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.And Rorvik and his men stared at the Doctor and Romana in astonishment.Before the arrival of the MZ, Rorvik had been trying to dig out some of the blocks to the side of one of the archways in an attempt to get around the mirror that blocked it.Or rather, he’d watched as a couple of his men did the work; they’d managed to lever out some of the masonry only to discover that the mirror simply carried on behind.The stone and the mortar and the crowbars had now been abandoned.Rorvik had drawn his weapon, and most of his men had done the same.‘Well, Doctor,’ he said, ‘This is a surprise.’‘For me too,’ the Doctor agreed.‘You seem to come and go around here with a great deal of freedom.’‘It’s a bit alarming, isn’t it? And the culinary arrangements are rather variable, too.’Rorvik smiled; on the surface he showed politeness, but underneath was something much darker.‘What’s the secret?’ he said.‘Something you’d care to share with us?’Romana said, ‘You won’t get the Doctor’s help by pointing guns at him.’Rorvik raised his weapon.‘I negotiate from strength.’‘Much the best way,’ the Doctor said, ‘when you can do it.’Perhaps Romana was remembering her rough treatment at Rorvik’s hands.She said cuttingly, ‘You’ve mended the warp motors, then? You’ve found a new navigator?’‘No need to be aggressive,’ the Doctor advised her.‘We’re all in the same boat and he knows it.’‘Except,’ Rorvik said, walking around the table to get closer,‘that you know the way out.’This seemed to be news to the Doctor, even more than it was to anyone else.‘Do I?’ he said, and then when Rorvik looked pointedly towards the nearest mirror the Doctor shook his head.‘Sorry,’ he said.‘That’s a dead end.’Rorvik was still smiling, but now more of the darkness was showing through.‘I don’t believe you,’ he said.‘And neither do my men.’ He looked around at them, perhaps hoping that they’d be showing themselves at their most trigger-happy and restless.They still had their weapons pointed vaguely in the Doctor’s direction, but with the exception of Packard they were one-handedly resuming what remained of their lunch.‘A hungry crew,’ the Doctor commented.‘As a matter of fact, it’s all a dead end.And unless we work together we could be stuck here until the time winds finally break in and take everything apart.Not that we’ll see it – we’ll be no better than some of these old remains, once the food’s run out.’‘Enough of the gossip,’ Rorvik cut in, his expression now completely bleak.‘The secret, Doctor?’There was a new urgency in his tone, and the crew could hear it.They abandoned their preoccupation with the food and raised their weapons; it seemed that the Doctor was now expected to make some kind of revelation, but even though he tried, he was unable to come up with as much as a halfway convincing bluff.And because nobody was willing or able to break the silence, K9’s arrival was particularly well timed.The robot came rolling down the entrance tunnel from the outside, shrilly declaiming his danger warning.‘I don’t believe it,’ Packard said; the last time that he’d seen the unwelcome beast was when he’d thrown it out into the void after being followed all the way back from the gateway to the privateer with demands for orders ringing in his ears.‘Present mass anomaly increasing,’ K9 proclaimed.‘Mass conversion anomaly alert.’Rorvik swung his gun around to stop the noise the fastest way he knew, but the Doctor prevented him with a sharp word.‘I wouldn’t do that,’ he said.‘K9 may have a point.’Rorvik stepped back as the Doctor passed him, watching with deep suspicion.The Doctor crouched by K9 and said,‘What are you trying to tell us?’‘Dimensional contraction of microcosmic system,’ the robot said.‘Requesting orders.’Romana knelt to join him.‘It’s the memory wafers, Doctor,’she said.‘It’s been hard to get any sense out of him.’‘I think he may be making better sense than we realise,’ the Doctor said.‘Give me your assessment, K9.’But Rorvik butted in without patience.‘Time to play with your toys later, Doctor.’The robot took no notice; ordered to proceed, he ran off a stream of data that appeared to make sense only to the Doctor and Romana.‘Contraction curve exponential,’ he concluded.‘Estimate on present data beyond the capability of this unit.’Romana looked up at the Doctor.‘So it’s starting slowly, but it could collapse any minute.’The Doctor nodded, but he didn’t seem fully convinced.‘It would take some huge mass to distort space-time to that extent.The TARDIS doesn’t weigh that much, and neither does their ship.’‘It might,’ Romana said.‘It’s made of dwarf star alloy.’‘The whole ship?’ the Doctor said, incredulous, and then he turned to Rorvik.‘Why dwarf star alloy? Is it something to do with this?’ And he dug into his pocket and produced the overweighted manacle that Biroc had left behind as he’d passed through the mirror.‘They’re slavers,’ Romana said quietly, and the Doctor nodded.‘They’re trading in time-sensitives, and dwarf star alloy is the only material that’s guaranteed to hold them.’‘And it’s very expensive,’ Rorvik said, holding out his hand, but the Doctor returned the manacle to his pocket.The only substance dense enough to pin down a dream.He said, ‘How many of the poor creatures have you got in that hulk of yours?’‘Poor creatures? Each one is worth a fortune, Doctor.You seem to understand business even less than you understand science.This wild theory about contraction, it won’t wash.’Rorvik turned to Packard.‘Get them over to a mirror.It’s time we dropped the kindness and tried a little pressure.’Nestor and Jos took Romana, Packard and Lane took the Doctor.As they moved, Packard said, ‘So what you really mean.’ he caught Rorvik’s eye, but he continued anyway.‘What you really mean is, the distances are getting shorter.’Lane added, ‘Like between the ship and here?’ ‘That’s right,’ the Doctor said.‘As the domain contracts.’Lane looked around, raising his voice to reach everyone.‘He’s right about one thing.The trip from here to the ship.each time we’ve done it, the distance has been less.’‘If I can get back to the TARDIS,’ the Doctor added, making the most out of the moment, ‘I can prove it.And I can also give us some idea of how much time we have left.’‘Back to the TARDIS?’ Rorvik said.‘Yes, I’ll bet that’s what you’d like.Well, tough luck, Doctor, you’re going to show us how to get through one of those mirrors, instead.And if you don’t, I’m going to help you by clearing your head a little.In fact, I’ll clear it completely.’ And to demonstrate his meaning, he raised the barrel of the gun to the Doctor’s ear and used it to push his face roughly against the cold surface.The bump was hard enough to daze him slightly.For a moment it gave him the illusion that the mirror was clear, that he could see through to where a dimmed image was formed on the other side; it looked like Biroc, and the Tharil was watching.Doctor, he seemed to be saying, you have seen our past and you have seen our present.Judge whether we have not suffertd punishment enough for the abuse of our gift.Yes, the Doctor thought, the weak did indeed enslave themselves; by setting themselves up as unjust masters they handed out invitations to rebellion and revenge.Which was a truth all would do well to remember, although it didn’t seem to be of much use to him in this predicament.what he really needed to know was, what do I have to do to get us out of here?Do nothing, Biroc seemed to say, it is done [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]