‘You’re… proposing to have a conversation with me?’ asked the Doctor.

‘The conversssation will not be conducted by me,’

hissed the giant.

‘Oh, interesting! Who do I get to talk to, then?’

asked the Doctor.

A figure had entered the chamber behind the half-ring of Warriors. He was not as tall or as broad as any of them, but he was just as imposing.

The Ice Lord wore a regal, form-fitting body suit of titanium mesh. It was the colour of verdigrised brass pipework or pellucid green sea-ice. His armoured mantle and long storm cloak were of a darker green, as though they had been woven from the needles of an evergreen tree. His sharply domed helm was like the nose of a burnished artillery shell. It was made of gleaming white steel with a faint threadwork of pale green. It looked as though it could have been sculpted out of the finest Pentelic marble. The eye slots were lensed with jade glass.

The Ice Lord came and stood in front of the Doctor.

‘You talk to me,’ he said. His voice was deeper than the wheezing, hissing tones of the bulky Ice Warriors.

It reminded the Doctor of a distant rumble of thunder, like a ferocious ice storm lurking below the horizon of a bleak antarctic waste.

‘Great!’ declared the Doctor. ‘Let’s start! What shall we talk about? I think the weather’s always a polite topic of conversation. Shall we discuss the weather?

Been a bit chilly of late, hasn’t it? Real overcoat weather. What do you think?’

‘Tell me about the new weapons you have arrayed against us,’ said the Ice Lord.

‘I don’t know anything about any weapons,’

answered the Doctor, ‘new or otherwise.’

‘Disinformation is not a good strategy to employ,’

said the Ice Lord. ‘New weapons have been produced and used. Account for them. Explain them.’

‘I can assure you,’ replied the Doctor firmly, ‘I have no knowledge of any weapons deployed against you.

My only participation in your business today has been trying to prevent you from killing me and my friends.’

The Ice Lord stared down at the Doctor for a long time, longer than any human would have held a silence. He didn’t seem to be having any difficulty comprehending the remark. It was more as though the Ice Lord believed that, if he waited long enough, he would get the answer he was waiting for.

This, the Doctor knew, was entirely typical of Martian psychology. As a result, he did not respond.

He fixed his gaze directly on the jade eye slits and waited. You didn’t win an argument with an Ice Warrior by arguing. You won it by staying silent for longer.

Behind the jade lenses, black eyes gleamed like oiled obsidian.

‘This is disinformation,’ the Ice Lord said at last. ‘In the surface woodland earlier tonight, you evaded one of my combat echelons. You, and three other mammals.’

‘That could have been anyone,’ replied the Doctor.

‘It was you. Heatprints do not lie. It is verified.’

‘They were chasing us,’ said the Doctor. ‘They didn’t seem all that friendly. We were obliged to run.’

The Ice Lord remained silent for another over-long moment.

‘When you refused to surrender,’ he said eventually,

‘they fired upon you. You withstood their sonic disruptors. I return to my original question. Tell me about the new weapons that have been arrayed against us. New weapons that can repel sonic attack.’

‘Oh, that?’ said the Doctor. He tried to appear relaxed, leaning back and attempting to casually cross his legs. The axe wedged across his chest rather cramped his style. After a couple of tries, he was forced to put his leg back down and pretend he’d only been trying to pick lint off his coat. ‘I wouldn’t characterise that as a weapon. It was an improvised defence against your unprovoked and lethal assault.’

‘Make an account of it,’ the Ice Lord growled.

The Doctor sighed. ‘I can show you,’ he said. He shrugged helplessly against the axe that caged him in the chair. ‘Can I get to a pocket?’

The Ice Lord looked at the attending Warrior and nodded. The Warrior reached forward, grasped the axe and plucked it out of the chair.

The Doctor breathed out, smiled, and fished around in his coat for his sonic screwdriver. He took it out and showed it to the Ice Lord.

‘A simple multifunction tool,’ he said. ‘Not a weapon. Attacked by your cohort, I adjusted it to generate a noise-cancelling field that blocked the effects of their disruptors. Passive resistance. Do you understand me? Not a weapon.’

‘Demonstrate.’

‘I can’t. Fending your warriors off pretty much exhausted this device. It is non-functional.’

There was another long pause.

‘On the other occasions,’ said the Ice Lord, ‘were devices such as this employed?’

‘What other occasions?’ asked the Doctor.

‘Do not evade.’

‘I’m not,’ said the Doctor. ‘What other occasions?’

‘This conflict is escalating,’ the Ice Lord said. ‘The latest advance gained by your side is a resistance to our sonic weapons. It has required us to re-equip with blade weapons. Are you the architect of this tactical advantage?’

‘Oh, come on,’ said the Doctor. ‘I block your sonic blasters during one skirmish in the woods – a frantic improvisation, I might add - and you revise your entire combat strategy? You dump your high-tech guns in favour of ritual blades? Seriously, I’m impressive, but I’m not that impressive.’

‘Your arrival in this theatre coincided with the sudden negation of our sonic arsenal. Can you deny that you are the architect of this tactical improvement?’

‘You are misreading the facts,’ said the Doctor.

The Ice Lord did not reply. At an almost leisurely pace, he crossed to the other high-backed chair, rotated it to face the Doctor, and sat down.

‘Where have you and the other new arrivals come from?’ the Ice Lord asked.

‘We arrived yesterday,’ replied the Doctor.

‘All of you?’

‘Yes.’

‘How?’

‘In my ship,’ replied the Doctor.

The Ice Lord paused again. ‘We have not detected a ship. Orbital surveillance is continuous and comprehensive. We have not detected a ship, certainly not a ship large enough to contain all of you.’

‘Well, there you are,’ said the Doctor. ‘I’m telling the truth. Your instruments must be wrong. So, you’re monitoring the human population on Hereafter?’

‘Of course.’

‘How do you distinguish between the existing population and any new arrivals?’

‘Heatprints do not lie,’ said the Ice Lord.

The Doctor nodded. ‘Ah, yes, right. Everyone’s thermal image is as unique as a gene-scan or a retina,’

he mused. He turned his head and took a wistful look at the hatch that Amy had sealed behind her. The woolly mitten was on the deck where it had fallen.

‘Or a palm-print,’ he added, ruefully. He looked back at the Ice Lord. ‘All right. This is interesting. You detected heatprints that didn’t match any on your database, so you despatched troops to find and identify the new arrivals.’

‘Precise monitoring must be maintained,’ replied the Ice Lord. ‘Constant threat evaluation and analysis keeps us ahead in this war.’

‘This cold war,’ the Doctor said. He sat back. ‘How long have you been here?’

‘Ten Earth years.’

‘But only in these last few weeks or so have you revealed yourselves?’

‘Alterations made to the climate engines were sufficient at first. We were waiting for the effects to manifest. However, we have been forced to become more proactive.’

‘Your plan has run into difficulties?’ pressed the Doctor.

‘It has turned into open war.’

‘Has it?’ asked the Doctor. ‘Has it indeed? Again, and I’m sorry if I offend, you are simply misreading the facts. You are traumatically altering the climate of this planet and, as a direct consequence of that policy, you are going to exterminate a sentient population.