Doctor Who: Dragonfire (4 page)

He shook his head quickly, and turned towards the cabinet. He jabbed at a button, and the transparent lid of the cabinet rose. The mist of supercooled gases flowed out.

Kane slid into the cabinet and lay down. The lid closed, and he felt the refreshing cool of the refrigerating gases as they flowed over him. He crossed his arms across his chest and closed his eyes. He lay like a lifeless body in a coffin. An automatic voice intoned as the temperature inside the cabinet fell. 'Current cabinet temperature: minus 20°C...

Target temperature: minus 193°C... Cabinet temperature falling...

minus 30 °C... minus 40 °C..." The voice continued...

From the shadows, Belazs watched. Anyone entering Kane's Restricted Zone would be killed, but she had followed him. She wanted to know what he kept hidden here.

She turned and retraced her steps back towards the Control Room. The way from the Restricted Zone emerged almost unnoticed into a corner of the Control Room where she strode over to the intercom and pressed the call-button. It was Kracauer's voice that replied. 'Yes, sir?'

'Kracauer, it's me - Belazs. Mr Kane has changed his mind about Glitz's spacecraft. It's not to be destroyed. Do you understand?'

There was a short pause, as though Kracauer was thinking about this.

Then he confirmed the instruction. 'The spacecraft is not to be destroyed.'

'That is correct.' Belazs released the intercom button. Did Kracauer suspect? If Kane ever found out what she had just done...

She looked at the palm of her hand, with Kane's mark branded deeply into her flesh.

After the Doctor and Glitz had left the Refreshment Bar, they had made their way down towards the Staff Quarters, where all the employees in Iceworld lived in small rooms off long corridors. From there, the two adventurers had clambered down the service shafts to reach the Ice Passages that ran beneath Iceworld. Here, a superstructure of metal gantries and walkways had been built onto the solid ice walls and floors. Dim lights illuminated the passages, and threw enough light on Glitz's map for the Doctor to read it. 'See any Ice Gardens, or Singing Trees?' he enquired, peering at the faded writing.

'We're still too close to the Upper Levels, Doctor. Let's cast me eyes over the map.' The Doctor passed the map to Glitz, and looked round, trying to match the gloomy passage to the map.

'Well, we've just come from that direction...' he observed looking behind them, 'so I would suggest that direction.' He pointed into the darkness ahead of them with his brolly.

'After you, then, Doctor.'

The Doctor strode purposefully off. 'Keep your eyes peeled for Singing Trees and Ice Gardens, Glitz...'

Not long afterwards, Mel and Ace also made their way down the long corridors of the Staff Quarters. Having lost her job, Ace was going back to her room to be miserable. Mel didn't have anything else to do, so she was following on behind.

Ace reached an automatic door, just like all the dozens of other automatic doors on that corridor, and she keyed a number into the security control. The door hissed open, and Ace went inside. Mel peered in at the doorway, not certain whether she had been invited in or not.

Ace's room was the usual teenage pigsty. There were clothes everywhere, with odd balls of discarded underwear strewn across the floor and disappearing under the bed. The room was also full of chemistry equipment, set up for elaborate experiments. Various stains on the floor and walls were evidence of experiments gone wrong, and foul liquids sat congealing in flasks and tubes. Even a poster, saying There's No Place Like Home, now had chemical equations scrawled all over it. An official picture of Kane had had two fangs added to it in fibre-tip.

Ace flopped onto the bed and sighed. Then she noticed Mel hovering in the doorway. 'Well, come in then, if you're going to.'

Mel stepped inside, and the door closed behind her. She began to pick her way through the mess on the floor towards a chair. Ace was staring at a recent stain on the ceiling. 'He really gets up my nostrils, that Glitz.'

'Oh, he's all right underneath.'

'No, I'll tell you what he is underneath. He's a Grade A, 100 per cent div, that's what he is,' retorted Ace. 'It's too dangerous for girls,' she mimicked.

Mel was trying to tidy some of the clothes on the chair before sitting down. Ace turned to her in irritation. 'Look, leave them alone, will you?'

'I was only trying to make room to sit.'

'Well, just sit on top of them, can't you, like everyone else does.'

'All right, all right.' Mel didn't feel like getting into another argument with Ace.

Ace relented. 'Well... I've been meaning to do the washing for a few days.'

