Damoda wouldn’t let them enter. He held the key to the Occult Room. And as a devout follower of Madame Blavatsky he had no choice but to obey her instructions. She had been emphatic when she had instructed him “to not let anybody examine the Shrine,” and it was his duty as one of the more ‘spiritually advanced’ Theosophists to keep careful watch of the Occult Room while she was away.
“My dear sir, I don’t care if you are a Chela. Or about the orders you’ve received. I am a Lord of Time. And I insist on seeing the Shrine.”
“ You can trust us,” Jo smiled sweetly at him in an attempt to charm him with diplomacy.
Damodar clutched the keys hesitantly and would probably have opened the door for them if Jo hadn’t chosen that moment to pluck the keys from his hand. The boy’s attitude changed instantly, whipping his hand back as if a snake had gone for him.

 “PLEASE. I AM A ‘CHELA’. You must not touch me. Or I will lose my astral magnetism.”

Jo wasn’t sure what to expect when she left the Tardis and stepped into the lavish spacious park surrounding the Adyar Headquarters of the Theosophical Society. While the Tardis was in flight the Doctor had given her a short history of the Theosophical Society and Jo was intrigued by the mysterious larger than life figure of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. To think that a woman who started off as a medium would found an international occult society that would attract so many knowledge seekers. And as the Doctor went onto explain “every one of those seekers was disillusioned with the science and religion of their time. All were willing to believe miracles could still occur in the Victorian age.”

The time travellers had walked up to a veranda furnished with comfortable cushions and easy chairs. Jo had been surprised to see a table stocked with books, novels, and magazines. This was not the austere, ascetic place she had been expecting.

The disciples were a quiet lot: delicate males from high cast families seemingly oblivious of the Tardis crew.

“Their minds are clearly on a higher plane,” the Doctor quipped.

They entered a hallway, walked along a corridor, and climbed some stairs while the Doctor continued to fill her in on the “Divine Wisdom” of Theosophy.
“ I get it. Their Buddhists,” said Jo.
“ Not exactly, “replied the Doctor. “Although, the movement did play its part in introducing Eastern Philosophy to the West., the Theosophists also campaigned for Home Rule.”
“So they’re political as well as religious then.”
They had reached the top of the stairs. “Theosophy is mostly about phenomena, Jo. Spiritualism, astral travel, secret doctrines.”
“And this Blavatsky gets messages from her ‘Masters. Via some kind of spirit telegraph,” laughed Jo. F forgetting  that she had witnessed far odder things on her travels with the Doctor. They had reached the Occult Room.
“Yes. They call it the shrine. They deposit letters inside and even get replies.”
At that moment Damodar had appeared and had barred them from going further.

Later, that night with a wheezing, groaning sound, a battered Blue Police box materialised inside the forbidden room. The Tardis door opened and the Doctor and Jo stepped outside moving quietly towards the shrine.
“What happens if they catch us?” whispered Jo.
“Old Damodar’s probably asleep by now. And if he wakes up you could all ways threaten to shake his hand.”
The Doctor parted a concealing curtain to reveal the sole piece of furniture in the room. It was a small wooden cabinet, five foot high by four foot wide, carved from black lacquered cedar wood, and suspended from the ceiling by thick iron wires.
But just as the Doctor reached out to touch the door of the shrine, a loud rap sounded on the wall. Jo almost leapt out of her skin in fright.

“Someone’s there Doctor!”
Another rap. Louder this time. Then another rap. The pair covered their ears in a vain attempt to shut out out the ominous sounds. Rap. Rap. Rap. Rap. Rap. A rapid succession of raps.
“These are spirit raps” shouted the Doctor “If they don’t stop they’ll wake the house up.”

‘If they don’t stop I’ll go mad,’ thought Jo.
Deafened, ghostly pale, trembling and with heart racing, Jo held onto the Doctor’s hand as they retreated from the Shrine. The raps grew quieter and less frequent with each step they took.
Immediately, upon regaining her hearing Jo became aware of the cries and footsteps of an angry, awakened house, “Someone’s coming,” she hissed.
But trouble threatened them from more than one source. For the curtains, surrounding the mysterious cabinet billowed outwards; needing no help from the wind, to create a terrifyingly unnatural effect. Jo stopped still. Mesmerised by the waving curtains: feeling a weird non-attachment. All was at it should be. She knew exactly what to do.

Hearing the key turning in the lock outside, the Doctor hurried back towards the Shrine. He was just about to open its doors, when CRACK! the back of his head almost split open with pain. The Time Lord was briefly conscious of a ‘thwack’, as flying fists and feet slammed into his skull.

When Damodar and the other Theosophists gained access to the Occult Room they found an unconscious Doctor sprawled on the floor while an expressionless Jo stood guarding the Shrine.

