Doctor Who - The Wheel of Ice

by Stephen Baxter

  Jamie, experimentally, tried it. When he twisted the scooter handles the complexes of strings tugged at the wing-shaped chutes above him, and he was pulled this way and that through the air. It wasn’t the same as when the scooter was in space. The responses were more sluggish, you had to leave a lot more time to complete a manoeuvre, and that slow swinging didn’t help. But soon he was swooping easily around the sky, and starting to enjoy himself again.

  Around him in the air he saw the other scooters sweep in like huge gliding birds, like albatrosses, closing in on the green light of the flare.

  But suddenly the ground was awfully close, turning from a map safely far beneath him to a real landscape of hills and dunes and streams into which he was falling, incredibly fast. The detail exploded further until he could see he was heading for a plain littered by rocks and pebbles, many of which were clearly big enough to crack an ankle.

  ‘Use your rockets!’ Phee shouted. ‘If you hit the big yellow button the scooter will do it for you.’

  Jamie, taking no chances, hit the button. The ground rushed up at him. In the last instant the rocket flared under his feet, kicking up dust that billowed around him. Even so he landed hard, and as the rocket died he tipped on his back, tumbling softly with the scooter still attached to him by its harness.

  The dust he’d kicked up fell down around him slowly. And then the big sheets of his parachute came settling out of the sky, covering him over, hiding the world behind a soft green orange glow. He felt oddly comfortable, lying there on his back, with only the noise of his own ragged breathing in his ears. ‘Did I just dream all that? Am I home in my bed?’

  The chutes whipped away from him, revealing Phee Laws, her grinning face behind her visor. ‘Not quite,’ she said. She held out a hand to help him up.

  25

  THE SCOOTER, PERFORMING one last function, hauled the shield-chutes away from Jamie, rolled them up and packed them back away into its body, cables and all.

  Jamie found himself sitting on a rocky plain. Not far away, Sam and the others hauled at a mound of rocks, like a cairn. There was some kind of heap of supplies under the cairn, and Sam and the others crowed and whooped at their success at finding it. Soon they were unfolding a dome-shaped tent, just like on Enceladus. Chutes were still coming down from the orange sky, like giant birds settling to a rookery. Jamie made a quick count. Sixteen plus him, sixteen safe and sound – well, not quite, one girl had hurt her leg on landing, and a few others were huddling around her to help.

  He stood up and took an experimental step. The ground was sandy, gritty; the dirt was an orange-stained muck. Boulders and pebbles of some kind of rock littered the plain. This wasn’t particularly Scottish, close to; it looked more like a rocky desert, or even the smashed-up floor of a crater on the moon.

  He picked out a flat rock, his skinsuit felt stiff when he bent to get it, and started walking towards the lake, which he could see as a fine black horizon, not far away. Walking was odd. He felt light, as he had on the Wheel, but he felt like he was pushing through some dense fluid, as if he was wading through an invisible ocean.

  He reached the shore of the lake. It was black, like a sea of oil. Slow, heavy ripples crossed its surface, and on a gritty beach it lapped by his feet, though he took care not to step into it. He hefted his rock and sent it spinning, flat through the air. It hit the lake surface and bounced once, twice before sinking. ‘Losin’ yer touch, McCrimmon,’ he muttered.

  ‘Nice effort.’ Phee was standing beside him.

  ‘Aye. Used tae do that on Loch Tay. Managed more than a couple o’ bounces, mind.’

  ‘You’re getting old.’

  ‘Och, dinna you start.’

  ‘What do you make of Titan?’

  He looked up into the sky. Beyond pale fluffy clouds the sky was just an orange dome, featureless although he thought he could see a brighter glow where the sun must be. He couldn’t see Saturn, and that was a disappointment. But now he heard a soft patter, on his skinsuit hood, his shoulders. A heavy rain was falling, big brown-black blobs of it, so slow it was like a rainstorm in a dream. He let it strike his visor, and the drops rolled off, leaving purple-brown smears.

  ‘It’s kind o’ like home,’ he said at last. ‘But all the colours are wrong. Like home, made out of different stuff.’