Mel looked at the heaps of clothing. 'It looks more like a few weeks.'

Ace turned angrily on Mel. 'All right, then - a few weeks! Satisfied?'

'Sorry...'

'God, you're just like the teachers at school used to be. They were always complaining: How do you expect to pass Chemistry A-level if you can't even store the equipment properly?' Ace sank back onto the bed, miserable. Mel turned to her in surprise.

'A-level? That means you must be from Earth!'

'Used to be,' corrected Ace.

'Whereabouts on Earth?'

'Perivale.'

'Sounds a nice place.'

Ace turned to look at Mel. 'You ever been there?' She stood up and started rummaging through the heaps of clothes for something to wear instead of her Iceworld waitress's uniform. She continued talking while she was getting changed. 'I was doing this brill experiment in my bedroom to extract nitroglycerin from gelignite, but I think something must have gone wrong because this time storm blows up from out of nowhere and whisks me

here.'

'When was this?'

'Does it matter?'

'Don't you want to go back?'

'Not particularly.'

'What about your Mum and Dad? Won't they be worried?'

Ace spun round, blazing furiously, 'I don't have no Mum and Dad! I've never had no Mum and Dad! And I don't want no Mum and Dad! It's just me\ Got that?'

Mel was startled by the sudden fierceness. Ace had seemed so tough before. Mel hadn't realised the teenager could suddenly get so upset.

Then she remembered what she'd been like herself when she was a teenager: all tough and argumentative on the outside, but sometimes confused and upset inside. 'I'm sorry... I didn't realise...' Ace relaxed slightly, and continued pulling her bomber jacket on. Mel decided to change the subject back to something that Ace was more comfortable with. 'What about Chemistry A-level, then? Don't you want to go back for that?'

'That's no good, either,' said Ace bitterly. 'I got suspended after I blew up the Art Room.'

'You blew up the Art Room?'

'It was only a small explosion. But they couldn't understand how blowing up the Art Room was a creative art. All they cared about was how the First Years' pottery pigs got blown through the wall and halfway across the sports field. So they suspended me.'

Even down here in the Staff Quarters, it was impossible to get away from the Bing-bong Woman, and she chimed up again with another cheery announcement about the icefall in the Upper Docking Bays. 'If there's anyone on the Emergency Control Room, could you please answer the phone? Thank you.' Bing-bong.

Ace looked up irritably. 'Isn't anyone going to do anything about that flaming icefall?'

She turned to the dressing-table and started gathering up some battered aerosol canisters, which she put in a plastic Iceworld carrier-bag and handed to Mel. 'Here -take these.' Mel peered inside and read the lettering on one of the cans: Iceworld Forest Fragrance Deodorant.

'Deodorant?'

'They're just old cans.' Ace was stuffing ropes, fuel canisters, and other odds and ends into a canvas shoulder bag. 'They've got home-made nitro-9 in them now,' she continued.

'Nitro-9?' asked Mel, peering suspiciously at the cans.

'It's just like ordinary nitroglycerin - except it's got more wallop. Careful you don't drop them.' Ace grabbed the shoulder bag, and disappeared through the door. Mel wasn't sure whether to drop the cans and run like hell, or hang on to them for grim death.

'Come on!' called Ace from the corridor.

Gingerly, Mel stepped through the doorway.

Cautiously, Belazs opened the small door in Kane's Control Room and stepped through into the Restricted Zone. She knew her way and moved quickly through the gloom towards the bright area where Kane's cabinet stood. Kane was still lying there. The automatic voice was no longer intoning the temperature within the cabinet. Belazs was certain she knew what the cabinet was for - why no one was allowed in the Restricted Zone. Even here in the chill of Iceworld it was too warm for Kane. He must come from one of the frozen planets, and he couldn't allow his blood temperature to rise too high. This cabinet was his refrigeration unit. But what was the tall object draped in muslin? Belazs wanted to know.

Silently, she stepped forward. The crisp ice crackled slightly beneath her feet, but Kane lay motionless. She took a corner of the muslin and lifted it. Underneath, she saw a huge block of clear ice. Parts of it had been shaped into a figure, and it seemed to have the rough outlines of a woman.

'What are you doing in the Restricted Zone?'

Belazs's heart stopped.

'I said - what are you doing in the Resticted Zone?'

She felt Kane's cold chill standing behind her. 'I... I was looking for you.'

