answered The Toymaker fondly, nostalgia seeming to tug his mouth into the semblance of a smile. ‘We had a game of dice, didn’t we, Stefan, in Constantinople.. 

Stefan also seemed to enjoy a trip down memory lane, for he to grinned broadly. ‘We did, Lord. Never was I so pleased to lose a throw.’ He turned to The Doctor, and announced with fierce pride, ‘I was with Barbarossa. The Army of the Third Great Crusade against the Turk.’ 

‘The Third Crusade, one long bloodbath. You killed more of each other than any enemy... One of the most savage and barbaric forces in history...’ The Doctor’s eyes narrowed in contempt. 

‘We took what we wanted,’ sneered the henchman. ‘We bowed our heads to our feudal Lord only. To no other man, of this world or any other.’ 

The Toymaker remembered a detail, something that had obviously been nagging him, like what colour shirt he’d been wearing, that sort of thing. ‘You wagered a young Greek family, didn’t you? They were Greek, weren’t they?’ 

‘They were, Lord,’ grinned Stefan, ‘strong, and good workers, too, given the right treatment.’ He flexed his right wrist with his left hand to leave The Doctor in little doubt as to what the ‘right treatment’ was.

'Whatever became of them?’ asked The Toymaker in evident concern. 

‘You sold them, Lord,’ Stefan reminded him, shortly. ‘I suppose I did,’ mused the Mandarin, ‘I mean, what else would I do with a Greek family? Oh, it’s a long time ago...’ With a wave of his hand, he consigned the Greek family, and the whole episode, to history. 

‘Eight hundred years,’ breathed The Doctor. 

‘Does it seem a long time to wait, Doctor? For A Game? I’ve been waiting a lot longer than that.’ 

‘Time, as someone once said, is relative,’ started The Doctor, and seemed set to go on into a detailed discussion of this fascinating subject, but The Toymaker would have none of it.

‘Come, Doctor. Pleasant though our little chat is, we should move to a resolution of the main event, should we not?’ 

‘I could simply refuse to play,’ speculated The Doctor. ‘What would you do then? Lock me away and throw away the key?’ 

‘Something like that, Doctor, I imagine. And whilst you were locked away, Stefan here would have no end of amusing games of his own with your two companions... the young lady first, I would imagine..' Stefan’s grin lit the skies. 

The Doctor jumped to his feet and strode towards the door. ‘What are we waiting for, then?’ he asked. ‘Time’s a-wasting...’ 

‘And we mustn’t waste Time, must we, Doctor?’ asked The Toymaker, softly. The Doctor looked at him closely. Had the Mandarin seen through him? How much did he know? Had he been listening and looking in at the wrong moment downstairs in the cell? The Toymaker’s smile was as inscrutable as ever. 

Stefan watched carefully as The Doctor walked around The Machine slowly, examining it in what seemed like some detail. ‘It meets with your approval, I trust?’ asked The Toymaker with the utmost courtesy. 

The Doctor was pretty convinced that The Question was a very idle one – if he said 'No', The Toymaker was hardly likely at this stage to say, ‘Oh well, that’s all right, old thing, let’s just call the whole thing off..' 

The difficulty was not thinking about anything the slightest bit relevant to what was going on downstairs whilst he was in such close proximity to The Toymaker. 

He just didn’t know how accurate the reports of his telepathic abilities were, or much of anything else about The Man – being – thing – whatever it was... 

‘Fine,’ he replied. ‘I prefer the classic simplicity of Space Invaders myself. I mean, they were good for what, a good ten or fifteen seconds before they got boring.’ 

‘I shall try to ensure you are not bored, Doctor,’ promised The Toymaker, softly. 

‘I’m sure,’ replied The Doctor, drily. 

‘There is only one rule –’ The Toymaker began. 

‘You have to win, yes I know,’ replied The Doctor absently. He was examining the screen, and noticed the All Time High Score sector. ‘125,550,’ he read off. ‘Who made that?’ 

‘I did,’ was The Toymaker’s bland reply. 

‘And, of course, I have to take your word for that?’ The Doctor smiled at him cynically. 

‘Don’t you trust me, Doctor?’ asked The Toymaker with wide-eyed innocence. 

