The Sylyx: Part Two
"Too bad K-9 isn't here," said Adric. He had only known K-9 for a short time, but it had been long enough for him to learn that there was very little that wasn't stored in the robotic dog's memory banks. That meant there was probably something about Sylyxes in there somewhere, ready to be accessed in response to a query from one of the TARDIS crew. There might even have been data on some inherent weakness in the creatures, one which the Doctor and his companions could use to their advantage.
"Well, he isn't," said the Doctor, resisting the urge to tell Adric to keep quiet if he had nothing useful to contribute. However, he had to admit that K-9 could have been invaluable in a situation like this, not only because of the data he contained, but because, as an inorganic entity, there were things he could do that beings of flesh and blood could not. But the Doctor quickly dismissed the thought; of the two versions of K-9 that had travelled with him, one was on Gallifrey with Leela and the other (the version Adric had known) was in E-Space with Romana. The Doctor had also built a third K-9, which he had left on Earth as a gift for his old friend, Sarah Jane. Which meant there would be no help from any version of the robot dog this time . . . "So we'll just have to figure this one out ourselves."
"What do you know about the Sylyx?" asked Nyssa, wondering how the Doctor planned to tackle the creature. She recalled the desiccated corpses she and the others had found while exploring the ship, all of them drained of their life-force and reduced to empty husks. And the same fate awaited herself, plus the Doctor, Tegan and Adric unless the Sylyx was stopped.
"Only what I've already told you." There was nothing else for it, the Doctor realised. He and his companions would have to go back out there and take their chances with the Sylyx if they were to have any hope of getting out of here. The TARDIS was immobilised by an outside influence and the Doctor knew from past experience that it would stay immobilised until the source of the problem was dealt with. The trouble was, where to begin . . .
Since the TARDIS controls were currently not working, the Doctor had to use an emergency handle to open the doors manually. It wasn't the first time he had had to do this, he recalled, remembering the time the TARDIS had been affected by the power drain caused by a sentient city on the planet Exxilon, but it was the first time he had done it since meeting any of his current companions. He cranked the doors open a crack and peered out, checking for any signs of the Sylyx; finding nothing, he opened the doors properly and told his companions to follow him.
"Great," Tegan said once the four of them were standing in the corridor once more. "What are we supposed to do now?" She was only here because the Doctor was her only hope of getting home; she would much rather have stayed in the TARDIS where the Sylyx couldn't get at her. But she dared not take the chance, dared not risk letting the man who was her "insurance policy" out of her sight.
"We split up," the Doctor replied. Then, before any of his companions could protest, he hurried on. "The Sylyx can't teleport in two directions at once. So, if we divide into pairs, there's a chance it won't know which pair to go for first - that should give us the time we need to find out how to deal with it." He clapped his hands together. "Right! Tegan, Nyssa, you two go that way," he said, pointing towards the rear of the ship. "Adric and I will head for the flight-deck and have a look round." Then, as a thought occurred to him, he pulled out his sonic screwdriver and handed it to Nyssa. "You might need this."
"But what about you and Adric?" Nyssa asked, looking down at the screwdriver in her hand.
"Well, I've only got one sonic screwdriver," the Doctor told her. "And I haven't got time to build a spare." Then, seeing that Nyssa still looked doubtful, he hurried on. "Look, you two go on - Adric and I will be all right." Nyssa, knowing from the expression on the Doctor's face that he meant what he said, did as she had been instructed and headed towards the rear of the ship. Tegan, however, stayed put, her arms folded and an expression which clearly said she did not think much of this plan etched on her face.
"Really?" she said. "And what happens if the Sylyx catches you? How am I supposed to get to Heathrow then? Have you thought about that?" The thought of the desiccated corpses she and the others had found on this craft filled her with horror; she had always prided herself on being able to handle most things that came her way, but she was not equiped to deal with situations like this. Add to that the fact that the Doctor was prepared to risk his life (and Adric's, though she thought the young Alzarian could be a little overbearing at times) and she found herself longing to give him a piece of her mind. Not only that, the Doctor had promised to get her to the airport in time for her flight, a promise he would have considerable difficulty keeping if the Sylyx caught him.
