Doctor Who_ Time Zero Part 24

She checked the corridor was empty, then ran back to her own room as fast and as quietly as she could.

If there was one person in the whole world who frightened Thorpe more than Hartford, it was the old man whose weather*beaten face stared unblinkingly out at them from the video screen set up in a corner of the Great Hall.

'Absolutely not,' Control said. His left eye twitched almost imperceptibly. 'No reinforcements. No further contact. In fact I'm amazed you even ask.'

Hartford, in contrast to his superior's calm, looked about ready explode. 'You sent me here to do a job, sir,' he roared. 'You got me out of retirement again because I'm the best.'

Control's reply was almost as loud. 'Then prove it. It's up to you to ensure you have the correct tools and sufficient resources for your mission, Colonel Hartford. If you can't handle the situation without making waves, we may have to disavow any knowledge of you, Alternatively, you can get the job done and go back to reading Walt Whitman on that ranch in Oregon.'

'My mission was to find and retrieve the time*travel equipment,' Hartford said, barely more restrained now. 'But there isn't any.'

'You mean you haven't found it,' Control corrected him.

'Perhaps.'

'Very well. You have the woman.'

Thorpe kept his face neutral as Hartford glanced at him.

Control seemed not to notice. 'She will have to do. You mission, as I'm sure you remember, was to get the equipment and technology and bring it back. Or if that proved impossible, to ensure that n.o.body else has access to it.' He leaned closer to the screen so that he seemed about to break the gla.s.s. 'Despite what you may have read, battles are not not lost in the same spirit as they are won. If you can't find it, I suggest you make sure there's nothing left for anyone else to search through. Clear?' lost in the same spirit as they are won. If you can't find it, I suggest you make sure there's nothing left for anyone else to search through. Clear?'

'Clear,' Hartford ground out. 'Sir.'

The screen went blank.

'I'll organise demolition charges,' Thorpe said quietly.

'Thirty minute timer, controlled from my chronometer.'

'I'll get them started,' Thorpe told him.

Before Hartford could respond, there was a polite cough from behind them. Surprised they both whirled round.

To find the Doctor standing there, watching them with interest and apparent amus.e.m.e.nt. Less amused was Anji Kapoor, who was standing with him.

'Before you get too distracted with other things,' the Doctor said, 'I wonder if I could borrow a couple of your chaps to help me move some equipment. Time*travel equipment actually. Blue box sort of stuff.'

Only now did Thorpe realise there was a third person with them. The man was familiar, though Thorpe couldn't immediately place him. He was wearing furs and needed a shave. He seemed to be faint, Indistinct, almost as if...

'Oh, I'm so sorry,' the Doctor was saying. 'Allow me to introduce George Williamson.' He smiled benignly. 'He's a ghost.'

The change in Hartford's demeanour was astonis.h.i.+ng. He listened as the Doctor explained hurriedly that he thought he had found the time machine that Hartford was after.

'The thing is, it's a natural phenomenon. That's why the scientists here have no idea what you're talking about.' He glanced sideways at Anji. 'Though presumably they will at some point realise the potential of the ice formation we have found, and use it to send Miss Kapoor here back in time.' He grinned. 'Simple really.'

'And you can prove this hypothesis?' Hartford asked thoughtful rather than belligerent.

'Oh yes,' the Doctor told him confidently. 'I think so,' he added, sounding less sure now. 'Probably.' He nodded to himself. 'I expect.'

Hartford looked closely at the Doctor. He seemed to be ignoring both Anji and George for now. 'What do you need?' he asked.

While Thorpe and two more of Hartford's team organised unloading the TARDIS from the aircraft outside, the Doctor and Anji were allowed to see the two surviving scientists. They left George in the Great Hall, rather than have to spend time in lengthy and unsatisfactory explanations. Hartford insisted on leaving an armed guard to make sure George didn't try to leave.

'What are you going to do if he does?' Anji asked. 'Shoot him?'

Hartford smiled at her, apparently amused by the question. 'No,' he said. 'Shoot you you.'

