The Abominable Mistake (Closed to Romana II and 4)

November 22, 1989
Zachariah Tebedo was sitting alone at his desk in the United States Arctic Research Facility (lovingly dubbed US-Arf by the men down there) staring at a blank screen and sipping his tepid and searing hot coffee. The taste of a strong Columbian roast swirled with a caramel flavored creamer and a small dab of cheap and young aged brandy ran over his tongue and into his belly, warming every inch it touched, giving him a sense of hope that one day he'll be relaxing on the beach and far away from the frigid temperatures and spine-chilling snow drifts. He was alone in the metallic cabin, far away from the prying eyes of his three other crewmates and their prying questions and twirling eyes.

The wind was howling, the snow was scratching and breathing up against the metallic walls and the cheap plastic window above his desk. As he took a final gulp of his spiked coffee, there was a light knock at the door. He looked up from his coffee to the door, seeing a light silhouette on the glass of the door from the industrial work lights . He felt a wave of confusion brush over him. All the crewmen have keys, why would they need to knock? Unless those damn kids lost their keys. He watched the door, the silhouette unmoving and ominous. The thing knocked again.

"Ya damn lousy kids, losing your keys every other week. This can't be happening again we only have limited supplies you know!" He opened the door, feeling the push and shove of the wind against him. But this one seemed stronger than the normal weather bound strength. He felt the door push against him with tremendous force, throwing him against the back wall, which was lined with shelves of books and samples. The wood splintered and the glass shattered, cutting his head open. He felt the blood trickle down his forehead and into his eyes, feeling them burn with the irony fluid. Through the glaze of the blood in his eyes, he saw the outline of a large, looming creature and a faint beeping sound....

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May 3, 2025
"This was a brilliant idea, Romana, coming to the International Space Museum! And I must say, you must agree that my ideas generally are brilliant you know." The Doctor was hovering over a decommissioned space module, observing the innards with great zeal and with childlike enthusiasm.

The adventure to get to the Space Museum was a trip in itself. The Doctor had mentioned to Romana that he was bored with the future and wanted to travel in the past. Romana, always keen on what the Doctor liked and disliked, mentioned the International Space Museum in 2025, which was located in San Francisco. The Doctor dismissed her immediately.

But within minutes, the Doctor was typing in coordinates and directions to the International Space Museum, claiming he's not been there in quite a long time, and made passion mention to some sort of family that included a guy names Jean Luc and his family that made wine.

The Doctor's enthusiasm for the space modules was overwhelming, examining every detail, spot of dirt and dust, flip-switch, push-knob, and light imaginable. At long last, the Doctor emerged from the module, his long scarf trailing behind him. "Before we get lunch, I would like to visit the next room. I heard they've got the antique Arctic research equipment from the USARF incident!"

The Doctor hopped down from the module and ran into the next room, leaving Romana behind.

When they had first arrived at the International Space Museum (the Doctor pretending it wasn't, or having forgotten that it was, Romana's idea), Romana practically had to run to keep up with him flitting from exhibit to exhibit like a toddler in a toy store, and babbling just as much. She had to keep track of him, because if she didn't, nobody would. Not even himself.

So when he finally did find something that captured his attention for more that a few seconds, Romana took the chance to sit down with the free Aerospace timeline. While the Doctor amused himself with buttons and knobs, Romana amused herself with the theories of space travel that the human race had once held to be true.

That is, until the Doctor spoke. Romana didn't really hear him.

"Hmm? Oh yes, of course." She turned another page in the timeline as the Doctor emerged from the module and left her behind.

It took her a moment for his words to set in.

"Wait, what? What USARF incident? Doctor!" Placing the timeline back on the table, Romana rose from her chair to chase after her scarfed friend. She fell easily into step beside him. "Doctor, what USARF incident?"

When Romana arrived in the room, the Doctor had already jumped the velvet ropes and was up close and personal with a massive enclosed ATV. The Doctor was already jumping up and down the vehicle and getting fairly close to some of the aspects of the vehicle. "Most interesting.....how terribly interesting...." could be heard as he mumbled to himself occasionally.

When he finally noticed Romana, he was very nearly on top of the vehicle. "The USARF incident, Romana. Don't tell me you've never heard of it? Never mind that, it wasn't made public at any rate." He opened the cabin door and climbed inside the vehicle, nearly disappearing from sight. A few ah-ha! could be heard from the cabin as metallic clanks and bangs, along with the typical buzz and whir of his sonic screwdriver.