She turned to face Kane. 'There's been an icefall in the Upper Docking Bays, and the Emergency Services haven't responded...' What was the point of lying? Kane would kill her for this.

His eyes burned into her, cutting right to her soul. She suddenly remembered the first time he had ever looked at her, nearly twenty years ago, when she first arrived in Iceworld. She had just run away from home, and was grateful for work. She was a fresh young teenager then. Kane's wishes had been like sharp needles of ice in her conscience, but she had let him use her - until she was no longer young, no longer fresh. Now he was going to kill

her.

Kane's eyes burned right to her memories.

'Must I do everything myself, Belazs? Go there immediately, and take charge of the situation.'

'Yes, sir.' Her mind was numb. She couldn't understand.

She turned to leave.

'And, Belazs...'

She turned back.

'This is the last time you will ever set foot inside the Restricted Zone.'

She felt the sickness of death churn within her stomach - and she understood.

The Doctor and Glitz had now journeyed even deeper beneath Iceworld. There were no longer any metal walkways to guide them, and they had to slip and clamber down the shadowy black ice of the Ice Passages. Their way was illuminated by a light that escaped through cracks in the ice. It seemed to come from deep down beneath them. The passages echoed all around with a distant thundering rumble. The Doctor and Glitz followed one passage until it reached a dead end.

'Do you suppose this is the Tunnel of Oblivion, then, Doctor?' asked Glitz, looking at the ice in front of them.

'It's a Lake of Oblivion,' corrected the Doctor. 'And according to this map, we should be able to get through here.'

Glitz examined the ice ahead of them. 'It looks like there's been some kind of cave-in. We'll never manage to dig through it.'

'What about through here?' The Doctor was trying to squeeze through a huge crack that ran from top to bottom of the wall to one side. 'The cave-in seems to have fractured the ice just here, and we can probably get through to the other side.'

The cracked ice was rough in places, and the wall was a couple of metres thick, but the Doctor managed to squeeze through, emerging on the other side into a huge ice cavern.

Light strings of ice hung down from the roof of the cavern high above him, and they swayed in the currents of air. There seemed to be the faint sound of voices singing, far away in the breeze. Large crystals shaped in regular polygons clustered on the ground, interconnected by veins of metallic minerals that glittered on the surface. The Doctor looked round, listening to the singing voices, while Glitz scrambled through after him. 'I think we've just found the Singing Trees, Glitz,' he murmured.

Glitz looked round as well. 'These aren't trees.'

'Use your imagination, Glitz. Up there...' The Doctor gestured towards the strings of ice that were hanging down. 'Willow trees - something like that...'

'Yeah, I see what a fertile mind might make of it. But where's the singing coming from?'

'Air currents, I imagine. Causes the crystal membranes to vibrate.'

'I bet it's worth a crown or two.' Glitz surreptitiously pocketed a couple of large crystals and a lump of valuable-looking mineral.

'Beautiful, isn't it? But I wonder what it does}'

'Does?'

'Yes - it's some kind of opto-electronic circuit. But why? What's it doing here?'

'You mean someone built all this?'

'Not humans, certainly. This is beyond human technology.'

'Dragons?'

The Doctor turned to Glitz with a slight twinkle in his eye. 'Possibly.'

Glitz shivered. 'Come on, Glitz. I promised Mel we'd be back for tea.'

The Doctor strode off towards the other side of the cavern, which closed down into another passage.

Glitz looked round again, thinking of the creatures who had built all this

- and he shivered again.

The entrance to the Upper Docking Bays was completely blocked. A roof section had collapsed under the weight of shifting ice and completely crushed the side walls. On the far side, anyone in the Bays was now trapped. The Emergency Services were nowhere to be seen; only a couple of guards appeared, attracted by the commotion. They were trying to lift one of the fallen girders but it was obviously too heavy for them.

Ace came careering down the corridor and swung round the corner, only to see the mangled passageway ahead of her. Her eyes lit up in delight. 'Gordon Bennett! What a heap of acne!' Mel caught up with her, trying not to jolt the canisters of nitro-9. Ace pointed to the two guards. 'Have you ever seen such a couple of spots! It'll take them months to shift it all at that rate! Here - let me have those cans.' She exchanged the canvas shoulder-bag she was carrying for Mel's bag of explosives. Mel looked worried.