Peter looked baffled.
Then everything seemed to happen at once.
Who the hell is that?’ said Haresh.
‘I don’t believe it,’ whispered Luke, eyes like saucers.
‘Who’s he?’ asked Rani.
K-9 burst out of hiding. ‘Master!’ he cried urgently.
The stranger ran down the aisle. ‘I said stop this wedding!’
And then — suddenly — he was pushed back by an invisible force.
A screaming, howling wind rushed through the ballroom.
Impossibly, the room started to shake like a ship caught in a hurricane.
Clyde grabbed hold of Luke and Rani.
Haresh and Gita and the other wedding guests looked round in amazement, clinging on to each other — the Registrar went crashing to the ground.
K-9 started spinning wildly — ‘Alert! Alert! Danger, Mistress, danger!’
The stranger in the brown coat called out over the wind, struggling up the aisle to Sarah Jane and Peter. ‘Sarah, get away from him!’
Sarah Jane looked startled, horrified. She looked from the stranger to Peter, who seemed strangely calm at the centre of the storm.
‘No — no,’ she murmured, shaking her head. ‘Peter?’
But he wouldn’t let her go. ‘Don’t be afraid, Sarah Jane,’ he said gently. ‘It’s the Angel.’ He pointed.
Suddenly a tall figure swam into being before the couple, seeming to form itself out of thin air.
It was dressed in a dazzling white hooded robe, which seemed to shine with radiant light.
Underneath the hood was a smooth pale face, with hideous grey stains in place of eyes and a wet lipless mouth. Clyde had never seen it before, but he had heard that face described many times by Rani and Luke.
It was the face of the Trickster!
The stranger was battling up the aisle against the wind. ‘Sarah Jane! Trickster, let her go!’
Too late, Time Lord!’ said the Trickster in his deep, sepulchral voice. He turned to look down at the horrified Sarah Jane. ‘You are mine, Sarah Jane Smith. Mine forever!’
Suddenly a twisting vortex, like a whirlwind, sprang up around Sarah Jane and Peter.
‘Sarah!’ cried the stranger.
‘Doctor!’ cried Sarah Jane.
She screamed.
And then the vortex whirled away, taking her, Peter and the Trickster with it.
Chapter Six
The Time Loop
The ballroom rocked again — the air seemed to ripple as a grinding, industrial-sounding noise, like a million gears jamming in some infernal machine, rent the air.
Clyde clung on to Luke and Rani — he had felt the same sickening sensation once before, when the Trickster had shifted him sideways into an alternative timeline. He knew he could get through this.
The grinding rose to an almost unbearable crescendo. The bitter freezing wind blew stronger than ever.
He was dimly aware of the wedding guests and the Registrar fading away from the room — he heard Rani crying out to her parents as they disappeared — and then he could hear the voice of the stranger.
‘Hold on!’ he was calling. ‘Everybody, hold on!’
And then there was a blinding white light that drove its way into Clyde’s skull. He felt the hands of his friends slipping away.
He opened his mouth to scream.
And then there was nothing.
What felt like hours later — but was in fact only a couple of minutes — the mist began to clear from Clyde’s mind. He could hear two voices. One of them belonged to Luke, and the other was unfamiliar.
Clyde blinked and sat up, the world slamming into focus around him. He was on the carpeted floor of the hotel ballroom. Next to him was Rani, who was struggling awake just like him. K-9 was whirring quietly to himself next to her. Then there was Luke, being helped to his feet by the stranger in the long coat.
‘Good to meet you in the flesh!’ the stranger was saying to Luke.
‘Mum!’ said Luke urgently, looking round.
For the first time Clyde noticed that they were alone in the ballroom. The incredible events of the last few minutes flooded back into his mind.
‘What happened?’ asked Luke. ‘I saw the Trickster—’
The stranger cut him off. ‘Luke, listen to me, everything’s gonna be alright. I can find Sarah. I can bring her back. I promise. But I need you to be strong for me, just like you were before. I know you can do it!’
Luke nodded, as if he knew and trusted this stranger. The stranger proceeded to pull out a chunky metal tube from his pocket. He pressed a button on its side and it whirred into life with a noise Clyde found oddly familiar. It was almost, but not quite, the same intense buzzing of Sarah Jane’s sonic lipstick.
