A HIGHWAY OF DEMONS - Chapter Four

A HIGHWAY OF DEMONS

by Whispering Jack

CHAPTER FOUR - TIME OUT OF MIND

"The end of time has just begun

Oh honey, after all these years you're still the one

Well I'm strollin' through the lonely graveyard of my mind

I left my life with you

Somewhere back there along the line."

Bob Dylan [Time Out Of Mind]

Looking out through the glass windows of the Tardis and into the mist of the million galaxies through which we were now floating, I recalled the tram ride home. I remembered the necktie and the way I rolled it up to my face and how the man's boot pointed to the skies. It occurred to me that it might have been angled in the very direction of our spaceship as we swirled through space.

We were spinning in much the same way as a well-directed punt kick but there were no goalposts in our sights. We seemed to have no direction at all as we headed toward unknown destinations, spiraling backwards and forward through space and time.

And yet, the destination wasn't entirely unknown. I was not trained in the mysteries of the laws of physics despite the fact that the great Albert Einstein and I have shared birthplaces (but that's another story altogether). The Doctor knew where we were heading. I was his passenger and we were not alone.

Back on the Tardis after the Las Vegas fiasco, I discovered that the Doctor had other companions with him. There was the tall, leggy Romana, a magnificent Amazon of a woman who wore slinky leather outfits and looked at you with dreamy eyes that sent waves of soft pinkish light piercing through your brain. She joined the crew from Calufrax Zanak, an outpost in a distant galaxy. I was fifteen years old and in love.

Then there was Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, a member of the Scots Guards who we called "the Brig". He was a tall, stiff upper lipped, professional soldier seconded to UNIT (United Nations Intelligence Taskforce) which apparently is an international organisation that defends the Earth from alien threats.

I was never informed as to how the Brigadier came to be a member of the crew; it was all top-secret stuff and would remain that way. He often communicated with The Doctor by way of what they described as a "mobile phone" which was a small slender version of a walkie talkie. The Doctor advised me that if I survived into the 21st Century I would learn all about mobile phones.

Early in the piece, I learned that it wise to give Lethbridge-Stewart a wide berth, particularly when there were threatening alien creatures in our presence. He was clearly a madman whose motto was, "shoot first, and try to ask questions later if those blasted things are still alive!" This rather gung-ho attitude philosophy often led to some messy outcomes.

The other member of our crew was the Doctor's pet mechanical dog known as K9. He was supposed to be a lifelike facsimile of a dog and he certainly befriended me from the very beginning. Indeed, the little mutt rarely left my side which could be somewhat annoying because the Doctor had never found the time for toilet training. This would inevitably cause problems when K9's batteries ran low. He once wiped out an entire race of desert dwelling androids which had an intolerance to moisture, and led us, rather embarrassingly, to abort an important mission to thwart the Black Guardian. Of course, it's no longer politically correct to make any reference whatsoever to that calamitous episode.

Despite all of their oddities, my new companions and I soon formed one big happy family and I enjoyed the subsequent period of exploration which took us to the outer reaches of the cosmos, or, as the Doctor correctly put it, the "time-space continuum."

Once, when we were enjoying our days in the suns of a binary star system in the constellation Orion, the Doctor suddenly became agitated and called us all into the Tardis. He hurried us into the craft and we took off without even saying farewell to our kind hosts on the Planet Epsilon where we had spent what seemed like at least a month of blissful rest from our hectic adventures. An hour into the flight our craft began to shake uncontrollably and the Doctor began working frantically to steady the ship. His face showed concern.

"Damn, it's been broken," he said.

"Newton's First Law. It's been broken. We have to get back to Earth. Right now!"

At the mention of Newton's First Law, I took the opportunity to demonstrate to the Doctor the fruits of my fourth form education in the field of the sciences.

"Newton's Law. That means that if an object is moving along, untouched by a force of any kind, it will continue to move along in a perfectly straight line at a constant speed…"

The Doctor pulled a lever on the controls of the Tardis, paused and glared angrily at me. The tremor of his voice barely concealed a touch of panic.

"No, not Isaac Newton. I'm talking about Michael Newton. Someone has broken Newton's First Law of Natural Selection. They've gone and picked him to play for that football team of yours and we have to do something about that or else …"

"Or else what?"

"Or else time could come to an end. That's what!"

[TO BE CONTINUED...]