PERILS

Chapter Eleven

"Wake me before you go." Mrs. Salt was relieved by Eugene taking her Master-watching shift, which had been difficult in the darkness, but dawn was breaking now.

"Good night, Missus Salt," said the Doctor, sitting on a chair near the settee. "I think A.J. can get quite a collection of autographs on two casts." Lou, pacing, smiled briefly at this. "I need to get to a specific point along the train tracks near or in Hoboken."

"How come you don't know exactly where?"

"It's hard to explain."

"Try me. I've met the Master. What can be weirder than that?"

"All right," sighed the Doctor. "What would you say if I told you the Master wasn't human?"

"I'd say I'd figured that out already."

This caught the Doctor off guard. "You have?"

Lou looked at him closely. "You're not speaking figuratively, are you…."

"No, I'm not. He is literally not human."

"All right, I give. What is he, a werewolf?"

"No, he's a Time Lord, from a planet called Gallifrey."

Lou stopped pacing and stared at the Doctor from across the room. "A.J. said you were special. He didn't say you were off your chump."

"I'm a Time Lord too and I can prove it. Well, I can at least prove I'm not human."

"All right. Go for it."

The Doctor stood up. "Come here." Lou gamely went to him. "Closer." She stepped closer. "Put your hand over my heart."

"Thumpety thump. Yes, I feel it." Lou was well amused.

"Now put your hand here." He took her right hand with his left (in order not to hit her with the splint) and put it over his right heart. She held it there for five seconds and the amusement drained from her face. She pulled her hand back as if it had been bitten.

"What the hell is that?"

"I have two hearts. Time Lords have two hearts. What I left in Hoboken is a kind of space ship. I knew you wouldn't believe me."

"Now hold on," said Lou, sitting back down on the arm of the settee. "I felt what I felt. Let me soak this in. You're from another planet. You have a space ship. After last night, maybe I'm ready to believe all that. What now? You need to get back to your space ship. Then what? You fly away to the moon?"

"Not to the moon, no, but fly away, yes. People are waiting for me."

"A girl?"

The Doctor laughed. "Two girls. Well, a girl and a young woman. The girl is my ward; she was orphaned. They are both friends. I didn't mean to abandon them; I was tricked – I can't believe I was such an idiot - the Master tricked me into coming here and as usual he had a ridiculous and elaborate plan to kill me. I swear, he delights in the ridiculousness and elaborateness, and a good measure of his delight is in the lengths he goes to make sure I know what is about to happen to me and to make sure I am sufficiently frightened."

"And are you?"

"Am I what?"

"Sufficiently frightened?"

"Sometimes. Mostly when others are involved. He will destroy people on a whim, or to get to me…. Yes, I am sometimes afraid for myself too. Anyway, I got away from him after Plan B, or was it C?"

Lou laughed in spite of herself. "How many times has he tried to kill you?"

"In my life? Countless! Since he got me here? Let me see, the train, the cave, the girder, not sure whether to count his attempt to recover his tissue compression eliminator…"

"… that thing I buried."

"… yes. And I've only been here…." He stopped, confused. "I don't even know how long, maybe a week? Funny thing, for a Time Lord to lose track of time. Anyway, I was unable to find my ship and now I am farther from it than before. I don't even know which rail line, or where in Hoboken, or if it's even in Hoboken or just near it. I need to follow the most likely line until I find it. I didn't mean to leave my friends for so long." He was becoming agitated again. It was his turn to pace. "You asked how many times he has tried to kill me. He succeeded, once." He looked at Lou, who was gawping at him. "Right, forget I said that. Can you help me find my ship?"

"You do know you're bonkers, right?"

"Yes, I know. But can you?"

"I don't know," mused Lou, "but I sure can try."

*0*0*0*

A.J.'s family was up in Canada but most of his friends, despite the Mohawk presence in the boarding house in which he'd been staying, lived in Little Caughnawaga in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn. Joe Benedict, the man who had helped A.J. to rescue the Doctor from the swaying girder, had a girlfriend, Mae, whose brother, Scott, could be persuaded to lend her his black and green 1909 Sears Motor Buggy. Joe had spent the morning fetching A.J.'s possessions and had brought them to Mrs. Salt's establishment, where everyone except Lou had already bid the Doctor farewell with handshakes and hugs; Martin and Eugene were off to work and Mrs. Salt was back at the kitchen door, on Master watch. ("Not a peep from him," she reported.) Joe would come back for A.J. in the evening and take him to Brooklyn. The Buggy chugged off, then, carrying the Doctor, the Doctor's sack of belongings (including provisions thrust upon him by Mrs. Salt) and Lou, who could not be dissuaded from going. Joe drove them to Port Authority and dropped them off. "Where do we begin?" asked the Doctor.

"I know we take the PATH train to Hoboken," said Lou. What line from there, well, even if they give us options we have no way of knowing which to take."

"We may have to become hobos," grinned the Doctor.

A window clerk could only suggest asking at Hoboken terminal, adding that the line in question would probably be the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad line. Armed with this snippet of information, the two of them bought tickets for the PATH train and were on their way to the train itself when the Doctor stopped and frowned. "What is it?" asked Lou, looking around to see what could be amiss.

"That phone box," said the Doctor. "It's red."

"Are they all blue? I mean must they be? But… what is it doing there, in the middle of the concourse? That's very queer."

"Queer indeed," said the Master, so close behind the Doctor that the latter could feel his breath upon his neck. The Master's attack was the simplest in the world: he reached around the Doctor and squeezed the splinted wrist. While the Doctor was rendered helpless by this momentary pain, the Master pulled the insulted arm back and twisted hard; the Doctor was on the floor in an instant. The Master didn't let go of his hand, however; he removed the splint, flinging it away, and scratched lightly over the radial artery with a rasp. When he did let the hand go it fell limply to the floor as well, beside its equally limp owner.

So swift had been this assault that by the time Lou could react, the Master had dragged the unconscious Doctor to the red phone box and shoved him inside. Waving the rasp at Lou, he entered the box himself. Not long after that, Lou and the crowd that had gathered were treated to a groaning, wheezing sound, and the sight of an empty space on the concourse where the Master's TARDIS had been.