Doctor Who - The Wheel of Ice

by Stephen Baxter

  ‘Aye. And how they got there. I dinna see a ship turn up. Did ye?’

  Phee knew he was just being polite to ask. MMAC, crusted with radar and other sensors, ‘saw’ far beyond the capability of the eyes of a mere human like her. ‘I expect Marshal Paley will be interested.’ Sonia Paley was the latest security chief imposed on the Wheel by Earth, by the International Space Command in Geneva.

  ‘Oh, aye.’

  ‘She’ll probably lock the crew up.’

  ‘But she will nae ha’ a chance if yon box is smashed to smithers.’

  ‘Do you think we should save them, MMAC?’

  ‘Thought ye’d ne’er ask. After yiz.’

  Phee ran a quick check of the systems of her skinsuit and scooter. Then she stood straight on her scooter, grasped the handle, and swept on a brilliant flame down towards the rings of Saturn. It was like falling down to a tremendous floor, thousands of kilometres wide. Behind her she sensed the bulk of MMAC, following at a careful distance.

  And before her ice fragments pinged from the carcass of the blue box, a drama unfolding in utter silence.

  3

  THE TARDIS CONTROL room was anything but silent. Zoe had anchored herself to a corner of the console, facing the external scanner. Peering into the murky, juddering screen, she was doing her best to call out warnings of the incoming hail of ice boulders. ‘Upper left! Left! Now upper right!’ The TARDIS bucked and shook as the Doctor responded at his controls. ‘Now low right – right, Doctor! Now right again! I said right!’

  Wham. Yet another block hit, almost dead on, despite all their efforts. Zoe thought she could feel the impact transmitted through the fabric of the ship to her own bones. But there was no time to reflect, for here came more of the unending storm. ‘Another one from the right – now from dead centre, above us – this one’s tumbling, it’s going to hit—’

  Scrape. Another bruising impact.

  ‘Not fast enough, Doctor!’

  ‘I’m doing my best, Zoe!’ the Doctor wailed. He was held in place at his console only by Jamie’s strong arms wrapped around his waist. ‘It’s not easy, you know!’

  ‘You’re telling me – left incoming!’

  ‘Why don’t we just leave this place?’

  ‘Well, we can’t for now, Jamie. You see—’

  Wham.

  ‘Surely this ship has an automated defence system!’

  ‘Oh, Zoe, of course it has. But if it wasn’t disabled, don’t you think I’d have activated it by now?’

  ‘Disabled!’

  ‘I have been meaning to get around to looking into it…’

  ‘I know you say yon blocks are only ice, but how much more o’ this can she take, Doctor?’

  ‘Well, she’s built for punishment, but not this much. I daresay the hull will survive, but the contents might not.’

  ‘The contents?’

  ‘The mercury fluid links, for example.’

  ‘Tae perdition with the mercury fluid links. What about us?’

  ‘Left, Doctor!’

  The Doctor wrenched at his controls again.

  Wham.

  Zoe turned, exasperated. ‘Why not just leave? Why not dematerialise?’

  ‘Because she won’t let me!’ the Doctor called back, distressed. ‘It’s all because of that wretched Continuum Displacement Zone. Until we’ve sorted that out we’re not going anywhere.’

  Jamie pointed. ‘Zoe!’

  And Zoe turned to the scanner in time to see a wall of white bearing down, not a cannonball this time, but a tremendous jagged mass heading straight for the TARDIS – she hid her face behind her hands—

  There was no impact.

  Zoe peeked through her fingers. The TARDIS was intact. Jamie and the Doctor stood breathing hard at the console. She was still here, uninjured. She saw, an odd detail, that the Huxley book had slithered across the floor and ended up at her feet, but it had lost her bookmark.

  On the scanner screen there was only a fine hail of glittering dust. The great boulder had vanished. But now another block emerged from the swarm – she braced and prepared to call out—

  The second block detonated and dispersed.

  And a machine swam across her field of view, like a fat disc studded with flaring rockets. A forest of manipulator arms waved.

  The TARDIS crew stood and stared.

  ‘It saluted us,’ Zoe said, breathlessly. ‘I’ll swear it saluted us.’

  With a nonchalant spin the robot turned and zapped another brace of incoming ice blocks.

  The Doctor came to life. He tapped a control to open a communication channel. ‘This is the Doctor, aboard the TARDIS. Calling unidentified robot. We, umm, we’re very grateful for your assistance.’

