Doctor Who - The Silent Stars Go By Read online

  'What labour do you do, Rory?' she asked. 'Let me guess. Are you a shepherd?'

  'No.'

  'Then a plantsman. That's it! A plantsman.'

  'No, actually I'm a nurse.'

  Vesta gazed at him, bewildered. 'A nurse? You're a nurse?'

  'Yes.'

  She leapt up, brushing her clothes down, her head bowed. 'Oh my Guide! I am so ashamed! So ashamed of my comportment!'

  'Whoa, what?' asked Rory, getting up.

  'You are an elect, an elect, and I show you no courtesy or respect! Oh goodness, and to think I struck you on the head too!'

  'Calm down. Please, calm down. It's all right.'

  She looked at him uneasily. 'I didn't know. Honest, and may Guide strike me down. I had no idea. You look too young, and you do not have a beard either.'

  'I can understand how you made the mistake,' said Rory.

  'Were you coming to visit us at Beside?'

  'Yes,' said Rory.

  'For the festival?'

  'The festival...?' he asked.

  'The winter festival.'

  'Yes,' said Rory firmly, nodding. 'That's why we'd come. To celebrate.'

  'You weren't on your own then?'

  'What?'

  'You said "we",' said Vesta.

  'I did, didn't I?'

  'Obviously someone as important as the Nurse Elect of a plantnation wouldn't travel alone. That would make no sense.'

  'It wouldn't, would it?' asked Rory.

  'So where is the rest of your party?'

  'It was just a small group. Three of us... travelling from, um, afar,' said Rory. 'The Doctor and... another person. We got lost and separated.'

  'How terrible, Elect,' she said. 'I hope they are all right.'

  'So do I,' Rory agreed.

  'We used to have wellwishers every year for the festival, but not since the winters turned white. The Morphans of Beside will be overjoyed that you have made this effort for the festival. We should go. We should go at once.'

  'To Beside? Now?'

  'Yes,' said Vesta. She was very earnest. 'This mill is quite secure, I suppose, but I do not wish to spend the night here, not with it out there. It is late, and it is cold, but if we go together and walk with purpose, we might make it in an hour.'

  'OK,' said Rory. 'What about my friends?'

  'We must hope Guide watches out for them,' said Vesta.

  The Ice Warriors moved surprisingly fast for such big creatures. They weren't running, but their stride rate had increased. They pursued the Doctor and his companions out of the tree-line and onto the soft snow dunes of the open grazing. Their gait was powerful and sure-footed even on the softest snow, as though they were evolved to excel in such conditions. It felt as if they could stride for ever, and knock down anything that got in their way, and no matter how fast you fled, eventually they'd catch up with you when you collapsed of exhaustion.

  "This way!' Samewell shouted, running ahead into the open ground. Lazy snowflakes billowed around him, spilling from a sky as dark as wet granite. 'Come on!'

  'No! No! No!' the Doctor yelled. He was still fiddling with his sonic screwdriver as he ran. 'Not that way! Keep to the trees!'

  Samewell was not going to be deterred, and Arabel was following him closely. Either he knew what he was doing, or he'd entirely taken leave of his senses, especially the one relating to direction. Given that surprise had almost sent Samewell running towards the Ice Warriors when they first appeared, the Doctor was not filled with confidence.

  The sonic screwdriver started chirruping again. He aimed it at the Ice Warriors, neutralising the lethal blasts of their sonic weapons, and bounded on after the others.

  Samewell had led them towards some kind of gully.

  He did know what he was doing after all.

  There were some steep ditches and sunken stream beds in the slopes between the wood and the gently rising Moreland. Snow-cover had softened them into narrow channels and defiles, blended invisibly into the whiteness. Amy and the Doctor found themselves slithering down a deep bank behind Arabel and Samewell, and then slogging along a winding channel out of view of the edge of the wood. There were a few lonely trees and coarse bushes, coated in snow, and large snow-dusted boulders jutted out of the frozen stream bed.

  Arabel slipped and half-fell, but Amy grabbed her and pulled her up again. They kept running.

