Read The Ice Warriors for Free Online Page A

eyebrows in surprise and glanced towards Miss Garrett, who echoed his reaction. ‘My dear man, where have you been all these years?’
    The Doctor threw a quick look at Jamie and Victoria before replying with a nervous smile. ‘As a matter of fact, we’ve been on a sort of… retreat – in Tibet.’
    Victoria had to turn away slightly to hide the smile that threatened to flood her face.
    ‘Oh… really?’ replied Clent. ‘Tibet… of course.’ He looked towards Miss Garrett for her opinion – but she was gazing silently at the floor.
    ‘Well,’ continued Clent, ‘as for the general situation, Miss Garrett can give you all the details later. Before we get to that stage, I want you to take a simple test.’
    ‘I’m not much of a one for examinations,’ observed the Doctor drily.
    ‘This is a verbal exercise in deductive logic. It’ll tell me whether you’re up to the standard I require. I don’t tolerate charlatans, you know.’
    ‘And if I don’t come up to scratch?’ enquired the Doctor.
    ‘You’ll be evacuated with the other scavengers.’
    ‘Where to?’ asked Jamie bluntly.
    ‘To one of the African Rehabilitation Centres, of course,’ replied Miss Garrett with cold formality.
    ‘Oh, no!’ objected Victoria. ‘Not Africa!’
    The Doctor shared her alarm. It wasn’t the country that was objectionable, so much as the fact that their only means of escape from this particular time zone lay outside the Base – half-buried in a snowdrift! To be transported to Africa would mean being parted from the TARDIS – and probably for good.
    ‘Let’s hear this problem then,’ the Doctor demanded quietly.
    ‘Very well,’ said Clent. ‘All the major continents are threatened by destruction beneath the glaciers of the New Ice Age. How would you halt the ice surge and return the climate to normal, using the equipment you’ve already seen?’
    The Doctor frowned, and puffed his cheeks at the enormity of the question. Both Jamie and Victoria stared at him anxiously. Smiling blandly, Clent sat up in the vibro-chair and reached out a hand to the chronometer by his side.
    ‘You have just ninety seconds,’ he murmured, ‘from now!’
    Victoria and Jamie could only stare at the Doctor’s fiercely concentrating face, as he fired out questions and comments that left them completely baffled. Clent, relaxed, had closed his eyes; Miss Garrett studied the Doctor with sharp interest, noting with approval the scope and alertness of his mental responses. This man was certainly no charlatan!
    ‘Possible causes, then,’ rapped out the Doctor keenly. ‘A reversal of the Earth’s magnetic poles?’
    ‘No such change has occurred,’ replied Clent, without opening his eyes. The smile had vanished. Only a trained scientist could have asked such a question.
    ‘Interstellar clouds obscuring the sun’s rays?’
    Clent shook his head.
    Negative again. But the Doctor hadn’t finished.
    ‘A severe shift in the Earth’s axis of rotation?’
    Once more, Clent indicated that the suggestion was wrong. The Doctor looked thoughtful; he’d been given a problem without clues – the most difficult sort. And time was slipping away…
    ‘Come on, Doctor!’ urged Victoria. ‘Think!’
    The Doctor looked at the recumbent Clent, and a slow, wicked smile spread over his puckish features.
    ‘Ah! A gigantic heat loss – is that it?’
    The Leader’s face gave nothing away. He glanced briefly at the chronometer, then again closed his eyes before replying to the question.
    ‘I require an answer – not a question. You have rather less than thirty seconds left, Doctor.’
    Clent’s carefully concealed reaction wasn’t lost on the Doctor. He grinned inwardly – two could play at that game!
    ‘In that case, it’s perfectly simple…’ he said airily, then paused, apparently lost in an attempt to read his plastic evacuation tag upside down. By the time the chronometer’s flicking hand had reached five seconds to zero, not