He got to his feet. Though he was forming an answer in his mind already he heard himself asking the stranger, ‘Who are you?’
The stranger turned to face him and for the first time Clyde had a good look at his face. He was good-looking, with deep brown eyes and lean, pointed features. He looked about forty-ish, though there was something about him that seemed much older. When he looked right into Clyde’s eyes, Clyde couldn’t help but feel reassured.
‘Hello Clyde!’ said the stranger, shaking him firmly by the hand as if they were old friends. ‘And that’ll be Rani!’ He shook Rani’s hand, too.
‘What?’ said Clyde. ‘How d’you know my name?’
Rani was smiling at the stranger. ‘Wait a moment. You must be — it’s you, isn’t it?’
The stranger smiled. ‘That’s me.’
‘The Doctor!’ said Rani.
‘That’s him,’ said Luke.
Clyde cursed himself inwardly. How could he have been so dumb? Of course this was the Doctor! Luke had met him — or at least spoken to him over Mr Smith’s screen — on the terrifying day Earth had been moved through space by the Daleks.
‘Hope you’re as good as Sarah Jane says you are,’ said Clyde.
‘You know journalists, always exaggerating,’ said the Doctor breezily in his strange, London- but-not-quite-right accent. ‘But yeah, I’m pretty amazing on a good day.’
K-9 zoomed out towards him suddenly, his ear- sensors wagging. ‘Master! Alert! Query — where is Mistress Sarah Jane?’
‘K-9!’ said the Doctor jubilantly, and knelt down to tickle the robot dog under his chin. ‘Did you miss me? Did you miss me, eh?’
The initial shock was wearing off, and Clyde had noticed something else. The ballroom looked exactly the same, but something had changed. He suddenly realised there was no sound coming from outside. Even this deep in the countryside, you could hear distant traffic, birdsong. Now there was nothing.
He looked towards one of the big windows behind the Registrar’s table. Beyond was just whiteness.
‘Repeat: whereabouts of Sarah Jane?’ said K-9. ‘Where is she?’
‘Where are we?’ said Clyde, pointing to the window.
The others hurried to join him at the window. The Doctor stared into the vast white void, fascinated. ‘There’s been a dimensional shift. Time’s moved on, but us — and this entire building — we’ve been left behind.’
‘There’s nothing out there,’ said Rani.
‘I said, all along, I knew something was wrong about all of this!’ said Clyde. He turned to the Doctor. ‘What exactly is going on?’
‘I’ll explain later,’ said the Doctor, still staring outside.
Suddenly everybody was talking at once.
‘Where’s Sarah Jane? How can we be in the same place, what’s going on?!’ demanded Clyde.
‘What’s going on? That was the Trickster! Where’s my Mum and Dad?’ shouted Rani.
‘If he’s got Mum where is she? Where’s he taken her, we’ve got to think of a way to find her —’ said Luke.
‘Alert, dimensional anomaly,’ bleated K-9. ‘Orders, Mistress, orders, Master —’
The Doctor tuned from the window and pulled an enormous old-fashioned footba
ll rattle from his pocket — it was surely too big to fit in there, wasn’t it? — and swung it. Loud!
Everybody was quiet.
‘Here’s the answers to all your questions,’ said the Doctor. ‘Yes, that was the Trickster. Yes, we’re trapped. Yes, I’m the only one who can get us out of the trap. Yes, I’m gonna bring Sarah Jane and your mum and dad, Rani, and all the others back safe. But I can’t do any of it without you.’
Clyde was surprised. ‘You need us?’
The Doctor nodded. ‘Like Sarah Jane needs you.’
‘But my mum and dad, where are they?’ asked Rani.
‘Rani, just go along with him,’ said Luke. ‘I saw him save the world.’
‘You helped me save the world, Lukey boy!’ said the Doctor. Then he turned to the big doors that led to the hotel reception. ‘Right, come on — we can use the TARDIS. I assume everybody knows what the TARDIS is, unless you’ve really not been paying attention? Use the TARDIS to find Sarah Jane, and He flung open the doors. ‘Allons-y!’
He ran out and the others followed. Clyde noticed he was wearing a pair of battered old trainers, which looked like they’d seen a lot of running.
