Doctor Who_ The Algebra of Ice - Lloyd Rose [17]
‘I have, yes. Years ago in Greenland. But in this climate, never.’
‘What is it then? Some extreme form of frostbite?’
Chapter Four
37
‘You could say extreme. Almost the whole hand is necrotic. Don’t ask me how it happened,’ he added as the Brigadier started to speak. ‘I don’t know.
And it’s localised in the hand. I don’t understand that either.’
‘Can anything be done?’
‘No. The hand will have to come off. For the present, it must be kept as cold as possible.’
‘As cold as possible? Why?’
‘Because,’ the doctor said wearily, ‘if it warms up, gangrene will set in.’
After some insistence, the Brigadier had persuaded the Doctor to accept a pager, though not a mobile phone. He couldn’t work out the reason for this reluctance.
It was hardly as if the Doctor were uncomfortable with advanced technology.
Lethbridge-Stewart had concluded that he simply liked the freedom of no one knowing how to reach him or where he was, or what he was up to. If he didn’t want to be found, he’d simply ignore any attempt to contact him.
But the Doctor showed up shortly after being paged, looking cheerful, as if pieces of this puzzle were falling into place. But he sobered when he heard about Molecross. ‘Has he said what happened?’
‘He was hysterical when he came in, and now he’s heavily sedated.’
‘Has anyone been to the site?’
‘No.’
‘Then let’s go.’
As they drove, the Brigadier related what the men on duty had told him, which was basically nothing. No one had heard anything, no one had seen anything, the temperature suddenly dropped noticeably, then just as suddenly shot back to where it had been. Presumably, Molecross had been knocked out too quickly to scream. The men had no idea anything had happened.
At the field, they found and followed the new pattern. Like walking a turf maze, Lethbridge-Stewart thought, only this one was of ice.
‘It’s laid down over the original pattern,’ he observed, ‘only slightly skewed.’
‘Yes, that’s peculiar, isn’t it?’ Hands on hips, the Doctor turned in a complete circle, taking in the expanse of icy trails. ‘It’s difficult to tell until we get aerial photographs, but it seems as if this second pattern is identical to the first.’
‘As if they were meaning to hit the same place but missed.’
‘Exactly. By just a few metres, but close only counts in horseshoes. Now, if you were Molecross, where would you have stood?’
‘The trees.’
‘Yes. They’re on the opposite side from the road, too. Shall we have a look?’
38
The Algebra of Ice
It took very little time to find what they were searching for. Right next to one of the ice tracks, a man-sized patch of stubble was crushed and broken.
‘His hand seems to have been about here.’ The Doctor got down on his hands and knees and peered closely at the ground. ‘Ah ha.’ From his pocket he took a pair of tweezers and poked carefully into the matted stubble. When he raised his hand, he had apparently caught hold of a bit of black thread. Lethbridge-Stewart shook his head unhappily.
‘Molecross?’
‘A shred of him.’ The Doctor held up the scrap of tissue, squinting at it. ‘His hand was black like this?’
‘It was certainly black. Dr Kalen said it was destroyed by freezing.’
‘In what I wonder? Liquid nitrogen?’
‘Is that likely?’
‘No.’ The Doctor deposited the tissue in a glass vial into which he firmly pushed a cork. ‘The damage would look different. But something as cold.
Perhaps colder.’
When they returned to the UNIT hospital, Molecross had stabilised enough to be questioned. He was hooked up to a morphine drip and his eyes tended to drift away from his visitors.
‘I don’t want to tire you,’ the Brigadier said, taking a chair, ‘but I’d appreciate your telling me what you can.’ Molecross nodded again. ‘Can you describe what happened to you?’
‘I was at the, the circle, the pattern,’ Molecross said unsteadily. His voice was so faint Lethbridge-Stewart had to lean forward to hear him clearly. ‘And it, they. . . they came back.’
‘What did you see?’
‘I didn’t see anything. I didn’t. . . hear anything. There was nothing.’
‘Except