041 - Doctor Who - Logopolis

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DOCTOR WHO

LOGOPOLIS

Christopher H. Bidmead

Based on the BBC television serial by Christopher H. Bidmead by arrangement

with the British Broadcasting Corporation

Events cast shadows before them, but the huger shadows creep over us

unseen. When some great circumstance, hovering somewhere in the future, is

a catastrophe of incalculable consequence, you may not see the signs in the

small happenings that go before. The Doctor did, however - vaguely.

While the Doctor paced back and forth in the TARDIS cloister room trying to

make some sense of the tangle of troublesome thoughts that had followed him

from Traken, in a completely different sector of the Universe, in a place

called Earth, one such small foreshadowing was already beginning to unfold.

It was a simple thing. A policeman leaned his bicycle against a police box,

took a key from the breast pocket of his uniform jacket and unlocked the

little telephone door to make a phone call.

Police Constable Donald Seagrave was in a jovial mood. The sun was shining,

the bicycle was performing perfectly since its overhaul last Saturday

afternoon, and now that the water-main flooding in Burney Street was

repaired he was on his way home for tea, if that was all right with the

Super.

It seemed to be a bad line. Seagrave could hear his Superintendent at the

far end saying, 'Speak up . . . Who's that . . .?', but there was this

whirring noise, and then a sort of chuffing and groaning . . .

The baffled constable looked into the telephone, and then banged it on his

helmet to try to improve the connection. If his attention hadn't been so

engaged with the receiver he might have noticed a distinct wobble coming

over the police box. Its blue surface shimmered momentarily and grew bluer.

The whirring sound stopped, but then so did the voice at the other end as

the line went dead. The constable looked ruefully at the telephone. Now he

would have to cycle all the way back to the station and get permission from

the Super personally, by which time the sun would doubtless be gone and

with it the prospect of a relaxing afternoon in the garden potting out the

sweet-peas . . .

This speculation was the constable's last thought in this world. As he

replaced the receiver his face was suddenly slammed up against the blue

door, as if - but that was impossible - something inside the box had

grabbed his hand.

His arm disappeared up to the shoulder. His head lolled back, the eyes

staring. As the throttled, terminal gasp bubbled away to a whisper in his

throat, from inside the box echoed the light delicate sound of a chuckle.

The TARDIS was full of surprises, but Adric wasn't ready for what he saw

when he turned the corner.

Suddenly he seemed to be in the open air, in a sort of crumbling stone

courtyard, with a floor unevenly flagged with stone slabs. A few small

twisted trees grew up between the flagstones, and beyond them the boy

caught the crimson flash of the familiar flapping coat. At least he had

found the Doctor.

Adric was about to call to him when he was stopped by the solemnity with

which the Doctor was pacing the pillared walk that flanked the quadrangle.

His strange companion seemed deeply troubled.

The Doctor must have sensed that he wasn't alone, because he slowed his

steps and turned. So caught up in his thoughts was he that at first he

appeared not to recognise the dark-haired boy. Then Adric found himself

being beckoned across the quadrangle.

The Doctor wasn't pleased to be disturbed; the cloister room was his

special place for deep, private thinking. 'Whenever you see me in here

pacing up and down like this, be a good chap and don't interrupt. Unless

it's terribly urgent. It's not, is it?'

The boy shook his head. The Doctor shook his too; it was as if there was a

loose thought in there, rattling among the centuries of wisdom.

'Well, now you know. In fact there's no need to come barging in here at

all. If it's terribly urgent you can always ring the cloister bell.'

Adric had never heard of the cloister bell. The Doctor explained that it

was a sort of communications device. 'Reserved for wild catastrophes and

sudden calls to man the battle stations.'

'Battle stations? The TARDIS doesn't have them, surely?'

'Not as such,' the Doctor replied vaguely. 'Still, I sometimes wonder

whether I shouldn't be running a tighter ship.'

He scratched at a nearby pillar. The stone was powdery, like chalk, and a

rivulet of dust cascaded from the point beneath the Doctor's finger. 'I'm

afraid the Second Law of Thermodynamics is taking its toll of the old

thing.'