The Doctor didn’t bother to reply. ‘Last player 175,’ he read again. ‘Poor chap...’ 

‘Are you ready?’ asked The Toymaker, archly. ‘Not quite,’ replied The Doctor, starting to roll up one of his jacket sleeves. 

‘Good,’ replied The Toymaker calmly, as his hand reached forward and pressed The One-Player button. The Machine immediately sprang to life, and The Doctor’s hands raced to the controls. 

‘Very well paced, Toymaker. Almost enjoyable.’ The Doctor manipulated the controls which spoke of countless hours misspending his youth in some intergalactic dive or other, wherever Time Lords went to misspend their youth, and, by the looks of things, at something considerably more demanding than Space Invaders... 

The monsters by the cars had been blown away a long time ago, and his score had already passed the 5000 mark. There was certainly no strain evident, not even a sign of any untoward concentration. ‘Obviously a lot of research in this,’ continued The Doctor, conversationally. 

‘Years and years,’ smiled The Toymaker. 

‘At the funfair, I suppose?’ There was only a look from The Toymaker in reply. ‘All those bumps on grab-handles, pressure pads on the seats – whole place wired like an octopodal dishwasher. Random blood tests and medicals too, I shouldn’t wonder.’ 

‘I could hardly bring several million people in here for testing, could I?’ asked The Toymaker, reasonably enough.

‘And you would have to test millions to get these results, yes, I can quite see that,’ agreed The Doctor in the same tone. ‘But why? I mean, you don’t need the money... do you?’ 

The Toymaker smiled, and inclined his head self-deprecatingly.

‘No, I can’t see you in Debtors’ Prison, worse luck. Oh they don’t have those any more, do they? Not here anyway...’ 

As The Doctor rattled on, the screen continued to explode in multi-coloured lights as he caught the monsters in his guns before they could catch him, but the pace was definitely hotting up. Better than 12,000 points now, halfway there and five lives up, with another bonus at 10,000, it seemed. 

‘Do I get my money back if I win?’ he asked The Toymaker, blithely, but now keeping his eyes more on the screen. The Toymaker did not deign to answer, but merely watched the screen, inscrutably. 

The atmosphere in the data room had changed perceptibly. There was a sheen of perspiration on The Doctor’s forehead, and the noise from the machine was never-ending. Stefan had edged closer, but the Mandarin looked on, unchanged and unchanging. 

The Doctor was fighting for his life now, the monsters on the screen coming from every direction, and now from the upper storeys of the buildings, too. The crunchcrunchcrunch noise had been taken over long ago, and added to by monsters of a different colour and size. They seemed more mobile now, more flexible, less monolithic and less unwieldy. 

Bending all his concentration to the task, The Doctor started to free himself. He sent the front part of his mind forward, and, an inch at a time, further still, to meet the forces on the screen. Forward, forward, until that part of his mind was in the screen, amongst the buildings and the ruins and the burnt out shells. He could sense the broken glass under foot and smell the burning rubber, hot plastic, hot metal of the firefight. The monsters came from all directions now, as if called by his presence, called to attack the intruder. His weaponry was burning white-hot, red and yellow lines of tracer arcing towards each threat as it appeared, sometimes before it appeared. He ducked into a doorway, turning as he went to spray a window high on his left, blowing a sniper to pieces. Half-rolling his body, he hurtled out again as another shape drew a bead on him from inside the building. Firing from the hip, he blazed off down the street, screams of agony and hoarse yells of frustration following him, echoing down the deadly canyons of the city streets. 

Unseen by him, the score counter spun dizzily, beyond 100,000 beyond 110,000, beyond 115,000... 

There was a stunning blow to his side, and another and another. He turned and fired blindly, and again, and the shells stopped exploding around him long enough for him to be able to take the next corner where, before he had time to recover, another of the monsters was firing at him. He moved back and felt the approach of more of them there, around the corner, then he roared out again, guns blazing, but another hit and another threw his aim off and ammunition was running low... 

The Toymaker looked on, though with a faint smile creasing his mouth now, as he saw the two extra Lives vanish, snuffed out like tiny candles. And his eyes glinted. 