“This proves it, Doctor. This proves it’s not all fraud. This is exactly the evidence I need to defend me against the lies and calumnies of my enemies. The missionaries. That traitor Coulomb shall hear about this.”
They were riding in a horse drawn carriage with one of the most remarkable women Jo Grant had ever met. Stout, brown faced, with large rolling, almost hypnotic, blue eyes Madam Blavatsky seemed as impressed by the time travellers as they were with her. Dressed in a loose black sacque; her fingers adorned with the costliest jewellery, Blavatsky launched into a foul-mouthed tirade against her former housekeeper Mme Coulomb.
Blavatsky had fallen out with Mme Coulomb and her husband M Coulomb over some private correspondence that had been published in a magazine. The letters contained passages -”wicked interpolations” thundered Blavatsky - that had been eagerly seized upon by the missionary press.

In these letters Blavatsky had instructed the Coulombs to drop “spirit letters” through cracks in the ceiling and to walk in the moonlight with fake Mahatma dummies on their heads.
“So you weren’t responsible for the ‘spirit rapping’s’ then?” enquired the Doctor, opening the door to Blavatsky and offering his hand to Jo. The women climbed down from the carriage and stepped onto the veranda to get out of the sun.
“I responsible!. How could I be? I wasn’t even there when you heard the rapping’s. ”

Blavatsky led them through a hall, up some stairs and into a well-furnished boudoir, on exactly the same route they’d taken the previous night on their way to the Occult Room.

They talked while they walked. Blavatsky entertaining them with satirical gossip and dropping witty anecdotes about all the people she had met in Europe.
In return they satisfied her curiosity with a cover story. The Doctor passed himself off as a Sanskrit scholar and introduced Miss Josephine Grant as his niece. Blavatsky sat down in a carved, upholstered, chair and invited her two guests to be seated.
“Please have a smoke,” she offered: opening a box of cigarettes. They politely declined. Jo’s eyes met the Doctor’s. The cut on his head brought a guilty lump to her throat. The Doctor was having none of it. He didn’t need telepathy to show her with the gentlest of looks she wasn’t to blame.
“But I was possessed,” shuddered Jo. “Something made me attack you Doctor.”
“I’m sorry, child, ” Blavatsky lit another cigarette “But the Shrine is a holy artefact and it’s protected by some Very Powerful Forces. It is dangerous to meddle with the spiritual telegraph! Besides,” Blavatsky took in a lungful of smoke then exhaled, “you had no business being there! My disciples caught you red-handed!”
“That Shrine is dangerous, Madame! I felt it as soon as I entered that room. It is even more dangerous than you could imagine. It should be dismantled at once.”

There was a pause and when Blavatsky finally spoke they were shocked.
“I agree with you, Doctor.”
“You agree!”

And so Blavatsky told them the story of the Shrine: of its construction by the French man M Coulomb, and how it had become the subject of the most bitterest controversy when Helena Petrovna Blavatsky’s enemies revealed there was a secret removable panel inside.
“And as the boudoir is next door to the Occult Room, they say I have easy access to the cabinet.”
“Could the panel have been planted by the housekeeper’s husband, this M Coulomb?” the Doctor enquired.
Blavatsky was silent. When she spoke again she sighed, “I shall be sorry to see it dismantled, Doctor. I have never needed the Shrine to talk with My Masters. But that doesn’t mean others don’t need it. I feel pity for those souls who have not yet seen ‘Their Masters’. They need the cabinet to communicate with the Mahatmas and to believe.”
“Well, the Mahatmas will just have to start using the post office just like everyone else,” the Doctor insisted firmly. “There’s more than your reputation at stake here, Madame! I believe all the letters and trinkets materialising in your cabinet are entering this world of ours through a hole in reality!”
“So the letters aren’t from Blavatsky’s Masters, then?”
Blavatsky’s reaction surprised Jo. “I will tell you because we are friends. Perhaps you ought to know the truth. It’s all glamour! People think they see what they don’t see. That’s all there is to it.”
Jo was even more surprised at the Doctor’s reaction “And the spirit rapping’s that have followed you since birth. Are they glamour?”
“Oh, raps are the easiest phenomena to produce,” boasted Blavatsky. And in an impressive demonstration of the fact the boudoir suddenly erupted with the mysterious sounds. The Doctor winced, his head still aching from the recent nocturnal blows. But Jo laughed. This wasn’t nearly as creepy as the raps they’d heard before.

The Doctor’s voice was at its most conspiratorial as he asked Countess Blavatsky, “So I take it that it’s possible that the occasional sighting of a Mahatma has been faked?”
Her voice was at its most enigmatic as she replied, “The Masters are a reality to the millions who believe in them.”
“I don’t doubt it, Madam. Now will you let us see the shrine?”

