'Yeek!' they both shrieked in unison, as they suddenly came face to face with a cross-looking Glitz staring back at them and growling.
'Grrr!'
Glitz didn't look to be in any mood for discussions, so Mel and Ace scurried back to the chamber. They sat down in a sulk once more.
Ace sighed.
'I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with/.' Her voice was dull and bored.
'Ice,' said Mel, equally bored.
'Your go.'
McLuhan and Bazin had been following the tracking signal for almost an hour. It had been growing steadily stronger, and they had now almost caught up with their foe. McLuhan knew that nothing they had been taught in training would be of use to them now. No amount of preparation could replace fast reactions, perfect aim, and telepathic teamwork. And no rule book could replace the tight fear that held her body tense and alert.
She also knew the one rule that wasn't written in any rule book: average life expectancy on an ANT-hunt is one hour fifty-three minutes.
The longer the hunt goes on, the more likely the alien is to win. And the losers never returned home. She wondered whether Bazin knew that rule as well - whether he was counting the minutes as well.
'It's here!' he hissed. The tracker was registering a strong signal.
'Where?'
'About fifty metres, straight ahead.'
Without thinking, McLuhan checked the mechanism on her Cosmolite, and then tightened her finger on the trigger. They moved cautiously ahead, Bazin concentrating on the tracker, McLuhan staring down the passage ahead. She couldn't see anything.
'There's nothing there!'
'It's there. Forty metres now - slightly to the right.'
McLuhan peered down the passage. About ten metres ahead, another passage forked off to the right.
'Thirty metres. Coming towards us...'
'It's that passage ahead! Ready to open fire!'
Silently, McLuhan and Bazin both dropped down to a kneeling position and flicked up the sights on their Cosmolites.
'Twenty metres!' hissed Bazin.
Carefully, McLuhan lined her sights up on the point where she expected the alien to appear. Her breathing slowed down to calm, measured breaths, and her finger began to depress the trigger until she felt the slight resistance of its trigger point.
'Ten!'
Then she saw it! A terrifying alien skeleton with angry red eyes!
At the same instant, a bolt-beam from Bazin's Cosmolite burst into the wall of the Ice Passage just in front of the alien. He'd fired too soon -
and missed!
McLuhan pulled her finger, but it was too late now; the alien had disappeared from the centre of her gunsight. She saw her own bolt-beam explode into the opening of the second passage at the same time as she saw two streaks of fire beam out of the alien's eyes. Without thinking, she rolled away, and felt one of the beams scorch her arm as it hit the ground where she had been lying. She fired half a dozen more bolt-beams down the passage, just hoping that one of them might hit its target. In her confusion, she saw another figure down the passage -
a human. She didn't know whether or not she hit the figure or the alien with any of her volley of shots. But she knew that she was vulnerable lying on the ground and had to get up. Another volley of bolt-beams, from Bazin's Cosmolite, exploded down the passage as McLuhan scrambled to her feet. The passage was empty ahead of her. No alien, no human, no bodies. 'Where is it?' she hissed.
Bazin glanced at the signal tracker. 'To the left. Sixty metres. Moving away.'
'Come on! Don't lose the signal!'
She hurried down the passage, but she knew that they had wasted their best opportunity. They had lost the element of surprise. One hour fifty-three minutes was an average: some people lasted longer - but that meant that others died sooner...
Stellar and her mother had almost finished their meal. Despite unfortunate recent experiences, her mother had allowed Stellar to have ice cream for dessert, which Stellar had declared to be 'Fantastick!'
Now she was just waiting for her mother to finish her decaffeinated and they would be ready to leave.
A passing waiter brushed against the chair that Ted was sitting on and knocked it. Stellar's teddy bear rolled forward, bounced lightly on the edge of the table, and then disappeared underneath.
'Pick him up, darling, or you'll lose him,' said her mother. So Stellar slipped down off her cushions and onto the floor. She peered under the table, and could just see Ted on the other side.
At the same moment, the door to the Restaurant burst violently open.
