The Dying Days - Chapter One
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What We Saw From the Ruined House
Tuesday, May 6th 1997
The Doctor was late, as usual.
Professor Bernice Summerfield wouldn't mind, but he was a Time Lord. Not only did this mean that he
could travel freely in the fourth and fifth dimensions of time and space, so he ought to be able to keep his
appointments, it meant that he could always have popped back afterwards and left her a note saying he
was going to had been late. He really had no excuse.
She resolved not to get too upset, and poured herself another cup of coffee. There were worse places to
be than the Kent countryside in the dying days of the twentieth century. Kadiatu and aM!xitsa had
dropped her off at the Doctor's house on Allen Road a week ago, on the morning of April the thirtieth
1997, the day before she and the Doctor had arranged to meet. Kadiatu had told Benny that they couldn't
stay long without violating the non-aggression treaty between the People and the Time Lords. Benny and
Kadiatu had used what time they had to drive down to Adisham to stock up on provisions. AM!xitsa
stayed behind to keep an eye out for the Doctor, just in case he turned up early. The locals were used to
them, now: they didn't turn heads at Mrs Darling's little corner shop, even when they tried to pay for a
trolleyful of food with a single five pound coin.
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Kadiatu had never been the easiest of people to strike up a conversation with, but this time she had been
more taciturn than normal. She and aM!xitsa stowed away the provisions in virtual silence and soon after
that their time machine vanished from the gravel driveway in a burst of colour and light that Benny's
human vocabulary couldn't even begin to describe. Once she'd probably have envied them as they flew
off into the unknown for another new adventure, but now she was quite content to spend a day on her
own sitting in the overgrown garden of the Doctor's house, watching the birds chase each other around
the treetops.
On that first morning she'd mopped down the wrought-iron garden furniture and brought out a couple of
faded cushions from the living room sofa. She'd arranged them along the south side of the house, the one
with the best view of the grounds, she'd put up a garden umbrella and then settled down to a day of
serious relaxation. First, she had caught up with her diary. This was more important than ever, now that
she'd finally persuaded a publishing company that there was a market for her memoirs. They'd paid her
quite a big advance for the rights, so it only seemed fair that she should get around to sending them
something.
She only wrote eight hundred words, none of them particularly enthralling ones, but managed to avoid
thinking about Jason all day. Mid-afternoon she did catch herself congratulating herself that she hadn't
been thinking about him, but concluded after some soul-searching that that didn't count.
When the Doctor hadn't turned up as arranged the next morning, Benny decided to spend a couple of
weeks here in Allen Road before trying to get a lift anywhere else. She had quickly settled into a routine.
At half-seven she'd shuffle across to the other side of the double bed in the main guest bedroom, and then
shake herself awake when she realised that her husband wasn't there. Every night for thirty-three years -
with only about a dozen exceptions before she was married - she'd slept in a single bed, by herself, so
why did she feel so lonely every morning now when she woke up and there was no-one lying alongside
her? She toyed with the third finger of her left hand. For thirty-three years she'd not worn a ring on that
or any other finger, why did she now miss the weight of one that she'd only worn for a few months?
Musing on this kept her occupied for a couple of minutes, before she decided that angst wasn't her thing,
and she really ought to get on with her life.
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So, she'd get up, realise how chilly it was, pull her robe on and go down to the kitchen. The house was
always a little too cold, regardless of the season of year or the time of day. So, when she'd prepared
breakfast, she'd lay the pot and plates on the tray with The Haywain on it and take it outside into the
sunshine. The next half-hour or so would be spent leisurely munching triangles of wholemeal toast and
washing them down with the finest Sumatran coffee.
On the second day, she'd pulled an old portable television from one of the guest bedrooms and set it
down on the garden table. Locating an extension lead long enough to reach the socket in the kitchen had
proved a little more tricky, but there had been one on a workbench in the garage. Most of the time she
kept the sound down, content to glance across every so often at the flickering, two-dimensional,
monochrome images of the world outside her walled garden. First thing in the morning, though, she'd
twist the volume control up and listen to the headlines.
Today, an Irishman with a square head was sitting on a sofa with a grinning young woman. They were
discussing the Prime Minister's visit to Washington, and there was much talk of 'forging links' and
'common ground'. Benny tried a little quiz on herself, but couldn't remember the name of either the Prime
Minister or the President. Both countries had had an election in the last nine months, so it was tricky. It
wasn't important.
She twisted the dial and managed to find another channel amidst the static.
' -fast News, coming live from the National Space Museum in London. I'm Justin Webb. Today, Tuesday
May the Sixth, Britain returns to Mars. It is over twenty years since the first missions to the Red Planet.
We'll be asking former Minister of Science Lord Greyhaven whether this is the beginning of a new life
on the final frontier or just an expensive waste of money. But first, here's Juliet with the headlines.' The
picture switched to another chirpy blonde. 'Good Morning. The headlines today: at a speech from the
White House lawn, the Prime Minister has - '
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Benny turned the television off. A little aurora danced on the screen for a couple of seconds as the tube
cooled down. It was eight o'clock, time to check the post. She stood, and made her way down to the
lawn. In her bare feet, walking down the gravel driveway was out of the question. Cutting across the
garden was also a shorter route. She stepped across the lawn, the long grass still wet with dew. She made
her way past the fountain, a piece of Victoriana that, like the tall greenhouse at the side of the house, had
fallen into disrepair at some point over the last century. Rainwater had collected, and yesterday she'd
seen tadpoles swimming about in there. There was no sign of them today.
Benny carried on walking, past the tulips, through the shrubbery and towards the gate. Every so often
she'd look back at the house, hoping to see the TARDIS arrive.
The statue of the girl was still by the gates, hidden among the leylandia. It was life-size and dull grey, the
colour of concrete. The subject was fifteen, at most, with hair that fell down her back. She wore a
miniskirt and cropped jacket, one of her high heels was missing. Her face was set forever in an
expression of terror, her arms were held out in front of her as if she was trying to keep something away.
Benny didn't know which thought was more disturbing: that the Doctor had chosen to put the figure in
his garden for aesthetic reasons or that it hadn't always been a statue. She certainly had no intention of
asking him about it.
Benny reached the iron gates and checked the postbox. The first thing she found was The Mirror, which
she still hadn't got around to cancelling. Eschewing both the state visit to Washington and the Mars
landing, the front page had decided instead to reveal that a voluptuous young woman (pictured in a white
basque and stockings) was having sex with someone famous that Benny had never heard of. This, the
headline declared, was a 'world exclusive'. A quick flick through the paper revealed that many other
people were doing much the same. A couple of years ago, Benny would have tutted at the demeaning and
trivial nature of the stories, now she just felt the faint ache of jealousy, the belief that all the young
people were off somewhere else having more fun than her.
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Behind the paper there was a single letter. Benny frowned when she saw it. The envelope was dull grey,
it was the type used for official communications in her native twenty-sixth century. Before she picked it
up, she checked around but there was no sign of who had delivered it. There wasn't a stamp, there wasn't
a postmark, there wasn't a corporate or military logo. The only thing printed on it was her name:
PROFESSOR BERNICE SURPRISE KANE-SUMMERFIELD. She looked at it for a moment. 39
characters, not including the hyphen. Opening the envelope and was rather shocked to find that it offered
her the chair of archaeology at St Oscar's University on the planet Dellah. There was a reasonable wage,
a rather generous research grant and free board and accommodation. The Vice-Chancellor looked
forward to meeting someone of her repute. Benny read the letter again to make sure she wasn't missing
some vital point, or perhaps the punchline. She had been given to understand that to get that sort of job,
one had to apply for it. The date on the letter was March 2593 - almost a quarter of a century after her
own time.
Somewhat preoccupied, she tucked the letter and the newspaper underneath her arm and set off. The
journey back up to the house always seemed to take longer than the trip down. As it sat on the green
grass below the clear blue sky, the house looked like a natural feature rather than anything man-made.
Simultaneously it looked well-tended and half in ruin. It seemed quite small from the gates, but inside it
was a labyrinth of empty bedrooms and dusty storerooms. She'd been dropping in for years, but Benny
still couldn't think of the place as a home. The house had stood for centuries, but no-one had ever lived
there for more than a couple of weeks at a time. It had compensated: filled its rooms and landings with
the creak of floorboards and the rattling of pipes. Lying awake in the middle of the night, something she
did every so often, Benny always got the impression that there were other people staying in the house.
Not ghosts, or burglars: nice people.
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By the time she returned to the house, Benny concluded that the Doctor wasn't turn up for at least another
day, and had reconciled herself to another day of dozing in the sun. Perhaps later she'd try her hand at
sketching: the orchard about a hundred yards to the west looked like a good prospect: recent storms had
brought down a couple of the trees, and made the woodland look terribly dramatic. There was a tin of
pencils and a drawing pad in the living room. It would give her some more time to think about the letter
from Dellah.
When she stepped back onto the flagstones, Benny realised how dirty her feet had become. She put The
Mirror down on the garden table, propping it underneath the breakfast tray to stop it blowing away. Then
she stepped inside to take a quick shower. The house was vast, but there was only one bathroom, which
had been the cause of friction between the Doctor's travelling companions on more than one occasion.
She remembered the last time: Roz had stood at the bathroom door, demanding to know how Chris could
possibly take an hour and a half in there every day. Benny and ... Jason had ... they had both been woken
by the sound of raised voices. They lay curled around each other in the upstairs bedroom, able to listen
only to Roz's side of the argument, trying to stop each other giggling, but both their bodies convulsed
with laughter at every terse insult that drifted up the short flight of stairs. They'd been pressed so close
together that in the end they hadn't been able to distinguish which of them was laughing at which remark.
They'd had to part, exhausted, and for the rest of the day, every time they made eye contact they couldn't
help sniggering. Benny found herself smiling, even now, despite all that had happened since.
Another source of tension was the minuscule amount of hot water the house would allow every day. It
was possible to get more, Benny had discovered, although you had to slap the brass tank that sat on the
landing a couple of times to get it. When you heard the glup deep below in the bowels of the house, you'd
know that you'd done it. It was the sort of valuable-trivial information that you kept from your
housemates, and she'd not told anyone else about the trick. The brass piping, like the electrical wiring,
was a little haphazard. Knowing the house's owner, Benny could well imagine how the plumbing had
been installed a bit at a time over the centuries, on the basis of need, from junk the Doctor had found in
the garage.
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She reached the landing with the bathroom on it. A quick check of the tank revealed that it was just about
full. Benny stepped into the bathroom, leaving the door open, because she could. Experience had taught
her to run the shower for a minute or so before stepping into it, so she stood on the cold black tiles
waiting for the rattling pipes to catch up with her. Hot water soon began gushing out. She slipped out of
her robe and into the shower stall. After getting used to the temperature, she leant against the tiled wall,
trying to prop herself upright while she soaped her foot. By the time she had the other one clean, Benny
had decided to wash her hair.
She stood for a moment, facing out onto the landing, letting the water splash across her shoulder blades
and run down her back. Without needing to look, she bent down and reached back until her hand located
the tiny phial of herbal shampoo slotted into the shower rack. Benny unscrewed the top and massaged it
into her scalp, working it up into a lather. Foamy bubbles ran down her neck and splattered to the floor of
the shower unit.
The peace of the morning outside was disturbed by an unearthly wheezing, groaning sound that drifted
through the half-open bathroom window.
'Isn't it always the way?' Benny observed, ducking her head under the water to get the worst of the suds
off. You couldn't even rely on the Doctor to be unreliable.
She twisted the shower off, and scooped up her robe from the bathroom floor, pulling it around herself as
she bounded down the stairs. Through the kitchen window it was possible to glimpse a solid blue shape
outside on the patio, right by the garden table. Benny hurried out through the kitchen door, leaving a trail
of wet footprints.
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The TARDIS stood there as if it had never gone away. The light on the top was still flashing, and the
grounds of the house were echoing with the sound of its arrival. Benny stood, looking up at it for a
couple of seconds, soapy water dripping from her fringe.
The door opened.
'Sorry I'm late. You wouldn't believe the state of the traffic around the Horsehead Nebula.' The man who
was framed in the doorway looked about her age, in his mid-thirties, perhaps a little bit older. He was
about her height. He wore a velvet frock coat that was probably a very dark green, but which might have
been a plain-chocolate brown. Either way, it came down to his knees and underneath it was a wing collar
shirt, complete with grey cravat and a shiny patterned waistcoat. He was wearing baggy trousers, tan
ones that had never even considered the idea of having a seam. His long face was angular, with a jutting
chin and aristocratic nose, but it was softened by a mass of dark brown hair that swept back down all the
way from his high forehead to his broad shoulders. He had a full mouth and sad blue eyes.
'Doctor?' she asked, unsure why.
'Bernice!' he jumped forward, a broad open-mouthed grin on his face, and tried to hug her.
Benny took a step back, almost tripping over one of the garden chairs. The stranger pulled himself back.
'What's the matter?' he asked. His voice had a hint of the Doctor's Celtic lilt, but only a trace.
'What do you mean what's the matter? What do you think?'
The man paused, stroking his top lip as he considered the question. 'I've changed my appearance since we
last met,' he concluded, with a faraway look on his face.