The Doctor wrote his query on smooth- glazed rice writing paper. Blavatsky sealed it in an envelope and addressed it to the Masters. Now, it lay inside the Shrine waiting for their reply.
They were back in the Occult Room. The shrine, impressive though no longer sinister, dominated the barely furnished room. Some Hindus were with them, but proved less than credible witnesses as they lay prostrated on the floor, eyes hidden beneath folded hands.
“May I ask what month it is?” the Doctor asked Blavatsky with a puzzled look in his eyes.

“Why, it’s December 1884. Surely every school child knows that, Doctor.”
“It was a perfectly reasonable question to ask, Madame.” But the Countess was no longer listening to him.
“She’s in a trance,” Jo observed.
“Well, the history books have obviously got it wrong again, “ the Doctor frowned. “According to the history books the Shrine was destroyed on the 20th September 1884, while Madame Blavatsky was away in Europe. That’s why I set the temporal co-ordinates for the summer of 84. But we’ve arrived here, now, in December 84 and the Shrine is still around.”
“But not for long, hey, Doctor. They promised.”
“But the hole in reality! Don’t forget, Jo, the anomaly is growing stronger and the hole is getting wider every second the Shrine still exists. And the damage to reality may be irrevocable.”
They were interrupted by the sound of a faintly tinkling bell, intermingled with the far distant strains of a harpsichord. But no such instruments were discernible anywhere in the room. Madame Blavatsky was staring at the shrine, a strange expression on her face. “Open it now!” she ordered. Damodar obediently opened the doors and Jo could see inside.
In the interior was a statue of the Buddha, and on either side of the Buddha were two portraits, Jo guessed they must be the Masters Koot Hoomi and Morya. But most interesting of all was the long narrow envelope, covering the Doctor’s unopened one, where none had been before.

When, Ralph Hodgson, psychical researcher, arrived in Madras in December 1884, he made much of the fact that he never got to see the miraculous Shrine. As it had already been broken up, burnt, and buried in the garden. His report for the Society for Physical Research noted “that there had been easy access ‘between Madame Blavatsky’s bedroom and the Shrine”. And the final verdict of the Society was damming: Madame Blavatsky was to be regarded as neither the mouthpiece of seers or as a mere vulgar adventuress but as “One of the most accomplished, ingenious and interesting impostors in history.”

Extracts from the Journal of Dr Ophelia Hart

Thursday 13th May. Received fax from Dr John Smith. He has left the country on an urgent business matter. A bit vague about when he is coming back. The fax states that he won’t need Bessie on his travels and so is leaving her in my charge.
In the Doctor’s absence I am to contact Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge Stewart of the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce. I must make arrangements with the Brig regarding the collection of the car.

Monday 17th May. Work continues on Project Bang Bang. Up all night with a tricky equation. The Doctor’s notes are barely decipherable, or believable. But if the Doctor is correct the implications of what we are doing here will revolutionise the entire world! Rocket propulsion will quickly become a thing of the past.

Wednesday 19th May. Tomorrow, we levitate the Doctor’s car! I am beyond excited. This beats anything anyone has ever done before. Vehicles may have levitated in the past but those vehicles had onboard superconductors and travelled at high speed over coils on the ground.
Diamagnetism is my own contribution to science. I’ve helped pioneer work by magnetising a frog. Placing it in a 10 Tesla magnetic field. But even that wasn’t true anti-gravity. Gravity wasn’t eliminated by the magnetic force only counterbalanced by it.

Thursday 20th May. 3.45 pm Bessie is parked in our Anti Grav Lab. White coated technicians consult computer terminals. Making last minute checks: taking power readings. The tension is palpable. My work is over. All I can do now is observe. Transfixed to the TV monitor.
The stainless steel doors of the Levitron open outwards. I cross my fingers for luck. The remote controlled Bentley drives past the steel doors into the massive Levitron room. Palms sweating, I think of Icarus. Then the experiment begins.

9.30 pm Bessie is in for repairs. Technicians are still inside the Levitron room clearing the debris. I can’t believe it! After all my hard work. I’m too upset to write anymore.

Friday 21st May 1980. Memories of Chakra come to me in morning meditation. I try to ignore them to focus on my breathing instead. But how can I let go of attachments, when this bittersweet recollection is all I have left?

Now, whenever I look inside myself, all I see is a void. A void to be filled up by science, conversation, and friends! But the one truly fulfilling thing that I’ve ever had in my life is missing. CHAKRA!

They’re all blaming me at work. The Director of the Psychophysics Institute called me into his office today, demanding an explanation. Fact is I don’t know why the anti-gravitons decayed.
I wish the Doctor would return. I hope he isn’t too mad with me when he hears about his car.