"Doctor, we have come for you." "Pralix?" "Pralix, what..." "Kill them." "Kill them all." "Pralix, what have they done to you?" "Hurry, the force wall will not last long." "They're on our side." "I thought as much." "But I don't understand." "Exciting, isn't it?" "Master?" "What is it?" "The Mentiads have located Doctor master." "They're approaching." "How can you tell?" "I didn't hear anything." "The Doctor master has very distinctive heartbeats." "Estimated time of arrival. 2 1.9 seconds." "I can't get over the Mentiads." "All my life I've been taught to hate and loathe them." "The Doctor would not have instructed me to conduct you to them if he had not thought it safe." "Twelve seconds." "How could he possibly know?" "My subsequent analysis of their brainwave patterns indicated no malice when they attacked him." "You mean they slammed him to the wall with good vibrations?" "Affirmative." "Arrival imminent." "Hello, K9, surprised to see us?" "Amazed, Master." "There you are, didn't I say he'd be amazed?" "Captain, Captain, sir, we were attacked in the mines." "The Doctor escaped with the Mentiads." "With the Mentiads?" "Incompetent fools." "Doctor, did you bring us the understanding we seek?" "For generation upon generation, our planet has been assailed by a nameless evil." "We would know its name." "Its name's the Captain." "You know that." "Why haven't you kicked him out?" "Because his evil is beyond our comprehension." "Strange images haunt our brains, and yet, when a new Mentiad presence appears amongst the people, we know we must find him and protect him." "They found me just in time." "With each new Mentiad, we grow stronger, but still the understanding evades us." "We're constricted by the people's hatred." "A gestalt." "A telepathic gestalt." "A g-what?" "Many minds combine together telepathically to form a single entity." "The power of a gestalt is enormous." "Can you help us, Doctor?" "We are powerless unless we understand." "Can you tell us what's happening to Zanak?" "Yes." "Zanak's just a shell of a planet, a complete hollow." "Hollow?" "Yes, but very rarely empty." "Now listen." "There are vast transmat engines hidden underneath the Captain's mountain." "Yes." "They make the entire planet suddenly drop out" "of the space dimension." "Vanish." "Vanish!" "Is that possible?" "Yes, but you don't notice that, you see, because you're part of it." "Now, listen." "At almost the same moment it vanishes, it rematerialises in another part of the galaxy around another slightly smaller planet." "In this case, a planet called Calufrax." "Yes, so your planet..." "Zanak." "Just helping you along, Doctor." "Yes." "So your planet..." "Zanak." "Yes." "Having materialised around the other planet, smothers it, crushes it and mines all the mineral wealth out of it." "Just like an enormous leech?" "Yes." "And that's when the lights change." "The omens." "Yes." "The omens mean the death of another planet." "By the blood of the Sky Demon, we've been queasy fools." "We should have obliterated the Mentiads years ago and rid ourselves of their sickly power." "But, Captain, we have tried many times in the past." "And failed, Mr Fibuli, and failed." "Captain, you said yourself it was a question of priorities." "I said?" "You dare to lay the rotting fruits of your own incompetence at my door?" "Captain, in your wisdom, you observed that whilst the Mentiads lay dormant with no leader and no purpose, we were well enough protected." "But now they will not be leaderless." "Now they will have a clear purpose." "But, sir, the means to destroy them is, at last, within our grasp." "The planet Calufrax is rich in Voolium and Madranite 1 -5." "That's what we came here for." "Voolium and Madranite 1 -5." "That is true, that is true." "The vibrations of the refined crystals can be harnessed to produce interference patterns which will neutralise their mental power." "And leave them defenceless, as weak as ordinary men." "Obliterable!" "Excellent, Mr Fibuli, excellent." "Your death shall be delayed." "Oh, thank you, again and again, sir." "Your goodness confounds me." "Mr Fibuli, how soon can you be prepared?" "Uh..." "Well, if we put all the automated mining and processing equipment on the planet onto full power, sir, we could reduce the entire planet of Calufrax within hours." "Of course, the machinery will be dangerously overloaded" "and the..." "That matters not a quark, Mr