'Well spotted. You've also started to go in for hugging. You know I don't like that.'
He fixed her with those eyes of his. 'We were alone in your tent, on a planet called Heaven. The Hoothi
had been destroyed. You were packing, ready to leave. There was a Japanese fan in your hand. I asked if
we could be friends and put my hand on your shoulder. You asked me not to touch you. You said that I
was very tactile, but you weren't and that you'd prefer it if I didn't.'
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The Doctor put a hand on Benny's shoulder.
'I am the Doctor, Bernice. Your friend.'
She hugged him.
'You're wet,' he whispered softly.
'I was in the shower. Where's Chris?'
'Gallifrey. He stayed behind, but he said he might pop around to see you. A lot has happened to me since
then.'
Benny yawned. 'It's been pretty damn action-packed here, too, I can tell you. I'll get dressed and tell you
about it.'
The helicopter maintained a steady 230 kph at 1750 metres altitude. From the ground it was a tiny black
dot, making its way silently across the clear blue sky.
Inside, the guards didn't know who their prisoner was, not for certain, but they knew that he was a
convicted multiple murderer and that he was to be considered dangerous at all times. They had been
briefed about that before they had left, and given orders to shoot him if he even looked like he was trying
to escape. There were four guards in all. The prisoner was handcuffed to one guard, with another, armed,
man opposite. The prisoner wore dark blue coveralls, a uniform without pockets, belts or buttons,
fastened by a single strip of Velcro down the front. They'd searched him twice, once in his cell and again
at the helipad.
The prisoner wasn't allowed to speak, but the noise of the rotor blades and the engines would have
drowned out anything he said anyway. Everyone in the helicopter was wearing bright orange earprotectors.
Not a word had been spoken since the start of the flight, over an hour ago.
The prisoner was in his early fifties, and was still in good shape. He had the square jaw and bearing of a
military office. His face was striking, with a chiselled profile and distinctive eyebrows that darted up
over his temple. It was one of those faces you were sure you'd seen before, in a colour supplement,
perhaps, or on television. He sat in his harness, looking around with a keenness entirely lacking in his
wardens.
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Only Caldwell, the man in charge of the transfer operation knew who the prisoner was. In his day
Alexander Christian had been notorious, but that day had long gone. The tabloids had plenty of other
killers to vilify, and they'd forgotten about him in favour of the Yorkshire Ripper, Myra Hindley and
Rosemary West. Every so often stories would leak out about the activities of those three, sparking off
another little flurry of public interest. It had been twenty years since Alexander Christian had made the
headlines, back when the men that were guarding them today were still at nursery school. Caldwell
wondered if they'd even heard of him.
Caldwell sat at the front of the compartment, watching Christian carefully. He remembered what he had
done, he remembered seeing the arrest on the news. Caldwell was nineteen at the time, in his first year at
university. He'd sat in the common room with everyone else in his hall, and seen every second of the
coverage via the zoom lenses of The Passing Parade. This was the closest that the prisoner had got to
fresh air since his conviction shortly afterwards. Knowing what he did, Caldwell was not comfortable
sharing a confined space with Christian.
The helicopter lurched, sending Caldwell sprawling, despite his harness.
The pilot was calling something into his radio: 'May Day! We're losing altitude. There's a problem with
one of the engines. May Day!'
'Let me help, Caldwell, old chap.' The prisoner was leaning over Caldwell, shouting over the noise of the
engines, 'I'm a pilot.'
'One of the best,' Caldwell replied. It was a split-second decision: 'Let him out of those cuffs, he's our
only hope.'
The guards looked at each other. The cabin lurched again, pitching them all over.
'Do it!' Caldwell shouted. He looked straight at the prisoner. 'If you try anything, Christian, you're dead,
do you understand?'
The prisoner nodded. The guard handcuffed to him undid the lock, releasing his wrist. Christian
clambered across to the cockpit, the guards parting to let him through.
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He didn't bother clipping in his harness. 'What's the rate of fall, skipper?'
The pilot didn't have time to be wary of him. 'Ten metres a second. We're currently at one seven five
metres.'
'That's about five hundred feet, right?' he grinned. He checked the oil pressure and rate of fuel loss.
The engine missed a beat, then another.
'Can you do anything?' Caldwell shouted.
'I can keep her upright.'
'Anything else?'
'I can try to crash this crate without killing us all. Hold on, everyone!'
Benny was up in her room, unsure what to think.
She towelled herself down, and fished around in the wardrobe for her chinos and a black T-shirt. Then
she moved over to the window, carefully unlatching it. She knelt on the bed, leaning her head out. The
Doctor was sitting on her garden chair, totally immersed in some cartoon on the portable TV. The picture
was in colour, she realised. He had a cup of coffee in his hand, and would occasionally sip from it. He
didn't seem to have a care in the world. He hadn't asked after Jason, but Benny sensed that he already
knew that she hadn't seen her husband for months. That had been the same time she'd last seen the
Doctor and a lot had happened since then. Benny wondered if Chris had left before or after the Doctor
had regenerated.
On Heaven, in her tent, the Doctor had pleaded with her. Ace had just left him. His voice was trembling
and urgent at the same time. He couldn't travel the universe fighting monsters alone, he had told her: the
magic dragon couldn't be brave without the little boy. Without his companion, he had nothing to be brave
for. In that moment, Benny had seen the real Doctor. Behind all the tricks, behind all the plans and dark
expressions and all his righteous indignation there was a little man who thought the universe ought to be
a friendlier place. Dorothee had never seen that, or if she had she hadn't understood it. She'd have
laughed: 'Yeah, sure, Professor, everything would be great if we were all nice to each other. Very
profound'. It's easy to be cynical, but it's hard to be nice. The Doctor had been a man who once in a while
needed protecting from the universe he was protecting. The Doctor needed looking after, he wasn't
carefree. And he certainly didn't have sex appeal and boyish charm.
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And now that little man had gone forever. The new Doctor looked up at her and waved, grinning. Benny
smiled back, trying not to look like she was spying on him.
Suddenly he was on his feet, peering up at the sky to her left, shielding his face with his hand. She
couldn't crane around enough to see what had grabbed his attention.
'Come down!' he shouted up at her.
There was a clattering filling the sky, and a droning underneath it. It shook the pictures hanging on the
staircase wall, it rattled the crockery in the kitchen. It sounded like an aircraft in trouble. Benny bolted
out of the door. As she reached the Doctor, the windows were rumbling, the sky was full of noise and a
near gale force wind was blowing.
A shadow fell over the house and a vast black helicopter almost clipped the roof. Warm, gasoline-rich,
air blasted down, pitching the garden umbrella over and forcing her and the Doctor to cover their faces.
As their clothing whipped up, the aircraft passed over them, trailing thick black smoke. It was streaking
towards the orchard, but all the time it was losing height. The orchard was on raised ground, and Benny
realised that the helicopter was going to crash, and that nothing that she or the Doctor could do was going
to stop it.
The whine of the engines, the clatter of the rotors, the screams of the men, the snapping of branches all
merged into a solid wall of noise. They were flying through trees, each impact slowing them down but
breaking them apart. One of the guards tumbled past Caldwell, his limbs flailing like a crash dummy's.
Oxygen masks, medical kits and emergency supplies showered from the overhead compartments,
trapping Caldwell in his seat, catching him on the side of the head, and perhaps even breaking one of his
legs.
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The helicopter ground to a halt, the front end pitching upwards. The lights had failed, the cabin would be
in darkness if it wasn't for the sunlight streaming in from the cockpit. For a moment there was silence.
Then Caldwell heard the sound of movement above him.
His gun was in his hand by the time the prisoner appeared framed in the sunlight, but Caldwell found that
it was too heavy to lift. His forehead was bleeding, he realised, where a metal box from the overhead
locker had caught him.
Christian was kicking at something in the cockpit, something Caldwell couldn't see. The impact was
enough to shake the whole of the helicopter, or what was left of it. They were the only two people left
alive, Caldwell instinctively knew that. Christian wasn't even hurt.
He tried to say something, but was too weak.
Out of his vision, the cockpit door slammed open. Caldwell heard Christian scramble out of the cockpit
and down the fuselage of the helicopter. He heard a pair of heavy boots crunch down into the soft earth
outside. Caldwell tried to move, but he couldn't.
The Doctor tried to keep pace with Bernice as she raced towards the woods. A vapour trail was scored
across the sky, a thick black line pointing the way to the crash site. There was a column of smoke rising
up the edge of the orchard, but there hadn't been an explosion. Now they were through the wicket gate, it
was only a hundred yards across an open field to the crash site.
A rabbit hopped out of his way, no longer concerned by the devastation strewn around its habitat. The
helicopter had hit the hillside at an angle, doing an equal amount of damage to itself and the orchard. It
had punched a hole through the woodland, leaving everything else unscathed. As he and his companion
entered the new clearing, the Doctor could trace its bone-jarring path down. The rotor blades had sliced
the treetops before cleanly breaking off - as they were designed to - and embedding themselves in the
thicker trunks. The fuselage had continued hurtling forwards, even with the rotors gone, but had become
tangled in the branches. The main body of the helicopter had twisted its way through the large trees
before dropping to the earth. By the time it reached the bottom it hadn't been travelling very fast:
virtually all its momentum had been absorbed by the trees. The air was full of the smell of charcoal and
burning rubber. It had pitched diagonally, with the port side higher and the cockpit highest of all. The
port engine, the one that was now facing upright, wasn't fully ablaze, but smoke was billowing out of it.
The ground was littered with pieces of twisted metal.
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'Mind your feet, Bernice,' he warned.
The cabin was lying on its side, almost intact. The helicopter had been black, and was unmarked. Even in
its current state, the Doctor could see that it was a military transport, a Puma, or perhaps a 212. That
could mean that there were fifteen people in there. He clambered hand-over-hand past the hot engines to
the cockpit, which was towards the top of the wreckage. The door was already open.
Bernice was twenty-five feet below him, examining the contorted remains of the tail. She seemed a little
distant. When his companion had spoken to him, back at the house, she had heightened that accent of
hers: the pronunciation was ever so slightly better, she would tilt her head a little as she spoke and draw
herself up to her full height. It was the way she spoke to strangers.
'Come up and help me,' the Doctor insisted cheerfully.
'I'm isolating the electrics from the fuel supply,' she said, 'to prevent an explosion. I'll be with you in a
moment.'
'Good thinking.' The Doctor pressed himself to the cracked cockpit glass. There was a dead man in the
cockpit, his eyes staring ahead, his neck broken. The Doctor tried peering past him down into the cabin.
It was dark: the lights weren't working, of course, but neither was the emergency lighting. He suspected
that Bernice would find that the electrics were already off. In the murk of the main cabin, the Doctor
could discern what looked like someone's leg. It wasn't moving, and there wasn't a sound coming from
interior of the helicopter. The Doctor eased himself over the lip of the door, and dropped down into the
pilot's seat. The floor beneath him lurched a little under his weight.
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Now that he was inside, the Doctor could see the bodies strewn below him, across the cabin. Seven
people, most with broken necks. If he had doubted that this was a military 'copter then one look into the
cabin would have confirmed it. The decor was gloomy, with equipment hanging from rails or stored in
functional metal boxes. Most of the men were still secured in their webbing belts.
The Doctor climbed down into the wreckage, checking the pulses of the men. They wore black uniforms,
and looked like military police. The floor was littered with metal and plastic containers, making it
difficult to move. He also needed more light. On one of the bulkheads along the starboard side of the
aircraft, the side that was pitched over to face the ground, there was a sliding door. The Doctor tried to
release the handle, but it was jammed shut - the fuselage must have twisted in the crash. The sonic
screwdriver released the mechanism, and a couple of swift tugs got the door moving.
Bernice was standing underneath the door, and she helped slide the door all the way open.
'Don't come in,' the Doctor advised her, ducking back inside.
'Is anyone alive?' she called up, biting her lip.
'I don't think so. I'm double-checking.' It was certainly too late for the two nearest the door with their
heads lolling over their chests. Another had been impaled by a support strut that had broken loose. A
third bore all the signs of a heart attack.
The fourth was alive, barely. The Doctor cradled his head.
'I'm the Doctor,' he said, 'what's your name?'
'C-caldwell,' the man coughed. He was about forty, with a neat moustache. He was in civilian clothes, a
smart single-breasted suit, not the military police uniforms of his colleagues. 'Christian,' he continued.
'Caldwell Christian?' the Doctor asked softly, unsure if that was what the man meant.
'Christian escaped. Soil.'
'All right. You're going to be all right.' Speaking was clearly too much of an effort, but he was conscious,
and breathing. The Doctor tried to make him comfortable. all the time being careful not to disturb his
neck or spine. The mistake people made in these sort of accidents was to try and move the patient. The
Doctor cleared some of the wreckage from the man's lap.
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'You've found someone alive?' Bernice was clambering in, bringing up one of her long legs for leverage.
The helicopter rocked a little as it tried to cope with her moving around it. Once inside Bernice needed a
moment to compose herself in the face of so much death, but she was soon looking around the
compartment.
She located a plastic box with rounded corners, the size of a small suitcase.