"Look," the Doctor said, straining to keep a note of impatience from creeping into his voice, "I'll keep my promise. But I can't do anything while the Sylyx has the TARDIS immobilised. So the sooner you do as you're told, the sooner we'll get out of here."
Even Tegan knew not to push her luck too far and contented herself with muttering: "Men!" in an exasperated tone, before hurrying after Nyssa.
Once Tegan and Nyssa were out of sight, the Doctor turned his attention to Adric. "Right, follow me. And this time I mean follow," he added. With a Sylyx on the loose, the last thing he wanted was for Adric to go off on his own again. He had always made a point of warning his companions not to wander off, but it was a rule that seemed to get broken on a fairly regular basis. Perhaps the fright Adric had received during his earlier encounter with the Sylyx would be enough to deter him from taking any more detours, but the Doctor knew how reckless the boy could be.
For once, however, Adric did not seem to be in the mood to disobey orders and hurried after the Doctor as the latter headed in the direction of the flight deck. Neither of them had any idea what they were going to find there, though the Doctor hoped the onboard computer might still be working and that this could provide some clues as to this craft's planet of origin. Not that he had any real need to know, but finding out would give him something to do while he worked on a solution to a more pressing problem, namely getting rid of the Sylyx. Though he had never encountered one of the creatures before, he knew they were dangerous, that a Sylyx which infiltrated a spacecraft would not rest until it had wiped out every living thing on board, before moving on to its next target, and the next, and the next . . .
"Doctor," Adric said, as he and the Doctor hurried up the corridor which led to the flight-deck, "are Tegan and Nyssa going to be all right?"
"Oh, I should think so," the Doctor replied, shrugging. "Don't forget, they've got the sonic screwdriver."
"But they're female; that means they're not as rational as us."
"Now, don't make sweeping assumptions, Adric," the Doctor said, sensing that the boy was about to switch into "know-it-all" mode. He did not know if the kind of patronising attitude Adric's remark displayed was typical of Alzarian males, but Adric was not on Alzarius anymore, or even in E-Space. "We males don't have a monopoly on rational thinking." Besides, he added silently, there were times when irrational thinking and intuitive reasoning could be just as valuable. It was what distinguished living organisms from even the most sophisticated robots, such as the Movellans, who appeared to be organic at first glance but whose true nature was betrayed by their rigidly logical thought processes. Of course, they were currently the last thing on the Doctor's mind.
"And," the Doctor went on, "just because Tegan and Nyssa are female doesn't mean . . ."
But exactly what Tegan and Nyssa's gender didn't mean was destined to remain unspoken. At that moment, the Doctor and Adric found something blocking the corridor ahead, something big, something grey, something tentacled. The Sylyx - and it looked like it meant business. The Doctor, remembering his previous encounter with the creature, instinctively reached into his pocket for his sonic screwdriver, only to come up empty-handed. "Oh, of course!" he said with a touch of frustration. "I gave it to Nyssa." Which, he reflected, meant it was just his luck that he and Adric should be the ones the Sylyx chose to target.
The Doctor knew he and Adric had three options. Try to get past the Sylyx, easier said than done when neither of them had the sonic screwdriver (or any other noise-making device) with him; make a run for it and try to meet up with Tegan and Nyssa, though the Sylyx could easily get ahead of them thanks to its ability to teleport; return to the TARDIS, which was currently immobilised. Whichever course of action he and Adric took presented problems, but the only alternative was to stay put and let the Sylyx catch them.
"Don't you think we should be heading back to the TARDIS?"
