Doctor Who_ Time Zero Part 12

'Are you keeping them out, or trapping us in?' George asked as they finished the task.

'Ask me in the morning, when it's light,' Caversham told him. 'Now, we need a fire. For warmth, and so we can use it to defend ourselves if need be.' He turned to Price. 'See if you can find some more wood broken doors, floors, anything. Then bring it back here.'

'What about us?' Fitz asked. It seemed sensible to let Caversham give the orders at least he seemed to have some idea of what he was doing. And Fitz was beginning to think that perhaps the outrageous stories he had told them of his previous exploits had more than just a grain of truth in them.

'Find somewhere for us to make camp,' Caversham decided. 'Ideally a room with more than one entrance so we have an escape route. But we need to be able to seal it. Large enough to start a fire without burning the place down, so ventilated too.' He smiled. 'Though I doubt that will be a problem.'

'We're on it,' Fitz a.s.sured him. 'What are you going to do?'

'I'll stay here, on watch. If and when those things arrive, we'll need as much warning as we can get.'

'Then what?' George asked.

'I'm hoping they hunt at night and sleep in the day. In which case we can put as much distance between them and us tomorrow as we possibly can.'

George frowned. 'What makes you think that's the case?'

'He's hoping,' Fitz said. 'Not constructing a thesis.'

'And if you're wrong?'

'Pray that I'm not,' Caversham said.

'It's a shame we only have the one gun,' Fitz said as he turned to follow George into the dark interior of the castle. The walls were damp with condensation and the flagged floor was slick with moisture freezing to ice.

Caversham called him back. 'Here,' he said, 'take this.' He reached into his coat pocket and pulled something out.

'What is it?' Fitz took the heavy metal ball and looked at it dubiously, He tossed it from one hand to the other.

Caversham caught it in mid air, and handed it back to Fitz, closing his hand around it. 'It's a grenade,' he said. 'I have more in my pack, somewhere. To blast the rock away so your friend can find his precious fossils.'

'Be prepared,' Fitz muttered. 'Thanks.'

'You just be careful with it,' Caversham replied. 'Only pull the pin if you're absolutely sure there's no alternative.' He looked round the corridor, 'Otherwise you could bring this whole place down on top of us.'

31: Cold Comfort

With a clarity born perhaps of helplessness, perhaps of fear, Anji could make out the details of the distant mountains as the plane approached them. She could see the gulleys and glaciers, the snow*capped peaks and the white*dusted lower slopes. She was flying over the foothills now, feeling strangely tranquil in her helplessness. So this was how it was all going to end. She breathed out a long breath and tried to relax into the rigid seat.

Was that a castle she could see, nestled into the side of the lower snowy slopes of the mountain? She could see the turrets and the heavy stone walls. And she could see where newer, less substantial buildings had been built on to the outside of the castle, where the courtyard had been roofed over. She would be over it soon, heading towards a mountain that loomed beyond and dwarfed the huge structure.

Anji's hand was patting the side of the pilot's chair, beating out a restless rhythm. Almost unconsciously it felt its way round the contours and edges. Was that a lever, a handle? Probably to the adjust seat. She gripped it.

And was suddenly, startlingly alert again. In a second she was out the seat and crouched beside it, staring at the handle she had almost pulled Without thinking. Gazing at the red capitals, the yellow*and*black warning stickers.

Then she was back in the seat once more, pulling the straps tightly round her as she clicked on the four*point harness. 'EMERGENCY USE ONLY.' Well, if this wasn't an emergency she wasn't sure what was.

She could see black lines running like scars down the side of the mountain, deep trenches in the snow. She could feel every facet of the handle, even the tiny ridges where the black paint had scuffed at the edges. Anji swallowed, closed her eyes, and pulled.

Nothing happened. The lever had not moved.

She tried again. Still nothing. The castle was almost below her now. Was that a group of tiny people just outside what looked like the main gates?

At full stretch, Anji managed to reach round and get both hands on the lever. She yanked with all her might.