'Could you pass me your sonic screwdriver when you have a moment?' she asked, clearly not wanting to
interfere with his first aid attempts. There was little more that he could do for the moment but stay with
the injured man. The Doctor tried to keep one eye on his patient and one on what Bernice was doing.
A couple of well-aimed squirts of ultrasonic energy released the clasps. Bernice opened up the case.
'Test tubes,' she announced, lifting up the case to give the Doctor a better look. 'Full of red stuff. I can't
see any hazard warning stickers, but if you don't mind, I'm not going to unstop them.'
'Soil,' Caldwell croaked.
The Doctor could hear a siren outside. 'An ambulance is coming,' he said.
Bernice was closing up the case and heading for the door. 'I'll go down and tell them,' she said, jumping
down.
The Doctor squeezed Caldwell's hand. 'You're going to be fine,' he assured him.
Caldwell gurgled his relief.
Car doors were slamming outside. He could hear Bernice saying something, then male voices replying.
After a moment, a uniformed policeman was poking his head through the doorway. 'Good morning, sir,'
he began in a gruff voice, 'The young lady says that you have a survivor in here.' He was a craggy-faced
man somewhere in middle age.
A policeman, presumably.
Page 18
The Doctor pulled himself over to the door, holding out a hand. 'His name is Caldwell.'
The policeman shook his hand, but was looking past him. Not at Caldwell, but at the plastic case that
contained the test tubes.
'If you could get clear, sir, we'll see to him now.'
'He's got a broken leg and he's in shock. He's almost certainly got concussion, too. Try not to move his
neck.'
'No need to worry, sir, I'm fully-trained.'
He helped the Doctor back down to the ground. Bernice was standing half a dozen yards away by the
police Range Rover, her arms folded over her chest. The Doctor crossed over to her. Most of the smoke
from the crash had dispersed now.
There were only two policemen. The gruff-voiced one beckoned over his colleague to give him a leg-up
into the helicopter.
'Stay here,' the other officer said, flicking his half-finished cigarette to the ground, 'we'll need to talk to
you.'
'Well, he could have said please,' the Doctor remarked, grinding out the cigarette butt with the heel of his
shoe. It wouldn't do to start a forest fire. He turned to Bernice and smiled. She smiled back, weakly. She
looked different to the way he remembered her. It wasn't the face: the high cheekbones and wide mouth
were just the same. Her eyes were still blue, her hair was still black, cut in a close crop.
The Doctor rubbed his chin thoughtfully. 'Have you shrunk? You don't seem as tall as I remember.'
'You grew,' she replied impatiently.
The Doctor considered the answer for a couple of seconds. 'That would certainly explain the
discrepancy,' he decided.
She handed him back the sonic screwdriver. 'Can we go now?'
He pointed over the helicopter. The first policeman had disappeared into the cabin, the other was talking
to his colleague, with his back to them. 'That gentlemen asked us to stay.'
'Before you came over he was threatening me with the Official Secrets Act. Do you fancy trying to
answer a set of awkward questions? Who are you?, Where did you come from?, that sort of thing.'
Page 19
The Doctor broke into a grin. 'When you put it like that, no. I think we've done all we can.'
They strolled away, trying not to look back, quickly reaching the edge of the woodland. Over a low
hedgerow was the field between the orchard and the house.
'There was something odd about them,' Bernice said as she clambered over the stile.
'They weren't real policemen,' the Doctor informed her, helping her down.
She hesitated for a moment before jumping down. 'What? I mean how do you know?'
'Didn't you notice?' he pressed her.
There was a pause. 'Let's just say for sake of argument that I didn't.'
The Doctor sighed. 'If they were real Constabulary of Kent policemen they would have shown us their
ID. They certainly wouldn't be smoking at the scene of an accident. And if they were responding to an
emergency call, they would have sent uniformed officers.'
'I took the registration number of the Range Rover. P876 - '
' - XFL,' the Doctor completed, beaming. 'Almost certainly a forged plate, but worth looking up.'
'What's going on here, Doctor?'
'I don't know.'
'I mean really.'
'I mean really,' he objected.
She straightened up. 'You really mean that, don't you?'
The Doctor smiled helplessly. 'Yes Bernice,' he laughed, 'I really mean that I really mean it. Obviously
it's got something to do with whatever's in that test tube. Caldwell said it was soil. The policeman I
talked to seemed a great deal more interested in the test tubes than in the injured man. Caldwell also said
Christian escaped.'
'It seems a lot of trouble to transport soil around,' Bernice muttered. 'If only I'd pocketed one of those test
tubes when I had a chance we might have some clue.'
Page 20
The Doctor smiled. 'Well, as a matter of fact...' He held up the test tube he had palmed earlier. 'We'll
analyse it in the TARDIS labs. After you've had your breakfast and finished your shower, of course.'
Elsewhere, a telephone rang.
It was picked up after two rings.
'Alexander Christian has escaped,' a gruff voice said, 'The helicopter crashed.'
There was a moment's pause.
'The specimens?'
'Recovered from the crash-site.'
'Understood.'
The handset was replaced.
The Dying Days - Chapter Two
Page 1
Foreign Soil
Alexander Christian stood perfectly still on the patio, catching his breath. He'd half-run, half-crawled the
hundred or so yards to the house, the nearest man-made structure.
It was a big place built in the last century, but now in some state of disrepair. The gardens were
overgrown. Christian had seen the owners, a couple in their thirties, hurrying over to the crash-site. He'd
ducked down in the long grass and they'd run straight past him. The police Range Rover had missed him
completely, driving up a dirt track fifty yards away to the south. His first five minutes of freedom had
proved a success.
Judging by the furniture, the man's clothes and the police box sitting by the kitchen door, the owners of
the house were Victorian enthusiasts. This eccentricity seemed to extend to not owning a telephone: he
couldn't see a cable leading into the house. They didn't mind electricity, though: a portable television sat
on the garden table. A young woman was dancing around in front of a couple of puppets. In the bottom
right-hand corner was a digital clock reading 8:23. Christian watched the spectacle, fascinated, for a
couple of seconds. How long had they been broadcasting television at this ungodly hour?
The owners had been in the middle of breakfast. There was a tray next to the telly loaded up with a plate,
a butter dish and a coffee pot. Christian lifted up the tray and plucked out the newspaper underneath. The
Mirror. He scanned the header for the date: May 7th 1997. Price: 30p. Page-three girls had made it to the
front, he noted. It was only a matter of time. More interesting was that the picture was in colour and that
the newsprint didn't come off in his hands. Man hadn't reached Venus in the last twenty years, but clearly
some things had improved.
Page 2
There were more sirens: fire engines, ambulances, perhaps more policemen. He needed to get away from
here. It would only be a few minutes before tracker dogs were brought in and there would be roadblocks
in a ten-mile area within half an hour.
Christian tried to prioritise: he needed civvies, antiseptic for the cut on his head and to make a single
phone call. He glanced up at the police box. Even if there was a telephone behind that hatch, calling the
nearest police station was not the wisest move. He'd need to find a pay phone, and he'd need some change
for it. The paper cost five times what it used to, so the phone probably did too.
Clothes, antiseptic and some 10p pieces. All three items should be in the house.
If the couple who lived here had children they'd be heading to school by now. There might be other
people living or staying here, but there was no evidence of them. Christian knew he'd need to be careful.
He had a couple of advantages, the main one being the element of surprise: the owners didn't know they
had an intruder. He should be able to keep hidden, even if they came back. If not, he'd be able to
overpower them.
Clothes and change: Bedroom. Antiseptic: Bathroom.
Christian kept hold of the newspaper and stepped through a dilapidated wooden door into the kitchen.
One hi-tech item sat incongruously amongst the pre-war range and an old tin bread-bin. It looked like a
TV set, but a nameplate said it was a microwave oven. Everything else looked like it had been sitting
there undisturbed since the fifties. The kitchen lino was faded, and curling up at one end of the room.
Christian began searching the drawers and cupboards. He briefly considered taking a bread-knife, for selfdefence,
but decided not to. He'd not taken a gun from the helicopter, either. He assembled the most basic
of survival kits: a box of sugar cubes, a candle and a handful of the matches from by the cooker, a couple
of black bin bags and one of the bars of chocolate from the refrigerator. After a quick search, he couldn't
find any salt or tea bags.
Page 3
He heard the wicket gate swing shut. They were back. Christian stuffed everything he'd collected into a
plastic carrier bag and moved deeper into the house. There was nothing in the hall except doors to other
rooms and a staircase. The bathroom and bedrooms would be upstairs, so he had no choice but to climb.
Every step squeaked as he made his way up. Outside Christian could hear their voices: she was a Home
Counties gal, her husband's accent was harder to place.
'I'll wait for you here,' the man said.
'Won't be long. Oh, Doctor, it looks like we've run out of bin bags.' She was inside the house as Christian
reached the top of the first flight of stairs. He was halfway up the second flight when she began climbing
up after him.
Christian reached the landing. A big water tank sat in one corner, but it wasn't big enough to hide behind.
There were three doors and another, shorter, flight of stairs up. One door was open: to the bathroom. The
other two were closed. Why was she coming upstairs? Chances are it was to have a wash or to use the
loo, so she'd be heading for the bathroom, but the woman could just as well be looking for a book, her
make-up or an item of jewellery, so she'd end up in her bedroom.
Christian chose one of the bedrooms, hoping she'd pick the other. He closed the door behind him. The
curtains were drawn back, the sheets were freshly laundered and neatly folded: this was not the room the
owners slept in. It was someone's room, though, a teenager's judging by the model aeroplanes hanging
over the window. There was a glass ashtray on the windowsill - it contained a handful of change and a
couple of small keys.
Page 4
The woman reached the landing. Christian ducked behind the bed, but as he had expected, she carried on
up the short flight of stairs. Christian started to breathe again, and checked the wardrobe. There were
about a dozen items in there, mostly T-shirts, but thankfully they were in adult sizes, in fact they would
fit a chap even bigger than he was. One of the T-shirts bore a slogan that made Christian laugh: 'My
Friend Went to San Francisco and All He Got Me Was This Lousy T-shirt'. Another one read 'It's
Pronounced Cwej'. Christian pulled out the smart grey suit and cotton shirt that hung at the other end of
the rail.
The ceiling above him creaked as the woman moved about upstairs.
Christian ran his finger very slowly down the seam of his coveralls. The Velcro parted silently, but it
seemed to take an age.
The woman was coming back downstairs as Christian stepped out of his prison uniform. He crouched
behind the bed, pulling the suit trousers down to him, but she walked past the door. He waited a couple of
seconds, but the woman didn't go back downstairs. Instead he heard pipes rattling, and a shower splutter
then burst into life.
Christian pulled the trousers on, and half-buttoned up his shirt. He took the provisions he had taken from
the kitchen and distributed them around the pockets of the jacket. He slipped the jacket on and tested that
the weight of the items was evenly spread-out and that nothing rattled when he moved.
He moved back over to the windowsill. Out across the rolling country, the straight line of the A2 was
visible, sunlight glinting off the windscreens of a string of cars. There was also a good view of the
woodland from here: the crash-site had been surrounded by emergency vehicles. Shouts and engine
noises drifted across the fields from time to time. Their efforts seemed concentrated towards the crash
itself, no-one was looking for him yet. It was only a matter of time. He plucked fifty pence in change
from the ashtray. The coins were odd, and at first he thought they were foreign. The five and ten pennies
were smaller, there was a twenty pence piece that was a peculiar shape.
Page 5
Christian tiptoed over to the door. The shower was still running, he could hear the woman moving around
underneath it. He pulled down the bedroom door handle, guiding it open with his other hand. Then he
edged forward.
The bathroom door was wide open.
Christian could have frozen, but he didn't, he carried on past the doorway and down onto the first of the
stairs. He tensed, prepared to grab the woman when she came to investigate. Only when he was ready for
that did he allow himself to piece together what had happened. He'd glimpsed her: the first woman he'd
seen for nineteen years, in the shower stall, water dripping from her back and down the side of her breast.
She'd been half-facing away from the door, bent over to rinse off her hair. She hadn't seen him.
Christian wanted to talk to her, he wanted to explain things, to tell her the truth. He wanted to see her
again. He hesitated.
The shower shut off. Christian lurched down the stairs, forgetting at first the noise the boards made when
they had weight on them. He reached the bottom without a plan. He had a minute to collect his thoughts:
the woman was going to have to dry herself and get dressed before she came down. He couldn't get out
through the kitchen door, the husband was out there. He opened up one of the other doors and discovered
that it led down a short corridor into a hallway. Christian followed it, finding the front door just as the
woman was coming downstairs.
'A coup? I find that very difficult to believe, Home Secretary.'
'That's what this information suggests to me, H. There are elements within society that are planning the
overthrow of the British government.
'Call me Veronica,' the Director General of MI5 replied sweetly.
'Ha ha,' the Home Secretary chuckled. The man was an idiot.