The counter moved again, not spinning frantically now, but turning through treacle, past 125,000 and towards The Toymaker’s High Score. Stefan looked on aghast. Not a muscle moved on The Toymaker’s face. 

The streets were littered now with broken monsters, cracks starting to appear in the asphalt where the firefight had proved too much for the substance to stay stable. The cracks widened as the very ground rumbled. The frantic pitch of battle had slowed also, the steady crunchcrunchcrunch now returning to dominate the scene. The Doctor, exhausted, looked around for the source of the noise. There was something... something his other brain was telling him, something washed in or washed out by the fighting, by the insight he had into the mind that devised The Game. 

The Score hardly mattered. 

He knew he had only one life left and he had to find The Answer before that was gone. Had to stay alive and find The Answer... had to fight on... had to fight on... 

The street filled with screaming crushing monsters one after the other as he blazed away, using the weaponry he had left as a hosepipe more than a precision piece. One life left and he was called back, called by the blare of electronic trumpets as the High Score was swept away. One more, two more, three bursts and again the street was clear before him... 

One life left. Still one life... 

One that was The Answer... 

One... One alone... 

He turned from The Machine, sweat pouring from him, scars that would never show criss-crossing his mind. ‘You’re alone,’ he croaked hoarsely at The Toymaker. ‘One. One alone. 

There’s just you, no one like you. Ever. 

This Game – an empty city, a ghost city. And one, just one fighter, one enemy, one on his own... 

You’re not from this Universe, are you?’ 

He turned and walked towards The Toymaker, past the speechless Stefan, who had just witnessed, for the first time in eight hundred years another being’s victory over his Lord and at one of his Lord’s own games! 

‘The Game,’ stammered The Mandarin, ‘you’re not thinking about The Game!’ There was a blare from The Machine as The Doctor’s last life was lost. The counter had come to a stop. 131,000, and The Toymaker’s score was languishing under ‘Last Player’. 

The Doctor appeared not to notice. ‘You’re not from this Universe,’ he repeated, ‘that’s why there’s no trace. That’s why The Laws of this Universe don’t concern you. You’re from another Time and Space!’ 

The Doctor was in full flow as the ramifications of his theory crashed in on him. Behind him, the game machine’s ominous crunchcrunchcrunch had started distantly in the background. No one took any notice of it. Not yet... 

‘Whatever catastrophe it was,’ The Doctor continued, as much to himself as to anyone else, ‘it hurled you from your own universe into this one. You carry your own matter with you – you’d have to – not anti-matter, of course, otherwise you’d have started the next Big Bang – but different from ours.’ 

He paused, thunderstruck by his own conclusions. ‘Relativity,’ he breathed, ‘follow it through...’ 

He swung round on The Toymaker again, ‘Your own universe is receding from this one so fast, it’s pushing your time back as it goes!’ He stared at The Toymaker, awestuck. ‘You’ll live for millions of years!’ 

The Toymaker had a look of crushing despair on his face as he croaked out, ‘I have done...’ The crunchcrunchcrunch was getting louder. A figure had appeared at the centre of the screen, and was growing larger, growing closer... 

‘The isolation of aeons,’ whispered The Doctor, overcome with compassion for the being he’d detested all his adult life. ‘The crushing loneliness of thousands of millenia... you poor, poor creature...’ 

The Toymaker’s eye was cast on a far, far distant horizon, lost in a world vanished aeons ago. ‘... and then I grew tired of even creating... ships, cities, continents, whole planets even. 

I created Life. 

I colonised, I helped it survive and thrive for millenia, hundreds of millenia, thousands...’ His voice trailed off as he remembered, as the bitterness and the loneliness overcame him. 

He rounded on The Doctor, his eyes turning away from the softness of remembrance to the fury of the present. ‘Until I came to destroy, wantonly, wilfully, the same ships, the same planets I’d helped to create, and that too became too easy and too empty... 

Meaningless Destruction is as appetising as meaningless Creation and just as unfulfilling... 

Until I found distraction in The World of Games, until I could throw off the pretence of Purpose and Meaning, until I too could be a prey to Chance and Hazard...’

