Chapter 6

Glitz enters the Nosferatu. It is small, messy with a pair of giant fluffy dice dangling from a chain.

"Ah, my ship. Soon be light years away from this place."

Glitz straps himself into the pilots seat, but then he feels a gun placed to his head.

"I wouldn't touch those controls if I were you," says Belazs.

At the top the Ice cliff, Mel starts down the ladder, collecting the Doctor's umbrella on the way. Ace and Nita follow.

"Wicked!" cried Ace. "And the bilge bag said this was too dangerous for girls."

Back at the Nosferatu:

"This spacecraft is mine," Belazs claims.

"Hang on, the seventy two hours aren't up yet," objects Glitz. "You said if I could get hold of the grotzits I could have the Nosferatu back."

"Then I shall just have to make sure you don't manage to find the money in time. I shall have to make very sure."

At that moment, The Doctor runs in.

"Hello. Not interrupting anything, am I?"

"What are you doing here?" Belazs demands.

"That's a very difficult question. Why is everyone round here so preoccupied with metaphysics?"

"I think she's going to kill us, Doctor."

"Ah. An existentialist."

"Quiet! Only one of us can leave Iceworld aboard the Nosferatu, and one way or the other it's going to be me."

"What about the boss, Mister Kane? Does he know of your little enterprise?" asks Glitz.

"Kane doesn't own me."

"Oh, I think he does," contradicts the Doctor. "I think he bought you like he buys everything in Iceworld."

"What would you know about it?"

"I think he bought you a long time ago," the Doctor continues. "He paid seventeen crowns for each of Glitz's crew. How much did he pay for you? Was it worth it? Were you worth it?"

Belazs holds up her burnt palm. "That's what I sold myself for, Kane's mark. I ought to cut my hand off for doing it."

While Belazs is distracted by the Doctor, Glitz unbuckles himself and takes her gun.

"Go on, then. Kill me!" she challenges him.

"Well, come on, Doctor. We've got the Nosferatu back. Let's get out of here."

"No, Glitz. You can't go on stealing everything you want, like this Stradivarius and that Dutch master. Pay Kane back his debt, even if it costs a thousand crowns, ten thousand crowns. Pay back the debt." He turns to Belazs. "And as for you, your debt to Kane, I don't think you'll be able to pay it off. Ever."

"What's the matter?" asks Mel, as Ace stops in her tracks.

"Shush. Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?" asks Nita.

"I thought I heard something."

"Well, what kind of something?" asks Mel.

The zombie crew are coming up behind them.

"I don't know. Can you see anything?"

More crew come round the corner.

"Look out!" cries Nita.

"Run!" shouts Ace.

Elsewhere, a bulkhead door creaks open. It is the Doctor and Glitz.

"I think we go straight on," says the Doctor. They hear a distant roar. "Either that, or we don't."

They start to creep along a catwalk, then the dragon fires its lasers at them. They retreat behind the bulkhead door again.

"Well, now that we've found the Dragonfire, what's next on your list of tourist attractions, Doctor?"

"Well, I'm not absolutely certain this one's over yet."

The bulkhead is getting hot from the dragon trying to cut through it.

"It must be generating a spot temperature in excess of fifteen hundred Celsius," says the Doctor.

Back with the girls, Nita pulls the top off a can. "Right, cover your ears."

There is a small explosion. The zombies don't like it.

"Ace! Yeah, good job. Throw the other one."

Another explosion as Mel throws a can.

"Yeah, go for it, tiger. That was well brill."

"We're not in the clear yet," says Nita, pointing to a zombie gettting up.

"I don't believe it. Not after two cans of Nitro. Nothing can survive that. Come on, Mel, Nita, shift!"

"Okay!"

Around the corner Mel slips and hits her head on some metal stairs. She is knocked unconscious.

"Come on! Come on, wake up," begs Ace.

Ace and Nita drag Mel under the stairs. The zombie clomps round the corner and goes up the stairs, standing directly above them. Then he goes back down and continues along the catwalk.

"Oh, what happened?" groans Mel, coming around.

"It's all right, doughnut. He's gone," says Ace.

The dragon cuts through the bulkhead door.

"Get back, Doctor."

Glitz aims Belazs's gun at the dragon.

"No, Glitz, don't."

"Why?"

"We've got no right to kill."

The Doctor throws the gun away and the dragon leaves.

"Why didn't it kill us?" asks Glitz.

"Perhaps we'd better ask it."

Belazs and Kracauer are in the refrigeration room.

"Can't sleep, Belazs?"

"How old do you think I am, Kracauer?"

"Thirty three, thirty four?"

"And how old do you think I was when I first agreed to join Kane? Sixteen. That was a long time ago. Do you see this?" Belazs holds out her palm.

"Yes, the mark of the sovereign."

"You'd have thought it would begin to disappear after twenty years."

"We sold ourselves. We knew what we were doing. We had a choice."

"I was sixteen."

"Even at sixteen we had a choice."

"He'll kill us. He'll find someone younger and he'll kill us unless we kill him first."

"How do you propose to do that?"

"With heat. Even here in Iceworld it's too warm for him. I've seen inside the restricted zone. That's where he keeps his refrigeration unit. He has to return there whenever his body temperature rises too high."

"Do you want some coffee?" asks Ace.

"Oh, thanks," answers Mel.

"Yes please," replies Nita.

Ace gets a large thermos from her rucksack.

"Do you know what I did for a job when they threw me out of school?" asks Mel.

"No," both girls answer.

"I worked as a waitress in a fast food cafe. Day in, day out, same boring routine. Some boring life. It was all wrong. It didn't feel like me that was doing it at all. I felt like I'd fallen from another planet and landed in this strange girl's body, but it wasn't me at all. I was meant to be somewhere else. Each night I'd walk home and I'd look up at the stars through the gaps in the clouds, and I tried to imagine where I really came from. I dreamed that one day everything would come right. I'd be carried off back home, back to my real mum and dad. Then it actually happened and I ended up here. Ended up working as a waitress again, only this time I couldn't dream about going nowhere else. There wasn't nowhere else to go."