Page 6
Home Secretaries tended to be idiots, Veronica Halliwell reflected, or they wouldn't have accepted the
job. There were three top cabinet posts below the Prime Minister himself, and nominally they were of
equal rank. The Foreign Secretary flew around the world for free enjoying five star hotels and banquets at
least three times a week. The Foreign Office staff and the network of Embassy staff did most of the actual
work, and it was difficult to be unpopular at home or with your party unless you accidentally started a
war, which happened, but not that often. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had ultimate control of the
economy. He set the levels of interest rates and taxation, and he also had the final say on public
expenditure. That meant that he could tell his Cabinet colleagues exactly how much money they had to
spend that year. It also meant that he'd retire to a dozen directorships of top London banks and financial
institutions. He would be unpopular during a recession, popular during a boom. He'd generally win the
respect of the party, who'd see him as 'firm but fair' and an ex-Chancellor usually stood more chance of
becoming Prime Minister than anyone else.
The third senior man, the Home Secretary, was in charge of all matters domestic. And that was the
problem. The Home Secretary was the man who had to deal with every child murderer, escaped prisoner,
dangerous dog, inner-city riot, drug dealer, illegal immigrant, terrorist, car accident, rapist and cracked
pavement in Britain. None of the nice things. It was very difficult to do the job well, the best to hope for
was to have a quiet time. There was no foreign travel, both wings of your party would gang up on you
when something went wrong and the public blamed you personally every time they ran out of toilet
paper. So anyone who wanted to be Home Secretary was an idiot.
Page 7
The new head of the Home Office fitted the job description better than few before him. His file back at
Five was a testament to mediocrity. David Anthony Staines had scraped his second at Oxford. He'd not
been popular, although he had met his future wife there. She'd been a party activist, and he'd gone along
to the meetings and fallen in with the in-crowd. He'd been secretary of the college party (there hadn't been
a rival for the position). Then it was usual path: he stood as a candidate in unwinnable seats for a couple
of years while he did his legal training and grew up a bit. He got his own practice the year before his safe
seat, Eastchester West. At Westminster, Staines had quickly fallen in with Lord Greyhaven, and for some
reason the old fool liked him. So he'd progressed up the party ranks. He'd managed not to acquire any
Swiss bank accounts or mistresses, at least none that Halliwell could find, and so he'd got a reputation for
honesty. Now he held a senior cabinet post.
Staines held open the report at the last page, and pointed out each phrase as he came to it. 'Subversive
groups operating in London. Security leaks in the press. Terrorism. An increase in gun-related crime. The
riots last week.'
'Sir, there is nothing to suggest that these events are linked. There have been terrorist and subversive cells
operating in London for over thirty years.'
'That's hardly a reassurance, is it Ms Halliwell? What are MI5 doing?'
'We've kept a lid on it,' she said firmly. 'We know who they are, we know where they are. The moment
they do anything illegal we pick them up.'
'Last year there was that book published that blew the gaffe on UNIT, I Killed Kennedy. Why didn't you
stop that, then?'
'Policy has always been to let people write what they want about aliens and UFOs. There are so many
cranks out there, so many children's stories, that no-one believes any of it anymore. We leant on the
publishers and they changed the cover, altered some of the dates and promised not to print anything like it
again.' Who Killed Kennedy had got close to compromising UNIT, but as one of the co-authors claimed
he'd killed Kennedy himself by travelling back in time it would have been counter-productive for the
government to try to ban it. The last Home Secretary had understood that without Halliwell having to
explain it to him in words of one syllable. MI5 had made sure the book had been marked 'science fiction'
and flagged it on their list of subversive literature. The name of everyone who had taken it out of a library
or ordered it from a bookshop with a computerised ordering system had been filed away for future
reference. Five had also kept track of the authors: James Stevens had gone to ground, but David Bishop
was still in London.
Page 8
Staines' head was agitating from side to side. 'It's not good enough. I want the publishers raided, to see
what other top secret information they have, and I want the editors questioned by your people to see what
they know. Shut them down, by midnight tonight. You will do that?'
'I will do it under the strongest protest and if I have written authorisation.'
Staines handed her two sides of Home Office notepaper, stapled together. Halliwell rolled her eyes. He
had obviously made up his mind about what needed doing.
She gave him one last chance. 'Sir, ten years ago, the government made idiots,' a knowing emphasis on
that word, 'of themselves over the Zircon project. Perhaps you don't remember, but I was actually in
Glasgow, helping to remove three vanloads of papers and film from the BBC offices. We went through
the same farce again with State Secret last year. If you want to give these crackpots publicity, then go
ahead.'
'Thank you, I will. Your attitude has been noted, Director General. I am also going to advise Cabinet that
we will need to increase security around the country. More police, tighter checks at airports, that sort of
thing.'
'Sir, you can't unilaterally declare a state of emergency.'
'Ms Halliwell, there is no question of a state of emergency, I just want our people to be a little more alert.
You agree that I am acting within my powers?'
The telephone rang, and Staines picked it up.
'Home Secretary,' he declared, redundantly.
An expression of concern crossed his idiot face. 'Yes, yes. Right.' He replaced the handset.
'Alexander Christian has escaped,' he announced grimly.
Benny and the Doctor stood at the top of the staircase that led down from the entrance to the main deck of
the redecorated console room.
'Well,' the Doctor said breathlessly, 'What do you think?'
'It's very ... big,' Benny observed. 'Big and ... dark. It's very big and dark. It's very you, really, I mean it.'
She was tempted to ask the Doctor for a pair of binoculars, or one of those telescopes you get on the sea
front. She didn't mind the TARDIS being bigger on the inside than the outside, but there were limits.
Page 9
The Doctor was stepping down, indicating the interesting features with a broad sweep of his arm. 'I used
the second control room for so long I got used to all that white, I have to admit, but this always was the
original. It's just taken a little while for the alterations to be completed.'
He picked up a tricorn hat which sat on a bust of William Shakespeare. 'It's simply ages since I wore this,'
he laughed, trying it on again. It didn't quite fit, which clearly amused him.
'So the rest of the TARDIS ... ?'
'Don't worry, your room's exactly as it always was. I'm not sure where it is now, I admit, but rest assured
I've not touched a thing in it.'
Benny smiled wanly.
'In here,' the Doctor called from the far wall, opening and striding through the sort of door that castles
had. Oh, yes, she thought, 'the sort of door castles had', a textbook description for an archaeologist. She
engaged her brain. At intervals along the wall of the control room, there were doorways surmounted by
drop head arches. The doors bore lovingly hand-crafted iron scroll-work, but no visible handles, latches
or locks. The control room as a whole was in the Decorated Gothic style, taking the form of a roughly
hexagonal lierne vault. The clustered shafts, niches and buttresses were typical of the style, but there was
evidence of alien influence. Illumination was provided mainly by candlelight. At irregular intervals the
same swirling, circular design appeared inlaid into the marble floor or the iron and carved into corbels
and bosses. Benny recognised it from her visit to Gallifrey, but couldn't remember what it was.
Benny ducked through the door, following the Doctor into the TARDIS laboratory. She couldn't recall
ever visiting the room before, and certainly would remember it if she had, she thought: a cold, dark
chamber stacked to its high-vaulted ceiling with cardboard boxes and scientific instruments. Four great
wooden workbenches were arranged haphazardly towards the centre of the room. On one of these an
elaborate construction of test-tubes, Bunsen burners, retorts, tubes and glass jars but if they had once
contained colourful, bubbling fluids they had long evaporated away. Every piece of equipment seemed to
come from another age, and she found herself trying to place every arcane item. She half-expected the
Elephant Man to come lumbering out.
Page 10
The Doctor led her along the maze of particle accelerators, oscilloscopes and lasers to the microscope
section. He ignored at least two electron microscopes, a holographic magnifier and a dimensional
revisualiser in favour of an antique brass microscope that he had clearly kept clean for years by lovingly
polishing it. Either that or the day before yesterday he'd popped back a century or so and bought a new
one.
The Doctor took the test tube from his pocket. 'A cork stopper,' he said.
'Is that important?'
He shrugged. 'It might be. The stopper is tight. This tube hasn't been unsealed for ages.'
He flicked the tube open and sniffed the contents. 'No discernible odour.'
He tapped the soil out onto a glass dish. It was red, with a texture somewhere between sand and clay.
'It looks like cocoa powder,' she observed.
'Well it isn't,' he snapped. Benny swallowed, surprised by the strength of feeling behind the Doctor's
reply. She kept her mouth closed as the Doctor placed some more of the dust on a slide and put it
underneath the lens. He poured a little more into another piece of equipment at the side of the desk and
flicked a switch on its side. The box chugged into life, lights flashing on its surface.
Benny leant over. The dust looked familiar from somewhere.
The Doctor peered through the eyepiece of the microscope. 'It's not from Earth, that's for sure. Let's see:
Fe2O3.3H20. Limonite. Hydrogenated iron oxide.'
Why was it making her feel nostalgic?
Tickertape spewed from the box at the side of the desk. Without taking his eyes away from the
microscope, the Doctor tore the tape off. Then he straightened up to read what it said.
Page 11
'Found only one place in the solar system - '
' - Mars,' the Doctor and Benny declared in unison.
'Well done,' the Doctor said, a little awestruck. 'I worked it out by spectrographic analysis with access to
one of the finest mineralogical databases in the universe. How did you know?'
'As you'd know if you'd read my first book,' Benny announced authoritatively, 'I made my reputation as
part of an expedition excavating the tombs of the Mare Sirenum,'
'Those tombs are carved from spotless blue crystal,' the Doctor objected in a wounded tone of voice.
'There was soil like that in the egg chambers.' - Benny realised she was blushing - 'I was twenty-four and
there was a lad called Tim in the same group. We spent a fair amount of the time rolling around together
up there. That soil gets everywhere, trust me.'
'The odd thing is that it has been chemically treated. The main question is, how did it get here?' The
Doctor peered down at the sample, as though he was expecting it to confess the answer.
'That's no big mystery,' Benny said, 'Humanity has got to Mars by now.' Her knowledge of history was a
little sparse in places, but the late twentieth century (or more precisely 1963 - 1989: The Kennedy
Assassination to the Fall of the Berlin Wall) was one of her specialities. Within a couple of years of the
Americans landing on the Moon, the British had put a man on Mars. It was all part of the superpower
space race, with Britain still trying to play with the big boys. Like all races, it was over quickly and didn't
really amount to much. The United Kingdom felt good about itself for a couple of years and put itself
even further into debt. There were no significant technological or scientific consequences, and all anyone
had to show for it in the end was about five hundred kilos of red rock and rusty soil. Most people in the
nineties probably wouldn't remember the names of any of the Mars Astronauts. There were a couple of
disasters towards the end, Benny recalled. Something to do with astronauts going mad. Hardly surprising
when they spent a total of sixteen months in a tin box the size of a Transit van.
Page 12
Page 13
The Doctor drummed his fingers on the bench top. 'Yes, now you mention it they were mounting Mars
missions when I was exiled here. I remember helping them out that one time.'
'There was a report on the television news this morning about a new landing on Mars.'
The Doctor grabbed her by the shoulders and stared straight at her. 'It's all coming together. It looks like
we need to catch up with current affairs. Come on, Bernice, let's get back to the control room!' He leapt
up and bounded for the door.
Benny glanced down at the little soil sample. 'Now look what a fine mess you've got me into,' she scolded
it.
The policeman in the village had seen him, looked straight at him. Christian had been forced to smile
back at him. What else could he have done? Broken his neck in the middle of the street? The constable
hadn't shown a glimmer of recognition. Later, though, when he saw the new 'Wanted' posters up at his
station, he'd remember.
Freedom. After twenty years, Alexander Christian could hardly remember what it was like to walk down
a street, to see the young girls in their colourful summer outfits and the birds landing in the trees.
Children with ice cream, mothers with prams. Fashions had changed, of course, that's what fashions did.
Other little things were different: the cars were more streamlined, with odd rounded fronts and there were
radio telescopes on the side of some houses - no doubt the latest hobby, like he used to build crystal sets
when he was a kid.
Christian had reached the little supermart on the corner of the main street. A sign on the door read 'Open
Today As Usual'. He straightened out his jacket, trying to look respectable, then he walked in. The bell
above the door jangled as he closed it behind him. An old woman was behind the counter, stroking a large
white cat.
'Hello,' he said - a word he'd not used for a long time - 'Could you tell me where the nearest phone box
is?' He scratched the cat's nose.
Page 14
'There's a pay phone just there, behind you,' she replied cheerfully. The cat looked set to follow him over,
until the woman caught hold of it. 'Stay here, Stevie.'
Christian thanked her and moved over to it. He checked the number for directory enquiries and then
dialled it. Or rather he tapped out the number - the phone had buttons rather than a dial.
After a couple of rings, a young man's voice asked which name he wanted. Christian told him and there
was a pause, punctuated by the clacking of a keyboard. The whole system must be computerised by now.
'I'm sorry, sir, I can't find that name.'
'It's double-barrelled. With a hyphen.'
'And you don't know the area?'
'No. There can't be many with that surname.'
'I'll just try again.'
A four-second pause, more clacking. The line was crystal clear.
'I've found it, sir, but it's ex-directory.'
'Ex-directory?'
'A lot of teachers are ex-directory, sir.'
Teachers? Well, it had been twenty years. 'Can't you give it to me? It's an emergency.'
'I'm sorry, we can't.'
'Can you give me the address?'
'We don't give out addresses. Security. You could be an escaped nutter or anything.'