Tegan had asked this several times already, but Nyssa had been engrossed in doing something with the sonic screwdriver (which she was currently holding like a tracking device) and had not replied. This time, however, she did. "And what good would that do? Until we find a way to deal with the Sylyx, the TARDIS isn't going anywhere - and neither are we." She said this in her usual matter-of-fact tone, but Tegan was not in the mood to listen to reason.
"Well, it's better than what we're doing now," she shot back. "Which is wandering around a spaceship with a monster on the loose! And suppose that . . . thing's got the Doctor and Adric!" As annoying as she had often found Adric in the short time she had known him, Tegan realised she did not wish anything bad would happen to the boy - and ending up desiccated like the Sylyx's previous victims ranked pretty high in her list of bad things. And she still needed the Doctor to get her back to Heathrow, where the most she would have to worry about was male passengers who couldn't keep their hands to themselves. "You can stay if you want, but I'm going back to the TARDIS," she added. Then, before Nyssa could stop her, she stormed off in the direction the two of them had just come.
Nyssa had never met someone as headstrong as Tegan before, someone who would do whatever it took to get her own way. It was obvious to the young Traken that Tegan would not be happy until she was back in her own time and, since the Doctor had failed to get her home, she was prepared to take matters into her own hands. But surely even Tegan wouldn't attempt to move the TARDIS herself, not when she knew the Sylyx still had it immobilised. Besides, they still didn't know how to deal with the Sylyx, what its weaknesses were or anything like that. Nyssa sighed as she realised she had no choice but to go after Tegan and try to make her see sense.
The Doctor and Adric stood side-by-side, watching the Sylyx to see what it was going to do next. The creature was studying the two male humanoids, almost as if it was trying to decide which of them it should go for first. Indeed, it was studying them, but not for the reason the Doctor and Adric feared; rather it was studying them to find out what species they were. Sylyxes do not "see" in the sense that a humanoid would understand the word, but they can detect the basic bodyform and approximate age of any living organism. This Sylyx could sense one life-form that was not quite fully adult and another that was centuries old but had the body of someone considerably younger.
And it knew by some deep instinct that it was the older of the pair who was the key to the strange box it had tried to infiltrate earlier. And, in the same instant, it realised where the older male came from - and what he was. A Time Lord, one of the most powerful races in existence and a serious threat; few races could match the Time Lords when it came to mental powers. Fortunately, most Time Lords were content simply to observe and never interfered in the affairs of others, but the Sylyx could sense that this one was different, that he was concerned for the three young people who had arrived with him. And the Sylyx was going to use that concern to its advantage.
Before the Doctor could stop it, it extended its tentacle and pressed it against Adric's forehead. The Doctor looked on in horror, expecting to see Adric turn into a desiccated shell, but the boy simply stayed where he was, though his brown eyes did become strangely unfocused. And, when he spoke, it was in a voice very unlike his own, a voice which sounded powerful but also menacing, the sort of voice which would terrify almost anyone who heard it.
"You are the Doctor."
The Doctor did not reply; he knew it was not Adric speaking, that the Sylyx was simply using the Alzarian as a living puppet. He had seen this kind of thing before: a creature, incapable of verbal speech itself, taking control of another living being in order to communicate. The Doctor did not have to question how the Sylyx knew who he was; it must have read Adric's mind and absorbed everything the boy knew about him. Then, it had started projecting its voice through Adric in order to communicate.
Still using Adric as a puppet, the Sylyx continued in the same menacing tone. "You will reveal to me the secret of your time-travel machine, the TARDIS, so that I may use it to travel anywhere in time and space. With your help, Doctor, the Sylyx race will have mastery over all."
But the Doctor had heard similar statements before, from members of various races. And he was no more impressed this time than he had been on previous occasions; megalomaniacs were all the same in his opinion, not caring what happened to anyone else so long as they got the power they craved. "It won't be as easy as you think," he told the Sylyx, with more bravado than he felt. "The TARDIS needs very careful handling."
"In that case, I'll give you an ultimatum. Reveal the secret - or I'll teleport out of this ship and take the boy with me!"