  The Doctor's screwdriver didn't. It puttered out again. They could hear the Ice Warriors descending the bank behind them, but they couldn't see them.

  Samewell led the fugitives along another channel, and then through a gentle basin where a lip of rock crowned with a gnarled tree overhung. Hard snow, driven by the wind across Moreland, blew down into their faces like sleet.

  Samewell gestured urgently for them to keep following him. He scrambled up another bank, cascading powder snow in all directions, and led them back onto a raised stretch of the grazing.

  There was a hut ahead of them. It was quite small, round, with a conical roof. Snow had drifted against its northward face. It was the shelter Samewell had told them about. It was the vent.

  The Doctor felt an acute rush of pity. Samewell had been trying so hard. His solution to them being lost out in the snow was to lead them to the vent. His solution to them being chased by murderous Ice Warriors was the same plan, unmodified. A vent provided shelter and safety for a herder. That was the way Samewell's mind worked.

  As they got closer, the Doctor rapidly revised his opinion. The vent was made of metal. The entire structure was composed out of shipskin. If they could bar the door, it might indeed protect against Ice Warriors.

  'Get inside!' he shouted.

  The four of them blundered into the vent. It was dark and cold inside, and smelled of straw, but it was surprisingly dry. Samewell swung the metal door shut behind them and dropped the bolt.

  They looked at one another in the gloom. It was so dark, they could discern only the faintest shapes. All of them were panting and out of breath.

  'Wait now,' said Samewell.

  He fumbled along the wall of the vent behind the door and found a rack containing small solamps. He turned one of the lamps on. The inside of the vent was a circular chamber about six metres in diameter. There were shelves with pots and pans, a small stove, two battered sleeping cots and a chair. The floor looked like it was impacted earth covered in dried rushes or straw.

  It was almost cosy.

  The sense of cosiness vanished the moment they heard the first mighty pincer-fist smash against the vent door. The blows came one after another, brutally hard against the metal, vibrating the door and the wall beside it. The Ice Warriors were determined to smash their way in.

  The metal will keep them out for a bit,' said Amy.

  'Shipskin is strong,' said Bel.

  'So are Ice Warriors,' replied the Doctor. He had taken the lamp off Samewell and was looking around, searching desperately for some kind of inspiration, some cue that might prompt invention or improvisation, anything to get them out of a small, exit-less structure that was, at best, a temporary refuge and, at worst, a hut-shaped death-trap.

  'Houdini built a career out of this,' he said encouragingly as his mind raced.

  'Of being trapped in a smelly shed under attack from Ice Men?' asked Amy.

  'Of escaping from tight places from which there was no obvious mode of egress,' replied the Doctor. He took a cup off a shelf, looking inside it, and then gave up on that line of thought. 'And it's Ice Warriors.'

  Amy glanced at the door, which was quivering with every dull blow from outside.

  'Uh-huh,' she said. 'Is that going to matter, in the long run? Ice Men? Ice Warriors? Ice Homicidal Freaks, who are still going to do us in whatever we call them?'

  'True,' said the Doctor. He flipped the chair over to check its underside. 'Funny thing,' he said, 'no one ever gets their name right. Not even them. I mean, as I remember it, it was a friend of mine called Victoria that first called them Ice Warriors. Then they
started to refer to themselves as Ice Warriors. It's confusing. If the cap fits, I suppose.'

  'You've met them before?' asked Amy.

  'Several times. Not for a long while, actually.

  Anyway, nice to see they're still entirely Ice-ish and Warrior-esque.'

  'Are they enemies of yours?' asked Arabel.

  'No,' said the Doctor, getting down to look under the cots. The hammering at the hatch had grown more intense. 'Yes. Sometimes.' He shrugged. 'They are an ancient and proud culture. One of the great pan-world civilisations in this part of the galaxy. Much to be admired about them. Great code of honour. Of fairness.

  Then again, they are pragmatic and resolute. They fight for survival and they fight without quarter. It's very dangerous to be on the wrong side of them.'

  'How many times have you been on the right side of them?' asked Amy.

  'Oh, a couple of times at least.'

  'And the other times?'

