Victoria's surroundings had changed abruptly from the palace gardens to a small room, dimly lit by high fluorescent panels, whose walls seemed to be hewn from some kind of reddish sandstone. She was standing on a triangular platform facing a tall door split neatly down the middle and slightly ajar. Both door and platform seemed to be made of the same metal as the plate she had stepped on in the garden, and the floor was some kind of textured rubbery stuff. A sort of table or shelf stood in one corner, covered with nameless bits of machinery, and there was a metal rectangle set into one wall, a computer panel with lights and buttons and gauges labeled in a strange language and script. A thick layer of dust covered all the surfaces and it immediately set Victoria sneezing. She stumbled off the platform, casting wildly about her for anything in the least familiar and sneezing violently.
Suddenly the platform sparked and made a whining sound. Victoria shrieked and backed into the nearest wall, little thinking that doing this had been what got her here in the first place... wherever here was, anyway. She was immensely relieved when the Doctor materialized.
"Oh, Doctor!" she cried, and ran to him, suddenly feeling a lot better about being stuck in a cavern on a strange planet with no idea how she had gotten there.
He patted her on the shoulder. "Didn't I say not to worry?" he chided mildly.
"What happened?" said Victoria. The Doctor looked around. "It's a transmat room!" he said happily. "Plain simple dimensional gateway. I've always liked those. I suppose Jamie'll be along any..."
There was a sudden billowing of purple smoke from beneath the platform and the lights dimmed momentarily. Victoria winced.
"Or... not," said the Doctor. He peered under the platform and frowned. "There's been a power surge." He examined the control panel carefully. "This hasn't been used for ages!" he exclaimed, crawling halfway under the platform. He came out cobwebby and sneezing. "Someone reconnected half of these circuits wrong. It's almost as if they only wanted it to work once or twice."
"Where are we?" said Victoria, shivering.
"The Great Labyrinth, without a doubt," answered the Doctor, looking around appreciatively. "Remarkable, isn't it? The proto-Vanussians carved out the entire thing with their bare hands. Well, almost. You see these slots on the walls? They used to hold torches in the glory days of the place. There were some fine old tales of monsters and such living here..."
"Who are the Vanussians?" said Victoria, worried about the monster bit.
"They're the inhabitants of Vanussia, the eastern continent of this planet." His voice changed to disapproval. "But I don't recognize any of this mess -- they even put in a new floor!"
He kicked the rubber with his toe, wandered over to the screen, blew some of the dust off and pushed a few buttons. Nothing happened. "It's obvious," he continued, "that the Vanussians were using this place for something they considered rather important. A control base of some kind, perhaps. Or..." His face grew grim. "Perhaps a bomb shelter."
"A bomb shelter? Were they going to have a war? Is that what destroyed the planet?"
"Possibly; maybe; perhaps." The Doctor tested the doors. They squeaked in their dusty tracks. "Come on, let's explore the place. If nothing else, we need to get back to the surface and find Jamie. Who knows what trouble he's gotten himself into by this time?"
-
When Jamie had realized that standing on the metal plate was getting him nowhere, he didn't panic: he decided to go straight back to the TARDIS and wait. It wasn't until he tried the door and found it locked that the sheer emptiness of this pseudo-Eden hit him. Other than the plants and trees and that garish spider there had been no sound or sight of life, intelligent or not.
The relative peace, in the light of most of his other experiences with aliens, should have reassured him; instead it terrified him. He kept imagining that something was watching him or creeping up his back or aiming at his neck.
Jamie considered his options. There was no way to break into the TARDIS and the Doctor carried the only key. He could just wait where he was and hope someone friendly would show up. But suppose someone unfriendly showed up instead? Maybe the Emperor, whoever he was, wouldn't like finding strangers in his garden. Logic told him to take to the high ground. He rejected the trees out of hand (spiders) and the TARDIS roof (hah!) was too exposed. The top of the ridge, hidden under thick bushes, was the best option he could think of.
He pulled out the old fighting dagger that he always kept in his boot and carefully etched a message to the Doctor on a piece of detached bark, hoping against hope that the aliens couldn't read English. This accomplished, he turned his back on the TARDIS and marched bravely up the hill.
(The khaki watcher slowly backed away from the rock and faded into the surrounding shrubbery.)
The ridge faced west. It was, Jamie guessed, about three in the afternoon, and the high sun glinted off of tall, graceful spires far in the distance. A city -- and over the fragile silver structures Jamie's mind superimposed a steaming, cratered lava field under a boiling sky. He turned away, sickened by the image, and gazed wistfully at the TARDIS standing alone in the valley.
"All right, you, stand still."
Panic coursed through Jamie an instant too late. He slowly turned his head. The voice belonged to a boy very nearly his own age, dressed in an assortment of blue velvet and gold braid that had obviously seen better days, with a cape slung over one shoulder. He had an honest face, if one that had seen too much too soon and too fast. Jamie had seen faces like that in his own era on Earth. A twisted rag around the boy's head covered the place where his right eye should have been.
"Here, who are you then?" said Jamie, backing away.
The boy raised his right hand. "No, no, don't try anything." The gun was so small Jamie had almost missed it, although the way it was aimed he doubted it would have missed him. "Get down here under cover. That's right. Gamra, get his knife."