  ‘That’s what you hear people say. People who’ve travelled… You can go to the moon or Venus or Mars or Titan, and everywhere you go you find rocky plains like this, eroded pebbles. But made from different stuff.’ She kicked a pebble. ‘Jamie, it’s very cold here. The “rock,” like these pebbles, is actually ice, but hard as basalt, and just as tough to drill into. The lake over there is methane and ethane. Hydrocarbons. Deep down under the crust there’s a mantle of liquid water. There are volcanoes, here on Titan, like the vents on Enceladus, but much bigger. The lava is water!’

  ‘Ye’re jokin’ me. So I’m a lumberin’ beast o’ molten lava!’

  ‘Yes! On Titan we’re the alien monsters.’

  ‘Aye, for once,’ he said with feeling.

  ‘But there is life here.’ She held out a gloved hand and let the murky rain fall into her cupped palm. ‘Because of all this complicated organic chemistry muck, falling out of the sky. They used to think there might be some kind of primitive microbes here, that it was too cold for anything else. Just bugs. Of course when they got here, what they actually found was—’

  Something whooshed over their heads, making them duck, heading out towards the lake. Jamie straightened up and saw two scooters screaming out over the lake’s dead flat jet-black surface. ‘Wha’s that?’

  Sam walked up. ‘Dai and Sanjay. Idiots want to go surfing. I told them to wait, we’ve got the whole shelter to set up and everything. But they wouldn’t listen.’

  Phee laughed at her brother. ‘“Wouldn’t listen”? You’re the great rebel, Sam. You’re the one who’s always breaking the rules. Now you’re complaining when somebody else breaks your rules.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘What a hypocrite!’

  ‘Shut up!’

  Jamie could see the scooters were dipping down to the lake’s surface, and throwing up huge plumes of oily liquid that fell back slowly. ‘Are they supposed to do that?’

  ‘No,’ Phee said firmly. ‘Remember the skis you used on Enceladus, Jamie? That’s what they’re using out there now. Like water skiing. Though that’s not water.’

  ‘Idiots,’ Sam growled. ‘They’ll use up their fuel too.’

  Jamie frowned. ‘I thought there was a methane plant down here.’

  Phee was staring at the lake. ‘I can only see one of them now… Maybe they’re in trouble.’

  Sam said, ‘The plant’s in the north, where all the really big lakes are. We’re near the south pole here. As far as you can get from Pop and his buddies.’ He spat out the name.

  ‘Who’s “Pop”?’

  ‘Our stepfather,’ Phee said. ‘Well, before the divorce. Casey’s dad. He’s not that bad, Sam.’ But she was staring out at the lake, distracted.

  ‘I see what ye mean,’ Jamie said now. ‘I only see one o’ them scooters, sort o’ flapping back and forth. Doesnae look much like fun to me.’

  Sam stared out. ‘If they were in trouble they’d call—’

  ‘HELP US!’ The screeching call, painfully loud in Jamie’s ears, came through right on cue. ‘We turned our comms off so Sam wouldn’t chew us out – Dai’s gone down – HELP US! CAN YOU HEAR ME?’

  ‘Sanj,’ Sam shouted. ‘Sanjay! Take it easy. What happened? Did Dai’s scooter fail?’

  ‘Not that. It came out of the water—’

  ‘What did?’

  ‘This big mouth. Teeth! It got the scooter, it missed Dai, but he’s in the lake—’

  Teeth?

  Jamie glanced around. The rest were busy with their half-built dome, though they were clearly listening in to Sanjay’s broadcast. They were all away from their scooters. Jamie’s was only a short sprint awa
y.

  He set off at once.

  Sam called, ‘Jamie, no. You’re not experienced enough.’

  ‘Aye, well, ye follow if yer want, but the quicker somebody’s out there the better.’ He grabbed the scooter, jumped on its platform, squirted its rockets and flew off.

  The scooter was sluggish, its rocket engine underpowered in Titan’s thick air. But soon he was swooping low over the eerie black surface of the lake. Of course he had no idea how much fuel he had left after the descent from space – less than the others, probably, given he had less experience handling the craft. But he put that out of his mind, he didn’t look back, and he leaned into the motion, urging a little more speed out of the scooter.

  Soon he was over the boy in the lake. Dai was floating, it looked as if his suit had inflated itself for buoyancy, but he was thrashing in the thick oily muck, sending up spray that fell back with eerie slowness. Of his scooter there was no sign. The other boy, Sanjay, seemed to have lost his head, and was just skimming back and forth on his own scooter a few metres above the surface.