"No!" The Doctor knew what would happen to Adric if he entered the vacuum of space without a space helmet; he had already seen it happen to Katarina and countless others. The Sylyx could survive in outer space for long periods, but a humanoid would perish almost instantly. On the other hand, there was no way he was going to reveal any of the TARDIS's secrets to a creature like the Sylyx; there was no telling how much damage it would do if it gained access to all of time and space. His one slim hope of avoiding the dilemma was that the Sylyx was bluffing. "If you do that, you won't learn anything!" he shouted, his voice rising in pitch as it often did under stress.
"But are you willing to take the chance? The boy looks on you as a father figure - would you betray his trust?"
The Doctor knew the Sylyx was manipulating him, playing on his heroic instincts. Even if he told the creature what it wanted to know, there would be nothing to stop it from desiccating himself and Adric anyway; they would be of no further use to it. After that, the Sylyx would go after Tegan and Nyssa, then, armed with the knowledge it had forced from the Doctor, begin a rampage through time and space. A Sylyx was dangerous at the best of times, but one that knew even a fraction of the Time Lords' secrets . . .
In the end, the Doctor was saved from having to make a decision which could spell disaster for the whole of creation. Nyssa appeared around the corner with Tegan close behind her; having found the TARDIS still immobilised, the two friends had decided the best course of action was to find the Doctor and Adric. Or rather Tegan had insisted on it. The Doctor's first instinct was to tell them to get away, but then he remembered how the Sylyx had backed off when he gave it a taste of his sonic screwdriver earlier.
"Nyssa!" he shouted. "Use the screwdriver!" It was only a temporary solution, but it should stun the Sylyx long enough for the four of them to get away.
Nyssa pulled the sonic screwdriver out of her pocket and held it at arm's length as she activated it, sending a pulse of high-pitched sound in the Sylyx's direction. As it had before, the Sylyx backed off immediately and stopped attacking. In the process, it lost its hold on Adric, who stood looking as though he had no memory of the last few minutes but otherwise seemed unhurt. Even so, the Doctor wasn't about to take chances. "Adric, are you all right?" he asked.
Adric blinked, confused; the last thing he remembered was that he and the Doctor had been heading for the flight deck when they found the Sylyx blocking their path. Everything that had happened to him in the minutes since was lost to him; he had no idea what the Doctor was talking about, nor how Tegan and Nyssa came to be here. He opened his mouth to ask, but the Doctor stalled Adric's question with one of his own. "Quick, tell me. What is a prime number?"
Adric felt somewhat insulted that the Doctor had asked what was, to the young Alzarian, a very basic maths question, but he answered nevertheless. "A number only wholly divisible by itself and one. I learned that when I was six years old," he added for no reason other than to remind everyone present that he was a mathematical genius. And, just in case it wasn't already obvious enough, he pointed to the badge for mathematical excellence pinned to his shirt.
"Good, no harm done," said the Doctor, before Tegan could butt in and tell Adric to stop being such a know-it-all. He looked at the still-stunned Sylyx, then at his three companions, before making a decision. "Right, change of plan. We're all going back to the TARDIS." But, just as he was about to head in that direction, he noticed Tegan looked at him in a way which said she thought this was the most ridiculous plan in the Universe.
"And what good will that do?" With that thing . . ." She nodded towards the Sylyx. " . . . around, that crate of yours isn't going anywhere."
The Doctor bristled slightly at hearing his TARDIS described as a "crate", but he quickly regained his composure. "Perhaps not," he told her. "However, it does contain some items that might be useful for dealing with our friendly neighbourhood Sylyx." And, without further explanation, he shepherded his three companions together and led them towards the TARDIS.
