in the
X.
The Doctor and Enik were inside the TARDIS for mere seconds when Enik nearly staggered at the sight of the primary console of the ship. “Doctor,” the Altrusian gasped, “the undulating crystals that move up and down horizontally...”
“Yes, Enik?” asked the Doctor, as he checked the Time Machine’s many consoles.
“They look remarkably like the crystal I utilized to traverse the planes of reality many years ago. My people call it the Mageti. Rick and Will Marshall inadvertently shorted it out soon after our first encounter with one another.”
“Fascinating,” the Doctor replied, equally fascinated by the fact that the crystal around the Altrusian’s neck started glowing as soon as Enik approached the Time Rotor he had been referring to, almost as if the two objects were communicating with each other. He walked over to where he’d left the Pylon Instruction Manual and disconnected it from the wiring that had been translating it. It was ready for his perusal, but after he and Enik could attempt to figure out the connection between the Mageti and the TARDIS Time Rotor, he needed to speak with Holly about the crystals that “Rani” had given her so many years ago.
---
Holly was all alone in the Marshall compound, doing her best to sort out what the Zarn had expressed to her. He’d explained to her that, upon his awakening, his first thought was vengeance against her father and brother, but when he’d become fully conscious, the emotion was fleeting. He told her how he’d captured her Uncle Jack and kept him in stasis on his ship and how, over the decades, the two had formed a psychic link of sorts, and now her Uncle Jack’s mind and psyche had conjoined with his own. He was in constant emotional turmoil because of the shocking duality of his inner mind, and while his primary thought was no longer on revenge, it was most certainly fixed on figuring out how to separate himself from the consciousness of Jack Marshall. And the sooner, the better.
The Zarn also told her that, once he’d figured out how to relieve himself of her Uncle Jack’s mind, he would be setting the man free if the Marshalls and the Doctor could assist him in doing the final repair work on his ship, and then he’d dropped an even bigger bomb: he told her that her father had never really left the Land of the Lost, but had instead been imprisoned on the Rani’s spacecraft.
Holly felt utterly betrayed and she, too, was in a state of conflict within her heart and mind. She had cherished her memories of the future Rani and their many clandestine meetings. The very thought that her father was aboard Rani’s ship made her sick to her stomach, first at the thought that her future self could betray her past self, and secondly at the thought that this hope she’d preserved within her heart had been a lie all along, and Rani wasn’t her future self. She was so very confused.
The Doctor and Enik entered the compound and Holly was seated with her head in her hands. “Is something wrong, Holly?” the Doctor asked.
“Everything,” she replied. And she told him all the Zarn had related in such a rush she felt as if she were emotionally vomiting. The Doctor and Enik listened intently, and the Doctor asked her to tell him everything she could recall about Rani.
“So Rani gave you three crystal necklaces,” the Doctor mused. “May I see them?”
Holly fished them out of their holding place in the cave, and the Doctor examined them with his Sonic Screwdriver.
“Interesting,” the Doctor noted. “This is a multi-channel transmitter and receiver. They’re interconnected, but in more ways than you know. Apparently, they’re sending signals to the Rani so she can keep track of your every move.” He tweaked the settings on his screwdriver and waved it over the necklaces once more. “There. Now we’ll be able to see what Rani is up to…”
“But Doctor,” Enik asked. “Is this not dangerous? Is the Rani not aware of what you have done to these devices?”
“I seriously doubt it,” the Doctor responded. “After all, the Marshalls have never had much more than knives and skins all these years. They’ve never actually had any futuristic technology. I doubt she suspects a thing.”
The Rani and the Master’s images appeared in the viewport of the crystal necklaces. They were a safe distance away, but the gun under the Rani’s arm gave the Doctor pause. Clearly, she meant to go hunting and, in all likelihood, she was on the prowl for him. He tweaked the necklaces with his Sonic Screwdriver once more and was able to tap into the security cameras within her TARDIS. He spotted the unconscious Will Marshall lying prone on a slab near his father, whose curly hair had turned a pale white in the years since he’d first been captured.
“Holly,” the Doctor asked. “Is this your father?”
Holly looked into the necklaces and began to shake. Tears streamed from her suddenly reddened eyes. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. “So the Zarn was telling the truth. Rani betrayed me. She wasn’t me after all.” Suddenly she steeled herself. “Doctor,” she said with determination. “We’ve got to get them out of there. Will can’t possibly have been in there for too long. I only saw him a short time ago. But what about my father? He’s been there for decades. Have his muscles atrophied?”