  And then Jamie saw the teeth. A ring of them showing in the water. They were white, white as ice, set around a cavernous, gaping mouth, and behind the mouth trailed a streamlined body, huge but barely visible in the black fluid. This tremendous beast was circling the terrified boy, creating huge slow waves that rippled out across the lake.

  ‘Can ye see this?’

  ‘Yes, Jamie,’ Phee replied, ‘we’ve synced into your visor.’

  ‘What manner of hell-spawned creature is that?’

  ‘It’s called a T-shark, Jamie. A Titan-shark. It has some posh name…’

  ‘I thought ye said there was only bugs here!’

  ‘Once everybody thought so, because of the cold, and of course the lack of free oxygen in the air… Well, everybody was wrong. Maybe it breathes hydrogen, or methane, instead of oxygen—’

  ‘So there are monsters here after all. I should hae known it were too guid to be true.’

  ‘It looks like sharks on Earth because it has the same kind of lifestyle.’

  Jamie had seen enough alien life forms to know a few basic facts. ‘Yon T-shark won’t get much joy out o’ eatin’ Dai, will he?’

  ‘No,’ Sam snapped. ‘He won’t be able to digest him. But, Jamie, I don’t think the shark knows that.’

  Suddenly a huge streamlined head shot up out of the lake, immense jaws snapping. Jamie had let his scooter dip too low. He dragged on his control handles and lifted up and out of its way, just, but that huge mouth came close enough to spray him with jet-black slobber.

  ‘Aye, and I won’t be goin’ down there to explain it either.’ He tried to think. ‘What I need is a rope…’ He snapped his gloved fingers. ‘Phee – the parachute cable – that’s all wrapped up somewhere inside this toy I’m ridin’, right?’

  ‘Yes, it is. Listen, Jamie. You’ll have to work the controls properly to release it. Just follow my instructions…’

  Soon the cable was dangling down from Jamie’s hovering scooter, and Dai was able to grab it.

  ‘I can’t hold it,’ Dai called up, sobbing, but reasonably calm. ‘My gloves are all greasy with this muck.’

  ‘Then tie it around your chest, ye numpty. And – whoa, hey, what was that?’ Sanjay’s scooter passed him, just metres away. The boy was flying around at random. ‘Lad, can ye no’ keep yer distance?’

  ‘He’s panicking,’ Phee said. ‘He’s in a worse state than the one in the water.’

  ‘Aye, well, just keep him talkin’, and out of my way. Now, Dai, ha’ ye got that tied tight? All right. Here’s ma plan. I’ll lift ye nice and easy so as not to strain the thread, and not to alarm yon critter—’

  ‘Lift me up! Here comes the shark!’

  So Jamie pulled at his controls, and the scooter lurched up. At first Dai’s weight dragged at the little craft, but he came free of the lake with a kind of reluctant squirt.

  Came free just as the T-shark jumped out of the lake and soared high into the air.

  Its long black body was exposed now, all the way down to massive beating flukes. At its highest point its razor teeth missed Dai’s dangling feet by a hair’s breadth. Then it fell back with a tremendous inky splash, and did not surface again.

  Heart hammering, Jamie turned to the shore.

  After that it was plain sailing. Except that Dai’s weight kept dragging the scooter down.

  And the fuel started running low, with loud warning chimes, and Jamie piled on the speed. But the two of them still went down into the lake, short of the shore. The others came out to help them wade free of the sticky stuff.

  Plain sailing.

  Safe at last, Jamie threw himself down on the sandy ground, his skinsuit black with the tarry stuff from the lake, his breathing a deep rasp.

  Plain sailing. Just another extraordinary day, in the extraordinary life of James Robert McCrimmon.

  He fell fast asleep.

  26

  TO STUDY THE corpse of the Blue Doll he had brought back from the moon, the Doctor co-opted one of Sinbad Omar’s surgeries to serve as a laboratory. This was no great loss to the Wheel, because there was a similar surgery in each of the three Residential sectors of the Wheel.

  But Zoe saw that the Doctor was provoking a great deal of resentment. It was as if he was being insensitive about the loss they had all suffered, moving too quickly to take over what had been Sinbad’s. After all Sinbad’s body hadn’t been recovered; he wasn’t yet declared dead. It didn’t make a lot of sense, but Zoe supposed it was a natural human response. People didn’t act very logically when they grieved.