The glint was back in his eye now, more dangerous than ever before as it merged with the gleam of triumph. The Doctor, seeing the difference, whirled round to see the formation of the monster on the screen, to see it grow larger and larger until the screen could not contain it. The crunchcrunchcrunch had reached its inevitable crescendo, and the electronic monster stood outside the machine, brighter, if anything, and more terrible than before. 

The Toymaker’s triumph screeched out at last. ‘A hazard, Doctor, which you have lost!’ The monster turned and lumbered slowly towards the transfixed Time Lord. 

The Doctor, staring at the monster, backed away slowly. His face bore the full horror of what he was seeing – not the monster, for he had seen much much more repellent examples than that, and the worst examples were always manmade, but The Purpose behind The Monster... 

‘Kill him!’ screamed The Toymaker. ‘KILL HIM!’ 

The Toymaker staggered, his hands to his head, his face screwed up in pain and confusion. Stefan had come out of his trance and was back to doing what he was best at – protecting his Lord. Gun in hand, he was circling slowly to keep away from the electronic giant and reach a point where he had a clear shot at The Doctor. He turned his head in agitation at the obvious discomfort of his master. Even the Monster seemed confused, distracted, as though it had lost its bearings on its target. It lumbered round half a step to advance on Stefan, but with the agile step sideways of a practised swordsman, Stefan skirted it neatly and was about to swing on The Doctor when The Doctor took matters into his own hands – literally. 

Grabbing Stefan’s gun-hand in both of his own, he pivoted sharply and swung the henchman bodily round in a full circle. Already off-balance, Stefan’s momentum carried him forward, and it was all he could do to keep his feet. At the end of the circle, The Doctor, gauging the trajectory as well as he could, released the hand, and Stefan went tumbling, smack up against the Monster... 

There was a short scream of pain – and another, this time of fear – and the monster’s hands did the rest. Stefan slumped, smouldering, to the ground. 

Peri’s scream was echoing and reverberating around the room, as if hitting a giant acoustic mirror, distorting, building, building, wavering wildly and crashing back like a wave on The Toymaker, who staggered still, his hands over his ears, unable to block out even a tiny part of the noise. 

His contorted face seemed about to burst as he tried to stop the dreadful falling tower of sound as, with a whump he crashed into the Monster. Turning around, eyes staring wider if that were possible, he watched helplessly as the Monster raised its hands and placed them on either side of The Toymaker’s head. 

Peri’s screaming was wiped out by the intensity of the power-hum which followed, and, as The Toymaker slumped to the floor, the Monster started to fade and disappear from sight... The Doctor took only a split second to glance at the fallen Mandarin and, without any further hesitation, raced from the room, down towards the prison cell and Peri. 

The door barrier was down, and the Mechanic was already switching off his machine, by the simple expedient of snipping through the power cable with his claw. He looked vaguely gratified at the sparks as the circuit shorted, and by then The Doctor was in, striding over to Peri and helping her remove the helmet from her head. 

‘Well done!’ he called over to the Mechanic, who, either by coincidence or through a deeper understanding than he’d let on before, waved a claw in friendly acknowledgement. 

‘What about me?’ protested Peri, feebly. 

‘Yeah, an’ me,’ groaned Kevin, fairly sure this was the sort of thing the Lord Mayor gave banquets for. 

‘Don’t worry,’ replied The Doctor, deliberately misunderstanding, ‘you’ll be fine. Now come on...’ and with that he was off again, tearing out of the door and up the stairs again.

Not out through the tunnels to freedom, but back into the Wolf’s Lair... 

‘Search everywhere you can think of,’ called The Doctor as he burst into The Toymaker’s study, and started looking himself in the drawers of the giant carved desk. 

‘For what?’ asked Peri, ever a stickler for detail. 

‘His tele-mechanical relay,’ replied The Doctor, exasperated that he should have to fill in every little detail. 

‘His tele-what?’ queried Kevin, who rather fancied himself well up on the high-tech scene. 

‘Tele-mechanical relay,’ repeated The Doctor, as if trying to win an argument against a particularly stub-born opponent. He abandoned his search of the desk and crossed swiftly to the video-screen, feeling round the edges for an opening. 

‘The relay he uses to operate the holo-field downstairs – and for everything else he wants to control without really trying.’ 

Instinctively, Peri looked around, trying to spot it. ‘What does it look like?’ she remembered to ask. 