The Doctor slammed to a halt in reception, looking at an empty space on the carpet. There was a large square indentation in the carpet. ‘No, no, no! It was there! Right there!’
Suddenly they heard a strange wheezing, groaning sound. Clyde recognised it as the noise he’d heard weeks before, when he’d first seen Sarah Jane with Peter. ‘Wait wait wait said the Doctor.
That noise,’ Clyde said, ‘ I heard it before!’
‘That was me, trying to get through,’ said the Doctor. ‘Got knocked back by the Trickster.’
In the air above the indentation there was a strange ripple. A vague blue shape began to form.
K-9 darted forward, eye-probe extended. ‘Temporal schism is preventing TARDIS materialisation.’
The blue shape got firmer. Clyde peered at it, not impressed. ‘Wait a moment. That’s the TARDIS? It’s just a wooden box!’
‘Outer plasmic shell, it only looks like wood, Clyde,’ said the Doctor.
The protesting engines wheezed desperately once again, and the blue shape of the TARDIS began to fade.
‘Come on, you can do it,’ said the Doctor. ‘More power!’
He pulled out the metal tube again — Clyde realised this must be his sonic screwdriver — and activated it at full power, directed at the TARDIS. ‘Come on!’
But it was no use. The TARDIS had faded away, the engine noise chuffing away into the distance.
The Doctor nodded. Clyde thought he looked as if he was trying to put a brave face on this. ‘Okay, got no TARDIS. It can’t materialise here until time moves forward!’
‘Then we’re trapped here, wherever this is?’ said Rani. She looked nervously at Clyde, who was himself beginning to feel a surge of panic again.
‘No!’ said the Doctor. ‘Because what have I got? I’ve got K-9, and I’ve got you three — Luke Smith, Clyde Langer and Rani Chandra. And any friend of Sarah Jane Smith is a friend of mine.’
‘But where is this? What’s happened to the rest of the world?’ asked Clyde.
K-9 answered. ‘Our present location: nowhere. No-when.’
‘No-when?’ said Luke.
‘Look at the clocks,’ said the Doctor.
He indicated a big wall clock. The second hand was frozen, as if it had stopped, at 3:23 and 23 seconds.
There were three clocks behind the reception desk, marked with plaques to show the time in London, Paris and New York. All three showed different times. But all three were frozen.
There was a small digital clock on the reception desk. Its display read 15:23.
‘Time’s stopped!’ said Luke.
Clyde looked at his watch. The display read 15:23:23.
The Doctor leant forward and turned on a small television set behind the reception desk. It showed horse racing — and the horses constantly jumping over the same fence, over and over and over again. A time stamp in the corner read 15:23.
‘No, time hasn’t stopped,’ said Luke. ‘This second is in a loop. 23 seconds and 23 minutes past 3 o’clock.’
‘And we’re caught inside it. In this one second,’ said the Doctor gravely.
‘But again,’ said Clyde, ‘where’s Sarah Jane?’ The Doctor looked him right in the eye again.
‘I think she’s right here,’ he said.
Chapter Seven
Peter’s Story
Sarah Jane woke and sat up. She looked round. She was in the hotel ballroom, Peter at her side. There was nobody else in the room.
‘What happened?’ The last thing she remembered was walking down the aisle. Her head felt foggy and slow, as though something was clouding it.
‘Don’t worry, Sarah Jane,’ said Peter, helping her to her feet.
‘Peter, what’s going on? Where is everybody?’ Peter took her hand. ‘Everything’s going to be fine. Listen to me. We’re about to get married. It’s our perfect day. All you have to say is “I do”, and we’ll be together.’
It sounded so reasonable. Sarah Jane looked down at her engagement ring. The diamond was sparkling with life. Of course, it was her wedding day. She was so happy. She looked into Peter’s eyes and smiled.
But then the face of another man flickered through her mind. A tall, thin, dark-haired man in a long brown coat. ‘Another man…’ she said. What was his name? Who was he? ‘The Doctor?’
‘Sarah Jane, please listen to me,’ said Peter calmly. ‘All you have to say is “I do”. Look.’
He produced another ring from his pocket. A plain band of gold. ‘And then we’re together.’
