Cold Fusion - Lance Parkin [65]
‘Who did this?’ Tegan asked.
‘Perhaps they know,’ the Doctor concluded. An Adjudicator hovercopter was floating above the devastation a searchlight probing the ruins. Unlike the one in which Tegan had been taken to the Scientifica, this vehicle had a cannon fitted to its side. It rotated in its mounting, tracking something she couldn’t see on the ground.
The centre of the encampment was a large brick building. Presumably this was the waystation that the computer had referred to. The roof had collapsed, seemingly under the weight of the snow. A great hole had been tom in its side. The skitrain had come to a halt at a small platform by the side of the waystation. Something had scooped the roof off the ticket hall, and great cracks ran down the masonry. The line itself showed signs of repair.
There was a clanking noise behind them. Tegan was alarmed, but a quick glance at the control panel assured the Doctor that it was just the back four carnages detaching themselves.
‘Building materials,’ the Doctor said simply. Outside, a dozen chunky yellow robots with fork-lift prongs for hands bobbed past. Tegan wondered whether they had been passengers on the train all this time, or whether they had been waiting here for the train to arrive.
‘We are pulling twenty carriages, Doctor. Does this mean there are another four bombsites like this?’
‘Possibly.’ The Doctor was getting to his feet and pulling on a pair of mittens that he’d found in his frock coat.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Going out there to get a better look. I need to find out what happened here.’
‘You are joking, I take it?’
‘No.’ The Doctor pulled down on the handle and the door hissed open. He jumped down out of sight. Tegan ran over to the doorway and looked down. The bitter air struck her like a whipcrack, and she stepped back.
‘You stay here,’ she told Patience, before lowering herself onto the track. It was slippery, and she almost lost her footing. The Doctor was more used to the terrain. He was heading down to the back end of the carnage, keeping his head low.
He turned to Tegan and looked down. ‘Aren’t your feet cold?’
‘Freezing,’ Tegan informed him. Her shoes were still locked away in some evidence drawer back at the Scientifica. The Doctor seemed untroubled by the subzero temperatures that were turning her legs blue and tightening the skin on her face.
‘Old Edmund told me a mountaineer’s maxim: “If you lose your gloves, you lose your life.” You really can’t stay out here like that.’
‘What’s that?’ she asked, trying to take her mind off the temperature. There was a crashing sound all around them in the distance. It was rhythmic, but it wasn’t soothing, just the reverse. ‘It sounds like the sea.’ She knew it wasn’t.
If there was an ocean around here it would be a block of green ice the size of a continent.
‘Avalanches. Glaciers. Snow thawing then instantly refreezing. ‘
Tegan reached out to lean against the carriage. The Doctor pulled her, hand away. ‘Don’t touch the metal with your bare hands. It’s so cold your skin will come straight off’
‘It all looked so peaceful from the train cabin.’
‘Then you shouldn’t have left, should you?’ the Doctor said professionally. In the distance, there was a sound that Tegan recognized from the TV news: artillery bombardment.
There was a high-pitched pulsing noise much closer.
Just above the waystation, then the sound of brickwork collapsing.
‘The hovercopter is shooting at something.’ The Doctor was already heading In the direction of the sound. Tegan trailed after him. They reached the waystation itself, but just as they were about to turn a comer, the Doctor lurched back, pressing himself flat against the wall. Tegan did the same. There were footsteps clattering over rubble, presumably the person that the Adjudicators were looking for. Tegan craned her head around the comer and saw a short man in a black fur coat hurtling towards an outbuilding.
Suddenly, a bright light was shining in