The Doctor scrutinized the imagery he saw. “Considering the technology the Rani has on her ship, I’m confident your father’s muscle tissue hasn’t been damaged. In all probability, she’s got him patched into machinery that stimulates the muscles in the event that he would need to be awakened and moved to another location. Who knows, she may well have awakened him from time to time and utilized him as a plaything of sorts.”
Holly pushed the thought from her mind and gritted her teeth. “We need to get my father and brother out of there so we can get back to Earth.”
“Indeed,” said the Doctor.
“And if we help the Zarn, we can collect Uncle Jack, too.” She smiled at the thought, but underneath it all, she was slightly concerned that something was going to go wrong. What, though, she had no idea whatsoever.
---
The Zarn removed the devices that held Jack Marshall in place. He, too, had technology that stimulated the man’s musculature as he was held in a constant state of hibernation. For all Jack knew, he’d been dreaming for the last few decades. His mind was cloudy for a time after the Zarn removed the psychic constraints, and when his eyes opened, Jack Marshall became aware that there was another mind in his skull.
”What’s going on here?” Jack asked, totally confused.
“Jack Marshall, I apologize for the intrusion. Our conjoined minds are the result of an accident that I am responsible for. I take full responsibility, and will do my utmost to separate our consciousnesses. In the past I proved to be arrogant and self-centered, but your humanity has shown me the error of my ways. At one time I wanted nothing more than to avenge myself upon your family, but those days are no more…”
Jack could not only hear what was being conveyed to his mind, he could feel it, and he knew the words to be true. “Very well,” Jack responded to the alien voice. “We’ll deal with the hand we were dealt, but I would really like to see my family.”
“All in due time, Jack Marshall,” the Zarn replied in an assuring tone. “But first we must stop the Rani and the Master from accomplishing the mission they have planned.”
Jack suddenly had full awareness of all that had been plotted, without explanation. It was the primary benefit of sharing a joint mind with an alien being. They knew exactly what they needed to do…
---
The Doctor, Holly, and Enik stealthily approached the Pylon and slipped quickly inside once they were certain the coast was clear. The Doctor removed the instruction manual, and made note of the crystal configuration he needed to stall his enemies’ approach.
Once the Doctor manipulated the crystals, the sky outside grew black, and gale force winds began to blow. Holly looked into her crystal necklace and saw that the Rani and the Master were being forced backward, and was delighted when they retreated into a nearby grove of trees to wait out the effects of the storm.
The Doctor looked at the instruction manual and not at Holly Enik, whom he began to address in the same way a teacher does a student. “Unlike a TARDIS,” he said dryly, “these Pylons don’t modify their outward appearance unless they were to be veiled by an invisibility cloak. They, instead, modify the environment around them. A primitive version of our TARDIS technology, true, only inverted. I guess you could say that my TARDIS is the perfected version of the Pylon, and I suspect the ancient Time Lords devised the Pylons to preserve the life-forms that might wander into the time holes that lead here.”
“I don’t fully understand,” Holly remarked, her face a mask of confusion.
“The ancient Time Lords were a benevolent people,” the Doctor droned on, still not looking up from the manual. “They didn’t want anyone or anything harmed here, if that was not the natural order of things. Have you never wondered why no one has ever really died here in the Land of the Lost? In a way, this stasis point between the ruptures in time we’ve discovered serve as a, for lack of a better word, sanctuary for the creatures that become residents here. Have you not noted that nearly every life-form here, aside from yourselves of course, are prime examples of extinct creatures?”
“But what about Medusa, and the Flying Dutchman, and all the others who seemed to step out of Fairy Tales?” Holly inquired.
“In some worlds what you consider fantasy is regarded as fact. And where your people regard some things as sorcery, others regard it as science.”
Enik was slightly perturbed by this line of reasoning. “But what does this say of me? Am I a relic from a lost time, Doctor?”
“Oh, no,” said the Doctor. “I suspect your being here, along with the Marshalls, is nothing more than an anomaly, perhaps the result of the Rani’s search for intelligent beings she might entrap to occupy her mind. I seriously doubt she would enjoy the company of Pakuni for too long.”