‘Haven’t the faintest idea,’ replied The Doctor. ‘just look for something you’ve ever seen before and can’t imagine a use for and we’ll start with that.’ 

With uncharacteristic vandalism, he took hold of the bottom edge of one of the wall-coverings, and ripped it from its fixings. ‘Over on that other wall!’ he cried. ‘Rip it down! It must be here somewhere, and we’ve got to find it before he regains consciousness...’ 

The Toymaker’s fingers, stretched out on the floor, flexed and stirred. His arm slowly pulled in as he levered himself up groggily to look at the barren data room. The only inhabitant apart from himself was Stefan, and the Mandarin painfully pulled himself over to where he lay. With an effort he turned his faithful henchman over and, with a final heave, Stefan flopped over on his back, obviously not merely unconscious. 

But then, The Toymaker had never intended the electronic monster to merely stun anyone. As he registered the fact, The Toymaker’s face darkened again. ‘Doctor...’ he whispered. 

The Doctor spun his head as he heard the dreaded voice once again. His efforts took on a frantic haste as he turned back to the wall beneath the tapestry The Toymaker had expressed such interest in during his previous visit to the room. 

With a cry of triumph, he tore it from the wall, reaching behind a control panel to force it away from its fixings. Behind was a metal cylinder, about a foot long and two inches in diameter, with wires springing from terminals at both ends. 

‘Doctor...’ the voice began, booming now instead of whispering, dwarfing the effect Peri’s screams had had, crashing around the room and shattering without discrimination the video-screen and a priceless Ming vase next to it. 

Screwing up his face and tucking his head into his shoulders as if against a hurricane force wind, The Doctor yanked the wires from one end of the cylinder. 

‘DOC –’ The voice had the force of an exploding shell, and the silence was the more shocking as The Doctor yanked the wires from the other end of the tube. 

He, then Peri and finally even Kevin breathed a sigh of relief as the thunder died away. 

‘Come on,’ said The Doctor grimly, ‘no more games.’ And with that he led the way swiftly out of the room. The Toymaker had abandoned his keening over the fallen Stefan and, as the trio came into the room, he was rising to his feet. 

The Doctor motioned the other two to stay just where they were as he moved towards The Toymaker. 

‘I have had millions of years to devise a punishment for you,’ hissed The Toymaker, ‘I have millions more to inflict it.’ He raised himself threateningly to his full height. 

‘Time you have, yes, Toymaker, time enough to drive any being mad. But you’re no more a threat to anyone...’ 

With that, he raised the cylinder in one hand and gave a sharp twist to one end. There was an audible click as something locked, and The Toymaker started forward. He stopped, abruptly, slamming into an obstruction. An invisible obstruction. 

The Doctor held up the cylinder. ‘Your own telepathic relay switch for the holo-field which now surrounds you. Tuned to your own thought frequency. 

Locked into a loop by the power of your own brain. 

It will function as long as your brain functions, even when you are asleep. Until you’re dead.’ 

With what seemed like overwhelming fatigue, the Time Lord turned, and started for the door, Peri and Kevin preceding him. The Toymaker’s face grew longer, his eyes staring as the enormity of his fate dawned upon him. His mouth opened and moved in what must have been a tearing scream... a timeless scream... a scream for all eternity... 

The Doctor turned back for one last look, a bleak and immovable sadness in his eyes. ‘I detest caging even the wildest beast, Toymaker,’ he announced, flatly, unsure even if the Mandarin could hear him, ‘but for you there is no other answer... Goodbye...’ 

He turned and left the room without another backward glance. In the confines of his cell, The Toymaker began to desperately explore the tiny limits of his invisible, eternal prison. 

In the corridor outside, Peri voiced the anxious question, ‘Is he unconscious again?’ 

‘Unfortunately for him, no,’ replied The Doctor. ‘We’d better get out quick, then,’ muttered Kevin. 

‘He can’t hurt you now,’ The Doctor said gloomily. ‘He’s locked in the same sort of holo-field as he kept us in downstairs, powered by his own thoughts, locked in an eternal, endless loop.’ 