Sarah Jane backed away from him. ‘I’m so confused. Need some air.
She turned to the nearest window — and saw nothing but empty white void beyond. ‘What? What’s happened, where are we?’
‘You don’t understand — just say you’ll marry me, say, “I do”.’
Sarah Jane looked down at her engagement ring again. It sparkled delightfully. So beautiful, so reassuring. She smiled. ‘Of course. We’re getting married.’
Peter came closer, holding out the wedding ring to her finger. ‘Do you take me as your lawfully wedded husband?’
‘I — I…’ Again that face appeared in Sarah Jane‘s mind. The tall thin man. Only this time she saw another man too. Another tall, thin man, with a shock of prematurely white hair, and a deeply-lined young-old face… And then a third man, with a beaky nose and huge blue eyes, and a broad-brimmed hat jammed on top of an unruly mop of curly hair…
Who were these men? And what was the word that connected them, made them — somehow — all the same person?
‘Another man,’ she said. ‘Always…’ Then she remembered. ‘The Doctor. Where’s the Doctor?’
It was as if somebody had splashed cold water in her face. She backed away from Peter, called out, ‘Doctor!’
Suddenly she realised. She held up the engagement ring on her finger — and saw it sparkling. It was beautiful, but unnatural. It was trying to take over her mind.
She ripped it off her finger and threw it away.
‘So we’ve been kept behind in this second?’ said Rani, looking in amazement at the TV screen and the constantly jumping horses.
‘Affirmative Mistress Rani,’ said K-9.
‘But the rest of the world, mum and dad and everybody, they’ve moved on from here, going forward in time. Why has the Trickster trapped us here?’
‘Come on, Rani, you know the answer to that one,’ said the Doctor. He was using the sonic screwdriver to scan around the room.
‘We’re Sarah Jane’s friends, all of us. Her best friends.’
‘Yep, which means…?’
Rani realised. ‘We’re hostages. He can use us to get at her.’
‘ We’ve met the Trickster before,’ Clyde told the Doctor. ‘Never found out who he is.’
‘The Trickster,’ said the Doctor,
‘is a creature from beyond the universe. Forever trying to break in to our reality and manifest himself. He’s one of the Pantheon of Discord.’
‘Good name for a band,’ said Clyde.
The Doctor flashed him a grin. ‘Yeah, actually, not bad. He’s an eternal exile who exists to wreak havoc. But we can fight him, the five of us. And we can win!’
Suddenly a beep issued from the sonic screwdriver. ‘That’s it, a time trace! A hint of Sarah Jane — she’s close!’
Clyde looked around — but there was no sign of Sarah Jane.
The moment you put that ring on my finger I was your puppet!’ said Sarah Jane, backing away from Peter to the door out of the ballroom.
‘It isn’t like that,’ said Peter. ‘It was just to make sure nothing went wrong, the Angel said people might try and stop us being happy. Listen and I’ll explain —’
She cut him off. ‘The Angel? Of course, I saw him.’ The memory of that terrible face appearing under the white hood flooded back into her mind. ‘The Trickster!’
She flung open the door, and ran out into the reception area.
It was empty. No sign of the Doctor or anybody else.
‘Doctor! Where are you?’
Rani was standing right next to the door leading to the ballroom. Suddenly she shivered. ‘Urgh, what was that? Felt like someone just walked over my grave.’
The Doctor swung the sonic screwdriver in her direction. ‘She’s here! She’s right here! K-9?’
‘Scanning Master!’ said K-9.
Sarah Jane flung open the main door of the hotel. ‘Doctor!’
Outside was nothing — an endless white void that seemed to have no dimensions. A limbo, without time or space. She had been here once before, when the Trickster had plucked her out of time.
She slammed the door shut.
Clyde’s ears pricked up — he heard the big main doors of the hotel being opened. The sound was distorted, an echo. He looked to the doors. They remained shut.
There came a faint, echoing cry. ‘ Doctor!’
It was Sarah Jane’s voice.
‘Mum!’ called Luke.
‘That was her!’ said Clyde, looking round wildly.
‘K-9, isolate the time trace!’ shouted the Doctor.
[Sarah Jane Adventures 09] - The Wedding of Sarah Jane Page 4