The Alzarians had given Adric a Badge for Mathematical Excellence, although

his grasp of physics wasn't very good - but on the journey from his home

planet Adric had had plenty of time to learn from the Doctor, and now he

knew about the Earth physicist Maxwell, and his ideas on entropy. Entropy

was the waste energy that builds up in systems, the rust on the wheels, the

weeds in the vegetable garden, the heat that eats away at components in the

computer. Entropy seemed to be much on the Doctor's mind lately.

Maxwell's Second Law of Thermodynamics consisted of two grim words:

'Entropy increases.'

The Doctor sighed. 'The more you put things together the more they keep

falling to bits. That's the essence of the Second Law of Thermodynamics,

and I never heard a truer word spoken. Have you seen the state of the time

column lately? Wheezing like a grampus.'

'It will get us to Gallifrey, won't it?' Adric asked anxiously.

'Gallifrey?' The Doctor spoke the name of his own planet as if it were a

new word in his vocabulary. 'Oh yes . . . Are you really set on visiting

Gallifrey?'

Adric nodded. 'That is where we're going, isn't it?'

The Doctor sat down slowly. Luckily there was a carved stone bench set in

the wall where they were standing, but there quite easily might not have

been. 'That was the very question I was pondering, Adric. In a general way.

There's bound to be a lot of fuss about Romana? Why she stayed behind in E-

Space, official investigations, all that sort of thing . . . '

'The Time Lords won't approve?'

'As a Gallifreyan she's broken the cardinal rule - she's become involved,

and in a pretty permanent sort of way. Perhaps we should let a few oceans

go under the bridge before heading back home.'

Adric smiled to conceal his disappointment. 'And see Gallifrey later?'

The Doctor nodded, but in no very positive way. 'Let me put another idea to

you . . . The place I have in mind isn't too far off our route. Well, sort

of, give or take a parsec or two. It's my home from home.'

He turned to Adric with a grin. 'You'll like it. It's that place called

Earth I was telling you about.'

That same afternoon, outside a cottage house in a quiet village-like street

many hundreds of parsecs from where the Doctor and Adric were, but less

than fifty miles away from all that remained of the unfortunate Constable

Seagrave, a care-worn woman was sitting behind the steering wheel of a

battered sports car that was almost old enough to have been new when she

was a girl. Despite the spring sunshine, she was well wrapped up against

the possibility of cold. There was, as she was fond of saying, no sense in

taking chances with your health.

A young woman in the neat purple uniform of an air stewardess came haring

out of the house, her flight bag bumping at her side. 'Sorry to keep you

waiting, Aunt Vanessa. Let's go.'

Aunt Vanessa hadn't been having much luck with the starter. Each time the

engine fired, then spluttered out.

Tegan was barely twenty years old, but she was used to taking charge. 'More

choke. And easy on the throttle as you turn her over.'

Aunt Vanessa nodded her white fur hat towards the house. 'While I do that,

dear, I wonder if you'd mind shutting the front door.'

Tegan's Australian accent became even broader. 'Oh, rabbits! I promise I'll

get organised one day . . . '

Tegan closed the front door and ran back down the path again. 'Sorry, first

flight nerves, I guess.' In obedience to her niece?s imperious gesture,

Aunt Vanessa abandoned the intractable ignition switch and humped her

bundled-up body across to the passenger seat.

Immediately Tegan pulled the starter the old engine sprang to life.

Clicking on her safety belt reminded her of the training course she had

just completed, and she went into the routine. 'Good evening, passengers.

To ensure continued safety on this flight it is necessary to draw your

attention to the oxygen apparatus situated above each seating position . .

. '

Wary of draughts, Aunt Vanessa hunched further into her fur collar as the

car pulled away from the curb.

Tegan changed smoothly up into third. 'This is brought into operation by

gently pulling the orange tag and placing the mouthpiece over the nose and

mouth. Disposable paper bags, together with our flight magazine, may be

found in the recess in the seat immediately in front of you . . . '

And she drove off down the street. Although she didn't know it then,

Tegan's route was destined to take her past the mysterious police box and

onto a journey very different from the passenger flight her training had

prepared her for ? a journey she would never forget for the rest of the

life.