After a frustrating ten minutes, the Doctor emerged again, holding a small black box in his hand. He jumped down to meet Romana, who was impatiently waiting for him. "The USARF incident" he started, trying to organize his thoughts, "was a small arctic exploration group in the Antarctic regions searching for a small pocket of methane gas. The exploration was supposed to be an environmental study to help reduce particular greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere by collecting the methane and using it for fuel in upcoming endeavors, along with using it to power space exploration vehicles, albeit them being terribly primitive for Earth at the time. "

As he spoke he bounced the little black box in his hand, twirling it in the air, taking keen notice that Romana was watching the box and him with a hawk-like focus. "This," in reference to the box, "is the black box for this particular module. Apparently sometime during the exploration of the methane pockets, the exploration team went missing and the home base stopped communications. American officials figured the home base was snowed in. That was until they found it. The base was ransacked and team leader was found dead under a pile of paper and computer parts. Now that's awfully interesting, isn't it?"

"If it wasn't made public, then how do you know about it?" Romana teased before he disappeared.

Crossing her arms over her chest, she leaned against the ATV and kept watch while the Doctor did what sounded like ransack the vehicle. No guards came, and when the Doctor emerged again, she gave him a look she knew he could translate.

Her brow began to frown with interest as he explained what the USARF incident was. By the end she was smiling mischeviously.

"Incredibly interesting. Interesting enough to, say, pay a visit?" She began walking backward, her grin increasing.

The Doctor glanced at Romana briefly, then back at her with that look of look who you're talking to! He gave her a smile. "I'm an old friend of the curator of this place. And a friend of the family. And in about a hundred or so years, I help them start up an academy for space negotiations, and eventually a starfleet. But until then, I just help identify and name certain bits of history. And this big hunk of machinery is one thing that neither one of us know. It's a new edition to the gallery, despite it having been under snow for nearly 40 years."

He began to walk in the direction of the TARDIS when Romana asked the question. The question he had been waiting for all day. He turned back to Romana. "Well of course we are! Why do you think I brought you here in the first place?" He gave her a wink and a little nudge, and off he went in the direction of the TARDIS.

Romana wrinkled her nose at the Doctor in mock annoyance, but immediately ran after him with glee. They raced back to the TARDIS; the Doctor winning by several yards.

She closed the doors and greeted K-9 with a chipper "We're back!"

K-9's ears swiveled and his head picked up. "AFFIRMATIVE, MISTRESS."

Romana made sure to give him an affectionate pat as she made her way around the center console, subtly helping the Doctor dematerialize the TARDIS.

((I've spoken to Robin about this, and she says that as long as K-9 is a supporting character, we can use him. But if someone applies for him we either have to drop him or invite him to the thread.))

The Doctor flipped some switches and twisted some knobs, and within a few moments the TARDIS was flying through the vortex of time and space towards 1989. While the TARDIS was flying and twirling, the Doctor started towards the wardrobe. "You know Romana, it IS a bit chilly where we're going, you might need to put on something a bit warmer than....what you're wearing. At least a heavier coat, perhaps?"

The Doctor emerged with an atrocious looking fur coat that fit him poorly. His shirtcuffs were fully exposed on the sleeves and the coat seemed too tight to fit closed properly. But he seemed satisfied with the coat to really care. He went over to the console vector screen and began to check their progress. The TARDIS had ceased traveling and had materialized near a small snowbank, and in the distance he could see the faint rectangular outline, presumably the research facility.

Romana looked down at what she was wearing: brown leather trousers and boots, and a long sleeved blouse tied at the neck with a thin black ribbon. Not exactly snow gear. She waited until the Doctor returned to grab her coat.

She liked the wardrobe, more or less. It was a large, ridiculously cluttered room that always housed something interesting. or so she thought, anyway. She'd set herself up a small section specifically for herself a long while back; the easier to find something more to her taste. And find it she did, in the form of a cream colored fur coat. It dropped to her mid-thigh, came with a hood, and was wonderfully warm. Happy with her choice, she rejoined the Doctor just as he was stepping out the door.

The fierce cold bit at her hands and nose. The wind, though not howling, was enough to make her grab her hood to prevent it from flying off. She could taste the snow on the wind. It was a world of white and gray. The immediate area was relatively flat, but off in the distance, she could see small dunes and a long rectangular shape. A man-made object that didn't seem to belong in a place so obviously inhospitable to human habitation.

She turned to the Doctor. "What exactly are we going to tell them when we get there? I don't suppose this is a very popular tourists spot."

The TARDIS doors opened, letting in a massive chill and blowing snow. The Doctor shuddered instantly, feeling the chill of the bitter cold through his scarf and coat. He turned to Romana as he was about to walk out, deep in thought, then shrugged. He then turned to the tremendous snowbanks that laid ahead of him and the research facility, and headed out.

