Doctor Who: The Highest Science by Gareth Roberts

Author:Gareth Roberts
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science-Fiction:Doctor Who
ISBN: 9780426203773
Publisher: London Bridge
Published: 1993-03-15T10:00:00+00:00

* * *

The cold could have killed them. Bernice shivered inside her coat as she ran the last few feet to the stones. Only the promise of an answer to the mystery of her blanked out past kept her going. She had stopped to drink from a can on the way up, caring little now for what it might be doing to her. All that she knew was that she needed it.

She found the three others standing disconsolately between the jagged stones. For that was what they were. Nothing more than blank, toppled chunks of rock. There were no inscriptions or markings. Only the precision of their linear positioning suggested that they had any significance at all.

They crowded forward silently. In response to the unasked question she handed them the last cans.

‘That’s it. There’s no more,’ she told them.

‘We’ll survive,’ said Sendei, with an optimism she could tell he didn’t feel. ‘There’s water here.’

She laughed and pointed to the can in his hand. ‘That isn’t water.’

She looked around. A huge dark rock, at least two hundred feet high, reared up a short distance away. It was hard to make out its shape in the darkness. It was bulky and rotund at the base and tapered into slender points at the top.

Slender points. Or could they be slender spires?

She ran over to the rock and touched it. Its surface was worn and rough, but her fingers could make out irregular indentations and shallow groove markings.

She stepped back and looked up again. This was the temple.

‘Sendei!’ she called. ‘Sendei, come over here! Look!’

All three youths ran over.

‘What gives?’ Rodo asked, confused.

‘This,’ she said, patting the stone. ‘This is the temple.’

‘The Temple of the Event Shift,’ Molassi said slowly. ‘Here the Wizard King meets the Lady of the Moonlight.’

He ran wildly around the temple, his boots crunching in the thin soil. They heard him give a cry of wonder from the other side and followed him.

Molassi had passed through a tiny opening that could just be made out in the dim light. It had obviously once been a door, but the stone lintel above had given way centuries before. Whatever decorative covering had concealed the entrance had likewise rotted into dust.

Rodo made to follow Molassi. Bernice halted him. ‘Do you think that’s wise?’

He shook her off aggressively. ‘This is it, girl!’ he snarled. ‘The Temple of the Event Shift! Molassi was right, Zagrat was right!’

He slipped himself through the gap. The jangling of his chains and bells was swallowed up by the blackness.

Sendei wasn’t ashamed to show his fear. ‘I suppose we’d better go in,’ he said with trepidation.

‘At least wait until it’s light,’ Bernice advised him. She spoke with sudden authority. ‘One doesn’t go blundering into unsound structures without a light source at the best of times. Would you go potholing without a rope?’

Sendei licked his lips. ‘I owe it to them,’ he said. ‘We were brought here together. There must be a reason.’

Bernice frowned. ‘You told me you didn’t owe them anything.

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