Adric and the Doctor were walking quickly back through the maze of

corridors to the TARDIS console room. It still puzzled Adric how the Doctor

managed to find his way around the vast craft without a map.

'Earth's the planet with all the oceans, isn't it?' Adric asked as the

Doctor paused at a junction of three identical passages.

'That's the chap.'

'It sounds wet.'

The Doctor set off again with long shambling steps that made it hard for

Adric to keep up. 'Wet it is,' he said. 'At least, where we're going.'

The Doctor had explained once already about the blue boxes, but it hadn't

made much sense to Adric. A lot of what the Doctor said was like that.

According to the Doctor the blue boxes looked more or less like the TARDIS,

but weren't. They had no spacious accommodation, no viewer screens, and

they didn't time-travel . . . Adric didn't see why the Earth people

bothered having them.

The corridor had petered out into a narrow passage. The Doctor stopped in

front of a door. 'They're a sort of elementary communications device.

Telephone boxes, from the Greek. 'Tele' meaning 'a long way', and 'phone'

meaning 'sound', and 'box' meaning . . . ' The Doctor opened the door. It

was a small cupboard. 'Meaning we're lost . . . '

They weren't really, but the Doctor had to ask Adric not to ask any more

questions while he concentrated on finding the way. It was quite some time

before they were back in the console room, and the Doctor was able to

resume a calm explanation of his idea about going to Earth.

'I see,' said Adric. 'We're going to visit one of these boxes that are like

the TARDIS.' It sounded to him like another of the Doctor's typically batty

schemes.

'You're getting your topsy mixed up with your turvy,' the Doctor corrected.

'The TARDIS is very like it! The blue box is what the mathematical model of

the TARDIS exterior is based on.'

The Doctor was at the console, busily setting the co-ordinates for Earth.

Even after several adventures with the Doctor there was so much Adric

didn't understand about the Time Lord and his technology - but he wanted

to, very much.

'Block transfer computation,' the Doctor explained when he had finished at

the console.

A frown creased the smooth young face at his shoulder. 'I've never heard of

that.'

Adric's precocious seriousness amused the Doctor. 'No reason why you

should. Logopolis is a quiet little place - keeps itself to itself.'

'Logopolis? But I thought we were going to Earth.'

'No, Logopolis is the other place. We take the measurements there

afterward.'

Adric was by now thoroughly confused. 'We're going to measure Logopolis?'

'We measure the police box on Earth and then take the measurements to

Logopolis...' said the Doctor patiently. Catching sight of the boy's blank

expression he had the tact to add: 'I'm afraid I'm not explaining this very

well. It's all to do with the problem of the chameleon circuit...'

Adric opened his mouth, on the point of voicing another question. But at

that moment the console room echoed to the sound of what might have been a

big clock bell, deep-toned and stately. It seemed to be coming from a very

long way away, and yet at the same time was somehow sinisterly present in

the room.

The Doctor stopped dead, as if rooted to the spot. The expression on the

Time Lord's face sent a shiver up the boy's spine, and he froze too, and

listened.

It was the first but not the last time Adric was to hear the cloister bell.

The traffic became heavier as they approached London, but Aunt Vanessa's

little car was going splendidly. Tegan enjoyed the rush of wind in her hair

and the feel of the engine under her control. She'd been a natural driver

ever since the age of ten, when her father had first lifted her onto the

springy steel saddle of the tractor on their sheep farm in Australia.

Driving was great. But flying - that was really travelling. Tegan took her

eyes off the road for a moment to glance up at the big blue canopy of the

sky that seemed to go up and up without limit above them. Cars were all

right, they got you moving, but they did keep you stuck on the one level,

reminding you that you were just a little human being like everybody else

with your feet in your shoes and your shoes on the ground.

'Tegan! Look out!' Aunt Vanessa's voice broke abruptly into her

meditations.

The lorry was the size of a brontosaurus compared with Aunt Vanessa's

little mouse of a sports car, and it was cutting in, straight across them,

closing in from the middle lane. Tegan slammed on the brakes and wrenched

the wheel over. The lorry passed in front of them with only inches to spare

and travelled on towards London lumberingly unaware of the terror it had

caused. With a screech of rubber the sports car thumped into the curb and

came to a halt.