The wind was blowing hard, around 32 knots the Doctor estimated. He grabbed the ends of his scarf and quickly wrapped them around his head in a makeshift hat and muzzle. The Doctor quickly rummaged through his pockets, finding gloves and goggles that he'd left there when he'd last gone to Tibet. He put them on, and felt instantly relieved. Well, as much as one could be relieved in the bitter chill of the arctic.

The snow was soft and sharp, crunching beneath of the leather soles of the Doctor's boots. His legs went through the surface like a warm cannonball through a pad of butter, coming up to his waist in some places, his knees in others. The wind blew the snow through wisps and twirls all around the pair, covering over any tracks the Doctor and Romana had left behind. The Doctor paused a moment to take a look back at Romana to make sure she wasn't buried in the mounds of icy crystals that surrounded them.

As he did, a strange sound blew on the edge of the wind. A small, barely audible beeping began to sound....

The wind that was mild near the TARDIS grew stronger the farther they got from it. And while the Doctor had his scarf, gloves, and goggles, Romana had none.

She struggled through the snow, falling and stumbling in the soft powder. At some point, she managed to grab one end of the Doctor's scarf. With that lifeline, she followed blindly.

She met his eyes as he turned to check on her, her face now pink and numb with the cold. "How much farther, Doctor?" She called over the noise of the wind.

She could not hear the faint beeping.

The Doctor and Romana trudged through the snow banks, casually stopping to pull their legs or appendages out of a wet pile of the icy crystals. The Doctor looked back towards the TARDIS, but it had disappeared beneath the drifts. There wasn't any turning back now. He turned back to calculate the distance between them and the research center.

The outline of the center was more bolder and darker than before, so he knew they were making at least a little bit of progress. On the wind, the faint beeping grew a bit louder, causing the Doctor to stop once more. He turned back to Romana, wiping the snow and bracing himself against the wind as he tried to yell over the massively whipping winds.

"ROMANA! WE'RE ABOUT 20 METERS OUT! NEARLY THERE! BE CAREFUL AND ON YOUR FEET THOUGH! GRAB ONTO MY SCARF AND GIVE IT A GOOD TUG IF YOU SEE OR HEAR ANYTHING SUSPICIOUS! I HAVE A FEELING WE'RE NOT ALONE...."

He handed her the dangling end of his scarf and started off once more to the center.

20 meters doesn't seem like a lot until you're trying to make that distance through a snowstorm. Romana renewed her grip on the Doctor's scarf and stumbled after him. Though he was cutting a path, it still did her little good. Whatever tracks he was making were almost instantly filled in with fresh powder blown in by the wind.

So she stumbled behind him, keeping her eyes open and her ears alert. If the Doctor thought they weren't alone, he was probably right.

They had reached the last snow dune before the center, about 8 meters away. She waited at the bottom as he tried to climb up. As she looked around at their snowy landscape, she saw it. Far off to their right, on a dune itself, an outline could be seen. She squinted at it, but no clear form could be made from it. There was the faintest beeping in the air.

Romana kept her eyes on it, not even daring to blink, should it disappear. She gave the Doctor's scarf a single, hard tug. She dare not raise her finger to point. "You were right," she shouted as quietly as she could over the wind.

The Doctor felt a gentle tug on the end of his scarf, a signal from Romana. He turned around to make sure she was still on that end, catching the faintest hint of her agreeing with him. He smiled underneath the several layers of scarf wrapped up around his face, and turned back to the cabin.

The snow mounted several meters high when they reached the metallic cabin. The beeping, which the Doctor had heard ever so quietly, now was lost in the wind. The door to the cabin was unlatched, and clanging against the cabin itself, creating a loud, tambourine sound that rivaled the wind. The Doctor turned back to Romana, helping her up onto the stairs of the cabin, and pulled both of themselves inside.

Once inside, the Doctor pulled the door shut, locked both himself and Romana inside against the chilly wind. Snow was mounting against a retro wood desk, creating moistened papers and ruining computer appliances that resided on the desk. Unwrapping himself like Tutankhamun, wiping away the snow and moisture from his eyes, he began to observe his surroundings more.

A small range existed on the other side of the cabin, which was still aflame under a whistling tea kettle. A small cabinet was shattered next to it, revealing partially opened cans of soup and beans. Shattered remnants of ceramic mugs and coffee were splattered across the wall. A gathering of small cots were situated near the range, two of them made up, one of them rumbled and undone. The Doctor looked to Romana, and took of his heavy fur coat.

