Doctor Who: Terminus Read Online Free

and forced her to cover her face as the shimmering moved in, a net that was slowly drawing closed around her. Tegan screwed her fists tight in frustration; there wasn’t a thing she could do to help, and it was burning her up. Turlough watched alongside her. His eyes didn’t move from the Doctor; perhaps his anxiety was all reserved for his own future.
    The Doctor popped up from behind the console.
    ‘Nyssa,’ he said, ‘look behind you!’
     
    Tegan saw Nyssa turn, and she wondered what the Doctor meant. And then she saw; something was happening to the back wall of the room. The normal grey-and-white interior moulding of the TARDIS was starting to fade away and to be replaced by a new texture. Nyssa stood before a large door. It was metal and monstrously solid, as if it had been built to withstand tons of pressure, but the garbled representation of the room’s interior could show them no more detail than this. The door was starting to swing open on its own. Nyssa took a step back, and almost retreated into the field of instability.
    ‘Go through!’ the Doctor called to her. ‘It’s your only chance!’
    ‘But where are you sending her?’ Tegan said, bewildered.
    ‘I don’t know,’ the Doctor admitted. ‘But if she stays, she’ll...’ Whatever he was going to say, it was drowned by a roar of static. The screen turned unbearably white, a window on Armageddon.
    Dimensional instability had finally consumed the entire section of the TARDIS; now they could only wait and hope that it would die out rather than spread.
    They could also hope that Nyssa had moved quickly enough.
    The screen cleared slowly – too slowly, it seemed at first, but as the image reformed they could make out the fact that the room had just about managed to hold its shape. The shimmering was spasmodic, much less violent than before although no less deadly. There was no sign of Nyssa at all.
    The unfamiliar door that was the TARDIS’s temporary gateway to the outside stood open.
     
    Beyond it was darkness, and the contrast range of the screen couldn’t handle the shadow detail.
    Turlough said that he thought he’d seen something move, and it occurred to the Doctor that Nyssa might be trying to re-enter the room, ‘Keep moving!’ he shouted to her, ‘It isn’t over yet!’ There was a blur in the doorway that might have been anything, and then the screen overloaded again for a few seconds.
    The Doctor disappeared back into the console. This was his chance to disconnect the faulty component and reassign its functions.
    ‘She’s still got a chance,’ the Doctor said.
    ‘Doesn’t that depend on where you sent her?’ asked Tegan.
    Now that the alarms were no longer sounding, it was possible to make out a regular pulsating hum that was coming from the console. ‘We’ve locked onto some kind of spacecraft,’ the Doctor said.
    But Tegan wasn’t listening. On the screen, the strange door was beginning to close of its own accord.
    The Doctor saw this and hurried out of the console room. Tegan started to follow.
    ‘What’s the rush?’ Turlough said. ‘I thought we were safe.’
    Tegan paused for a moment; she wanted to tell him that he had the hide of an elephant. Instead she flashed him a disapproving look, and set out after the Doctor.
    The new door in the far wall had completely closed.
    The Doctor went over to examine it, but for the moment he didn’t touch. Turlough was pushing his way in from the corridor as Tegan said, ‘How strong’s the link?’
     
    ‘We’re well hooked,’ the Doctor said. The door wasn’t really telling him anything; it was as much a part of the TARDIS as of the craft they’d contacted.
    On the other side, there would probably be an opening where there had been no opening before. If there was a crew to be met on the other side, he hoped they’d be flexible in their thinking.
    Tegan said, ‘Hadn’t we better find out what we’ve sent Nyssa into?’
    The Doctor shot her a look of impatient