  A speaker crackled to life. ‘Aye, nae problem, wee man.’

  Jamie stared. ‘Ye’re Scottish.’ He leant over the console. ‘I said, ye’re Scottish!’

  ‘Really, Jamie,’ said the Doctor, ‘there’s no need to shout. This equipment is very sensitive.’

  ‘So I am, fella, and you too by the sound o’ it. Call me MMAC. That’s M, M, A, C.’

  ‘James Robert McCrimmon,’ said Jamie proudly.

  ‘McCrimmon? The sept of the McLarens?’

  ‘Aye, tha’s right. Ye know of it?’

  ‘Ye wouldn’a be a piper by any chance? The McCrimmons are famed for that.’

  ‘Tha’s me. Served with the laird hisself.’

  ‘Which laird?’

  But the Doctor shook his head sharply.

  Jamie asked instead, ‘Wha’ about ye? Where’re ye from?’

  Zoe snorted. ‘Ask him where he was manufactured.’

  But the robot answered, ‘Born and bred in Govan.’

  Jamie’s face fell. ‘Govan? Glasgae? Och, I should hae known. Here I am off in space and the mechanical Scotsman I meet has tae be from Glasgae.’

  The robot calmly zapped a couple more blocks.

  ‘That looks like a meson shield to me,’ murmured Zoe. ‘Short range but effective.’

  ‘And wha’s wrong with Glasgae, if I may ask?’

  ‘Only that ye lowland jessies supported the Anglish in the ’45, tha’s all.’

  MMAC laughed, a convincingly human sound. ‘Ye’ve a laing memory, fella.’

  Now a new figure appeared in the scanner’s view. ‘Maybe we could talk about this later when we’ve got you to safety.’

  Zoe stared, fascinated. With the robot continuing its defensive work in the background, in the foreground a spacesuited figure rode a simple rocket craft, just a platform on which she stood, a handle before her with basic controls. She was a young girl by the sound of her voice, maybe not much younger than Zoe. She wore a transparent sealed suit over what looked like straightforward T-shirt and shorts, in plain grey colours. Her face, serious and sensible, was dimly visible through her visor.

  The Doctor murmured, ‘That suit rather reminds me of the equipment on your own station, Zoe.’

  Zoe felt oddly defensive. ‘Well, we didn’t walk around in transparent pressure suits. And nothing like that broomstick would have been allowed on Station Three. I mean, where’s its backup propulsion system?’

  ‘I think ye’re jealous,’ said Jamie with a grin.

  ‘Oh, be quiet, Jamie.’ She raised her voice. ‘You, on the broomstick. Please identify yourself, and your rank.’

  The Doctor raised his eyebrows at her aggressive tone.

  ‘My name’s Phee Laws.’ She sounded amused, and snapped out, ‘Josephine Miranda Laws, ma’am! I’m sixteen years old. I don’t really have a rank. My tentative parapsychological-socioeconomic classification is A, if that helps. My mother has a rank, I suppose. She’s Jo Laws. She’s the mayor, sort of, on the Wheel. Oh, her grade is B.’

  ‘The Wheel?’

  ‘The Mnemosyne Cincture. We call it the Wheel of Ice. Look, we ought to get you out of there before MMAC’s meson gun runs out of juice. The best way is for MMAC just to tow you out of the plane of the rings. Then we�
��ll take you to the Wheel.’ She glanced around, evidently eyeing up the TARDIS’s unprepossessing exterior. ‘Is there any kind of grappling handle?’

  ‘Oh, that’s easily sorted out,’ the Doctor said brightly. ‘Do you have a line? We’ll just wrap it around the control console, here inside the ship.’

  Phee looked surprised. ‘OK. It’s your vessel. Where’s the airlock?’

  ‘Oh, no need for that. Hang on while I open the door.’ He reached for the control.

  Zoe cried, ‘Doctor – no!’ She lunged towards him, every space-trained instinct clamouring to keep the pressurised environment intact.

  But the Doctor opened the door, long before she could reach him. Through the door Zoe saw a star field, a smattering of ice fragments, the spidery robot spinning and whirling, and the astonished-looking girl on her rocket craft, with a cable trailing back to the robot. And, rather to Zoe’s surprise, the air did not rush out of the TARDIS leaving them gasping like stranded fish.