  Of course the death of Sinbad impacted on her too. She had barely known him, yet he had shown her such kindness. For her, it was going to be a great relief to be able to concentrate on the science for a while. She knew she would have to deal with her feelings about Sinbad’s loss in time. For now she shut them up inside a compartment of her soul.

  Jo Laws was the last to leave. ‘Is there anything else you need? I could have someone from Sinbad’s staff assigned to help you.’

  ‘No, thank you,’ the Doctor said briskly. ‘No need for that. The equipment here is rudimentary but it’s quite comprehensive. We’ll soon get the hang of it, don’t worry.’

  ‘We’re still looking for Sinbad. We have various deep-scan devices we’re turning on Mnemosyne now. Deep radar, heat sensors. We’ve been using them to locate bernalium deposits. If we retune them to detect movement, heat pockets, we may find Sinbad, or more concentrations of these Blue Dolls.’

  ‘Umm,’ the Doctor said. ‘Don’t you think that would have been a good idea before now? Ah, but of course you were all dancing to Florian Hart’s tune, weren’t you? Who has probably been making these sort of scans all along.’

  Zoe touched his arm. ‘Doctor…’

  ‘Oh – I apologise, Mayor Laws. Now isn’t the time, is it? But I do rather fear Sinbad is lost. As a human entity at least.’

  Jo nodded, expressionless. ‘Just remember I have three kids here, Doctor. Two lost on Titan. And the smallest of them has been in contact with these – effigies. Every minute of every day I find myself shaking at the thought that instead of just looking at little Casey they might have taken her.’

  Zoe said gently, ‘But they didn’t.’

  ‘You know, I chose to bring my children up in this place. I thought it would be a better life for them than on an Earth of overcrowding and pollution and war… It turns out I can’t even keep them safe.’ She glanced up at a camera nestling in a corner of the ceiling. ‘You’ll be under surveillance. It’s necessary for the official records. And I’ll have to have a guard posted on the door.’

  ‘To keep us in, or to keep others out? Oh, never mind. We’ll be fine, Jo, really.’

  When he had finally hustled her away, the Doctor blew out his leathery cheeks theatrically. ‘What a relief! Now then, Zoe, where were we?’

  Zoe had been quietly looking around. She had already found
a kit of surgical gear, scalpels, forceps, pliers, clamps, even rugged-looking saws. Over the table there was a more modern set-up of scanners and surgical lasers. Now she opened a drawer and produced surgical gowns, with masks and caps, all in a cool grey. ‘These might be useful.’

  ‘Good thinking, Zoe. Though I have a feeling the chance of cross-infection and so forth is rather remote.’ He slipped on the gown. ‘How do I look? Do you think I suit A-class grey?’

  She snorted. ‘Not with your grubby old bow tie dangling out of your gown, no.’

  ‘Ah, well.’ He looked around for a sink. ‘We’d better scrub in, as they say. What fun to play doctors and nurses!’

  There was disinfectant fluid in dispensers. As they scrubbed their hands and arms, slipped on long surgical gloves, and fixed their masks in place, Zoe felt she was engaging in some archaic ritual.

  Then they stood side by side over the body on the table, their gloved hands raised. The Doctor, only his eyes showing over his mask, winked at Zoe. ‘The two of us masked and armed with forceps. An alien body on the slab, and a camera in the corner of the room. Takes me right back to Roswell, 1947! That took a bit of explaining away, I can tell you.’

  ‘Doctor?’

  ‘Never mind, never mind. Let’s make a start.’

  ‘Shall we use the laser?’

  He shrugged. ‘We’re venturing into the unknown, Zoe. I rather think the old-fashioned way will be the best.’ He picked up a scalpel, and looked down at the Doll’s inert face. ‘Sorry, old chap.’ He laid a hand over its eyes.

  Then he thrust the scalpel into the chest, delicately, just beneath the throat, or rather the smooth skin where a throat ought to have been. Zoe could see the skin was tough, resistant. The Doctor began to pull the scalpel down the body, making an incision that would run down the centre of the torso. ‘Hard work,’ he said. ‘It’s like cutting into stiff plastic.’

  ‘Let me help.’ Zoe moved to stand behind the table to hold down the creature’s shoulders, enabling the Doctor to exert more pressure on the skin. Zoe could see that beneath a tough outer layer was softer, spongier matter, a deeper blue. But there was nothing like blood.