He hefted the cylinder in his hand. ‘His telepathy!’ Peri exclaimed. ‘He can order someone outside to destroy the relay.’ Kevin looked nervously at the cylinder, and just as nervously at his companions. 

Fortunately for The Doctor, Peri had provided a point upon which he could vent his feelings. He turned on the poor girl savagely. ‘You know nothing about time, Peri. Nothing. 

I’ve just told you – he’s trapped in an endless loop. The eternal circle. No beginning, no end. The Law which applies to all Universes. 

His thoughts will just go round and round, trapping him, holding him, echoing all around him for the rest of time... it’s... loath-some...’ he sagged against the wall, overcome by the dreadful fate he’d condemned The Toymaker to, a fate which The Doctor, the Time Lord, could appreciate only too well. 

Peri touched his arm gently. ‘When I screamed, I saw a bright picture in my head – a picture of a burning giant, a monster, an unstoppable monster. Wouldn’t that have gone on forever too?’ 

‘When you screamed, you flooded his mind,’ explained The Doctor almost absently. ‘The Mechanic rigged up a mental broadcast transmitter on the same wavelength as the holo-field he used for our prison – it reversed the flow of his thoughts for a split second, and you must have caught the backwash.’ 

‘And the monster I saw would have rampaged over the whole Earth?’ 

‘It certainly would. That and thousands like it, all generated by anyone losing at The Toymaker’s latest game. 

That was his Great Work,’ he finished, bitterly. 

‘Then you had no choice,’ she said, gently. 

‘But don’t you see, Peri? I know exactly what it would be like, the endless unbroken stream of time... nothing but time...’ The Time Lord seemed to sink into melancholia, into his own cosmic angst. 

Peri decided a practical problem needed a practical solution. ‘Well,’ she started, brightly, ‘we can’t just leave him where he is, cluttering up Blackpool for the rest of eternity. We’ll get back to the TARDIS and you can use the transdimensional stabilizer to whisk him off to somewhere he won’t be noticed. Then you can ferry our friends downstairs back to where they came from.’ 

‘What d’you think I am,’ he spluttered, ‘a cosmic taxi service?’ Before she could form a suitable reply, the breath caught in her throat. Along the gloomy corridor a figure shambled towards them, not quite humanoid, not quite alien, its face seemingly composed of a single, gaping, cavernous hole. 

‘There’s a helluva racket goin’ on,’ the figure yawned. ‘I’m trying to get some kip in –’ ‘Geoff!’ exclaimed Kevin. ‘Hello, Kev,’ said the missing brother amiably. ‘What are you doing here? D’you know the time?’ By way of a reply, Kevin caught him in a gigantic bear-hug, which, from the look on Geoff’s face, was not the usual reaction he provoked in his elder brother. 

‘Shall we leave Romulus and Remus to sort things out?’ muttered The Doctor to Peri. She nodded her agreement, and they both made their way to the door at the far end of the corridor. 

‘Kevin,’ he called back as he was about to go through the door, ‘somewhere in here you’ll find the patents for all those machines – except one, that is – they’re yours as much as anyone’s. Should be worth quite a bit of money. Why don’t you use it to close down The Toymaker’s factory? The term "takeover" seems very apt under the circumstances.. 

‘I’ve always fancied setting up on me own, like,’ replied Kevin, suddenly transformed into a pillar of the commercial establishment. ‘Take my tip,’ grinned The Doctor, ‘always start at the top if you can.’ ‘Ta,’ said Kevin, ‘See you –’ But The Doctor and his companion were gone. ‘You know,’ said Geoff to his brother, confidentially, ‘in the couple of days I’ve been here, I’ve seen more oddballs –’ ‘Coupla days?’ asked Kevin. 

‘Yeah.’ Geoff continued in the same confidential tone of voice. ‘You get so you don’t ask any daft questions, Kev. Know what I mean?’ 

The Doctor, the spring back in his step, strode down the corridor, Peri struggling to keep up. He made straight for a door off to the right, half hidden by a curtain. Peri stopped at another corridor leading off the the left. 

‘Where are you going?’ she called. ‘This is the way out.’

The mischievous gleam in his eye matched the smile as he replied, ‘But this is the way back to the funfair... coming?’ 

Peri hesitated for only a moment and then, with a grin, hurried after him.