Christian decided not to argue the point.
'Could you at least tell me the county?'
'No, I'm sorry.'
'OK.' He hesitated for a moment, racking his brains. 'Katherine, with a K, the same surname.'
A different voice, a recorded one, rattled out a number, then repeated it. Christian didn't have a pen, he
committed the number to memory. He cut the connection, got a dialling tone, then tapped in the phone
number: 0122 69046.
Page 15
The Doctor was striding back towards the console, which in the new scheme of things stood on a
hardwood plinth in the centre of the vast control room. Immense iron girders sprouted from the floor and
arched overhead, forming a canopy.
Wolsey detached himself from a chaise-longue and jumped over for attention. The Doctor strolled past
him, his attention fixed straight ahead. Benny bent down and scratched the tabby cat under the chin. He
was almost embarrassingly grateful.
'Has he been neglecting you?' Benny asked seriously.
'Miaow,' replied Wolsey. The little cat was happy enough. Why wouldn't he be with all this antique
furniture lying around from him to claw and leave hair all over? Benny noticed the question-mark
umbrella gathering dust on top of a filing cabinet, and a shiver ran down her spine. Benny joined the
Doctor, Wolsey trotting ahead of her, leading the way.
The Time Lord bounced around the console. After a second's consideration he chose one of the panels
and began to flick switches and twist dials. As Benny stepped up to join him a holographic frame
materialised at head height between them, filled with static.
'With this, the TARDIS can tune in to every television channel broadcasting on Earth at this moment.'
The Doctor had his head down, trying to stabilise the picture.
'What, even the mucky ones?' Benny said, leaning forward. Image after image started to flash up on the
screen, too fast to decipher all but a handful: the Pyramids; Dale Winton with Japanese subtitles; riots on
the Falls Road; Greedo firing first; a smiling Xhosa woman; James Bond diving after a plane in freefall;
tanks in the desert; Batman knocking out the Riddler with a 'KA?OW!'.
'I've established the search parameters.'
The picture quickly settled on one of the American 24-hour news channels. An attractive young blonde
was standing in the morning sunshine introducing a pair of men somewhere between three and four times
her age. Her voice and manner weren't quite as annoying as some of her contemporaries, and suggested
that there was a lot more to her than hair lacquer and lip-gloss.
Page 16
' -ermass and Patrick Moore, two of the leading British space experts from that pioneering era. Professor,
if I could start with you: you must be very proud?'
He was in his eighties, the tweed suit he wore wasn't much younger.
'Must I? We could have done all this twenty years ago. Forty years ago. We chose not to: space is a
Pandora's Box and we shouldn't open it until we've sorted out our problems down here. Think of all the
setbacks, all those hundreds of millions of dollars, roubles and pounds which exploded on launch pads,
crashed into the sea or never come back from that void. Remember the dozens of people that died. Then
you decide whether all this is worth it just to plant a flag in some radioactive rust. Space isn't the final
frontier, you know. Earth is a tiny planet, surrounded by an infinite night, and out there are unimagined
horrors.'
He was waving his finger upwards by this point. The interviewer had been shrewd enough to give the
Professor enough rope to hang himself with: by the end of his speech he was ranting and almost out of
breath. He'd reduced himself to an indignant old fool, live in front of tens of millions of viewers. Benny
glanced over at the Doctor, who was rubbing his chin thoughtfully.
'Mr Moore, do you agree? After twenty years away from space, why pour so much money into it now?'
Benny recognised the seasoned television performer, but even if she hadn't she would have admired the
professionalism of a man who had been asked foolish questions by young journalists many, many times
over the years. When he spoke, he paused between sentences, allowed everything he said to sink in.
'The Professor's views are well known. I disagree with the idea that mankind has ever been away from
space. Your American viewers won't know me. I present an astronomy programme for the BBC that
celebrated its fortieth anniversary last month. Back when The Sky at Night started, manned space flight
was still only the dream of people like Bernard, here. Since then, the moonshots, and the Mars missions
have been and gone and things have seemed pretty quiet. But in reality, so much has happened in the last
twenty years. Just think: you are only able to broadcast this programme across the Atlantic thanks to the
communications satellites that ring the Earth. They may be less dramatic than the old manned mission,
but the space shuttle and the Zeus and Ariane programmes have made local space travel a matter of
routine.'
Page 17
'But we've not been travelling to other planets anymore?'
'The Hubble Telescope and Voyager probes have allowed us to explore our little corner of the universe.
Only last year we got the first sight of the surface of Pluto. Space research has concentrated on improving
our life on Earth. Satellites monitor the environment. They help the rescue services. Military satellites can
tell us when a country is building weapons that they shouldn't be. Those things are a great deal more use
to us than putting a man on the Moon.'
'So the question seems to be why are the British going back to Mars? Are they hoping to find little green
men?' she laughed.
They were nearing the end of the report, Benny realised, and the reporter wanted to end on a lighter note.
'They are five million years too late for that, if they are,' the Professor snorted.
'The findings of the Mariner probes of the nineteen-sixties didn't rule out the possibility that Mars might
support human life, but I'm afraid that ten years later the British astronauts and the American Viking
unmanned probes proved beyond all doubt that Mars was a barren, radioactive world, at least now. There
may have been primitive life, many billions of years ago, but I remain sceptical. Mars is the world most
similar to ours in the solar system, but the only water is frozen solid as a rock in the polar regions. I'm
afraid that any human being walking on the surface of Mars without a spacesuit would be blasted by
radiation, frozen to death by the temperature and then he would suffocated by the lack of atmosphere.'
'Well on that note, it's back to the studio. Thank you gentlemen. This is Eve Waugh, coming live from
outside the Mars 97 Mission Control at the British National Space Museum, London, England.'
Page 18
The picture cut back to a middle-aged man in the Washington studio.
'Thank you, Eve. We'll bring you coverage from London all day, including live coverage of the landing
itself starting at 5am Eastern Standard Time.'
The Doctor tapped a control and the sound cut off.
'What do you think?'
'I liked his monocle and her hairdo, they're both good at their jobs. The Professor needs to switch to
decaff, though. I've walked on the surface of Mars without a spacesuit, and I'm fine.'
The Doctor beamed. 'Most of Mars has been terraformed by your time, as well you know.' He screwed up
his face, trying to dislodge a memory. 'The National Space Museum is in Trafalgar Square.' He paused.
'That's only a two minute trip by TARDIS.'
He set about the instruments again, rotating some big blocks on the navigation panel, pulling across a
couple of switches and releasing the handbrake. The column that protruded from the centre of the console
and carried on up as far as Benny could see began to hum, the mechanisms within it rising and falling
with a familiar piston movement.
The Doctor moved in a way that was both manic and calm - suggesting that after centuries operating the
TARDIS he still wasn't entirely sure he knew which buttons he should be pressing. It was odd to see
someone else at the controls. Odder still to think that this man was the Doctor. He was in his element
here, the tails of his frock coat flapping in time with the strands of his hair as he moved around.
Wolsey had found her again, and was brushing around her legs, keeping her between himself and the
Doctor.
There was the familiar chime, deep below the console. At least that hadn't changed. This part of the
procedure, at least, the Doctor could accomplish with a practised ease. He straightened up, staring into the
central column for a second or two, then flicked the last few controls and applied the handbrake.
It was quite a trek to the door, now, though. Benny followed the Doctor to the exit. The doors swung
open as they approached.
Page 19
The pigeons scattered as they stepped out. Once again the TARDIS had managed to land in the middle of
one of the biggest cities in the world without anyone noticing. The Doctor locked the door behind him as
Big Ben chimed nine o'clock.
Bernice was walking on ahead, looking at the National Space Museum with an historian's eye. Perhaps
she had heard about the controversy a quarter of a century ago when it had been built. The concrete and
chrome building was striking, one of the most recognisable modern buildings in Britain, but that hadn't
silenced the public outcry when it had been built on the edge of such an historic square. It stood out even
now, when a whole generation had grown up with it there. A huge red banner flapped above the door
declaring 'MARS 1997'. Below street level was Mission Control itself. Of course the Mars 97 rocket
hadn't blasted off from central London - the launch itself had taken place in Oxfordshire, but it had all
been co-ordinated from here. The roof bristled with satellite dishes, aerials and antennae, but all of them
were part of the architecture, just as a medieval cathedrals managed to blend guttering and structural
necessity with decoration and aesthetics.
The Doctor left Bernice behind, crossing the busy road and jumping up the steps, two at a time. When he
tried the door, it wouldn't open.
'It's closed until ten-thirty,' an American voice informed him.
The Doctor turned to see a young woman winding up her microphone cable. She and her cameraman
were packing up their equipment. Her two interviewees had disappeared.
'Eve Waugh. I've just seen your interview - well done, I know the Professor and he's a bit crotchety
nowadays.'
She was shorter than she looked on television, but also a bit more willing to smile. 'Thanks, but I've faced
worse.'
'Of course: your work during the Mexican War. I saw that, too: you saved a lot of lives, exposed a lot of
evil men.'
Page 20
She frowned. 'You have me confused with someone else. Wait a minute, how did you see my interview?
It was only broadcast in the States.'
Bernice had finished her quick survey and had crossed over to join them. 'Hello, Doctor. I see you've
made a new friend.' She held out her hand. 'Professor Bernice Summerfield.'
'Eve Waugh. Yeah, I know: my folks were big fans of his, particularly Brideshead.' She looked Bernice
up and down. 'So you're a Professor? And you are Doctor ... who?'
'Quite,' the Doctor nodded sagely.
'This museum doesn't open for another hour and a half,' Bernice interrupted. She was looking at the little
card in the door.
'You academics should read your invitations,' Eve suggested. 'I'm going to be there, but I've got plenty to
do before that - change into my gown for one thing. So, see you at ten-thirty,' she flashed them both a
smile. 'Ready Alan?'
Her bearded cameraman nodded, but didn't say anything. Together they descended the steps.
Bernice waited until they were out of earshot. 'Nice woman. Right - so it looks like we've got to go back
to the TARDIS and hop forward an hour and a half.'
'Time doesn't work like that. Now we're here we'll have to find something to do for ninety minutes. And
we're not going to sit around in the TARDIS when we could be exploring this city.'
'Now why did I know you were going to say that? OK, but let me pop back, find my room and get
changed into a party dress. If we're going to a posh do, there's no way I'm going to let anyone out-frock
me.'
The Dying Days - Chapter Three
Page 1
Return To Mars
Mrs Fukuyama and her husband had arrived in London the afternoon before, but until now their only
contact with the city had been the view of the suburban streets from the window of the coach that had
whisked them from the airport to their eight-storey hotel in Kensington. The view from their window was
of a flat expanse of converted mews and modern hotels, broken only by a large building called Earls
Court. The hotel room was clean and air-conditioned, but could have been anywhere in the world from
Boston to Beirut.
After breakfast, they had ventured out of the hotel to explore the City. The Tube station was just around
the corner. They'd bought their tickets and descended into the world beneath the city.
They had emerged at Big Ben, walked around it, taken their photos and walked a little way up the banks
of the Thames. The city was busy, the roads full of traffic, but few of the shops were open yet. It had
been a short walk from there to Trafalgar Square, or so it had appeared on the map. In actuality it had
taken half an hour to get there, punctuated by a couple of stops at tea shops that had struggled open. It
was a public holiday, apparently, something to do with the Mars Landing.
Now they were here, her husband's attention had been caught by a blue box sitting at the foot of Nelson's
Column. He was running his fingers along it.
'It's humming,' he concluded.
Page 2
The door opened and a young man bounded out, almost crashing into them. His clothes suggested he was
a tour guide, or a street entertainer. The woman who trailed after him reinforced this impression:
although it was not yet nine-thirty in the morning, she wore a strapless peach sequin dress, elbow-length
lace gloves and pill-box hat. The two couples stared at each other for a second before her husband
plucked up his courage and asked the strange man what the box was.
The reply came in perfect Japanese, 'This is a police box. They were more common before the advent of
the walkie-talkie, but they're beginning to reappear now. You can call a policeman from here if you need
help.'
'It is very striking. Would you mind taking a photograph of us in front of it?'
'I'll do it.' The Englishwoman took the camera, examined it for a moment and then pointed it towards the
trio, who had posed themselves in front of the door. 'Say cheese,' she ordered them, again in perfect
Japanese.
There was a flash and the woman stepped back over.
'Thank you,' Mr Fukuyama said, checking his list, 'Now, how do my wife and myself get to the Tower of
London?'
The strange man thought about the question. 'You could try committing treason,' he suggested gently.
The other three laughed, leaving him a little bewildered.
'Circle and District Line, the nearest stop is Tower Hill,' the woman supplied.
The two tourists thanked them and set off to the nearest tube station.
'It is a very good job that my daughter is too young to know who you are.'
He kept his distance, standing at the other end of the churchyard. Despite the familiar voice, underneath
that overcoat he'd grown fat. His hair had thinned, and that moustache of his was grey. Despite that, he'd
managed to arrive without Christian seeing him. Crows were cawing in the next field.
'It's a very good job that she's old enough by now to have her own phone. Good morning, Alistair.'
Page 3
Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart moved a little closer, became a little warier. 'Good
morning, Lex,' he replied finally, when they were ten feet apart.