Romana was finding it hard to mover her limbs by the time they reached the cabin. Despite the coat, she was chilled to the bone. She gratefully accepted the Doctor's help up the stairs, and was even more thankful when he closed the door. There had to be some kind of heating system inside.

She breathed on her hands and looked about. The cabin was messy, but not the kind of messy that accompanied people who didn't clean. Objects were thrown about and ripped apart, smashed against the wall, toppled over, violently dismantled...

She went to the screaming kettle, turned off the gas and felt its weight. "It's down to about a quarter," she announced. "What do you think: half hour, forty five minutes?"

Her eyes trailed to the counter where, on its side but unbroken, lay a mug with a teabag inside it. She set it upright again, and it took a lot of willpower to not make a cup of warm tea - even if it was the cheap kind. Instead, she set the kettle down and shoved her hands in her pockets and thought out loud.

"Must have been looking for something. I wonder what it was. ...I wonder if they found it." She took another look at the ruins of the room. "They must have been very angry, whoever they were."

The Doctor shuddered from the chill that still permeated his body, and possibly from the unusual situation that the Doctor and Romana had stumbled upon. This cabin seemed vaguely reminiscent of something, but he couldn't place it.

Feeling a ping of inspiration hit his rather overloaded Time Lord brain, he jumped up to meet Romana. He smiled, ear to ear, and stared her straight in the eyes. He let out a small chuckle. "Oh Romana, you brilliant woman, you!"

He grabbed her head and gave her a small peck on the forehead. He strolled over to the computer system and booted up the machine. A hefty fan was whirring noisily in the modem, drowning out the minuscule scraping sounds created by thousands of tiny snowflakes battering up against the metallic sides.

The Doctor typed furiously into the keyboard, bringing up the computer's last performed commands. The results brought up research that was being performed in the current region of Antarctica, particularly the region's sustainable methane pockets that existed deep in the crusts of the continent.

"Research and drilling, Romana. I knew I felt some unusual vibrations in this area. And perhaps....well, it may just be a premonition. Maybe it's just my previous knowledge of these sorts of things. Perhaps they had been drilling...and hit something they weren't supposed to find..."

Romana beamed, as she always did when the Doctor complimented her. Of course, she knew she was brilliant, but it really meant something when it came from the Doctor. She stored the compliment for a time when she'd need it and followed the Doctor over to the computer.

Leaning over his shoulder she could see the research the humans were doing and listened to the Doctor, nodding. Of course they found something they weren't supposed to find. What else could have happened to these humans, drilling into the unknown? Just because they knew where the gas was, doesn't mean they knew what was where the gas wasn't.

Romana calculated all the normal things they'd find in the Earth's crust, and immediately threw them out of her mind.

"Well it probably wasn't a gas other than methane," she thought out loud, a habit she'd picked up from the Doctor. "Most of them are flammable, and they obviously didn't drill into something flammable."

She looked around the room again, taking in the mess of thrown and broken objects. "They found something living," she whispered back to the Doctor. "But what could it be?"

Romana tallied up all the planets she knew of that contained creatures that could live in solid ice for thousands of years. The closest one was Mars.

"It can't be Martians," she told herself. "They're stubborn, but they're not stupid. A Martian wouldn't destroy their best chance at getting off Earth. So that only leaves... a couple thousand other options, off the top of my head." She concluded with a sigh.

"What do you think, Doctor?"

Letting the computer slowly power down, the Doctor sat in the computer chair, elbows on the desk cradling his head, and watched as the screen went green, then black. The computer shut off, and began to lightly smoke. The computer was no longer able to give them any more information in their seeking of what happened here.

"Hmm? The Martians? Absolutely not. Mars would have nothing to harvest from this time in Earth's history. Besides, they're in hibernation at this point in time and Mars is plentiful in frozen methane gasses. No, my dear Romana, I think that this is much more serious than Martians."

The Doctor got up and paced for a bit inside the cabin. "Drilling for methane gasses in the Antarctic, one person goes missing, three more unaccounted for. The cabin research is destroyed, but nothing is missing apparently. Someone wants to sabotage this operation, but doesn't want the research. The computer isn't missing information, but the person who imputed the information is. This certainly doesn't look like an inside operation, seeing how three of the four beds haven't been touched in more than a day. It couldn't have been the other team members, otherwise more personal effects would be missing."

The Doctor went silent, hand resting on his chin, walking back and fourth and mumbling quietly to himself, testing ever single possibility he could imagine in his head. Meanwhile, outside in the blowing snow and the terrible wind, a small, barely audible beeping had began to penetrate the air...