“And what of the Pakuni?” Holly asked. “We haven’t seen any since the earthquake, the day my father was abducted.”
The Doctor smiled, finally looking her full in the face. “They fled, and relocated, and as they say, they multiplied. There’s a thriving Pakuni community that I would be delighted to introduce Chaka to once we resolve this conflict with the Master and the Rani.”
For the first time in a long time, Holly had hope that things would work out. The Doctor tweaked the Pylon a few more times, and informed Holly and Enik that they now needed to return to his TARDIS, where he needed to pick up an item or two.
---
The sky outside lightened, and the Master and the Rani strode out into open view. “Surely this was the doing of the Doctor,” the Master snarled.
The Rani grinned with malevolence. “It will avail him nothing,” she laughed. “For this is the day I kill him, and you claim his body for your own.”
The Master laughed along with her, and they quickly made their way to the Doctor’s TARDIS, where they instinctively knew he’d be waiting. They were completely right in their assumption, and completely shocked when he opened the TARDIS door with both arms in the air.
“Alright,” the Doctor said. “I’ve been aware of your presence here for quite some time, Rani.” His words triggered an emotional reaction that immediately registered on her face.
“Is that so, Doctor?” she replied.
“Indeed, and I’m wondering when you’ll ever tire of visiting people over the course of decades just to fill their minds with false hopes and empty dreams.”
“False hopes and empty dreams,” the Rani spat back at him. “Bah! Who are you to lecture me on such things, Doctor, when this is precisely what you have given all those you’ve intended to help over the last several hundred years? Without your assistance, those whom you’ve aided would have destroyed themselves if left to their own devices, and where do you leave them once you’ve done your good deeds? Alone again, just as you found them, with no chance of making things right once they’ve fouled them up again. Your meddling is an offense to me because you have no grand plan, as I do. You go where the solar winds that push your TARDIS take you, and nowhere else. You do nothing less than stumble about in time, wholly unaware of where you’ll go next, or what you’ll next encounter. As for me, I know what I’m doing because I plot it out in advance. You’re a traveler with no set agenda, but I know precisely what I want, and precisely where I’m going.”
The Master watched and listened, but said nothing. He wondered where he fit in her grand scheme of things, and couldn’t quite discern whether or not she’d incorporate them into her ultimate plan.
“It’s all about faith, Rani” the Doctor answered coolly. “I have faith that I’m being led where and when I need to go. Let’s leave it at that.”
“I don’t want to hear your personal philosophy, Doctor,” the Rani barked. “Come along, let’s get this over with. The Master has plans for you.” She pointed her laser rifle at him, and he walked slowly ahead of the two villains. As they moved along, he noted out of the corner of his eye that there were words carved into the nearby trees; they were subtle, but he spotted them right away. To his amazement, he realized they were clearly in his very own hand-writing style, a constant which never changed from regeneration to regeneration.
When they reached the clearing nearest to the Rani’s TARDIS, which looked remarkably like a metallic pink, malformed Pylon, he saw the following words on a tree:
“Duck NOW, Doctor!” - The marking was signed merely #10.
The Doctor did as the engraving instructed and, when he did, a bright light filled the air, and the Rani and the Master both lay unconscious on the ground. Someone had knocked them out cold with a stun ray of some sort, but he couldn’t discern who it was. Enik and Holly darted over to the scene as quickly as they could, and the Doctor carried the Rani into her ship, and instructed Enik to take the Master to his ship.
After carefully removing the Rani’s wristbands, and any other object that might conceal weapons or tools of any sort, the Doctor configured her TARDIS for eminent takeoff. He set her ship for automatic pilot, and did the same within the Master’s TARDIS after figuring out how to deactivate XR-6.
When Holly saw her father for the first time, they both wept so deeply that they shook with emotional convulsions, and the Doctor reminded them that time was of the essence. Will also shed a few tears when he regained consciousness, and the Marshalls and Enik then set out for the Doctor’s TARDIS, which he’d also programmed to leave at the same exact time as the Rani’s and the Master’s ships.
The Zarn was most pleased when the Doctor made the needed repairs to his ship that would allow him to return to his own spacial dimension, and the Zarn also set his ship to leave at the same time as the other spacecrafts. Jack Marshall was delighted to be reunited with his brother and family, said his goodbyes to the Zarn, and yet knew full well that the two of them would always remain conjoined; this didn’t bother either of them, however, as it seemed to somehow balance them out as both an alien and a human. No more would the Zarn fend only for himself. When he returned to his people, he would make a positive impact on his world.
