Doctor Who: The Twin Dilemma Read Online Free Page A

refused to break. Peri felt consciousness slipping away from her. She knew that if she blacked out she was dead.
    With a last enormous effort, she beat and pounded the mirror, but it still wouldn't shatter.
    Peri was now consumed by panic and terror. She felt that she was about to slip into the bottomless pit of death and oblivion. Almost as though she were waving herself goodbye, her limbs started to jerk in spasms. A moment later she went limp.
    The Doctor, now believing he had killed his victim, loosened his grip slightly. As he did, a terrible leer crossed his face and he started to lick his lips like a glutton who has just had a feast placed before him.
    At the same moment, Peri half-opened an eye and saw the hateful delight on the Doctor's face. Summoning up the last shreds of her strength and energy, she held up the mirror so that the Time Lord could see his own expression.
    The Doctor froze as he caught sight of his own gruesome image.
    Then as though he had been savagely slapped across the face he let out a terrible scream at the same moment flinging himself away from Peri and the image in the mirror. On hands and knees, like a frantic, scared baby, the Time Lord quickly crawled across the room, wailing and howling as he went.
    Peri lifted herself up onto one elbow, spluttering and coughing.
    Once her lungs were fully ventilated she started to cry, as much at the pleasure of being alive as with the fear and anger of the assault that had just taken place. She watched the Doctor, as he reached the corner of the room, draw his knees up under his chin and then embrace his own legs. His eyes were like saucers - wild and staring. He was now silent. Then slowly, gently he started to rock backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, as though desperate to comfort himself.
    Peri wondered how long he'd remain that way, and, more desperately, what he would do when he came out of his trance-like state.
     

3
ENTER PROFESSOR EDGEWORTH
     
    Romulus and Remus sat before their respective computer terminals. On the screens before them were a maze of numbers, symbols and calculations. The children had been at play.
    Outside it was raining, cold and unfriendly. Outside it was dark. If the twins had looked from their window they would have seen a wet, shabby ginger torn being rather possessive about a few badly-kept flower beds and an area of weed-ridden grass. At least that is what they thought they would have seen. But they would have been wrong. For in the cat's mind, he was fat, virile and sexy. The flower beds were his territory and he was very proud and very defensive of them.
    Inside, in the warm, was the twins' world. They didn't know the cat existed. If they had, they would have paid him little attention. For in their minds they thought they knew everything about everything, and there was nothing a cat could teach them.
    They, of course were wrong, for they didn't realise the cat could teach them survival. The ginger torn could quite easily enter their warm, comfortable world, survive, even have prospered. But the twins couldn't enter his. They would have died of hunger and exposure in a very short period of time. The cat knew this, he knew what the two geniuses didn't know. He also knew it was impossible to calculate the square root of minus three and that Professor Archie Sylvest had made a mistake. It didn't bother him and he wouldn't tell anyone. He had more important things to do - he had his flower beds to guard.
    When the whole history of Earth is finally written, it will be shown that cats were the most intelligent creatures ever to have inhabited the planet. The fact they allowed human beings to run things for a while shows their tolerance. They knew the humans would cause havoc and fail, but the cats also knew they would be able to repair everything and make it right again.
    In the middle of his favourite flower bed, the ginger torn looked up into the night sky. A thousand miles above his head was a space freighter