'Oh, rabbits!' Tegan exclaimed, jumping out. Through the windscreen she saw

Aunt Vanessa's face peeping out from its nest of white fur in dazed

indignation. 'I'm sorry, Aunt, honestly. I'm usually a pretty good driver.'

There wasn't any damage done to the body-work, but when Tegan saw the

front nearside tyre her heart sank. 'Aunt Vanessa, it's a blow out.'

The elderly bundle of fur extracted itself from the passenger seat to have

a look. 'So it is. Dear me.' She was taking it quite sportingly,

considering, Tegan thought. 'Well,' said Aunt Vanessa, 'what do we do now?'

Unknown to them that question was already decided. Perhaps Fate is always

lying in wait a few yards up the road; in this case for Tegan and her Aunt

Vanessa it was already in view. If they hadn't both been hypnotised by the

immediate but relatively trivial flat-tyre disaster that loomed so large in

their minds, they could have spotted it from where they stood.

It took the unusual shape of a blue police box. An abandoned bicycle was

leaning against it, the small door that housed the telephone was open, and

from it dangled the receiver on the end of its cord.

Adric listened. Apart from the wheezing of the time column as it heaved up

and down in the middle of the console, all was quiet. Adric found himself

oddly disappointed. 'The cloister bell's stopped.'

The Doctor nodded gravely.

'What does it mean, Doctor?'

'Nothing very much when it's not sounding.' The Doctor was trying to make a

joke of it, but Adric could see that the Time Lord regarded the cloister

bell as far from funny.

'But something must have made it ring?'

The Doctor bristled at the question. 'Not necessarily. It could well be our

old friend entropy crumbling away at the systems circuitry. We'd better

check the main logic junction.'

With a quick glance at the console to make sure the flight to Earth was on

track, the Doctor swept out of the console room. Adric followed.

'Is that something to do with the chameleon circuit you were telling me

about?' Adric asked.

The Doctor said that it wasn't, and went on to explain that while he didn't

mind being pestered with questions in the normal course of events - didn't

mind at all, in fact found the boy's ceaseless interrogation of anything

and everything rather stimulating - there were times (and this was one of

them) when whys were unwise and silence was golden . . .

They travelled down the corridors without saying another word, and the

Doctor wrapped his own dark thoughts around himself, with faint sighs and

mumbles escaping his lips from time to time.

Eventually they came to a large oval arch set into the wall of the

corridor. It framed a kind of panel made of a translucent material that

Adric discovered to be oddly heavy as he helped the Doctor lift it down.

Behind the panel was what looked like a mass of fine grey hair, except that

if you looked closely you could see that each hair had a tiny light that

moved up and down its length. The effect was dazzling; the thing seemed to

be alive.

The Doctor poked the hair with his finger, and the lights flickered in

response.

'Nothing wrong with the main logic junction, then.' He signalled to Adric

to help him put the panel back. 'Well, if the intermittent fault wasn't

inside the TARDIS it must be outside the TARDIS. Someone must be trying to

get in touch with us. Long way away, poor reception.'

They began walking back the way they had come. The Doctor turned to Adric,

as if seeking a second opinion. 'Don't you think?'

'Why ask me?' There was a sulky note in Adric's voice. 'I don't know

anything about it. And I won't know anything if you don't tell me.'

The Doctor put his hand on the boy's shoulder. 'Sorry I snapped. I'm not

quite myself at the moment. What do you want to know?'

So as they made their way back to the console room the Doctor gave the boy

a brief outline of the chameleon circuit, simplifying the maths to a few

concurrent transcendental equations to convey the general picture. At least

it explained how the inside of the TARDIS came to be bigger than the

outside.

The boy was quick to pick up the main point. 'So the inside space, where we

are now, is non-existential?'

'The dimensions are real enough, but they don't quite join up in the usual

way.'

'They couldn't, could they. Not if the exterior of the TARDIS only exists

as a real space/time event and has to be mapped on to one of the interior

continuums.'

The Doctor nodded. 'Precisely. Very good.'

'So you can turn it into anything you like?'