'You didn't call the police?'
The Brigadier straightened. 'When you telephoned I gave you my word that I wouldn't. Not until I came
to hear what you have to say. You used to be one of my men. I owe a fellow Guardsman that much.' His
hands were deep in his coat pockets.
'Are you carrying a gun?'
'Wouldn't you be?'
Christian laughed, holding his hands away from his body. 'I'm not,' he answered.
Lethbridge-Stewart couldn't see the humour of the situation. 'Why did you call me?'
Alexander Christian bit his lip. 'Because you are the only person in the world that I can trust. Something's
going to happen, Alistair. On Mars and here in Britain. Something you have to help me stop.'
At the main entrance of the National Space Museum, the doors were being opened. The VIPs invited to
attend at Mission Control itself were going through an adjacent door, where their invitations were being
carefully checked. They'd pass through a couple of other security points before going below ground level
to their social gathering.
Without invitations, the Doctor and Benny weren't going to be able to get in. At least not through the
front door. So, they joined a coach party and were herded through the public entrance, past the lobby and
into the first of the public galleries. The hall was filled with display cases full of bulky space suits. The
tour guide hadn't noticed them join the edge of the group, she was too busy fielding questions about how
astronauts went to the toilet and whether the boy astronauts ever had sex with the girl astronauts. Benny
found it reassuring that amidst state-of-the-art technology and on the brink of interplanetary conquest, the
human race still had its priorities right.
Page 4
The Doctor and Benny mingled with the group, careful to remember their objective. Casually, the Doctor
glanced at a map of the building hanging from one wall. Disguising it as a yawn, he managed to indicate
to his companion where they needed to head next. As soon as possible, they extricated themselves and
stepped through into the Main Hall.
An actual Mars Probe hung suspended in mid-air twenty feet above their heads. The hall was vast, but
gleaming and white, packed with artefacts from the international space programmes of the nineteenseventies.
They walked past the scale models, the photographs and the display case featuring the
'Astronaut's Survival Kit'. Benny paused at the full-sized mock-up of the inside of an old space capsule. It
was cramped, of course, but the thing that struck her was how old-fashioned it was: the displays were
mechanical, not LED or even digital, the controls were clunky switches, the computer that took up half
the room wouldn't have been powerful enough to run the average washing machine even now, a couple
of decades later. It was an object that belonged to the era of the eight-track cartridge, nylon slacks and
the Ford Capri. This wasn't the retro-futurism of the TARDIS, with its incomprehensible forces hiding
behind a Jules Verne veneer: this was the real thing.
The sound of the sonic screwdriver interrupted her train of thought.
The Doctor was bent over a display case, prising off the glass cover. The alarms hadn't gone off, but
neither of them were exactly inconspicuous in their outfits. Benny strode across the room, and saw the
Doctor scraping up some red dust into an empty test tube.
'Martian soil,' he announced by way of explanation.
'Yes, I know.'
The Doctor closed the case, sealing it up again. The test tube had already disappeared into the depths of
his frock coat. 'Caldwell was concerned about the soil, remember?'
'Yes.'
'Look at this case, though. There's pounds of the stuff, on public display.'
'It's still in limited supply. It would cost hundreds of millions of pounds to get any more.'
Page 5
'Bernice, ordinary Martian soil can't be of much scientific interest nowadays - once you've found out the
exact composition, what else is there to know? That man was critically injured, but that soil was one of
the only two things on his mind at that moment. No, I suspect that when we compare this soil with the
sample we acquired this morning we'll find a big clue to this mystery.'
'Fine,' Benny conceded. She hesitated. 'Didn't Caldwell also say something about someone escaping?'
The Doctor grabbed Benny's arm and led her to a display board. Ranged in front of her were photographs
of all the Mars crews, every one of them happy, smiling clean-cut folk in neat uniforms or shiny
spacesuits. The Doctor pointed to the very last picture. Three people, two men and a woman.
'Alexander Christian,' the Doctor declared. As Benny read, her jaw slowly began dropping.
'Some of you may need reminding about Alexander Christian,' Halliwell began. 'Those of you old enough
will remember him very well indeed, but you won't know the whole truth. The full facts were never
released by the government for reasons that will become apparent.'
She had been driven down the M2 at high speed, with full police motorcycle escort. When the traffic
parted and you didn't have to stick to the speed limit it was amazing how fast you could get around the
country. She'd got from Whitehall to Canterbury in three quarters of an hour. Now she stood in front of a
couple of dozen senior Kent policemen, the people who would be co-ordinating the manhunt on the
ground.
She paused and put the first slide up on the screen. Alexander Christian at twenty-nine, resplendent in his
Space Defence Division uniform. He had a movie-star face, not a bland Aryan look, but an odd and
angular with eyebrows that looked like a symbol in shorthand. A memorable face.
'This is how Lex Christian looked just before Mars Probe 13 was launched.' She pressed the control
and the picture changed. Now Christian had been joined by two others: a plump, white-haired man in his
forties and a beautiful redhead in her mid-twenties. All three were smiling, Christian was in the middle
with his arms around both of them.
Page 6
'The crew of Mars Probe 13. Alexander Christian, Albert Fitzwilliam and Madeline Goodfellow.
Christian shared quarters with Fitzwilliam, he was the sometime lover of Goodfellow. They had been
friends for nearly five years. This is what he did to them.'
The inside of a space capsule, in full colour. Blood smeared over the chrome and plastic, two bodies in
the centre of the picture, their chests split open exposing glistening organs, their eyes missing. Behind
them a bank of monitors had been smashed, the computer panels had been smashed apart.
'As he left Mars, thirty-two weeks into the Mars 13 mission he was commanding, Alexander Christian,
hero of the British space programme, took a fire axe and did that to his best friends. For eight months, he
sat among the blood and filth and smashed equipment. Every day, at nine o'clock GMT precisely, he
would send messages to mission control. These were little more than rants, littered with swear words and
Biblical allusions.
'The messages were never released, of course, but one of the American networks managed to intercept
one. This is what they broadcast of it.' She pressed the tape recorder button.
'Had to die. Had to -bleep- die. World -bleep-. -bleep-.' She pressed the 'stop' button.
'Well, you get the gist. At no point did he offer explanations, at no point did he talk to the psychologists
or negotiators on the ground. After eight months, his capsule automatically splashed down in the North
Atlantic. The HMS Sheffield was waiting for him, and he was arrested by armed sailors. At a court
martial held in camera, Alexander Christian was committed to a top security mental institution, with the
unanimous recommendation being that he should never be released. The thirteen Mars missions cost the
British taxpayer nearly five billion pounds. That was a lot of money back in those days - over a year's
worth of North Sea Oil revenue. Alexander Christian had been a national hero, now he was an insane
killer, and the whole affair was very embarrassing for a lot of people. So, it was hushed up, the evidence
was destroyed, the tabloids were told to go easy on Christian, and everyone but everyone involved was
sworn to silence. The victims had no living relatives: Fitzwilliam's aunt died while he was en route to
Mars. There were no pictures of Christian allowed when he returned to Earth. Starved of any new
information or photographs, the story died. Mars 13 was the last mission to Mars for twenty years. Until
today, in fact.'
Page 7
'Excuse me, Director, but what drove him mad?'
Veronica Halliwell shrugged. 'Claustrophobia, a fear of the unknown. He was trapped in that steel box
for the best part of a year, with only those two as company. The day before, he'd radioed in as normal.'
Halliwell paused, sipped from her water and put up another slide, showing a map of Kent. The crash-site
was ringed in red.
'An hour and a half ago, Alexander Christian escaped. As you know, over the years the Mars astronauts
have been unlucky - they've had more than their fair share of car crashes, boating accidents and nervous
breakdowns. Alexander Christian was always the most experienced Mars astronaut - he'd been there
twice before Mars Probe 13. They wanted him at Space Centre in Devesham to provide his expertise in
the event of problems with the mission. En route from Fortress Island, his helicopter crashed in Kent, just
south of Canterbury. Everyone with him died, not all of them in the crash. He is now on the loose, he is
possibly armed, and he is most definitely dangerous. We're bringing in army helicopters, and there's an
SAS squad on its way. Your men are not to approach Christian when they find him.'
'Is that the only photo of him?' the Chief Constable asked. Halliwell pressed the projector control again.
'There are no more recent photographs of him, but prison staff have helped us come up with this
computer-enhanced picture of what he looks like now. They say that he's resourceful, daring and
intelligent. He has attempted to escape his prisons a dozen times, using a different method each time, and
came damn close to getting out.'
Page 8
'Are we telling the public?'
'Not yet. I was with the Home Secretary when we heard about the escape. He doesn't want to cause a
panic, but he's agreed that if we haven't found him by noon-thirty then warnings will be posted on the
lunchtime news.'
'Do we know what his objectives might be?'
'A link with the Mars landing seems the most likely. We've posted extra guards at Devesham and at the
National Space Museum.'
'An axe-murderer? An escaped axe-murdering ex-astronaut?'
'Yes. Trying saying that three times when you're drunk.'
'I think I might just take you up on that.' The caption underneath the photograph was a model of
understatement, but it managed to convey the information that Alexander Christian had killed his
shipmates.
The Doctor plucked his pocket watch from his waistcoat. It was the same watch that he had worn before
he changed, and he used the same technique to flick it open with one hand. 'Ten thirty. Time to join the
party.'
The great and the good had been drifting past them for the last ten minutes or so. They were getting a
condensed version of the guided tour as they headed to the stairways at the back of the Main Hall. The
Doctor's plan was that they would join a group of VIPs and follow them down to Mission Control.
Benny tried to keep her mind off Alexander Christian by standing at the edge of the Hall and identifying
as many of the guests as she could as they walked past. The first one she had got had been Steven
Hawking. He'd been deep in conversation with Richard Dawkins and his wife, and had been helped down
the stairs by a couple of hefty security guards. Jarvis Cocker and Chris Evans followed, chatting about
something. The next woman Benny recognised was either Mystic Meg or Lady Di (Benny always got
them mixed up). She had no problem identifying Lady Creighton-Ward - she didn't live far from the
house in Allen Road and Benny had often seen her being driven around the Kent countryside. All were
wearing their poshest outfits, and despite her earlier anxieties that she'd be under - or over- dressed,
Benny felt that her own ensemble had been well-judged.
Page 9
The Doctor took her arm, and Benny found herself following Gillian Anderson through a low archway
down a short stairway and into the party. No-one checked for an invite, but a man on the door gave them
the once-over. Benny smiled at him with her best 'I'm meant to be here' look.
There were about two hundred people in the room, more if you included the waiters milling around the
little social groups that had begun to form. The reception was being held in an observation gallery that
overhung Mission Control. Beneath them, two dozen scientists were at their posts, eyes fixed on the giant
screen that dominated the back wall. Up here there was row upon row of red chairs arranged to watch the
show. A big digital clock above the observation bay window was counting down to the landing. It was
currently hovering just over the ten minutes mark. There was a podium at one side of the bay window,
complete with a TV monitor and autocue.
A buffet had been laid out down one wall and the rich and the famous were picking away at it. In one
corner Richard Branson and Alan Yentob were arguing about something, in another Geoffrey Hoyt was
sharing a drink with Dame Emma Knight. Beneath the gentle rumble of conversation music was playing:
Holst. Around the edge of the room film crews had set up, and journalists from around the world were
pulling celebrities from the edge of the crowd to share a few words of wisdom with their viewers.
A waiter hurried by, and Benny plucked a champagne glass from his tray with an expertise born of years
snatching free drinks.
She sniffed it and sipped it. 'Nice,' she concluded.
'A 1982 Ayala. A good year.' The Doctor hadn't taken any for himself, and had apparently identified the
vintage just by looking at the glass or catching a whiff of it on her breath.
'I've just seen someone I recognise,' he declared, disappearing into the crowd.
Page 10
'Great, leave me here with my champagne,' Benny moaned. 'Second thoughts, Doctor, you do that.' She
took another sip and gazed around the room. She was rather disappointed that none of the big celebrities
were here. Her intensive study of The Mirror over the last week meant that she knew exactly which pop
stars and models ought to be at such a bash, but virtually everyone here was a politician or a scientist.
'I'm sorry to hear about the problems with your marriage,' a voice piped up nearby. Benny looked down.
A little old woman in a red coat and hat was standing in front of her, clutching a handbag in front of her.
Benny swallowed a little more champagne. 'Heavens, word gets around, doesn't it?'
The old woman blinked at her through big round glasses. 'If it's any consolation, it sounds like it was all
his fault. And I loved Sense and Sensibility.' She disappeared back into the gathering, waving at someone
with a TV camera.
'Er yes ... me too!' Benny called after her.
The Doctor bobbed through the crowds. He bumped straight into a man in a dark suit, stopping them both
in their tracks. The man he had obstructed was in his late sixties, with thin white hair and an aquiline
face.
'I know you ... ' the Doctor began.
'I should certainly hope so,' the man said, smiling a politician's smile. A couple of the people around him
laughed nervously. They were all senior members of the government.
'Teddy Greyhaven. You were the Minister of Science in the nineteen-seventies. You oversaw massive
government investment in science and technology.'
