‘Get inside!’ he shouted.
The four of them blundered into the vent. It was dark and cold inside, and smelled of straw, but it was surprisingly dry. Samewell swung the metal door shut behind them and dropped the bolt.
They looked at one another in the gloom. It was so dark, they could discern only the faintest shapes. All of them were panting and out of breath.
‘Wait now,’ said Samewell.
He fumbled along the wall of the vent behind the door and found a rack containing small solamps. He turned one of the lamps on. The inside of the vent was a circular chamber about six metres in diameter. There were shelves with pots and pans, a small stove, two battered sleeping cots and a chair. The floor looked like it was impacted earth covered in dried rushes or straw.
It was almost cosy.
The sense of cosiness vanished the moment they heard the first mighty pincer-fist smash against the vent door. The blows came one after another, brutally hard against the metal, vibrating the door and the wall beside it. The Ice Warriors were determined to smash their way in.
The metal will keep them out for a bit,’ said Amy.
‘Shipskin is strong,’ said Bel.
‘So are Ice Warriors,’ replied the Doctor. He had taken the lamp off Samewell and was looking around, searching desperately for some kind of inspiration, some cue that might prompt invention or improvisation, anything to get them out of a small, exit-less structure that was, at best, a temporary refuge and, at worst, a hut-shaped death-trap.
‘Houdini built a career out of this,’ he said encouragingly as his mind raced.
‘Of being trapped in a smelly shed under attack from Ice Men?’ asked Amy.
‘Of escaping from tight places from which there was no obvious mode of egress,’ replied the Doctor. He took a cup off a shelf, looking inside it, and then gave up on that line of thought. ‘And it’s Ice Warriors.’
Amy glanced at the door, which was quivering with every dull blow from outside.
‘Uh-huh,’ she said. ‘Is that going to matter, in the long run? Ice Men? Ice Warriors? Ice Homicidal Freaks, who are still going to do us in whatever we call them?’
‘True,’ said the Doctor. He flipped the chair over to check its underside. ‘Funny thing,’ he said, ‘no one ever gets their name right. Not even them. I mean, as I remember it, it was a friend of mine called Victoria that first called them Ice Warriors. Then they started to refer to themselves as Ice Warriors. It’s confusing. If the cap fits, I suppose.’
‘You’ve met them before?’ asked Amy.
‘Several times. Not for a long while, actually.
Anyway, nice to see they’re still entirely Ice-ish and Warrior-esque.’
‘Are they enemies of yours?’ asked Arabel.
‘No,’ said the Doctor, getting down to look under the cots. The hammering at the hatch had grown more intense. ‘Yes. Sometimes.’ He shrugged. ‘They are an ancient and proud culture. One of the great pan-world civilisations in this part of the galaxy. Much to be admired about them. Great code of honour. Of fairness.
Then again, they are pragmatic and resolute. They fight for survival and they fight without quarter. It’s very dangerous to be on the wrong side of them.’
‘How many times have you been on the right side of them?’ asked Amy.
‘Oh, a couple of times at least.’
‘And the other times?’
The Doctor looked at her.
‘Those didn’t go so well,’ he admitted.
‘What are they doing here?’ asked Amy.
‘The same thing as the Morphans, I should imagine,’
the Doctor replied, standing on the chair to examine the ceiling, ‘shopping for a new home. If Earth and its solar system are gone, forcing a migration of human colonists, then Mars has gone too.’
‘Why does that matter?’
‘Because that, Amy Pond, is where they come from,’
he said.
‘Mars?’
‘Yes.’
‘They’re Martians?’
‘Yes.’
She stared at him. ‘You’re actually, seriously telling me, with a straight face, they’re green men from Mars?’
‘I know,’ the Doctor said. ‘It’s ironic, isn’t it? Of course, they’re not little green men. That would just be silly. They’re nice and big.’
Amy looked at the door. The last few savage blows had actually begun to dent the metal around the bolt.
‘Big and strong all right,’ she said. ‘Strong enough to start bashing the door in. They’re buckling the metal.’
‘That’s shipskin!’ protested Samewell. ‘It’s the strongest metal we have!’
‘It is, isn’t it?’ mused the Doctor.
He didn’t seem at all distracted by the incessant banging from the door. He stamped the heel of his right foot against the hard-packed ground, moved a short distance and did it again.
‘And that’s the interesting part,’ he went on.
‘Shipskin’s the toughest material you’ve got. It’s rare.
It’s a precious commodity.’
‘So?’ asked Amy.
‘So why did the Morphans build a shepherd’s hut out of it?’ asked the Doctor. He stamped his heel again and began to grin.
‘What have you found?’ Amy asked.
‘As usual, the obvious!’ he announced. He dropped to his hands and knees and started to rake up the earth floor with his fingers. ‘Come on! Help me! Before they knock that door in!’
They all got down and started to scrape the soil away with him. There was something under the dirt, just a few centimetres down. Something metal.
‘It was surprisingly dry in here,’ said the Doctor, working fast. ‘That’s the first thing I noticed. Dry. And made of metal. Well, made of metal was the first thing I noticed. Then I thought, why’s it so dry in here?’
‘You’re gabbling,’ Amy said.
‘Sorry,’ said the Doctor.
There was a particularly loud bang from the door.
Part of the lip had folded in. They could see a massive green pincer clamping at the frame, trying to prise it open.
‘It’s obvious,’ the Doctor said. ‘I was over-thinking it! The Morphans don’t call this a vent because it’s a derivation of a word for wind, they call it a vent…
because it’s a vent!’
They had dug away and exposed a large hatch in the floor. The Doctor brushed dust and dirt out of a latch mechanism.
‘Hurry!’ advised Amy looking at the door.
‘This is an exhaust outlet,’ said the Doctor, ‘venting warm air from the underground systems. It’s part of the large scale terramorphing mechanisms built under the landscape here. There are probably hundreds of them all over the countryside. The Morphans have come to use them as huts because they’re usually warm and dry.
They don’t remember what they were originally.’
Amy looked at the doorway. Part of the door was bent inwards and a great deal more of it was bulging.
Two sets of large green pincers were now visible, trying to shear the bolt away from the frame.
‘Really hurry!’ she said.
The Doctor adjusted his screwdriver, ratcheted around a setting and aimed it at the latch. It made a rather sickly and pathetic noise. He shook it and banged it against his hand.
‘I drained so much power noise-cancelling the Ice Warrior weapons,’ he sighed. ‘It’s feeling rather sorry for itself. It just wants to sit in a pocket quietly and recharge. Come on,’ he whispered to the screwdriver.
‘Just do this, and I won’t bother you again all day.’
‘Doctor!’ Amy cried.
Another formidable bash from the doorway had begun to deform the bolt.
The Doctor aimed the screwdriver carefully again, clicking the base end of it with his thumb as though it was a ballpoint pen. The sonic burbled, flashed, and then maintained a steady, whirring cycle. Three green lights winked on in series across the latch unit, and the hatch released with a clank and a hiss.
They hoisted it up. It lifted on one heavy-duty hinge like a submarine’s front door. It revealed a vertical metal shaft that descended into darkness. There was a metal ladder fixed down one side.