  The Doctor looked at her.

  'Those didn't go so well,' he admitted.

  'What are they doing here?' asked Amy.

  'The same thing as the Morphans, I should imagine,'

  the Doctor replied, standing on the chair to examine the ceiling, 'shopping for a new home. If Earth and its solar system are gone, forcing a migration of human colonists, then Mars has gone too.'

  'Why does that matter?'

  'Because that, Amy Pond, is where they come from,'

  he said.

  'Mars?'

  'Yes.'

  'They're Martians?'

  'Yes.'

  She stared at him. 'You're actually, seriously telling me, with a straight face, they're green men from Mars?'

  'I know,' the Doctor said. 'It's ironic, isn't it? Of course, they're not little green men. That would just be silly. They're nice and big.'

  Amy looked at the door. The last few savage blows had actually begun to dent the metal around the bolt.

  'Big and strong all right,' she said. 'Strong enough to start bashing the door in. They're buckling the metal.'

  'That's shipskin!' protested Samewell. 'It's the strongest metal we have!'

  'It is, isn't it?' mused the Doctor.

  He didn't seem at all distracted by the incessant banging from the door. He stamped the heel of his right foot against the hard-packed ground, moved a short distance and did it again.

  'And that's the interesting part,' he went on.

  'Shipskin's the toughest material you've got. It's rare.

  It's a precious commodity.'

  'So?' asked Amy.

  'So why did the Morphans build a shepherd's hut out of it?' asked the Doctor. He stamped his heel again and began to grin.

  'What have you found?' Amy asked.

  'As usual, the obvious!' he announced. He dropped to his hands and knees and started to rake up the earth floor with his fingers. 'Come on! Help me! Before they knock that door in!'

  They all got down and started to scrape the soil away with him. There was something under the dirt, just a few centimetres down. Something metal.

  'It was surprisingly dry in here,' said the Doctor, working fast. 'That's the first thing I noticed. Dry. And made of metal. Well, made of metal was the first thing I noticed. Then I thought, why's it so dry in here?'

  'You're gabbling,' Amy said.

  'Sorry,' said the Doctor.

  There was a particularly loud bang from the door.

  Part of the lip had folded in. They could see a massive green pincer clamping at the frame, trying to prise it open.

  'It's obvious,' the Doctor said. 'I was over-thinking it! The Morphans don't call this a vent because it's a derivation of a word for wind, they call it a vent...

  because it's a vent!'

  They had dug away and exposed a large hatch in the floor. The Doctor brushed dust and dirt out of a latch mechanism.

  'Hurry!' advised Amy looking at the door.

  'This is an exhaust outlet,' said the Doctor, 'venting warm air from the underground systems. It's part of the large scale terramorphing mechanisms built under the landscape here. There are probably hundreds of them all over the countryside. The Morphans have come to use them as huts because they're usually warm and dry.

  They don't remember what they were originally.'

  Amy looked at the doorway. Part of the door was bent inwards and a great deal more of it was bulging.

  Two sets of large green pincers were now visible, trying to shear the bolt away from the frame.

  'Really hurry!' she said.

  The Doctor adjusted his screwdriver, ratcheted around a setting and aimed it at the latch. It made a rather sickly and pathetic noise. He shook it and banged it against his hand.

  'I drained so much power noise-cancelling the Ice Warrior weapons,' he sighed. 'It's feeling rather sorry for itself. It just wants to sit in a pocket quietly and recharge. Come on,' he whispered to the screwdriver.

  'Just do this, and I won't bother you again all day.'

  'Doctor!' Amy cried.

  Another formidable bash from the doorway had begun to deform the bolt.

  The Doctor aimed the screwdriver carefully again, clicking the base end of it with his thumb as though it was a ballpoint pen. The sonic burbled, flashed, and then maintained a steady, whirring cycle. Three green lights winked on in series across the latch unit, and the hatch released with a clank and a hiss.

  They hoisted it up. It lifted on one heavy-duty hinge like a submarine's front door. It revealed a vertical metal shaft that descended into darkness. There was a metal ladder fixed down one side.

  'Go! Quickly!' the Doctor urged.