  The Doctor smiled. He held out his arm to the girl outside. ‘This way.’

  Phee hesitated. Then, with a skilful blip of her rocket, she sailed in towards the TARDIS. She killed her relative motion before she collided with the ship, reached out an uncertain hand, and allowed the Doctor to pull her through the force field, or whatever it was that contained the TARDIS’s air. She stood with a slight stumble on the gleaming floor, evidently surprised by the gravity, her lightweight craft in her hand. Zoe saw that under her transparent suit she wore a heavy pendant at her neck, a slim black panel about the size and shape of a playing card. It reminded Zoe of the communicators they had used on Station Three.

  Somewhere inside the TARDIS an alarm chimed faintly.

  The Doctor let the newcomer get her bearings. ‘Welcome aboard,’ he said gently, his face crumpled in a beaming smile.

  ‘What is this thing, some kind of escape pod?’

  ‘Well, we have done rather a lot of escaping in it, I suppose…’

  And then Phee took in the size of the control room. Looked back at the open door that had taken up half of one of the TARDIS’s external faces. Looked around the cabin again, with the doorway lost against one vast wall.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ the Doctor said. ‘Everybody reacts like that. Most people far worse, in fact.’

  Zoe had heard this routine a hundred times. ‘Isn’t that a bit patronising, Doctor, considering that this girl and her robot spider are saving all our lives?’

  ‘Yes, all right, thank you, Zoe. I wonder if you would mind glancing over at the console to check on that alarm? As for our visitor, it’s perfectly safe to open your visor now, you know.’ To back that up he filled his own lungs with a deep breath.

  Phee cautiously tapped a control, and her visor slid back. Her hair was a rich red. Her face was serious, square rather than pretty, and she squinted in the control room’s bright lights, her pupils oddly large.

  Jamie came up to her with his usual clumsy friendliness. ‘My name’s Jamie.’

  Phee grinned. ‘Ah, yes, the proud Scot. MMAC’s not so bad, you know, when you get to know him.’

  ‘Aye, well, if he pulls us out o’ this hole I’ll even forgive him for being born in Glasgae. If he was born. Can I take this?’

  ‘My scooter? Thanks.’

  He propped it in the corner. ‘Light, this thing. Might hae a go mesel’. Now here, let me gi’ ye a hand with yon cable…’

  The Doctor joined Zoe at the controls. ‘You found the alarm.’

  She pointed. ‘This one.’ The indicator was labelled PEDLERON PARTICLES. ‘Went off just as Scooter Girl over there walked in.’

  ‘Umm. Then the mystery we have to solve before we can leave here has just deepened, Zoe.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He tapped the display with his forefinger, and looked across at Phee, puzzled. ‘I mean that the presence of pedleron particles tells me that the TARDIS has detected an object, something that has just been brought into this control room, that has travelled through time…’

  Soon the cable was fixed in place around the base of the console. It snaked off out of the door, across open space, to the labouring, spinning, multi-limbed robot. With a squirt of rockets MMAC drifted away, the cable went taut, and the TARDIS followed like a dog on a lead.

  4

  THERE WERE FIVE members of the loosely constituted inner council that ran affairs on the Mnemosyne Cincture, known to its inhabitants as the Wheel of Ice. Or rather, Mayor Jo Laws admitted to herself tiredly as the arguments rambled on, they liked to believe they ran those affairs, rather than just react to the latest calamities.

  There was herself, Josephine Mary Laws, with the more or less informal title of mayor of the mining colony. She was, however, the only one of the council actually elected by those they were here to serve.

  She had one firm ally among the other four, she believed, in the colony’s chief medical officer, Sinbad Omar.

  Then there were the two representatives of Earth’s tangled politics. Marshal Sonia Paley was the cop imposed as security officer by the ISC in Geneva, the International Space Command. And Luis Reyes, ambassador from the PEC, the Planetary Ethics Commission, was here to monitor their moral behaviour – and, in extremis, shut the operation down if they didn’t wash behind their ears thoroughly enough. Both following other people’s agendas, both not bad folks in themselves, both thoroughly out of their depth out here on the edge of the solar system.

  And then there was Florian Hart, who was talking now, as usual dominating the session in her ferocious way. Her official title was a corporate rank: Administrator. In practice she was the embodiment of Bootstrap, Inc., the mining consortium that had put up the money for this operation in the first place. As Florian never hesitated to remind them all.

