Doctor Who_ The Ice Warriors - Brian Hayles [12]
‘And if I don’t come up to scratch?’ enquired the Doctor.
‘You’ll be evacuated with the other scavengers.’ ‘Where to?’ asked Jamie bluntly.
‘To one of the African Rehabilitation Centres, of course,’
replied Miss Garrett with cold formality. ‘Oh, no!’ objected Victoria. ‘Not Africa!’
The Doctor shared her alarm. It wasn’t the country that was objectionable, so much as the fact that their only means of escape from this particular time zone lay outside the Base—
half-buried in a snowdrift! To be transported to Africa would mean being parted from the TARDIS—and probably for good.
‘Let’s hear this problem then,’ the Doctor demanded quietly.
‘Very well,’ said Clent. ‘All the major continents are threatened by destruction beneath the glaciers of the New Ice Age. How would you halt the ice surge and return the climate to normal, using the equipment you’ve already seen?’
The Doctor frowned and puffed his checks at the enormity of the question. Both Jamie and Victoria stared at him anxiously. Smiling blandly, Clent sat up in the vibrochair and reached out a hand to the chronometer by his side.
‘You have just ninety seconds,’ he murmured, ‘from now!’
Victoria and Jamie could only stare at the Doctor’s fiercely concentrating face, as he fired out questions and comments that left them completely baffled. Clent, relaxed, had closed his eyes; Miss Garrett studied the Doctor with sharp interest, noting with approval the scope and alertness of his mental responses. This man was certainly no charlatan!
‘Possible causes then,’ rapped out the Doctor keenly. ‘A reversal of the earth’s magnetic poles?’
‘No such change has occurred,’ replied Clent, without opening his eyes. The smile had vanished. Only a trained scientist could have asked such a question. ‘Interstellar clouds obscuring the sun’s rays?’
Clent shook his head.
Negative again. But the Doctor hadn’t finished.
‘A severe shift in the earth’s axis of rotation?’
Once more, Clent indicated that the suggestion was wrong. The Doctor looked thoughtful; he’d been given a problem without clues—the most difficult sort. And time was slipping away...
‘Come on, Doctor!’ urged Victoria. ‘Think!’
The Doctor looked at the recumbent Clent, and a slow, wicked smile spread over his puckish features.
‘Ah! A gigantic heat loss—is that it?’
The Leader’s face gave nothing away. He glanced briefly at the chronometer, then again closed his eyes before replying to the question.
‘I require an answer—not a question. You have rather less than thirty seconds left, Doctor.’
Clent’s carefully concealed reaction wasn’t lost on the Doctor. He grinned inwardly—two could play at that game!
‘In that case, it’s perfectly simple...’ he said airily, then paused, apparently lost in an attempt to read his plastic evacuation tag upside down. By the time the chronometer’s flicking hand had reached five seconds to zero, not only the youngsters and Miss Garrett were on tenterhooks. but Clent himself was sitting up in the vibrochair and gripping its arms in expectation.
‘Well?’ he demanded. ‘Hurry, man—speak up!’ The Doctor looked up at Clent with mild surprise—as though he’d forgotten the Leader was there. ‘Ionisation.’ he said precisely, as the clockhand reached zero.
‘Is he right?’ asked Jamie anxiously.
‘Yes,’ admitted Clent warily, ‘he is.’
‘But... ionisation?’ interrupted Victoria. ‘What does it mean? I don’t understand.’
‘Its to do with the carbon dioxide content of the earth’s atmosphere, Victoria,’ explained the Doctor. ‘It’s only a fractional proportion, but it helps to retain the heat of the sun, after it’s filtered through to the planet’s surface:
‘Like a sort of invisible blanket, you mean?’ Victoria was trying hard to understand.
‘Something like that, yes,’ beamed the Doctor. ‘Now—if you take the gas away, or even unbalance its mixture too much, the sun’s reflected heat is rapidly dispersed, our planet cools down too quickly and we’re left with the sort of freeze-up these people have now. Is that clear?’
Victoria nodded brightly. But Jamie was still puzzled.
‘But where