Fibuli." "Speed is of the essence." "The Mentiads will be moving even now." "Do it on the instant and this time there shall be no escape." "Hurry." "Hurry, I say!" "So Zanak was a happy, prosperous planet?" "Yes, till the reign of Queen Xanxia." "May her spirit be accursed." "She had some kind of evil powers." "The legend says she lived for hundreds of years." "Come on, that's not necessarily evil." "I've known hundreds of people who live for hundreds..." "What?" "Shh, Doctor." "Please carry on." "Master?" "Shh, K9, shh." "Please carry on." "Queen Xanxia staged galactic wars to demonstrate her powers." "By the time she'd finished, Zanak was ruined." "When the Captain arrived, there was hardly anyone left." "Just a few miserable nomadic tribes." "Tell me, how did he arrive?" "The legend speaks of a giant silver ship that fell from the sky one night with a mighty crash like thunder." "The Captain was one of the few survivors." "And needed pretty extensive surgery, by the look of him." "I wonder who did that?" "I don't think anyone knows." "Master?" "Not now, K9, not now." "Go on." "The Captain took charge of Zanak." "He persuaded the people to work for him." "Golden ages of prosperity." "Pampered slavery more like." "For some of us, terrible agonies of the mind began." "Yes, well, they would for someone who was telepathic." "Why, Doctor, do you know?" "Yes." "Yes, I do." "You were absorbing what you would call the life force from the plundered planets." "What is the life force?" "Well, it's quite difficult to explain in simple terms, but basically..." "Romana?" "Every atom of matter in the universe has a certain amount of energy locked inside it." "Now, with something the size of a planet" "there's an enormous quantity." "Oh, enormous." "So, every time Zanak crushes a planet, it releases all that energy." "Now, some of it will be on psychic wavelengths." "Right." "So every time it happens, there's a fantastic blast of psychic energy, enough to smash open the neural pathways of anyone with telepathic abilities." "Like you Mentiads." "That's right." "You Mentiads were absorbing" "all that power into your brains." "Yes." "And each planet, as it dies, adds to that power, the power by which it will be avenged." "Master?" "What is it, K9?" "My seismograph detects enormous increase in mining operations round the whole planet." "Every mining machine is now working at full pressure." "By the left frontal lobe of the Sky Demon, Mr Fibuli," "I used to be one of the greatest hyper-engineers of my time." "Of all time, Captain." "Your reconstruction of this planet is proof of that." "It is not scale that counts, but skill." "Now, the ship from which most of the major components were salvaged, the Vantarialis, now there was a ship." "The greatest raiding cruiser ever built." "And I built it, Mr Fibuli." "I built it with technology so far advanced you would not be able to distinguish it from magic." "All the same, sir, this must be one of the great engineering feats of all time." "A hollow, space-jumping planet?" "This planet?" "This vile, lumbering planet?" "Devil storms, Mr Fibuli!" "You are a callow fool." "Do you not see how my heart burns for the dangerous liberty of the skies, plunder, battle and escape?" "My soul is imprisoned, bound to this ugly lump of blighted rock, beset by zombie Mentiads and interfering Doctors." "But what can they do to you, Captain?" "Enough." "They shall die." "By the flaming moons of hell, they shall die." "Find me those crystals, Mr Fibuli." "Aye, aye, Captain." "As soon as we can, sir." "I shall be avenged." "Oh, good." "I see you've found some occupational therapy, Captain." "It's a good thing not to let your old skills die." "I assure you my old skills are very much alive." "Well, they say you can fool some of the people all of the time." "Let's see, shall we?" "I really must stop doing this." "It's like shooting fish in a barrel." "Hold it." "Hands up." "Get out." "Captain, sir." "Captain, they've caught the Doctor." "Splendid, Mr Fibuli." "He was trying to steal an aircar." "But one of our guards managed to immobilise it." "We've sent another aircar to pick them up," "which means in the end..." "Trivia, Mr Fibuli, trivia." "Have the guards managed to open his vessel yet?" "No, sir." "It is proving remarkably difficult." "Nothing they can do will even mark it." "Fools." "Incompetent cretins." "But we have located a potential source for PJX 1 -8." "Ah, better, Mr Fibuli." "We can manage one more jump under our present conditions, sir." "If we made it to that planet, we could mine it for PJX 1 -8 and then" "make our own repairs." "We will mine it." "Prepare to jump as soon as the Voolium and Madranite 1 -5 crystals have been produced." "I feel I should point out, Captain, that it is a heavily-populated planet." "Show me the chart." "It is here, sir, in the planetary system of the star Sol, the planet Terra." "Ah, yes." "A pretty planet." "It looks a pleasant world, Captain." "Then it will be pleasant to destroy it." "Yes, sir." "I will make arrangements." "Another planet, Captain?" "Another planet." "Then the objective will soon be reached." "It will." "It will indeed." "Master?" "Contact." "Have I told you my plan?" "No more Janis..." "No more Janis thorns." "I think it should work really quite well." "I think..." "Good morning." "So, Doctor, you have discovered the little secret of our planet." "You won't get away with it, you know." "What makes you so certain of that?" "At the moment, nothing at all, but it does my morale no end of good just to say it." "I've been tied to pillars by better men than you, Captain." "Ah, but none, I dare guess, more vicious." "Vicious?" "Don't panic, Kimus." "Don't panic." "We have lift off." "What are you doing it for, Captain?" "It doesn't make sense and you know it." "I can understand the life of a full-blooded pirate, the thrill, the danger and the derring-do." "But this?" "Hidden away in your mountain retreat eating other people's perfectly good planets." "Where's the derring-do in that?" "Silence." "You're just trying to shut me up." "You can't kill me while I'm helpless." "Can't I?" "No, you can't." "Because you're a warrior and it's against the warrior's code." "You should have thought of that before you tied me up." "By the hounds of hell." "Hard to listen, isn't it, Captain, when someone's got a finger on a nerve?" "What is it you're really up to?" "What do you want?" "You don't want to take over the universe, do you?" "No." "You wouldn't know what to do with it, beyond shout at it." "Mr Fibuli!" "Yes, sir." "No." "Release him." "But, Captain..." "He said release me." "My trophies, Doctor." "Feast your eyes on them for they represent an achievement unparalleled in the universe." "What are they?" "Tombstones?" "Memorials to all the worlds you've destroyed?" "Not memorials." "These are the entire remains of the worlds themselves." "You come here to gloat on the wanton destruction you've wreaked on the universe." "I come in here to dream of freedom." "Did you just say the entire remains of the worlds themselves?" "Yes, Doctor." "Each of these small spheres is the crushed remains of a planet." "Millions upon millions of tons of compressed rock held suspended here by forces beyond the limits of the imagination, forces that I have generated and harnessed." "That's impossible." "That amount of matter in so small a space would undergo instant gravitational collapse and form a black hole." "Precisely." "What?" "But Zanak would be dragged into a gravitational whirlpool." "Why isn't it?" "Because the whole system is so perfectly aligned by the most exquisite exercise in gravitational geometry that every system is balanced out within itself." "Which is why we can stand next to billions of tons of super-compressed matter and not even be aware of it." "With each new planet I acquire, the forces are re-aligned but the system remains stable." "Then it's the most brilliant piece of astro-gravitational engineering" "I've ever seen." "The concept is simply staggering, pointless but staggering." "I'm gratified that you appreciate it." "Appreciate it?" "Appreciate it?" "But you commit mass destruction and murder on a scale that's almost inconceivable, and you ask me to appreciate it?" "Just because you happened to have made a brilliantly conceived toy out of the mummified remains of planets." "Devil storms, Doctor!" "It is not a toy!" "What's it for?" "What are you doing?" "What could possibly be worth all this?" "By the raging fury of the Sky Demon, you ask too many questions." "You have seen, you've admired, be satisfied and ask no more!" "Captain, sir, come quickly please." "The Mentiads, they're on their way." "Excellent, Mr Fibuli, excellent." "Guards." "It's a long climb up there." "Don't worry, we'll make it." "I hope Kimus and the Doctor managed to break into the