Hartford went with them to their rooms, and listened carefully as the Doctor asked first Naryshkin, then Miriam Dewes, if they were aware of the flames apparently trapped within the ice in the cave. They knew of the cave, of course, but each of them expressed surprise at the Doctor's description of the ice.

'I still don't believe it can be a coincidence,' the Doctor observed when they were done talking to them.

'Why not?' Hartford asked him.

'They're trying to create an optic black hole. To do that they need to slow light.' The Doctor shrugged. 'So it is rather handy that exactly the right substance to do that, something with the relevant properties and attributes, can be found a few minutes walk from the lab. Don't you think?'

'If you're right about the ice,' Hartford pointed out.

'Yes,' the Doctor admitted. 'Well, let's find out.'

'It is possible,' Hartford said as they returned to the Great Hall to find George, 'that someone else knows.'

'Who?' Anji asked.

'That had occurred to me,' the Doctor said. 'Whoever established this Inst.i.tute here in the first place.' They had all heard the Doctor ask Naryshkin who had chosen the Inst.i.tute's location. Now Anji realised the point of the question, and Hartford, she could see, had also realised that the Doctor was about three steps ahead of them both.

'Financial benefactor Maxwell Curtis. Someone else to talk to,' the Doctor mused. 'But I think I'd like to be a little more sure of my ground before we do that.'

Thorpe was waiting for them in the Hall. 'We've loaded your box on to a freight sled,' he told the Doctor. 'And the charges are being laid now,' he said to Hartford.

'What charges might they be?' the Doctor asked. 'Bank charges? Electrical charges?'

'It needn't concern you,' Hartford snapped.

'Oh but it does,' the Doctor a.s.sured him. 'Cavalry charges?'

Hartford ignored him. 'Thorpe, you and Jonas go with them. Any trouble, any attempt to escape kill them.'

'Understood, sir.' Thorpe turned back to the Doctor. 'Anything else you need?'

'Yes,' the Doctor said. 'I need the Grand d.u.c.h.ess.'

'Why?' Hartford snapped.

'Because she owned the journal, because she may know more from that than any of us do.' The Doctor grinned. 'And because I enjoy her company.'

The Doctor's mood of jovial excitement lasted until they reached the main entrance. The TARDIS was lying down on a low sled in front of the Inst.i.tute. The sled was attached to a diesel*powered vehicle on tracks. Anji and the d.u.c.h.ess, who kept glancing disconcertedly at George, immediately set off towards it.

'This box,' George said.

'What about it?' Anji asked.'

'I have seen it before,' he said. He was frowning. 'Or something like it. In the ice.'

But before Anji could ask him what he meant, she realised that the Doctor was not with them. He was crouched down, examining something on the ground. With a sigh, Anji went back to see what he was doing.

'There was another one in the corridor,' Thorpe was saying. They seem to be fixed down somehow.'

They were looking at a dark lump poking up from the thin layer of ice. The Doctor had dusted the snow away from it and was rubbing his chin thoughtfully. He was no longer smiling.

'Things are worse than I thought,' he said quietly.

'You know what it is?' Jonas asked. He was a short, stocky man. His voice was hesitant and nervous but his a.s.sault rifle was ever poised. He glanced at Thorpe, as if for confirmation that it was OK to speak.

'No' the Doctor said. He straightened up and dusted the snow from the front of his coat. 'But I've seen one of these before.'

'Where?' Anji asked.

'In an auction house in London. Where there should have been a dead body.'

Thorpe said: 'One of our people went missing from here.'

George stepped forward, his arm pa.s.sing through the Doctor's shoulder as he moved. She flinched and shook her head in continuing disbelief.

'I have seen it too,' he said. 'Here in the Castle. Though many years ago of course. When Caversham went missing.'

The Doctor nodded, his face grave, 'I know. Fitz mentions it in the journal. Come on. Time is moving on.' They strode out across the frozen ground towards the TARDIS. 'What's the common factor here do you suppose?' he asked. 'The linking element?'

From where he stood behind the broken end of a low wall on the other side of the inst.i.tute, Curtis could see the group of people approaching the Doctor's blue box. He watched as the tall black soldier got into the small cab of the powered sled and started the engine. He waited until they were almost out of sight before he crossed to the main doors, glanced briefly down at the dull black lump on the ground, and went back inside.