'Ah? a very sore point. Yes - according to the handbook - the outer plasmic

shell of the TARDIS is driven by the chameleon circuit.' But what the

handbook said and what the TARDIS actually did were two rather different

things, as the Doctor had long ago discovered.

'In theory,' said the Doctor, 'the TARDIS can change its appearance more or

less infinitely. In practice, however . . . '

The Doctor's voice tailed off. He had come to a halt in front of one of the

doors. 'I always meant to get Romana to help me fix it one day'

The door was like all the others in the corridor. Rather oddly, almost as a

ritual, the Doctor pushed it open. As Adric glimpsed the familiar

furnishings, the soft curtains and the glass ornaments, he felt a pang for

the absent occupant. She was at the Gateway with Biroc and the Tharils, and

he had reconciled himself to the fact that there was no chance in the world

of seeing her again. But he had completely forgotten about her room. That

was a shock; it was as if part of her were still here after all.

'I suppose we're going to miss her and K9,' said the Doctor in a voice that

suggested the thought had only just struck him. He looked down at Adric,

and the boy nodded, stuck for words.

The Doctor took a deep breath. 'But . . . the future lies . . . '

He looked up and down the corridor, pondering for a moment, as if not

exactly sure which way the future did lie. Then he drew the door of

Romana's room firmly shut and pointed to a branch of the corridor that ran

off to the right.

'This way,' said the Doctor.

The time column was still oscillating uneasily when the Doctor and Adric

got back to the console room. Silence seemed no longer to be golden for the

Doctor; he was talking non-stop and Adric could hardly get a word in.

' . . . which would all be perfectly fine, except that the chameleon

circuit's stuck. I first noticed it that time in the Totter's Yard, and

that was many years ago. Come to think of it, there was probably something

up with it even before that. She was in for repairs on Gallifrey at the

very beginning of things . . . When I first . . . borrowed her.'

'Borrowed her?' Adric was able to interject. Rather worryingly, the Doctor

had vanished. Yet the voice continued . . .

'On a sort of finder's keeper's basis. I should have waited until they

fitted the new version of the chameleon circuit. But there were pressing

reasons for my departure at the time.' His voice was coming from under the

console unit. Adric walked round it to find the Doctor on his hand and

knees working at something on the undersufface. 'Ah, that's got it . . . '

said the Doctor.

Adric jumped back as a panel rose vertically up out of the console under

his nose, and then hinged forwards to form a horizontal table. The boy

found himself looking down at a keyboard with numbers and letters.

A lean Gallifreyan digit prodded a button on the console and the viewer

screen opened. The full set of fingers danced briefly across the keys of

the startling new keyboard, and soon the screen showed a shimmering blue

outline picture Adric recognised.

'The TARDIS exterior!'

'Right. Now in theory, you should be able to do things like this . . . '

The keyboard rattled as the Doctor entered in some more numbers and

letters. While Adric watched, the picture on the screen slowly transformed

into a solid triangular shape.

'A tetrahedron,' said the boy knowingly.

'Roughly, yes. Egyptian idea. A pyramid.' The Doctor worked at the keyboard

again and an opening appeared in one of the sides of the object.

Adric was doubtful. 'Yes, I suppose that's useful.'

'Useful? A door's essential. We've got to be able to get in and out.'

'No, I mean being able to change like that.'

'Quintessential,' said the Doctor. 'Remember the Master.'

It was the first time since they had left Traken that the Doctor had

mentioned his deadly enemy by name. He said it lightly, with no special

emphasis. But even so Adric shivered at this reminder of the evil renegade

Time Lord who had plunged the home planet of his friend Nyssa into darkness

and confusion.

'If the chameleon circuit were working,' the Doctor mused, reaching for a

lever on the console, 'I'd only have to pull this . . . and we'd be a

pyramid.'

The Doctor turned to Adric with a shrug. The picture on the screen had

reverted to the police box shape. 'Can't get away from it, you see.'

He seemed to need cheering up, so Adric said: 'But why do you want to? It's

sort of distinctive. A friendly sight, to look at.'

'And a sight too easy to look for. I'm not sure we should be distinctive.'

Suddenly Adric understood the Doctor's concern about the chameleon circuit.