engine room without getting caught." "We're in trouble if they haven't." "The Doctor knows what he's doing." "Would you like to put me down?" "Put him down." "We're preparing to meet your friends the Mentiads." "The poor misbegotten fools who are going to attempt to storm the Bridge." "That should be fun." "What?" "Kimus, are you all right?" "What?" "For goodness sake, get him down." "He hasn't done you any harm." "Captain?" "You do it." "By the bursting suns of Banzar, Mr Fibuli, where are my crystals?" "Doctor, where are we?" "We're on the Bridge." "The Bridge?" "What's that?" "That's your beloved Captain." "But I..." "Shh." "Don't make any noise." "The Mentiads are on their way here and he's got no power against their psychic strength." "What's that machine, he's..." "Oh, it looks like a psychic interference transmitter." "A what?" "Well, it's a sort of a machine for neutralising psychic power." "Wag your tongue well, Doctor." "It is the only weapon you have left." "Nonsense, Captain, nonsense." "To make that machine work you'd need a collection of the most rare crystals." "Yes?" "Oh, yes." "Voolium..." "Voolium?" "..." "Madranite 1 -5." "And, as far as I know, they occur only naturally on one planet and that's..." "Captain, the crystals from Calufrax." "..." "Calufrax!" "My biorhythms must be at all time low." "Excellent, Mr Fibuli, excellent." "You see, Doctor, your friends are doomed." "They are?" "And so are you." "We need not delay your death any longer." "By the curled fangs of the Sky Demon," "I've looked forward to this moment." "You hideous, murdering maniac." "No, no, no." "Don't, don't." "Avitron, kill." "Come back, K9, come back." "Come on." "Stop them!" "Stop them!" "What's this place?" "Never mind about that." "Let's find another way out." "Get back." "Come on, here it is." "Locked?" "Yes." "We're trapped." "Never." "Come on." "No, don't." "Those are the Time Dams." "What, you mean they stop time?" "Not completely, but they can slow down the flow of time in the space between, given enough energy." "That's repulsive." "What is it?" "That's your beloved Queen Xanxia." "What?" "No, no." "Xanxia's dead." "No, no." "She's not." "She's suspended in the last few seconds of life." "You mean, she can hear me?" "But I just called..." "No, she can't." "Does she know we're here?" "No." "Not while she's between those two things there." "How much longer must we wait?" "Mr Fibuli?" "Sir?" "Prepare to prise open the door." "To find enough energy to fuel those dams, you'd need to ransack entire planets." "So whole other worlds have been destroyed with the sole purpose of keeping that alive?" "Yes." "There must be something more to it than that." "Even more?" "Yeah." "Would you go to those lengths just to stay alive?" "Not in that revolting condition, no." "No, not in that condition, but in what condition?" "What?" "Shh." "K9!" "Look at that." "Master." "You're a good dog, K9." "A good dog?" "You're a hero." "Congratulations are unnecessary, Master." "Isn't that marvellous?" "Well, it's certainly a relief, but how are we gonna get out of here?" "I've got a job for you two." "Now, listen." "Over there is a service elevator." "It must go down to the engine room." "So?" "So, you and K9 are going down in the lift to the engine room to sabotage the engines, all right?" "Affirmative, Master." "Good." "Off you go, then." "What about you?" "I'm going to see to the Captain." "Ready, Captain?" "Here, give it to me." "I'll do it." "Yes, sir." "All right, all right, all right." "I give up." "So, Doctor, you have survived." "Yes, I'm afraid I seem unable to break the habit." "And your colleagues?" "My colleagues..." "Excellent." "And my Polyphase Avitron?" "I'm sorry about that, but it was becoming an infernal nuisance." "Destroyed." "By the great parrot of Hades, you shall pay with the last drop of your blood." "Every corpuscle, do you hear?" "Mr Fibuli." "Yes, sir." "Captain, I think you'd better hear what I have to say first." "I mean, I think when you hear what I've got to say, you'll change your mind." "Guilty." "Please listen." "Guilty." "Please listen!" "Guards." "A plank." "The theory is very simple." "You walk along it." "At the end, you fall off, drop 1,000 feet." "Dead." "You can't be serious." "Is he?" "Captain, you don't realise what you're doing." "If you just listen to me..." "I shall listen to you when I hear you scream." "But, please..." "Bye-bye." "But..."