Doctor Who_ The Algebra of Ice - Lloyd Rose [0]
Hardly uncommon. But there are some peculiar features. It’s not a circle but a series of square-sided shapes. It’s filled with ice. And it draws the Doctor and Ace into a confrontation with a reality right next to zero.
This adventure features the Seventh Doctor and Ace.
THE ALGEBRA OF ICE
LLOYD ROSE
DOCTOR WHO:
THE ALGEBRA OF ICE
Commissioning Editor: Ben Dunn
Creative Consultant: Justin Richards Editor: Justin Richards
Project Editor: Vicki Vrint
Published by BBC Books, BBC Worldwide Ltd, Woodlands, 80 Wood Lane
London W12 0TT
First published 2004
Copyright c Lloyd Rose 2004
The moral right of the author has been asserted Original series broadcast on the BBC
Format c BBC 1963
Doctor Who and TARDIS are trademarks of the BBC
ISBN 0 563 48621 X
Cover imaging by Black Sheep, copyright c BBC 2004
Typeset in Garamond by Keystroke,
Jacaranda Lodge, Wolverhampton
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Mackays of Chatham Cover printed by Belmont Press Ltd, Northampton To Justin Richards
CONTENTS
Chapter One
6
Chapter Two
15
Chapter Three
24
Chapter Four
32
Chapter Five
41
Chapter Six
49
Chapter Seven
60
Chapter Eight
65
Chapter Nine
77
Chapter Ten
83
Chapter Eleven
90
Chapter Twelve
98
Chapter Thirteen
110
Chapter Fourteen
116
Chapter Fifteen
121
Chapter Sixteen
133
4
5
Chapter Seventeen
141
Chapter Eighteen
147
Chapter Nineteen
159
Chapter Twenty
169
Chapter Twenty-one
178
Chapter Twenty-two
184
Chapter Twenty-three
191
Chapter Twenty-four
196
Chapter Twenty-five
203
Chapter Twenty-six
210
Chapter Twenty-seven
219
Chapter Twenty-eight
220
Acknowledgements
226
About the Author
227
CHAPTER ONE
‘You’re doing it again, Professor.’
The Doctor didn’t answer. He hadn’t answered all morning, though Ace had asked him at least half a dozen times to please stop it. He wasn’t being rude.
Not exactly. He was just in one of those moods, well, states of mind, really, where he didn’t know she was there. Probably didn’t know he was there, she thought, watching him at the TARDIS control board. Had he been staring at that same screen all morning? She’d sneaked up behind him to have a look over his shoulder at what was so fascinating, but all she’d seen was a jumble of numbers.
It wouldn’t be so bad if he’d just stop humming.
‘Professor!’
No reaction.
‘You know what they used to call that? On Earth? A tune stuck in your head was called a “soundworm”. Nasty, huh?’
The Doctor turned slowly towards her and blinked. ‘Hello, Ace. Have you been there long?’
‘Only all morning.’
‘Is it still morning?’
Ace wasn’t going to get drawn into another fruitless discussion about what time of day it was in the floating-in-the-timeless-vortex TARDIS. ‘And you’ve been humming.’
‘Humming?’ He looked more surprised than the information warranted.
‘Humming what?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t recognise it.’
He paused delicately, trying to think, she knew, of a polite way to point out that her knowledge of music was limited to about ten years in the late twentieth century.
‘It wasn’t even a tune,’ she protested.
‘Can you hum it back to me?’
‘No, ’cos it wasn’t a tune. It was just sort of a drone, only with bits of melody in.’
Chapter One
7
‘Hm.’ He lost interest and turned back to the control board.
‘What’s going on, then?’
‘Oh nothing, really. The TARDIS is acting up a bit.’
‘Oh?’ Ace said hopefully. She knew she ought to be worried, but the TARDIS’s acting up generally meant they were in for an interesting trip, not some visit to a green-skied planet containing nothing but weird-looking orange groves.
Or that naff marmot planet. Of course the Doctor had defended the marmots.
Said they were “humble”.
‘What’s it doing then?’
‘Well, that’s what I’ve been trying to work out. She’s been veering subtly off course, and I’ve