The Master's own TARDIS had been in good repair, so he had been able to

disguise it as something the Trakens thought was a harmless old statue. But

the Doctor's vehicle was stuck in the shape of a blue police box - surely

one of the most conspicuous objects in the universe.

'It's not as if anybody's looking for us,' said Adric. 'You've disposed of

the Master now. '

'Yes . . . I did, didn't I?' the Doctor replied, with a certain unease that

left an almost tangible silence hanging in the air for a moment or two. In

his mind's eye Adric could still see the terrifying blaze of colour around

the Keeper's Chair as the Master had met his fate.

The Doctor cleared his throat. 'It may just be nonsense . . . but since we

left Traken I've been feeling rather unsure about that . . . And then when

the cloister bell rang . . . '

The Doctor's eye fell on a small display screen set into the console, and

in a blink of the eye he had thrown off the mood that had gripped him. He

grinned at Adric. 'Ah, Earth,' exclaimed the Doctor, as if those dark

thoughts were now a million miles away. 'Nearly there!'

Aunt Vanessa looked down at the grass verge under her feet and worried

about the rheumatic diseases that struck upwards from damp ground, even

through sensible shoes and two pairs of stockings. Cars and lorries were

whizzing along the by-pass not ten feet from where they stood, but none of

them showed any signs of stopping to help. 'I really think we should

telephone for help, dear.'

Tegan shook her head. 'Feeble. We'll crack this ourselves, or not at all.'

Her rummage in the boot had brought to light a greasy metal tube with a rod

running through it at right-angles. 'Wheel spanner. Just the job.'

Getting the hubcap off was easy. She jiggled the wheel spanner onto one of

the nuts and stood on the lever. Eventually the nut came free, but as it

turned it seemed to release a mysterious whirring, chuffing sound, which

Tegan vaguely associated with the remaining air escaping from the tyre.

Aunt Vanessa heard it too, coming from behind her. She looked round, but

there was nothing there - only a couple of blue police boxes.

'By the way, dear,' said Aunt Vanessa, not wanting to interfere, but it did

look dangerous, 'don't you think we should put a jack under there before

you take the wheel off? They always do it that way in the films.'

Tegan straightened up. The dear old cinema-goer was perfectly right, of

course. Tegan strode round to the boot again.

Rabbits, rabbits, rabbits!

The time column had stopped oscillating, and Adric knew this meant the

TARDIS had come to the end of its journey. At a nod from the Doctor he

worked the lever that opened the viewer screen.

The shutters parted to reveal a broad expanse of some flat grey surface on

which coloured objects streamed in both directions. Adric guessed it had

been carved out of the countryside, because you could see the greenness and

trees on either side. The coloured objects had wheels, and as you looked

closer you could see they were primitive vehicles, with people inside.

Close to them was a blue box, exactly like the TARDIS.

'We've missed,' said the Doctor.

'What's supposed to happen?' asked Adric.

'I usually suppose we're going to miss.' The Doctor threw a disapproving

glance at the console, and seemed to be addressing it directly. 'I just

thought it might make a pleasant change to materialise on the right co-

ordinates.' He checked some of the console settings, and made a quick

calculation in his head. 'Two point six metres off target. What a landing!'

'That's not bad,' Adric pointed out, in fairness to the old TARDIS.

'That's what I said - what a landing!'

Adric instinctively reached for the lever that worked the exit door, but

the Doctor stopped him.

'Aren't we going out there to measure it?'

The Doctor shook his head. 'No need to draw attention to ourselves. The

TARDIS and I are getting rather better at these short hops.'

And the Doctor leaned over the console, gingerly resetting the co-

ordinates.

Aunt Vanessa and her niece had been too busy to notice the arrival of a

second police box on the verge of the Barnet by-pass, so they certainly

didn't notice its dematerialisation. Passers-by in their cars who were not

too caught up in their own small immediate destinies might have seen -

though nobody did - one of the big blue roadside objects shimmer into

translucency and depart. By not seeing it, nobody was misled - for in fact

the TARDIS did not depart.

To be precise, what happened was this. At one moment there were two police

boxes side by side. They seemed identical, though a close observer might

have noticed that from one the telephone receiver dangled loosely on its

cord, and the light on top of the other had begun to flash.