Startled diners looked up to see twenty or more living corpses - Kane's frozen mercenaries -stagger in. A woman's scream was the trigger for general terror, as diners leapt from their meals in confusion and panic, and tried to fight their way out of the Restaurant.
Stellar, under the table, heard the screaming, and saw the legs of people running past, kicking chairs in all directions. Her mother tried to reach down and rescue Stellar, but the chaotic rush of frightened people carried the woman away and towards the exits. 'My daughter!
Let me get my daughter!' she screamed, but nobody heard her, and she was jostled away.
An old woman, who couldn't run as fast as the others, snapped like an autumn twig. A man who bravely tried to help her, fell broken alongside her. The empty-faced killers were unstoppable.
Stellar couldn't see what was happening, and was puzzled by all the commotion. She decided she had better sit where she was until her mother told her what to do.
The mercenaries' instructions had been to create terror, and drive everyone towards the Docking Bays. Their orders were to leave no one alive in Iceworld. They looked around the Restaurant now and saw no one left alive. Most of the diners had fled, only to find themselves driven towards the Docking Bays by other mercenaries. The few who hadn't run, or hadn't run fast enough, were lying dead on the floor.
Stellar didn't understand why her mother had left her behind. She looked around from under the table. A tall, horrible-looking man was stumbling towards her. She sat still under the table. She saw his strong legs stagger up to her table. He stood right over Ted, with one foot either side of the toy.
The mercenary was unsure; it thought it could sense a living creature close by, but it couldn't see anything. From beneath the table, a small arm emerged. The mercenary shuffled. Its feet brushed against a child's plaything on the ground. It looked at the dead bodies on the floor. The small arm pulled at the teddy bear between the mercenary's feet, but it was standing on one of the toy's ears. The mercenary looked round and shuffled again. The small arm pulled the teddy free, and took it under the table. The mercenary looked at the ground where it stood, but saw nothing there. Then it stumbled off after its colleagues.
The Restaurant was silent.
Stellar looked round from under the table. She couldn't see anybody. Carefully, she crept out, bringing Ted with her.
She stood up.
Chairs were lying broken. Plates and dishes were smashed on the floor.
An old woman and a man were lying asleep in the most uncomfortable positions. Food was spilt everywhere.
'Naughty Ted! Look what's happened, all because you jumped under the table.'
The refrigeration cabinet stood waiting as Kane strode into the Restricted Zone. He needed time alone -time to prepare himself. After three thousand years of waiting, he needed to concentrate his mind.
He lay down inside the cabinet, folded his arms across his chest, and closed his eyes. With a slight hiss, the lid of the cabinet closed and sealed itself shut. Refrigerating gases began to fill the cabinet.
'Current cabinet temperature: minus 15 °C... Target cabinet temperature: minus 193 °C... Cabinet temperature falling... minus 20
°C... minus 30 °C... minus 40 °C...'
This would be the last time that Kane would ever need to refresh his body temperature here on Svartos.
The customers in Iceworld fled from the relentless mercenaries like terrified animals. They were used to living civilised lives on civilised planets. If any kind of disaster threatened, they had leaders to guide them - that was why they elected governments and leaders in the first place. Now they found themselves without leaders to tell them what to do, and they were terrified. After a lifetime of relying on other people to make their decisions, and of doing what they were told, they had lost the ability to think clearly in an emergency. They were easy prey for the empty-faced men and women.
The mercenaries herded them like senseless sheep. They drove them from the Freezer Centre, from the
Refreshment Bar, and from the Sports Hall. They stampeded them down corridors, and gradually herded the panic-stricken people towards the Docking Bays, as Kane had ordered.
Stellar knew nothing of this. The mercenaries had missed her, and left her behind. She trailed through the empty corridors with her teddy, wondering where everyone was, and why her mother had left her.
There was no one about. No muzak drifting from the loudspeakers. No cheery announcements from the Bing-bong Woman. Nothing.
Stellar supposed she would have to find her own way back to the spacecraft, but she wasn't sure which way to go. She looked at the signs on the walls, as she had seen her mother do when she wanted directions, but Stellar hadn't learned to read yet, and the signs had arrows pointing in every direction.