'Did they perhaps learn of the ice from Fitz's journal?' George asked as they made their way towards the entrance to the cave.

'He mentioned the ice?' Anji asked.

George shrugged. 'He certainly had the journal while we were in the cave.'

'The problem with that,' the Doctor said, 'as the Grand d.u.c.h.ess here will tell us, is that the journal Curtis has is a fake.'

'But,' Anji said slowly, 'it does mention the ice cave. Doesn't it? Am I missing something here?'

The Doctor opened his hands wide as if throwing the question to the audience. 'd.u.c.h.ess?' he prompted.

'I cannot explain that,' the d.u.c.h.ess said. 'The journal the faked journal was provided by a business a.s.sociate of mine. A prop.'

'Prop?' George echoed.

'Business a.s.sociate?' Anji said. She was beginning to see what was going on here. 'You mean, you knew it was a fake.'

The d.u.c.h.ess seemed scandalised. 'Of course I did. But I never expected the real journal to turn up.' She shook her head in annoyance. 'As far as I knew there wasn't wasn't a real journal. Just a few pages of scribble in the British Museum.' a real journal. Just a few pages of scribble in the British Museum.'

They had reached the entrance to the cave now the mouth of the sloping tunnel that led down into the cavern. The Doctor waved to Thorpe in the cab of the sled, and pointed to the dark opening. The sled ground to a halt beside it and Thorpe stepped down from the cab.

'What now?' he asked.

'Well, ideally, I'd like the TARDIS my box of equipment down there in the cave.'

Thorpe considered the problem. 'We can slide it down. Looks like it will just about fit, so long as the pa.s.sage doesn't get any narrower. Don't want it getting stuck on the way.'

'Indeed we do not,' the Doctor agreed. 'But it actually opens out as it goes.'

'What if it blocks the opening at the other end?' the d.u.c.h.ess asked. The Doctor raised an eyebrow. 'The TARDIS isn't that stupid,' he said as if it were up to the box to sort it out.

Thorpe nodded and climbed back into the cab. He swung the sled round and backed it up to the entrance.

It took all of them to push the TARDIS off the sled and base*first into the opening. Anji was surprised that the d.u.c.h.ess helped she seemed stronger than she looked. George also tried to help, and seemed more and more frustrated as his hands slipped through the TARDIS exterior.

Eventually, the TARDIS reached the point of balance. It tipped slightly, then a little more before swinging upwards and sliding slowly out of view.

Thorpe sent Jonas after the TARDIS, then the rest of them. He waited to follow last.

When Anji arrived with a flurry of snow and ice at the bottom of the slope and sprawled on the ground, she saw George standing in front of her. He was staring at the TARDIS which had come to rest against the ice*wall of the cavern.

He turned slowly towards Anji, just as the Doctor arrived behind her with a shout of glee like a child on a water*slide. George's expression was a mixture of confusion and perplexity. 'That's where it was,' he said. 'That's where I saw it.'

'Saw what?' Anji asked.

'This box. Only, it was made of ice.'

'I hardly think so,' the Doctor said. 'Memory playing tricks on you after all the time in the ice. Deja*vu rearing its ugly head.' He unlocked the TARDIS and went inside. Almost instantly he was back again, holding a small red box with a meter set in the top.

They were all in the cave now. The d.u.c.h.ess, Jonas and Thorpe were looking round in amazed interest. The Doctor was standing by the wall where the' tiny flames seemed trapped within the ice. Slowly everyone else made their way over to him.

'Yes,' he said at last. 'The energy has definitely dissipated. There are residual readings of a far stronger energy field. Look, the original exothermic coefficient is off the scale.' He held the meter up for them all to see. 'And now it's hovering close to zero.'

With a sudden rapid movement that made Jonas clutch his rifle more firmly, the Doctor pocketed the device and turned to face his audience.

'Now what we need to know,' he announced, 'is what made that happen. What could possibly have released that amount of tempora*thermic energy?'