It felt as if someone had driven a truck into the small of her back. But before she could scream with the shock and the pain, the canopy above her exploded outwards and her breath was ripped away by the cold air outside. She was flying, strapped to a metal seat that probably weighed more than she did, and flying no, falling through the icy air.

Another jolt, less violent but just as painful, following the first, and she was looking up aghast at the umbrella*shaped parachute above her It seemed rock*steady as she swayed beneath it. One edge crumpled slightly and for a moment she was terrified the flimsy material would fold up and collapse, leaving her to plummet to the ground below. So far below.

The plane kept going. She fixed her eyes on it, not wanting to look either up or down, watched it flying onwards towards the mountains. Miraculously, it cleared the first peak and kept going... going... Until it was out of sight.

At which point the chair hit the ground, rolled over, and Anji was screaming, thumping at the buckle against her chest, breathing in rasping frozen air.

She staggered away from the ejector seat, leaving the parachute to bellow and roll in the wind. The wind that was tearing through her thin clothes and making her s.h.i.+ver. The snow was over her ankles, into her suddenly not*so*sensible shoes. The tears were freezing on her face.

And somewhere in the distance was the sound of an explosion. m.u.f.fled, muted, but clearly audible. A pall of black and orange smoke rose above the mountain peaks. Between Anji and the crashed plane was the castle. It rose like a mountain in its own right, and she staggered towards it, falling almost immediately. Up again, and falling again. So cold, so very cold. She could no longer feel her fingers. Her body was shaking so much she thought she would fall to pieces.

'I should have stayed in the plane,' she managed to gasp through chattering teeth. Her only hope was to get to the castle, to reach shelter. But as she staggered and fell and crawled towards it, Anji thought it looked a lifetime away.

30: Discovery

'Are you serious?'

'I can a.s.sure you that I am entirely serious.' Maxwell Curtis's face filled the monitor. The image flickered and static rippled over his features.

'And on the basis of this journal,' Naryshkin said, 'you expect me to trek across the tundra in, search of... 'He waved his hand in annoyance and perplexity. 'In search of ice ice.'

'Not just ice!' Despite the weakness of the satellite link and the distortion, Curtis's pa.s.sion was clearly audible. 'This is it, don't you see Vladimir? The end of our journey the very material we need to complete the experiments.'

'In a hundred*year*old journal of a lost expedition?'

Curtis sighed, his enthusiasm giving way at last to a frown, 'It isn't far from the Inst.i.tute. At least go and look.' He paused, before adding: 'Or must I find someone else to run the Inst.i.tute, someone who will this small thing for me?'

Naryshkin was astounded. 'Are you threatening me?'

'I hope I don't have to. What is the problem here, Vladimir? Why not indulge me. Half a day, that's all, to get there and see for yourself. Half a day that may save months if not years of effort. And if there's nothing in it, what have you wasted?'

Naryshkin was shaking his head. 'All right, all right,' he said quietly 'Read me the pa.s.sage again. I received the map that Holiday e-mailed, but tell me again what it is we are looking for.'

Curtis's eyes were dark circles on the cloudy screen as he smiled. 'I promise you will not be wasting your time,' he said. 'And soon I shall be there to share in your excitement and success.'

There did not seem to be time to encode a message and e-mail it. In any case, the incursion team was close enough now for a verbal report. The base of Miriam's hairbrush was the transmitter, the bristles poking through the mesh of the concealed sneaker. Her voice was real*time encrypted, but there was still a chance that someone would register the transmission, so she had to be quick.

'He's taking Yuri and Penny with him, but he won't say where. Just that it's a mad fool expedition that our sponsor has insisted on.'

The reply crackled through the dark hairs that were caught in the bristles of the brush. 'OK, we'll take it from here. We should acquire visual contact soon. Report back when they return or if you learn anything more. Out.'

'Oh yes,' Miriam said, remembering. 'Out.'

But the speaker was already silent, save for the hiss of static like the cold wind outside.

