Chapter 1
In a refrigeration room, dry ice floods into the large open space. By upper railings stand people in white uniforms with Prussian style hats - the ones with a nasty spike sticking out of the top. Another waits downstairs. A woman, also in white, leads in six people.
"Halt!" cried the woman.
"Oh, you lucky, lucky people," said the man downstairs. "You are the chosen ones, the elite, specially selected to join our force of mercenaries and create fear and terror wherever you go."
"We were tricked," objected one of the prisoners.
"Kane has paid seventeen crowns for each of you," said the male officer. "And he insists on value for money."
"Seventeen crowns?" asked the prisoner, incredulously. "You couldn't even buy a dog for seventeen crowns."
"Precisely," replied the officer, derisively. "I wouldn't have paid seventeen crowns for the lot of you, let alone each." He pushes the prisoner back and he falls, touching one of the boxes giving out the dry ice. It burns.
"Only frostburn," remarked the officer.
"Frostburn?" asked the prisoner.
"Liquid nitrogen," explained the officer. "Minus two hundred Celsius. Just be thankful your arm didn't go inside the vat, otherwise it would never have come out again." He turned to the woman. "Right, freeze them."
"Wait!" cried the prisoner, whose name was Zed. "You mean we're going to be frozen?"
"Until Kane needs your services, yes," replied the officer. "What's the matter, getting cold feet?"
The woman moves the other men out. Zed hits the remaining guard, takes his weapon and tries to run for it. The officer starts shooting. "Kill him!" he shouted.
Zed runs through a door.
"Leave him," said the officer. "He's in the restricted zone. He's a dead man."
Zed has gone into a room where an old man is chiseling at a huge slab of ice. He trips and drops his newly acquired weapon into a vat. A white clad arm with gold braid reaches in and takes it out, handing it back. Zed drops it on the floor, where it shatters, then the pale faced man puts his hands on Zed's face, and he dies.
"Pay no attention to the intruder," said the owner of the white-clad arm to the old man. "You may continue with your work."
In the TARDIS, the scanner shows a small planetoid sunlit at the bottom and with a massive city on the opposite side.
"Where are we?" asks Nita.
"Iceworld," replies the Doctor. "A space trading colony on the dark side of the planet Svartos. Space travellers stop there for supplies. I've been picking up a faint tracking signal for some time. I think there's something interesting going on there, girls."
In a shopping mall, a woman looks in a chest freezer then drags her daughter away. There is an announcement.
"Don't miss our special offer in the nurturing spares department. Photon refrigeration units for only twenty four ninety five. Thank you."
The TARDIS materialises. Only the little girl looks up as Mel, Nita and the Doctor come out.
"A freezer centre?" asks Nita. "How boring."
"Oh, trust not appearances, Nita," replied the Doctor. "You never know what might be lurking in the freezer chests. Think gothic."
The little girl runs up to Nita wearing a mask, making her gasp then smile.
"This way," says the Doctor, leading them through a doorway into a restaurant.
Amongst the people at the tables of this down market Cantina is Sabalom Glitz, who is complaining about something to a teenaged waitress.
"Ah, three of your best strawberry milkshakes, if you please," requests the Doctor of the girl behind the counter.
"Certainly, sir," replies the girl.
"There must be some mistake in the reckoning," says a man sitting at a table.
The Doctor, Nita and Mel sit at the next table, and he takes out a book to read. The Doctor's Dilemma, by Bernard Shaw.
"The mistake's in your wallet, not my arithmetic," objects the waitress to the man at the table.
"Do you take Asteroid Express?" asks the man. The Doctor recognizes his voice and turns to him.
"Glitz!" cries the Doctor.
"Glitz!" echoes Mel.
The waitress takes the credit card and goes to the bar as the Doctor, Nita and Mel join Glitz at his table.
"What?" asks Glitz, looking around to see if anyone heard. "No, never heard of him."
"It's us, Mel and the Doctor," says Mel. "You haven't forgotten us, have you, Glitz?"
"Shush," begs Glitz. "Keep your voice down. No, of course I haven't forgotten you. Mel, and the Doc. Here, you're not the Doctor."
"I've regenerated," explains the Doctor. "The difference is purely perceptual."
"And this is our friend, Nita," Mel introduces.
"Pleased to meet you," says Glitz to Nita. He turns to the Doctor. "Here, you couldn't do us a favour, could you? You see, I'm in a spot of bother."
The waitress brings the Doctor, Nita and Mel's drinks.
"What's this, Glitz?" asks the Doctor, suspiciously. "Not another one of your dodgy deals backfired?"
"No, no, nothing like that, straight up," denies Glitz. "Fact is, I'm on a mission of highly philanthropic nature."
"What's that?" asks Mel.
"It means it's beneficial to mankind," replies Glitz.
"We know what philanthropic means," says Mel, rolling her eyes. "What's the mission?"
"I have been entrusted to deliver certain secret documents which nefarious unnamed parties would stop at nothing to grasp within their own grubby digits," Glitz replies.
"You mean.." begins the Doctor.
"…They'd kill you," Mel finishes.
Three of Kane's white clad mercenaries enter the restaurant. One touches Glitz' shoulder.
"Sabalom Glitz, we've been looking for you," she says.
"Leave him alone. If you kill him, you kill us too," says Mel, impulsively.
"Er, steady on there, Mel," objects the Doctor.
"What are you talking about?" asks the mercenary, confused.
"Oh, he's told us everything, about how you tried to stop him delivering secret documents," says Mel.
"Shush," objects Glitz.
"Becoming quite a story-teller, aren't we, Glitz?" says the mercenary. "I'm afraid you also seem to be a victim of Mister Glitz's cavalier attitude toward facts."
"Glitz!" exclaims the Doctor.
"I'm not interested in any secret documents which Mister Glitz may or may not possess," says the mercenary. "I am more concerned with the hundred crowns he took from my employer, Mister Kane, under false pretences."
"That was highest quality merchandise," objects Glitz.
"A space freighter full of deep frozen fruit which turned out to be rotten," the mercenary argues.
"Oh, a bit on the ripe side, maybe," says Glitz.
"They were putrefying, Glitz."
"A little past their prime, perhaps."
"And Mister Kane does not run Iceworld to subsidise crooks like yourself. The hundred crowns, please."
"I think you'd better pay back the money, Glitz," advises the Doctor.
"I can't."
"Why not?"
"Well, you see, there was this game of cards. I got well damaged."
"What about the hundred and two crowns you sold your crew for?" asks the mercenary.
The Doctor returns to his book.
"Sold your crew?" asks Mel, appalled.
"Well, the mutinous rabble. They tried to take command of my spacecraft. I relieved myself of them for seventeen crowns a piece. Rather more than they were worth, I think."
"The money," demands the mercenary.
"Gone the way of all organic matter, I'm afraid. Down the tube."
"In that case, we're confiscating your spacecraft."
"The Nosferatu? You can't do that."
"You have seventy two hours to find one hundred crowns or you lose your spacecraft."
"But it's my livelihood."
The three mercenaries leave.
"Doctor, you've got to help me," begs Glitz.
"You've only got yourself to blame," says the Doctor.