  She actually had some bernalium on the table in front of her, a frothy lump of it mined from Mnemosyne, the ice moon at the centre of the Wheel. The sample was embedded in lead-doped glass that would, hopefully, contain its residual radiation. Florian lifted the lump and let it drop; it swam down through the air in the low-spin gravity.

  ‘Let me just put it on the record once again,’ Florian said sternly. ‘Bernalium, mined from the core of the moon. This is why we’re all here. Bernalium, a highly conductive mineral, essential for the next-generation high-energy technologies that will fuel mankind’s leap outward into deep space…’ Raised in America, she was very beautiful, in a rich-kid, hothouse way. But there was nothing soft about her, nothing spoiled. On the contrary, Jo had learned, her background, and what had become of her father, had left her hard, driven to progress the fortunes of Bootstrap, Inc., locked in deadly competition across the solar system with its commercial rivals.

  The rest listened to Florian with strained patience. She was a nightmare to work with.

  The council was meeting in one of the smaller buildings in Residential One, the Wheel’s top-class habitation sector monopolised by A-grades like Florian; as a mere B, Jo felt out of place. There were windows set in the ceiling, and when she looked up Jo could make out the battered hulk of Mnemosyne itself. When Jo worked up there, in the little moon’s miniscule gravity, her disability, her legs shattered and amputated after an encounter with a roadside IED in Venezuela far away and long ago, counted for nothing. But down here on the Wheel, even though the spin gravity was no higher than Earth’s moon’s, she was confined to chairs.

  Florian dropped the bernalium lump again. ‘Bernalium is the reason we’re all here. The only reason. Once we extract it in significant quantities – assuming we ever do, assuming we get past the trial-bore stage we’ve been stuck at for months – this dump might pay for itself at last.’

  Dr Sinbad Omar, an elegant, restrained North African, leaned forward. ‘You don’t need to remind us, Ms Hart. We need bernalium-based technology ourselves, in this hazardous environment. Almost every day I treat impact injuries caused by ring fragment collisions – crushing, broken limbs, decompression incidents. To keep at bay the s
warm of ice missiles we live in requires something beefier than our elderly meson shields. The new laser technologies they are trialling on Earth’s moon will be much more effective, but barely affordable until bernalium becomes more widely available.’

  Florian took this as support for her position. ‘Fine. Then we should accelerate the bore programme.’

  Luis Reyes was a Spaniard; he came across as diffident, even nervous, and Jo suspected he was on a steep learning curve. But she had detected a strong moral core in him. ‘You rush to conclusions, Florian,’ he said now. ‘We of Planetary Ethics will not sanction any pressure to accelerate the work programme here unless we are certain of the safety of the workers. Especially,’ he said, emphasising his point with a hand slapped on the table, ‘the young people, the children, born here in what is effectively a labour camp, many of whom are already working on the mine projects in a quite unacceptable manner.’

  Florian sneered. ‘There’s more at issue than the fate of a bunch of C-grade loser kids.’

  A bunch of kids that included Jo’s own son, Sam. Jo seethed silently.

  Florian Hart went on, ‘I know what your agenda is, Reyes. It’s always the same with you people. Let’s give up. Let’s roll up the colonies, let’s all go back to Earth, let’s pull the blankets over our heads and pretend the rest of the universe doesn’t even exist, and boo hoo. Yes?’

  Luis was intimidated, but he stood his ground. ‘I know what you’re hinting at. The Pull Back to Earth faction holds one extreme and unrepresentative philosophical position, and is nothing to do with me. The Planetary Ethics Commission is a widely backed, government-supported moral initiative. As you know very well, Ms Hart. If it’s a choice between slowing down this particular project and risking harm to children—’

  Florian laughed loudly to drown him out.

  Sonia Paley sighed. ‘Let’s all try to keep calm, shall we?’

  Jo suppressed a smile. That was the authentic voice of a British bobby, which was what Sonia had been before joining the ISC: calming, reassuring, even rather boring.

  But Florian rounded on Sonia. ‘More Brit smugness from you, Marshal Paley? It’s a shame you and your deputies aren’t concentrating on cracking down on the vandalism and theft and downright sabotage that seems to be endemic in this sinkhole. As long as you and your half-trained goons sit on your hands—’