The three figures were bulky and clumsy and easily visible in their brightly coloured parkas. Swathed with thermal material and stumping along through the snow, it was impossible to distinguish male from female.

'Three of them, just as she said.'

A group of harsh white figures watched from behind a ridge. The image of the three from the castle was relayed from the binoculars of one of them to a small screen that the others were watching.

'Get a direction, plot a probable course. Let's see if we can work out where they're headed.'

'Sir.'

'B Group to follow them.' The man's voice was crisp, unaccented. 'Tell Charles I don't want them to see his team.'

A voice crackled in the man's ear.

'Got that, sir. They won't see us, because we're not here. We're following now.'

'Here it is.' Naryshkin was surprised. He had expected to find nothing. But here, just as Curtis had said, just as was marked on the map, was an opening in the snow and ice. Peering inside, he could see a tunnel leading deep down into the glacier.

'We're going in there?' Yuri demanded, stamping his feet in an effort to keep warm. 'Is it safe?'

Penny Ashworth was already examining the sides of the entrance. 'It seems safe enough. If we attach a rope to that boulder over there, we should be able to lower ourselves in.'

'And get out again, I hope,' Naryshkin added.

'Funny,' Penny said as she lowered the rope down into the tunnel. 'It looks as if there's light down there.'

'Reflection, perhaps,' Yuri suggested. 'Shall I go first?'

'No,' Naryshkin told him. 'It may be dangerous. I shall go first.'

Yuri shrugged. 'You're the boss,' he said in Russian.

It was light. Naryshkin could see the way down the tunnel quite clearly more clearly the lower he went. It was not a long distance. Perhaps thirty feet. The tunnel emerged into a cavern, and he dropped from the tunnel entrance to the floor. The rest of the rope was coiled lazily on the icy floor.

'I'm down,' Naryshkin called, tugging on the rope to let the others know he was safe and had arrived. He did not wait for a response. He was staring across the cavern, pus.h.i.+ng his torch back into his pocket, mouth hanging open at what he saw.

The light, the ice, the glow of frozen fire. And on the far side of cavern, frozen solid caught in a moment of time...

'Good grief!' Penny breathed behind him. 'What have we found?'

29: Involvement

It was so cold now that Anji could feel nothing. She had even stopped s.h.i.+vering, which she was sure was not good. Not good at all. Her entire life was a rolling, crawling movement. She was detached, almost as if she were watching herself make hesitant progress towards the castle in the distance. She could not even feel the hard lumps of rock and ice that bruised her body as she rolled over them, not any more.

Except when she summoned the energy to lift her head and stare blearily through the white*out towards her destination, Anji's entire world was the next six or eight inches of monotonous snow, of ice, of grey rock poking through close to her head.

Snow ice rock.

Reach forwards a few inches and drag herself forwards.

Snow ice rock.

Reach forwards a few inches.

Snow ice boots.

Reach forwards...

Boots?

There was a pair of boots just in front of Anji's face. White boots, from which loose white trousers emerged and flapped in the chill breeze. She could feel the ice in her eyebrows, stinging in her eyes and her nostrils as she struggled to look upwards, to see where the legs went.

A pair of white*gloved hands grabbed her firmly under the armpits and dragged her to her feet. Her own legs trailed under her, unable to support her weight. Something was shoved at her, pressed into her mouth and she was drinking a warm, scalding warm liquid, choking, coughing. A coat wrapped round her.

A face. Dark beneath a white hood. Smiling, amused, triumphant.

'Miss Kapoor,' Thorpe said, his voice muzzy in the cold, 'we saw your parachute. How nice to renew your acquaintance.'

They let her get her breath back, sat her in the cabin of a snow*cat and ma.s.saged some feeling back into her legs and arms. She was too tired and cold to resist. She could not run, and anyway there was nowhere to run to.

'You've led us a merry dance,' Hartford said. He handed her a steaming mug and she clutched and held it tightly. Their breath was a cool mist despite the heating in the vehicle. 'Almost killed yourself several times.' He smiled, white teeth within white hood. 'But you're too valuable to us, you know.'