Cold Fusion - Lance Parkin [63]
‘Very good, sir. Mind how you go.’ It waved him on.
Jovanka thanked it, wound the window back up and started the engine.
‘How did you do that?’ Nyssa asked.
‘This far from the Scientifica, there’s only low-level security and the droids aren’t very sophisticated,’ he explained. The Australian accent hadn’t returned. ‘That droid was looking for a married Ozzie called Jovanka who’s armed. I didn’t fit any of the search parameters, and the weapon and lie detectors didn’t find anything either.’
‘So your name is really Cwej, then?’
‘Yes. Call me Chris, It s easy to pronounce. The “Bruce Jovanka” act was a cover. A friend of mine suggested it, he said it was a classic case of misdirection. Good old Bruce has probably outlived his usefulness now, though. Any more questions?’
‘Yes. What are champagne and oysters?’
Cwej smiled, revealing a row of pointed teeth.
The train had left the city limits after only a few minutes’
travelling. That wasn’t surprising, of course. The Strip was only ten or twenty miles wide. After an hour travelling north, the blizzard was more severe than ever. As far as Tegan could tell, dawn was breaking, but the sun was still barely above the horizon and the light outside was still a pale blue somewhere between night and day. Lining the track were endless rows of greenhouses the size of football pitches. Tegan had already seen maintenance drones sweeping off the snow from the outside, and people in grey tunics busy wiping down the condensation on the inside.
The soil in there was rich and brown, and all manner of veggies and crops grew there in neat lines.
‘Astonishing,’ the Doctor said. ‘They’ve ground up barren rock and made soil. They must recycle their organic waste to make compost. That’s how the Scientifica keep the population fed. A triumph of man over nature.’
The buildings looked old, but well-maintained. They reminded Tegan a little of the pictures she’d seen of Crystal Palace: lots of iron girders and panes of glass. They passed through a train station without stopping. Ahead of them were more and more of these greenhouses, the weak sunlight glinting off them.
Patience was looking outside with the sort of inquisitive look usually worn by children. She had become even more subdued since the train had left the Scientifica pyramid.
For much of the time she didn’t even seem to notice Tegan, only reacting to what the Doctor said or did. At the moment, he was bent over the instrument panel, studying the controls.
‘Do you know what we are carrying?’ Tegan asked him.
‘According to the manifest, we are pulling twenty carriages of “building materials”. The journey will take ten hours.’
‘How fast are we going?’
‘Not very: about two hundred kilometres an hour.’
‘Two thousand kilometres?’ Tegan spluttered. ‘I thought you said that no one lived that far north.’ They would end up a long way from Nyssa, Adric and the TARDIS, and it was cold enough at the equator.
‘There are isolated settlements, research centres and the like. We must be heading for one of those.’
‘What are we going to do when we get there?’
‘Meet whoever has arranged all this,’ the Doctor concluded.
The sun was clear of the horizon when the hovercar pulled inside the garage. The door automatically lowered itself shut behind it. Chris smiled at Nyssa, deactivating his safety belt. She did the same. On the back wall of the garage there was a thin metal door, which was slowly opening.
Chris stepped out of the car, wincing slightly as he put weight on his twisted ankle. He opened Nyssa’s door for her, and supported her arm as she pulled herself out of the bucket seat. In turn, she steadied him as he hobbled towards the exit. Behind them, the garage door slid open again, letting in bitterly cold air.
‘What’s going on?’ Nyssa asked. The car began reversing itself out.
‘The car isn’t ours. I’ve programmed it to return to where we