And at the next moment there was only one police box. It was the one with

the dangling cord, but the cord was no longer dangling. An Earth person

watching from the verge would have found this very puzzling. But like a lot

of problems the solution was simple from the inside.

Adric was on the inside. 'You've materialised around it!' the boy

exclaimed.

The blue shape was swimming into focus inside the TARDIS console room: a

police box with a dangling telephone.

'With considerable finesse, as I hope you noticed.' The Doctor stepped

forward to inspect it, something close to a smirk of satisfaction on his

face.

But the boy was worried. 'Are you sure it isn't another TARDIS, Doctor?'

'I hope not. That would produce some very unpleasant dimensional anomalies.

No, it's just an ordinary police box.'

There was an official-looking notice on a small panel set into the door:

Police Telephone Free for Use of Public. Advice and Assistance Obtainable

Immediately. Officers and Cars Respond to Urgent Calls. Pull to Open.

Adric had seen identical wording on the outside of the TARDIS, and had

taken it to be some sort of joke of the Doctor's. Officers and Cars had

never, to his knowledge, responded to Urgent Calls, although there were

several occasions when he and the Doctor could have used a little extra

help.

He reached for the thing dangling on the end of a cord in order to tidy it

away in the little box in the front door, but the Doctor quickly took it

from him. 'Best not to touch,' the Doctor said. 'Heisenberg's Uncertainty

Principle, and so forth.'

'What's that?' the boy asked.

'I'm not entirely certain. Something to do with not being able to measure

an object without disturbing it.'

The Doctor looked at the phone in his hand, and then waved it at Adric.

'Disturbed it already, you see.' He paused to debate with himself for a

moment whether to leave the phone as it was or hang up. Then he hung up the

phone and delicately shut the little door.

The Doctor seemed to know an awful lot of people with Rules and Theories

and Principles. Adric opened his mouth to ask more about Mr Heisenberg, but

the Time Lord shushed him with the gesture of a finger to his lips, and

took a folding steel ruler from his pocket. 'Get something to write with

and take these dimensions down,' said the Doctor. 'I've been meaning to do

this for centuries.'

The handle of the jack was so stiff that Aunt Vanessa had to help Tegan

with it, which Tegan privately viewed as one small triumph in an afternoon

of defeat. Together they managed to get the car propped up, then Tegan

showed Aunt Vanessa how to work the wheel spanner, and went round to the

boot again. She glanced at her watch as she hauled the spare tyre out. It

was a good job they'd left Aunt Vanessa's house in plenty of time. There

was no panic yet - as long as nothing else went wrong.

'I'm so sorry,' said Aunt Vanessa, taking a very early rest from her

efforts. 'What a thing to happen on your first day.'

The wheel was caught up in the tangle of a string shopping bag and a dog

lead and an old cardigan with holes in the elbows. 'Car's are OK,' said

Tegan, 'but I guess I'm just spoiled with having our own plane back home.'

It was a Cessna, and Tegan's father had taught her to fly, though he said

she was still a little too impetuous to go solo.

The moment Tegan dropped the tyre onto the verge she knew something was

wrong. It wasn't heavy enough, and it didn't bounce with the sort of

ringing sound you expect from a properly inflated tyre. She looked up

accusingly at Aunt Vanessa. 'What kind of a maintenance schedule are you

running here, Aunt V! This tyre's completely flat too!'

Aunt Vanessa smiled a faint disarming smile that had always stood her in

good stead when people from strange religious sects turned up on the

doorstep. Tegan knew the smile of old, and refused to be warmed.

She turned away and looked about her, as if seeking help from elsewhere. On

the far side of the road, beyond the rushing traffic of all those people in

cars who quite infuriatingly were getting where they wanted to go with no

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DOCTORWHOLOGOPOLISChristopherH.BidmeadBasedontheBBCtelevisionserialbyChristopherH.BidmeadbyarrangementwiththeBritishBroadcastingCorporation1.Eventscastshadowsbeforethem,butthehugershadowscreepoverusunseen.Whensomegreatcircumstance,hoveringsomewhereinthefuture,isacatastropheofincalculableconsequence,...

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041 - Doctor Who - Logopolis

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