She remembered that they had come up in a lift from the spacecraft, so when she saw a sign pointing down a service shaft, she decided that it must be the right way to get back to the spacecraft. She smiled, and thought of how surprised her mother was going to be when she discovered that Stellar had found her way back all by herself.
But when she got to the bottom of the ladder, she wasn't at all sure that this was the right way after all. It was darker down here, and instead of tidy corridors, the way was along metal walkways with ice walls. There was another passage off to one side, so Stellar decided to look down there. But it was the same as the first one. She turned back to return up the service shaft to where she had started. But she must have taken an extra turning somewhere, because she couldn't find the ladder again. She wandered further down the Ice Passages, moving deeper beneath Iceworld, and hoping that she could find some way back to her mother.
'Naughty Ted. It was your idea to come this way, and now you've got us lost.'
The Doctor didn't know whether the Creature was still alive, or dead.
They had been ambushed by two of Kane's guards, and the Doctor had been lucky to escape with his life. But in the confusion, the Creature had disappeared in a different direction.
He hurried back to the chamber of the Singing Trees to collect Mel, Ace and Glitz, but when he arrived, Glitz wasn't there - only the two women sitting glumly. Mel was the first to see the Doctor, and she jumped up.
'Doctor!'
'That doesn't begin with M,' complained Ace, who still hadn't noticed the Doctor.
'Where's Glitz?' demanded the Doctor.
Ace spun round in delight. 'Professor!'
'He's gone back to his spacecraft,' answered Mel.
The Doctor turned to go. 'Come on, hurry! Time is only skin deep, and the Creature's in terrible danger. We've got to stop Kane!'
He strode off, and the two women hurried after him.
McLuhan and Bazin had been tracking the Creature for an hour and a half, and were now making their way along the metal gantries directly beneath the Staff Quarters. McLuhan didn't believe the signal tracker as it led them further upwards towards Iceworld, but Bazin insisted that the signal was growing stronger.
'We're too close to the Upper Levels,' she hissed.
Bazin was intent on the tracker. 'It's here!'
McLuhan felt a sudden tightening of her stomach. She swiftly peered round the surrounding passage. There was nothing. 'Where?'
Bazin scanned the area with the signal tracker. 'I don't understand...'
'Where is it?'
'It's everywhere.'
'What do you mean - everywhere?
'I don't know. Whichever direction I point the signal tracker, I get the same reading.'
'I told you it was giving a false reading.'
'No, it's here somewhere. It's coming towards us!'
McLuhan stared frantically round. There was nothing in sight. 'It's wrong. There's nothing here.'
'Still approaching. Fifteen metres.'
'There's nothing there, Bazin! The tracker's wrong!' But she knew it wasn't.
'Ten metres...' . .
McLuhan swung round wildly. 'Where is it?' she screamed in panic.
'It's all around us! Five metres...'
'Where, for God's sake?'
'It's here! It's here somewhere!'
'Where?'
They both looked frantically round. There was nothing in either direction down the passage. Suddenly, they heard a scraping sound from beneath the metal walkway they were standing on. 'It's down there!' shouted Bazin, and immediately began to open fire at the metal gantry. The bolt-beams blew a large section of the gantry away, along with the ice beneath.
A child screamed!
'Stop!' shouted McLuhan. 'Hold your fire!' She pulled Bazin's hand away from the trigger of his Cosmolite.
The burnt metal of the gantry still crackled from the heat, and hot pieces of metal hissed as they fell into the melted ice. A small girl was crying fearfully. McLuhan covered the source of the sound with her own Cosmolite. 'Come out!' she ordered.
Slowly, the frightened Stellar crawled out through a gap at the side of the walkway.
'It's a girl,' said Bazin, still confused.
'Come on - right up here.'
Stellar climbed up onto the walkway, pulling her teddy with her.
'But... how come the tracker's picking her up?'
It wasn't. The Creature dropped down out of the metalwork in the roof of the passage. Stellar screamed when she saw the terrifying alien.
Without even seeing the Creature, McLuhan and Bazin both knew what was behind them. They spun round with their Cosmolites. But they knew the Creature had the advantage this time.