A rustling in the bushes in front of Jamie produced a thin fellow in a sort of dirty uniform and matching headband, caked with mud and sprinkled with pine needles, and fairly bristling with weapons. In another moment Jamie was disarmed.
"You've been spying on me!" said Jamie angrily.
"More than just you," said the boy. "Gamra?"
"Clearer today," said the thin man. "Lots of the new ones about, the khaki ones. Don't seem to be doing anything, though, just watching."
"Watching the watchers," grumbled the boy. "What are they doing here? What's the point?"
"What are who doing here?" asked Jamie.
The boy looked at him sharply. "You should know. All those new patrols. We knew about the old ones, that's normal, but now there are all these new ones hiding about. What are you doing on my father's estate?"
"Your father? Your father's the Emperor then?"
The boy laughed in disbelief. "Fire, where have you been? My father's been dead for a month, and me and what's left of the Royal Guard hiding out all that time. What's your name?"
"Jamie. Jamie McCrimmon."
A sudden suspicion flared in the boy's remaining eye. "Where are you from?"
"Well, that's a bit difficult to explain..."
"Oh, great. Just great," said the boy sarcastically. "As if all this wasn't enough, now we have other-siders spying on the palace. Well, it's no good, I'm not in there." He laughed.
"What's your name?" said Jamie.
"You really don't know? They didn't brief you very well, did they? I'm the man you're out to get. Cerf Eldar, Prince and Emperor-by-right."
"All right, Prince Eldar, nobody sent me an' I'm not out to get anybody. An' will you please put the gun down? Who's after you, anyway?"
Cerf Eldar looked thoughtful. "This is almost too bizarre. Almost. What do you think, Gamra?"
The thin man, whose expression had not changed during the whole discussion, said, "For what it's worth, Highness, I've never heard of other-siders in that sort of uniform. But," he added hastily, "I wouldn't trust just anyone now."
The Prince considered, staring hard at Jamie with his one eye. It was not a comfortable stare.
"Look," said Jamie, "I promise I'm not part of any conspiracy and I'm not after you or anyone else."
"Trust must begin somewhere," said the Prince softly, as if quoting someone. Apparently reaching a decision, he stuck the tiny gun in a belt pouch. "All right, Jamie, you want to hear the sad story of the past few months?"
"Aye, thanks," said Jamie.
The Prince grinned. "And you can call me Cerf."
-
"You see?" panted the Doctor. "Someone has been here less than a month ago. Look at the dust!"
Victoria felt like she had been running forever. The doors in the rectangular room had opened into a long orange-brown corridor, which had led to another corridor, which in turn had split into three or four other identical corridors and so on and so on. She had no idea what they were running for -- she didn't see anything dangerous in the boring, dusty hallways.
The clouds of dust did seem a bit thinner here and Victoria breathed gratefully. "I knew something like this would happen," she panted. "We haven't been on this planet half an hour and already we're hopelessly lost."
"We're not so lost," the Doctor retorted. "I visited these caverns on a school trip when I was young, centuries before they moved all this modern stuff in. Then I was lost. I must have memorized the whole labyrinth before they found me."
"So you know a way out?"
"Of course! Well, if they haven't built something over it."
Up ahead the tunnel they were in ran into another tunnel. Another identical tunnel. Victoria was just deciding that she hated Vanussian architecture and wondering whether they would go left or right when the Doctor skidded to a halt. She stopped so fast she almost fell over and the Doctor pulled her back against the wall. "Shhh!"
Lacking the breath to form a coherent answer, Victoria obeyed. A sudden breeze stirred the dust at their feet and a faint hum sounded from the corridor up ahead. They both pressed flat against the wall as a coppery box floated into view, equipped with three antigrav devices. It was half again as long as Victoria was tall, and as wide as the Doctor's outstretched arms, and there was an ornate handle of twisted copper on the front and a set of control panels in the back.
Beside it strode two soldiers in khaki battle fatigues. Each had a hat that looked like a blue-green fez, dark hair down to his shoulders and a simple-looking stun gun strapped to his belt. Each seemed to be guiding the box with one hand, keeping the other close to his weapon. The taller soldier had patterned stripes on his left sleeve, and two bluish-green tassels on his hat, while the other had only one.
"These aren't Vanussians," breathed the Doctor. "There's something awfully odd about this. When I say run, we run."
They slowly backed away toward the corner. Victoria found the Doctor's statement strangely ironic: there had been something -- usually a lot of somethings -- odd about everything they had come across since she had met him and Jamie. Then, looking back, she saw the face of the nearer soldier -- proud and hawklike and cruel. She had never seen anyone who looked so purely vindictive.
Her heart seemed to be pounding twice as fast as it had when she had been running. Don't come this way. Don't turn left. Please don't turn left...
They turned left.
"Right, run!" The Doctor and Victoria bolted for the nearest tunnel – too far away! – and then stopped abruptly as at least six blaster bolts flared past them and made sizzling heat spots on the walls. Victoria screamed.
The two raised their hands and slowly turned around. The Phestans had abandoned the huge box and were hurrying down the corridor toward them, ray guns out and ready. The shorter one was younger, and had a puzzled, questioning expression, but the taller one's face was as grimly impassive as the surrounding stone.
Victoria slumped against the wall and almost cried as the Doctor stepped forward and said hopefully, "I say, can either of you tell us the best way to the surface?"