Doctor Who_ The Algebra of Ice - Lloyd Rose [88]
The Doctor was silent.
‘You want to go by your house?’ Ace asked, as she and Molecross drove out of the Waitrose car park. ‘Since we’ve got the car?’
‘No. I can’t check my email, and there’s nothing else there.’
‘Clothes,’ she suggested. Like Ethan, Molecross had been wearing leftovers from the TARDIS, and they did little to improve his appearance.
‘No.’
‘You have to go home sometime.’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘Well, you can’t stay at the house.’
‘Perhaps the Doctor could use a caretaker. For when he’s not here.’
Ace rolled her eyes. ‘You don’t live in the real world, Molecross.’
‘Not if I can help it,’ he agreed.
The Brigadier didn’t really think it was necessary to revisit the crop patterns; but the Doctor was insistent. So they found themselves wandering through the muddy field checking out the lines in which ice was still frozen. The Doctor poked at this with his umbrella for no reason Lethbridge-Stewart could see. But then the Doctor’s motives were so often a mystery. Why, for example, had he come with a small entourage that included Molecross? ‘He’s been very useful,’
the Doctor had said, and explained no farther.
Chapter Twenty-one
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Aside from Molecross – who, the Brigadier had to admit, was noticeably subdued – the Doctor had brought with him Ace and Amberglass. Ace, of course, was to be expected, but Amberglass didn’t look as if he ought to be up and around. He’d been put through it. People who associated with the Doctor so often were.
To preserve the Doctor’s circle, Lethbridge-Stewart had had it filled with cement. The Doctor poked at this too, as if testing its firmness.
‘I assure you, it’s not coming out of there.’
‘No, doesn’t look like it.’
‘We’ve been monitoring this location, and there haven’t been any new mark-ings.’
‘Yes, this entry seems to have closed up. In any case, they won’t be trying any more. The bridge wasn’t enough, and that was all they had.’
‘So we are here because. . . ?’
The Doctor tapped his chin with his umbrella. ‘Because it never hurts to check.’
More to give them something to do than anything else, Lethbridge-Stewart had dispatched Amberglass, Ace and Molecross to the far edges of the field to check for suspicious marks. Molecross, understandably, was unwilling to return to the spot near the trees where he’d been maimed, so Ethan took that area. Ace sloshed around about a quarter mile away, and Molecross went down into a small dip and out of sight.
Work for work’s sake, Ace thought irritably. In the mud. All right, she’d been getting restless and was glad to leave the house. Still, this wasn’t what she’d signed up for. Especially when she could be home in a warm bed with Ethan
– Molecross and the Doctor both gone, plenty of room and privacy. Ethan had been a bit off lately – distracted, back inside himself. Something was going on between him and the Doctor, she knew it. But she couldn’t work out what. If it were something they weren’t telling her, she’d be right pissed off. But it might just be some weird, difficult code problem. The Doctor, certainly, had been more or less distraught since discovering the hacking attempt. She looked over at him and the Brigadier, standing on either side of the cemented circle and apparently finding it interesting. Well, she thought resignedly, at least she had found her wellies and wasn’t stamping about in ordinary shoes like Ethan and Molecross.
Molecross’s feet were damp, but he hardly noticed. He was happy. He was 182
The Algebra of Ice
helping the Doctor, which meant helping save the universe. Were such tiny actions usually part of so huge a task? Perhaps so. Perhaps it wasn’t so often like movie special effects but more like this, treading around in the mire, getting your feet wet. They also serve who only stand in mud.
It was decent of Amberglass to take that. . . that other part of the field. He’d volunteered, sympathetic in a taciturn sort of way. Fine chap, really. Molecross tried not to pay attention to the knot of guilt in his stomach; it was