  'Where does it lead?' asked Arabel.

  'Away from here,' replied the Doctor, 'and that's probably it's most appealing quality at the moment.

  Go!'

  Amy scrambled onto the ladder and started to descend. Arabel followed her, and then Samewell.

  The Doctor held the hatch lid up, and then followed Samewell as soon as the lad had gone down a few rungs.

  Behind him, a final brutal blow broke the door in. It squealed open on mangled hinges and snow swirled into the vent. An Ice Warrior filled the doorway, staring with malevolent yet expressionless red eyes.

  The Doctor clattered down the first few rungs, pulling the hatch lid down after him.

  It had almost engaged in the shut position when a green pincer caught the edge of it and wedged it open.

  With an exclamation of alarm, the Doctor pulled down.

  The Ice Warrior pulled up.

  No contest.

  Chapter

  9

  The Night is Darker Now

  The Doctor grabbed the underside handle of the hatch with both hands, teetering on the edge of a rung. He dragged down on it as hard as he could, teeth clenched, eyes closed. Below him, climbing down the ladder as fast as they could go, Amy, Arabel and Samewell looked up and called out in dismay.

  The Ice Warrior simply flipped the hatch up as easily as if he was opening the lid of a wheelie bin.

  The hatch went up, and the Doctor went with it. He was pulled clean off the rung he'd been standing on. He dangled for a nanosecond from the handle, his legs hanging free and driving the pedals of an invisible bicycle.

  Then he lost his grip.

  The Doctor dropped like a stone. The sudden release of his weight jerked the hatch out of the Ice Warrior's clamp of a hand, and it fell shut. There was a click as the latch engaged.

  The Doctor was in no position to appreciate that the Ice Warriors had just been shut out. He was simply in a position of falling crazily down the vent shaft with his legs and arms waving. He hit Samewell first, knocking the young man off the wall ladder. Samewell barely had time to grunt in surprise. They were falling together when they hit Arabel, who was immediately below Samewell. The impact took her off the ladder too. She held on by one hand for a second, but couldn't retain her grip. Then she was falling with them.

  All three of them, a tumbling, yelping bundle of lim
bs and bodies, collided with Amy, who was the lowest of the four. Her feet slipped off the rungs of the ladder, but she managed to retain her grip. The elastic strap connecting her mittens through the sleeves of her duffel coat caught on the rung for a moment, just long enough for her to plant her grip.

  The Doctor, Samewell and Arabel plunged past her and vanished into the darkness of the shaft below.

  'Oh my god! Oh my god!' Amy babbled, hauling herself back onto the ladder properly, and tilting to gaze down at the drop below. 'Oh my god! Doctor!

  Doctor!'

  Her voice echoed back. There was no other sound.

  There was no reply. There was no reassuring answer, no It's OK Amy, we landed safely on this convenient mattress.

  On the positive side, there was no sound of impact either.

  Amy swallowed hard, shocked by the disastrous turn of events. She called out their names again, and clambered down a few rungs. Then she went back up two steps, unhooked her mitten elastic, and started again.

  There was a resounding clang from up above. The Ice Men had started work on the hatch.

  Ice Warriors, she told herself, Ice-stupid-well Warriors.

  She started to climb down as fast as she could.

  Several times she went too fast and slipped. The shaft seemed to go down for ever. They were going to be so dead when she finally reached them. It was going to be upsetting, and very messy, and then she was going to be alone with only Ice Men for company.

  Warriors. Warriors!

  She carried on down, running out of puff from the exertion. Despite the Doctor's earlier pledge that the day would be full of Christmas fun, and there'd be an absolute minimum of unnecessary shouting and running about, it had turned out to be the exact opposite. Things really had to stop ending up like this.

  The universe was a beautiful, amazing and enthralling place, and she wanted to travel widely and enjoy it, preferably in the alive company of her husband and her good friend the Doctor. Amy was beginning to believe that she wasn't getting the most out of the universe by touring it at speed, and viewing it in passing. There was never any time to look at things. There only ever seemed to be time to glimpse things while running away from other, more pressing, things.