'I like to think that I kept the white hot heat of the technological revolution stoked up for a couple of
years,' he said with mock-modesty. 'I'm Lord Greyhaven, now, though. I have very little influence
nowadays.'
The Doctor's eyes narrowed. 'No, no. You wouldn't have.' He continued on his way, nearly colliding with
the Home Secretary as he strode up to Greyhaven and his group.
Benny allowed the waiter to refill her glass. The Doctor had still not reappeared.
Page 11
There was a tap on her shoulder and she turned.
'Hello stranger.' Eve Waugh was gorgeous in a halter-top dress that showed off her figure while keeping
every inch of it swathed in powder-blue silk. The two women circled each other, looking each other up
and down.
'I like your dress,' they said in unison, before laughing. Behind Eve, her cameraman was in his tuxedo,
checking lighting levels.
'I can't interview you now,' Eve complained. 'That dress is strapless.'
'Is this some policy of the American networks that I should know about? Am I too rude for them?'
'In a way: when Alan does his standard head and shoulders shot, you'll look naked from the hat down.'
Eve drew a line over her own chest with a finger by way of demonstration.
Benny glanced down at herself, a little self-consciously.
'Do you know anyone here?' Eve asked.
'I recognise just about everybody,' Benny said, looking back up, 'but I don't know any of them
personally.'
'Do you know who that is? The black woman in the United Nations dress uniform?'
Benny peered across the room to the slight figure keeping close to the fire exit.
'Yes I do, as a matter of fact. That's whatsername ... Bambera.' Brigadier Winifred Bambera. Benny
racked her brains, trying to remember when they had met - it had been outside Buckingham Palace, a
couple of years in the future. 'She works for UNIT.'
At the mention of the name, Benny could have sworn that a couple of people around the room looked up.
'Really?' Waugh said seriously, 'Now, that particular organisation is one of my special hobbies. How
much do you know about them?'
'Enough to know that we shouldn't discuss them too loudly in here. And enough to know that Bambera's
here on business.'
'If she wasn't on business, she wouldn't be hiding that automatic pistol in her waistband. Maybe we'll
carry on this conversation later? My hotel room?'
Page 12
The Doctor materialised out of the crowd. 'I saw Ralph Cornish. He's over there, look, with his
boyfriend.' A tall chap with peppery hair and a matching crisp suit was chatting to a young man.
'And who's Ralph Cornish?'
'He was the head of the British Space Programme at the time of the first Mars Missions,' Eve Waugh
supplied.
'He didn't recognise me from back then,' the Doctor said sadly.
'We he wouldn't,' Benny reminded him gently. Eve was watching them carefully, presumably wondering
what the Doctor had been doing at Space Centre in his mid-teens.
The countdown had reached ten minutes.
'If I could have your attention,' a young man was calling, 'the Mars Lander has finished its preparations
and is nearly ready. If you could all take your seats.'
'See you later,' Eve called, hurrying away.
The pitch of the conversation became more excited, and the guests began shuffling into their designated
places. Benny hoped that there were more chairs than guests. She squeezed her way past the Spice Girls
to take an empty chair. Somehow the Doctor was already in the next seat, sharing a joke with Jeremy
Paxman.
'The Mars Orbiter,' a bearded scientist at the podium began explaining, 'has been orbiting Mars for the
last two days. In that time, instruments have been mapping the surface and taking measurements of the
thin Martian atmosphere. The crew have also deployed a couple of unmanned vehicles, released weather
balloons and launched a couple of satellites that will stay in orbit long after this mission has come home.
All that information is being collected and collated at the Space Centre at Devesham. Meanwhile, they
have also been preparing the Mars Lander.'
The video screen flickered into life, showing a CGI representation of the Mars craft. As the scientist
continued to explain, Benny quickly established that the new Mars Probe was the same sort of
arrangement as the old Apollo missions: a command module would stay in orbit while a four-man Lander
would detach itself and drop down to the surface. The Mars 97 was about the size of the old Apollo
rocket, but nothing was jettisoned: instead of liquid fuel, the three hundred metre length of the spacecraft
was given over to the atomic engine. The eight-man crew huddled together in the compartment in the
nosecone of the vessel during the four-month journey to Mars - the new atomic motors meant that the
vessel was twice as fast as the old Mars Probes.
Page 13
'They'll stay on the Martian surface for a month,' the scientist continued. 'The aim of the mission is to
conduct a full geological survey of the Mare Sirenum.'
'Been there, done that,' Benny said softly to the Doctor. She expected him to beam back, but instead he
scowled, and made a show of straining to hear the lecture.
'We have the aim of having a full, working colony on Mars in the next ten years. The Mars 97 Mission
will conduct a full feasibility study into this. If the Mars colony is not possible, then all is not lost: IIF are
planning to build a nuclear-waste storage facility on the Moon in the next two years, the first manned
flight to Jupiter is planned for two years after that. To tell us all how this has been possible, we have an
honoured guest here this morning: Mr David Staines, the Home Secretary.'
A thin, bespectacled man made his way forward. The applause rippled around him and the world's
television cameras followed his progress. The autocue was waiting at the podium.
'Today, after over twenty years, the human race returns to Mars. This would be a cause for celebration
regardless of which nation had got there. But it isn't, I am sure, jingoism to suggest that we are all
particularly glad that it is the United Kingdom that got there first.' - applause - 'Twenty years ago, the
British space programme was a clear demonstration that our country still had the know-how to be a
world-beater. I was a young man when Grosvenor and Guest planted the Union Flag at the foot of mighty
Olympus Mons. My heart still swells to think of it: British astronauts staring up at the mightiest feature
of the solar system, a mountain almost three times the size of Everest. And remember just who it was that
reached the summit of that particular Himalaya before anyone else!'
Page 14
'Yes,' the Doctor whispered across to Benny above the applause, 'it was Sherpa Tensing. I should know,
it was me that pulled him up. It was a good half-minute before Edmund joined us.'
Staines had continued. 'Like those early flights, the Mars 97 Mission has been a showcase for cuttingedge
British technology, proof if it were needed that British is still best. An example to the world of what
can be achieved when the worlds of big business and science co-operate with the government and the
military. Unlike those first missions, Mars 97 hasn't cost the British taxpayer a single penny, thanks to
Lottery grants and private funding. That and the support of many of Britain's leading manufacturers: it is
fair to say that without the revolutionary atomic motors built in Reigate by Donneby's the Mars rocket
wouldn't have ever got ... off the ground - ' - laughter - 'Without the computers built by ACL and
software designed by I2, without the alloys developed at Vickers and Rolls-Royce or the
communications equipment custom-made by BT or a thousand smaller contributions from a thousand
smaller companies this would never have been possible. The Mars 97 programme is a testament to
British enterprise. But none of it would have been possible without a guiding intelligence. A man of
vision. Ladies and gentlemen, as the Mars 97 prepares for its historic landing, please remember that we
are all here today because of my friend and mentor, Lord Edward Greyhaven. Thank you.'
They were applauding the Home Secretary as he returned to his seat, but the warmest reception was for
the old man sitting in the next seat. The Doctor was studying him keenly. After some coaxing,
Greyhaven stood, and waved to the audience. The applause got a little louder.
High, high above Mars the final checks had just been completed.
Page 15
Page 16
Captain Richard Michaels looked back at the four men who had the worst job in the Space Service. Mars
97 had an eight-man crew, but only half of them would set foot on the Red Planet. The other four would
stay up here, two hundred miles up. They were vital to the mission, they'd be relaying instructions, acting
as back-up, monitoring the information from the unmanned probes. They'd never be able to tell their
grandchildren that they'd walked on Mars as part of this mission. The crew had drawn lots a year ago to
see who'd have which duty. Since then, the unlucky four had been resigned to this moment, when their
colleagues would leave them to walk on an alien world. It hadn't made it any more palatable, and there
had been the odd tense moment on the four month trip out. Singh, Campbell, McGowan and Lewis
would be staying. He, Andi McCray, Bob Haigh and Claudia would be going down to the surface.
That had been the plan right up until this morning, when Claudia had fallen ill. She'd eaten something
that disagreed with her - quite an achievement in such a regulated environment. She'd been confined to
quarters since then, with only Singh allowed to see her. Everything about the mission was carefully
balanced: one crew member ill for a day wasn't too bad, but if she had a bug that another crewman
caught then they might have to abort the mission.
Five hours to go, and Michaels had been forced to decide which of the other four was coming down.
Singh had been the calmest. He'd always been the most rational of the crew - agreeing to cut his hair and
shave his beard to be an astronaut, despite his religious beliefs. He'd accepted the result of the ballot
without reservation, and was able to put the whole thing into perspective - he was still an astronaut, after
all. But it couldn't be him - as the only one with full medical training he was needed up here to monitor
Claudia. Campbell had been the worst: three months ago he'd been a serious cause for concern - his
'jokes' on the subject of the landing party had continued long after he'd been asked to stop, and he'd
undermined morale.
But he was the one, his record more than made that clear. He'd confirmed the choice with London, and
told the crew two hours ago, when everyone was too busy to get angry or disappointed.
The face of Richard Michaels filled the huge video screen. The crowd at the National Space Museum
cheered.
Page 17
He was playing to the television audience, which clearly made him a bit nervous. 'Hello there, this is
Mars 97. The pictures you are seeing now are coming from a long way away. Mars is nearly sixty million
miles away from Earth. Or, to put it another way, back on Earth Washington and Moscow are about
seven thousand miles apart but my crew and I are eight thousand six hundred times as far away from you.
That means that even at the speed of light, our radio signals take nearly five minutes to reach you. These
pictures are five minutes old and by now, God willing, we're walking around on Mars. Hope that doesn't
take the shine off the live coverage!'
A round of applause and a little laughter, with all eyes fixed on the screen.
'OK, London Control. All systems ready. Lander is go. Andy, could you do the honours?'
A spacesuited figure, Benny couldn't work out whether it was a man or a woman, pulled a control and a
rumble sounded along the ship.
The picture cut to an exterior view. A camera mounted about halfway along the length of the Command
Module. Now, the Lander was emerging slowly from its compartment, edging out like a butterfly from a
chrysalis. It looked vaguely insect-like, with stubby landing gear, delicate solar panels and
communications arrays. Beneath the craft, Benny recognised the southern hemisphere of Mars. She'd
made the same trip, although by her native twenty-sixth century shuttlecraft were fitted with antigravs
and the journey was as routine as InterCity train travel in the nineteen-nineties. That was only because of
pioneers like these people, of course.
An engine on the underside of the Lander flared and it shot away.
'London, Lander is good. Entering radio blackou-.'
Behind them, a dozen reporters explained to their audience that this was perfectly normal as the craft
entered an atmosphere.
After a couple of tense moments, a message crackled through the loudspeaker: 'London. This is Mars
Lander. We're down and safe.'
Page 18
Everyone in the room was on their feet, cheering. Benny found to her surprise that so was she. After a
couple of seconds, a picture of a barren landscape flashed up onto the screen. The rusty soil and pink sky
were familiar to Benny, everyone else, the Doctor included, was fixed to the screen. The camera was
mounted to the landing gear, metal struts were visible in the foreground, and the ladder that the
astronauts would climb down was also in plain view. After a minute or so it was clear that no-one was
going to be coming down that ladder for a while.
'What's the delay?' she asked the Doctor.
'The astronauts have to get used to the gravity, they check the conditions outside. They triple-check the
airlock and the spacesuits and they radio to London for the go-ahead.'
'That sounds a pretty lengthy procedure.'
'About quarter of an hour, perhaps less.'
Benny craned her neck. At the back of the room, the journalists were interviewing scientists and
politicians. This event was going out live. She felt for the reporters forced to find something to say to fill
the gap, the only picture from another world being a static image that could have been Arizona if it
wasn't for the pink sky. Benny recognised the twilight from her expedition: even at noon on the Mare
Sirenum the brightest it got was a late-evening grey.
The guests were gradually realising that there was going to be a delay, and were breaking off to replenish
their drinks or chat to their friends. The man the Home Secretary had mentioned in his speech, Lord
Greyhaven, wasn't there, although the rest of his circle were.
Benny turned to the Doctor to see what he planned to do for the next ten minutes. A young man, Ralph
Cornish's friend, was leaning over him, whispering something, passing something to him. Then he had
gone.
Benny bent across. 'What's up?'
'That young man just passed me a note,' the Doctor explained. He unfolded it. ' Chesterton Road, 12.00.
Green Door. Bring violets. ' he read, bemused.
There was movement on the ladder.
'That was quick,' the Doctor said cheerfully.
Page 19
A bulky spacesuit hopped down the ladder. He wasn't as nimble as he would have been on the Moon, the
gravity was about twice as strong, but he moved in wide, arcing leaps.
There wasn't a carefully-prepared sound-bite, or indeed any ceremony. Just a simple 'I'm on the surface,
chaps'. Two other astronauts followed him out, and they spent some time bouncing around, getting used
to the idea that they were on an alien planet. 'Keep that camera pointing that way, Bob. There's a
beautiful violet sky,' Michaels said finally.