After the Doctor escorted Chaka to the Pakuni colony he’d discovered and the Marshalls said their tearful farewells, they laughed when they saw Chaka and a young female immediately embrace. They knew full well he’d be okay if they left him, and so would they.
“Well, then,” said the Doctor as he prepared his TARDIS for final departure. “I suppose you’re all wondering how this is going to work.” He looked down once more at the Pylon instruction manual, and didn’t lock eyes with anyone in particular. “It seems that, aside from the secret entry point that the Rani discovered, the only way out of the Land of the Lost is by simultaneously manipulating the spatial tumblers within the four wormholes that lead here. The Master’s TARDIS, which seems to be of stone, will exit via the selfsame entryway that, once upon a time, tossed a Frisbee to you, Will and Holly, within a mountain. The Rani’s TARDIS, which is presently of metal, will exit via a portal within a metal Pylon. The Zarn’s ship, which appears invisible to the Sleestaks, will exit through space, leaving behind it what seems to be nothing more than blackness and smoke - which explains the prophecy of the Skull of Primacy, Enik. And my own TARDIS, made of wood, will exit via the selfsame waterfall that entrapped the Marshalls here. We’ll all be leaving this place at the exact same instant, and when we leave, there will be no more human life-forms in the Land of the Lost, at least as far as my sensors can detect.”
Holly was curious. “But what about the Repairman I met when I was a young girl?” And she told the Doctor about her encounter with him.
“According to the manual here,” the Doctor noted, “He was nothing more than a hologram designed to take on the appearance of a Time Lord attired in the clothing that was most familiar to the sentient life-forms that might encounter him.”
---
The familiar wheezing of the Doctor’s TARDIS began anew. The Marshalls and Enik braced themselves and looked with apprehension at the main viewscreen console. What first appeared to look like water took on the appearance of smoke and clouds and then, finally, all they could make out were stars and planetoids.
“Holly and gentlemen,” the Doctor smiled. “Are you ready to go home now?”
The Marshalls were more than ready, but Enik was not.
“Doctor,” the Altrusian said coldly. “I have been alone for so many years that I feel I am in no rush to return to my people. That is, if you are aware of where they exist in time and space.”
“I admit that I do not - as of yet,” said the Doctor. “You’re still something of a mystery to me, my friend.”
“Then I humbly request that you allow me to accompany you for a time,” said Enik. The Doctor almost thought he could detect a smile, but knew full well that it was impossible. Enik wanted to learn as much as he could about the Time Lords, and the Doctor wanted to learn as much as he could about the Altrusians, and how they related to the Silurians, so the arrangement was more than acceptable to him. After all, he’d become quite bored travelling alone, and he knew the perfect location for Enik to take temporary residence aboard the TARDIS.
A loud “PING!” emanated from the TARDIS console, and the Doctor checked to see where they now were in time and space.
“All ashore for Earth, 2011,” the Doctor smiled.
Rick Marshall approached the Doctor with a certain amount of apprehension. His mind was still slightly muddled after the psychic manipulations of the Rani, but his primary concern was how he and his family would live. The Doctor assured him that the money he had in the bank account they’d left so many decades earlier had grown into a small fortune thanks to his wise investments, and he and his children would be more than comfortable. Also, Jack’s wife had never given up that he would return to her one day, she’d never remarried, and had been maintaining the family property while making wise financial investments of their own.
Holly and Will wept as the TARDIS door opened. While part of them would miss the Land of the Lost, and especially Chaka, their hearts mourned over the many years they’d been deprived of, and at the prospect of having to learn how to adapt to a strange new world all over again. Still, it would be a wonderful experience to sleep in real beds again. They were so glad to be home.
As the Doctor said his farewells to the Marshalls, he opted not to linger and to allow their family reunions to be done in private. He and Enik has places to go, and things to discover. The TARDIS began to wheeze, and it vanished from sight as the Marshalls waved goodbye to the Doctor and Enik.
“Well now, my new friend,” asked the Doctor. “Where shall we go next?”
“Where ever the solar tides take us, Doctor.” Enik stoically responded. And so they were off, destination unknown.
THE END?
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