Doctor Who: The Trial of a Time Lord : The Ultimate Foe by Pip Baker, Jane Baker

making a grab for the Key. Nipping aside, he stuck out his foot.
    Mel tripped and sprawled, full length, on the floor...
    Scattering pebbles, the Doctor tugged the retching Glitz down a shingle slope, gaining temporary respite from the advancing cloud of gas.
    ‘Come in, Doctor...’
    Blinking, the hard-pressed Time Lord rubbed smarting tears from his eyes. The summons came from a dilapidated beach hut.
    ‘You’ll be perfectly safe...’
    Deciding it was Hobson’s Choice, the Doctor bundled Glitz into the tar-stained hut – to be confronted not by rickety deck-chairs and sun-faded parasols... but the sophisticated control room of a TARDIS.
    Blundering to the console, coughing and choking, the Doctor rested on the central control, sucking uncontaminated air into his burning lungs...
    Then he registered the pulsating tab of a Chameleon Circuit ...
    A functioning Chameleon Circuit? His own was defunct. The police box could not change its shape to meld with any surroundings, but this TARDIS could... A fact that prompted the Doctor to wonder whether he hadn’t jumped out of the frying pan into the fire.
    ‘I never thought I’d welcome the sight of you,’ he stuttered between gasps.
    ‘It will not happen again,’ came the uncompromising rejoinder.
    ‘What puzzles me – is why it’s happening now.’
    The muzziness induced by the gas was beginning to recede: self-preservation ousted relief, and he hastily put the bulk of the console between himself and his malignant host.
    ‘The explanation is quite simple. I want the Valeyard eliminated. You are the most likely candidate to achieve that,’ purred the Master.
    ‘Hang on!’ Glitz wheezed in the midst of a hacking cough. ‘I don’t get that! You told me – this flashy, fair-haired geezer was – the one you wanted to croak.’
    ‘Silence, worm!’
     
    But the truth was out. Glitz was exposed as the Master’s lackey. A traitor. Sent to decoy the Doctor.
    Being a traitor did not bother Glitz. There was even a degree of glamour attached to the status of a spy.
    But to be called a ‘worm’! Not on your life! ‘Hey, show respect there! Nobody talks to Sabalom Glitz like that and gets away with it!’
    Seizing the opportunity to exploit the split, and mindful of the maxim ‘there’s no honour among thieves’, the Doctor fanned the embers of mistrust. ‘Especially not a business partner. What was it, Glitz? A fifty-fifty arrangement? Or were you the forty-nine per cent?’
    ‘Yeah, he’s got a point.’ Glitz rounded on the black-bearded renegade. ‘Who voted you Chairman of the Board?’
    The Master treated Glitz to a beatific smile. ‘Sabalom.
    Sabalom. Remember our many fruitful collaborations. I beg you, friend, don’t listen to him. Can you not perceive his motive?’
    ‘The profit motive’s all I’m interested in!’
    ‘Naturally, Sabalom, old friend. And profit you shall have...’ Condescension oozed. The ingratiating speech dropped an octave for the finale. ‘... after the Valeyard has been disposed of.’
    Judging the sycophantic bartering to be concluded, the Doctor added his comment. ‘Which completes the circumnavigational dissertation. Bringing us to my question. Why?’
    ‘Am I aiding you?’ The Master, evil though he was, had a handsome smile. He was enjoying the contretemps.
    ‘Yes, why is the leopard changing his spots?’
    ‘With you as my enemy, I always had the advantage.’
    ‘Huh!’
    ‘Oh yes. You are constrained by conscience. There are limits beyond which you will not trespass.’
    ‘Constraints from which you’ve never suffered.’
    ‘Thank you. I appreciate your magnanimity, Doctor, in conceding that.’
    ‘The two of you’ll be kissing and making up at this rate!’
    ‘Perish the thought, Glitz!’ groaned the Doctor.
    ‘But the Valeyard, the distillation of all that is evil –’
    The Master almost smacked his lips as he uttered the word,
    ‘– in you, untainted by virtue a composite of your every dark