As soon as everyone was back on board the TARDIS, the Doctor began to outline his plan, a plan which had occurred to him after he had twice seen the Sylyx's reaction to the sonic screwdriver. "But the screwdriver alone won't be enough," he explained. "Even if I crank it up to its highest setting. So . . ." He strolled over to Nyssa and Adric, who were standing next to the console, and rested his hands on their shoulders. "So we're going to build a sonic amplifier. Or, rather, Nyssa and I are. Adric, I'll need you to do a few calculations."
"Great," said Tegan, rolling her eyes as she realised she was being left out of the Doctor's plan. True, from what she could tell, it involved a load of scientific mumbo jumbo she couldn't begin to understand, but she hated just standing around doing nothing. "And what am I supposed to do?" Of course, what she wanted to do was get back to her own time, but that clearly wasn't an option at the moment.
"Just trust us," was all the Doctor said, before he, Nyssa and Adric left the Console Room and headed for the laboratory.
"Whatever you say, Doc," Tegan muttered, seconds after Adric had closed the door behind him. She looked at the console and sighed; if it wasn't for the Sylyx draining the TARDIS's energy, she could have a crack at getting out of here. After all, how hard could it be to pilot a TARDIS? All you had to do was press a switch and the machine would take you to wherever you wanted to go. Or not, as the case may be . . .
Recalling that it was the Doctor's incompetence that had landed everyone in this mess in the first place, Tegan mentally reeled off the long tirade to which she would subject the Time Lord when she next saw him. She had given him a specific place and time and she had expected to be delivered to that place and time. Apart from anything else, she had a job to do, not that the Doctor seemed to realise that.
Eventually, after what felt like an interminable wait, the door to the Console Room opened and the Doctor appeared, carrying the most bizarre-looking device Tegan had ever seen and followed by Nyssa and Adric, both of whom were carrying two sets of headphones. Tegan was not sure what she had been expecting, but she had a feeling it wasn't the strange device the Doctor was carrying. The sonic amplifier (there was nothing else the device could be) seemed to be based around an old dansette record player that had had various accoutrements, most of which Tegan could not begin to name, added to it. The young Australian woman fixed the Doctor with a look which said she thought he was completely mad.
The Doctor ignored Tegan's look. "Right," he said, addressing all three of his companions, "let's go and take care of that Sylyx." But, even as he spoke, doubts began to creep into his mind; he didn't even know if this plan would work. If it didn't, the Sylyx was sure to find a way to make him reveal the secrets it had tried to force from him earlier. And that could not only lead to it claiming four more victims, but also to it gaining access to secrets only a Time Lord was supposed to know. No, he must not think like that. So he quickly dismissed any thoughts of potential failure and ushered his companions out of the TARDIS.
As soon as they were all out in the corridor, the Doctor turned to his companions and began to outline his plan. His theory was that the Sylyx, which had no use for a sense of hearing in the vacuum of space, was sensitive to sonic vibrations, as suggested by the way it reacted to the sonic screwdriver. "So, if we can produce a note of the right pitch and sustain it for long enough," he explained, "it should take care of the Sylyx for good."
"You mean kill it?" asked Nyssa, who found the idea of destroying any living thing troubling.
The Doctor nodded grimly. "I don't like it any more than you," he told her. "But I can't let a creature like that learn any Time Lord secrets. It would threaten the whole created Universe - that's why we've got to stop it." Without saying another word, he set off down the corridor, as his companions followed him.
As they walked, a troubling thought occurred to Tegan. "Doctor," she said, "how exactly are we going to find the Sylyx? It could be anywhere in this ship."
"No need to worry about that, Tegan," the Doctor replied, speaking a little too airily for Tegan's liking.
"And why not?" Tegan said, biting back the diatribe she longed to unleash on the Doctor. The four of them were risking their lives here - and the Doctor was acting as though this was a Sunday school outing. Clearly, she thought, the fall from the radio telescope at the Pharos Project had done more than cause the Doctor's appearance to change, not that she had had much chance to get to know his previous incarnation; it had also unhinged him. And this was the man she was counting on to get her home.
"Because," the Doctor replied, "we don't have to find it. It will find us."