Whatever else was said was drowned out by the cheers from Mission Control and the party guests in the
observation gallery. The cameramen were relaxing now, turning off their equipment. They'd got the
interviews they'd wanted before the landing and while the astronauts were getting ready for their
Marswalk. The guests were leaving their seats, stretching. They were being ushered out by the waiters,
who really weren't tolerating any dawdlers. Benny looked around for Eve, who was by the door, trying to
collar Lord Greyhaven for an interview.
'Is that it?' the Doctor said, still firmly in his seat.
'That's the end of the live coverage, yes, sir,' a waiter told him as he collected up the empty glasses. 'The
museum restaurant, The Observatory, is still open - a lot of the guests will be eating lunch there. It's fully
licensed.'
Bernice giggled. 'How about it, Doctor, fancy a trip to the Mars Bar? I think that they want us to leave.'
The last few journalists and their teams were being ushered away, a curtain was being drawn over the
observation window overlooking Mission Control.
'Something odd's going on ... ' the Doctor muttered.
Winifred Bambera was standing by the door, keeping an eye on the guests as they filed out.
'Isn't that - ?' the Doctor began, but he was cut off from a burst of static from the loudspeaker. Down in
Mission Control, a couple of technicians scuttled back to their posts.
Page 20
'London Control, this is Michaels. Condition violet should now be in place, you've had your ten minutes.
Cut the live feed. I can't wait any longer.'
Bambera was scowling at one of the waiters who was moving to pull out the lead from the loudspeaker.
The Doctor leapt over a row of seats, ran to the front of the room and yanked the curtain that had been
blocking their view of Mission Control.
Captain Michaels' helmet filled the giant screen that dominated the room down there. 'We've found an
archway,' the loudspeaker crackled, 'Repeat, an archway, in the sand.'
The picture panned around away from the commander and settled on a circular shape cut into the side of
a low rock formation. It was indeed a high archway, leading into a cave. It was too dark to see anything
more than a few feet inside, but the archway was clearly not a natural feature - there was definitely a
keystone there, and what looked like carved symbols.
'Please advise, London Control.'
The Dying Days - Chapter Four
Page 1
Gratuitous Violets
The powerful beam of light swept down, petering out after two hundred metres. After walking through a
short tunnel, all four of the astronauts had entered the cavern. The cavern was irregular in shape, made up
of the black volcanic rock common on Mars. Cut into the floor of the chamber was a circular pit, twenty
metres in diameter, fifty times as deep at least. Commander Michaels wasn't looking at the pit, but rather
what was inside it.
He had kept his radio mike open all the time, and was keeping up a running commentary. The Command
Module had informed them that the pictures from Bob's camera weren't getting through properly - the
volcanic rock was interfering with the signal. Michaels struggled to find the words. 'The pit is full of
large structures, solid blue crystal. They are, er, stalactites.'
'Stalagmites,' Andi's voice corrected him, ' Tites come down.' Andi took up the commentary. 'They
project up from the floor, narrowing at the top. Stalagmites the size of cathedral spires. The low gravity
means they can grow so much taller than they can on Earth.'
'Are they a natural feature?' A male voice crackled from the Command Module. The sound was
becoming as erratic as the pictures - Michaels couldn't even identify the speaker for certain.
'Good question. What do we think?'
Page 2
Page 3
The four astronauts stepped forward, right to the edge of the abyss. They looked across at the spires and
then back to each other. Andi, Bob and Campbell all shook their heads.
'Negative,' Michaels stated, 'These are artificial in origin.'
'Is that ice in there?' Bob asked. Michaels checked his wrist monitor. It was cool in here, with no
atmospheric water vapour.
'There's so little water on Mars, how could it be ice?' Campbell objected, bringing a torch beam to bear
on the nearest spire.
There was a shape inside, a humanoid shape.
Eve checked her make-up and hair in the mirror.
'OK Alan?'
'Sure,' her cameraman grunted. 'Ready to roll.'
'Do I pass muster?' Lord Greyhaven asked. He was the picture of English elegance in a single-breasted
suit with a silk tie and matching handkerchief. There was something classy about a man that had over a
billion dollars but didn't feel the need to exude wealth.
Not that he'd got his money because his great granddad was at Agincourt. While she was researching this
story, Eve had often seen footage of Edward Greyhaven, then a fortysomething politician with a black
quiff and some very sharp suits. He'd managed to get the Treasury to pour money into R&D back then,
and the British had led the world in the field of pure research. Every month he'd open some new project
that promised to revolutionise the way people lived their lives. Not all of them had failed, either. If only
the rest of British industry had been in a state to exploit all that new technology. Greyhaven had made his
fortune as a consultant after he'd left office. Twenty years on, he looked more distinguished, but there
was still a mischievous twinkle in his eye.
'You look good. Er ... before we start, I've got a question. How - ?'
'You can call me Teddy, or Edward if that's too informal.'
Eve was caught out, something that rarely happened. 'How did you know that's what I was going to ask?'
'I've been interviewed by Americans before, Mrs Waugh. You don't have to address me as Your
Lordship. And my name is spelt with an 'e', not an 'a'.'
'You don't have to call me Mrs. I'm not married.'
Page 4
'I'm afraid that I am,' he replied, chuckling. 'Is this your first time in London?'
'No. Who's doing this interview, me or you? It's the second time this year. I covered the general election.
No need to ask you about the result.'
Greyhaven smiled. He had flourished regardless of which group of politicians happened to be in charge.
'Which hotel are you in?'
She told him. He brightened. 'Oh yes, an excellent place. If you're eating in the restaurant there, I
recommend the lamb. If not, try the Thai place around the corner.'
'Thank you. Shall we begin? Ready Alan?'
'Still ready.'
The picture on the screen at London showed the three astronauts venturing towards the archway, their
torch beams coming on and leaving streaks of light across the Martian landscape. These were five-minute
old pictures.
'I must ask you all to leave.'
The Doctor turned his attention away from the screen for just a second. The large young men wore black
wool suits that might have been tailor-made to make them look like secret service agents. There were
only three people left in the observation bay now: Bambera, Bernice and the Doctor himself. They'd sent
three men to get them out. Each guard picked a target and began to advance.
With a couple of seconds before the guard reached him, the Doctor turned back to the screen. The
astronaut with the camera followed his colleagues into the tunnel, and the picture became darker, more
grainy.
The Doctor was grabbed from behind, and pulled away from the window. The giant screen lurched out of
view. Benny was kicking and shouting, trying to wriggle free.
Bambera was more calm, although her voice was just as loud: 'I am a member of the United Nations
Intelligence Taskforce.'
'No sudden moves,' one of the men warned.
Page 5
The Doctor snatched another glance at the screen. The astronauts were still in the tunnel, there was more
static now than picture. His head snapped back to look at Bambera and her antagonist.
'I'm reaching for my ID,' Bambera said sternly. 'Believe me, son, if you want to play Top Trumps with
our security clearances you'll lose unless you're the Secretary-General herself.' When Bambera held up
her security card, the guard recoiled like a vampire at the sign of the cross.
The Doctor and Bernice weren't so lucky. They were now being dragged across the room to the door, and
both had found it impossible to break their captor's grip. The guard clasping the Doctor was paying
particularly little attention to how he held his charge, choosing to dig in his nails and shake him as he
moved.
'Stop this!' the Doctor yelled. Everyone in the room stopped and faced him.
'Winifred, I am the Doctor and this is my friend Bernice. We have to get down there, to Mission Control.
There might still be time to save those astronauts.'
'The Doctor? Ancelyn and Lethbridge-Stewart both said that you could change your - '
'Come on! We haven't time for this now!' he shouted.
'These people are with me,' Bambera informed the guards firmly. The one in charge shrugged, and let all
three out of the observation bay.
'Through here for mission control,' he ordered, opening up a door for them. All three piled through.
The door slammed shut and to their acute embarrassment the Doctor, Bernice and Bambera found
themselves standing in an empty alleyway on the wrong side of a fire door.
They quickly determined that it had been barricaded from the inside and that nothing short of an ATR
would open it.
'I can't believe we just fell for that,' the Doctor groaned.
'I need to get in touch with UNIT HQ,' Bambera snarled, plucking her radio from her breast pocket.
'Seabird to HQ. Seabird to HQ. Hey! Where are you going?'
The Doctor and Bernice were already running off.
Page 6
Staines found Lord Greyhaven as he stepped out of the Gents.
'That all went rather well didn't it, Teddy?'
Greyhaven smiled. 'Of course it did, dear boy. A marvellous speech, by the way.'
The Home Secretary grinned. When Lord Greyhaven praised you it was like getting a special mention
from the Headmaster at morning assembly. Staines decided to try for another positive response. 'It was
no more than you deserve, Teddy.'
This time he was rewarded with only a faint tic at the corner of the mouth. Walking side by side like this,
Staines was surprised to notice how short the former Minister for Science was.
'Are you well, Lord Greyhaven?'
'Everything is wonderful, Staines. There's an Englishman on Mars, the FT index is up ten percent on the
day and I've just been interviewed by a lovely American girl younger than my granddaughter who gave
me her telephone number.'
'Golly. What did you do?'
'I gave her my card and told her that I would be happy to help in any way that I could.'
'How do we top that? Lunch at the club?'
'No, Staines, I think that now I should get down to Mission Control and see if I can be of any help down
there. By all means come with me.'
Lethbridge-Stewart hadn't taken his eyes of Alexander Christian since he'd first seen him. They'd walked
down the footpath to the railway station in silence, and all the time the Brigadier had kept him covered
with his pistol. Christian was nervous of being spotted, but the streets were deserted: everyone was inside
watching the Mars Landing on television. About ten minutes ago there had been a rowdy cheer from
inside the pub on the corner. There was an Englishman on Mars again. The Brigadier couldn't let that
distract him. Much as he wanted to hear that the mission was a success, much as he wanted to hear the
first words of the astronauts as they were spoken, he couldn't predict what Christian's reaction would be
if he watched the coverage, so they couldn't risk a cafe or a pub.
Page 7
They sat down on a bench, catching their breath. Neither of them were young men any more, although
Christian had a ten year advantage over him.
'All right, Lex. Tell me.'
'They buried me, Alistair. They buried me for over twenty years. I'm not mad. I didn't kill my crew.'
'I saw the photographs.'
'Fakes. You didn't see the bodies, did you?'
'No, whyever should I have done? What about the radio messages?'
'What messages, old chap?'
'You ranting and raving. A radio ham picked one of them up and sold them to the American television
stations.'
There was a pause, the silence broken by the sound of a helicopter in the distance. Both men looked up at
it.
'The radio antenna was destroyed in the attack. I couldn't broadcast. They were fakes, too. That's a police
helicopter, Alistair, they're coming for me. We have to go.'
'We'll go when I say so. What do you mean attack?'
Christian turned to him, looked him square in the eye and without hesitating said, 'My crew were
murdered on Mars. Not by me.'
'Cosmonauts? Are you telling me now that the Russians got to Mars?'
'Worse.'
'The Americans?'
'Worse.'
'Give me a straight answer, please Lex.'
'My crew were killed by Martians.' Alexander Christian paused. 'I was the only survivor. I ran back to the
capsule and launched it, leaving behind the bodies of my crew. I radioed Earth, warned them about what
I'd seen. And when I got back I was arrested and thrown into a mental institution.' He took a deep breath.
'Do you know how difficult it is to get out of a mental ward when you have to convince two doctors that
you are sane, but you're too stubborn to let them hear what they want? I did see a Martian city. I've never
doubted it for twenty years, not once. Of course they think that I'm mad. You have to help me convince
the government that there are aliens out there. But you think I'm mad, too, don't you?' He looked up at
Alistair again, frowning. 'You don't think I'm mad. Why not?'
Page 8
'The British government has known about the existence of extraterrestrial life for over a century. Twenty
years ago I was the commanding officer of a United Nations task force that tried to contain alien
incursions. Describe these Martians,' the Brigadier ordered quietly.
The scientists at Mission Control watched helplessly as the picture and sound continued to break up. In
between the bursts of static and the shouts of the astronauts there were just impressions that couldn't be
assembled into a coherent narrative:
Hissing.
The sound of a visor cracking.
Red eyes, looming over them, burning like hot coals.
One of the torch beams snapping off.
A grunting, barking sound all around.
A claw like a giant crab's.
The camera lurching around.
Great slabs of green detaching themselves from the walls.
A woman's screams, cut short.
A pulsing sound, like air folding in on itself.
The picture and sound went dead.
David Staines tried to take a step back. He took a deep breath and turned to see what Lord Greyhaven
was doing. No-one else in the room was looking at Greyhaven, and why would they when they had so
much to do? The former Minister of Science was standing at the back of the Mission Control room, and
surely his expression would be the one of horror worn by everyone else in the room. But no. He stood
impassively, watching the screen as though it were some science fiction blockbuster. All his plans were
in ruins, but he stood there like a rock.
Page 9
The scientists were shouting their jargon:
'I've lost lifesigns on all four of them, sir.'
'The camera on the Lander just went off-line.'
'I've lost telemetry on the Lander.'
'Lander transponder dead.'
'They're dead, or else the signal is completely blocked.'
'There isn't anything else.'
'Re-establish contact with the Command Module,' Greyhaven suggested softly to the scientist who was
manning the post immediately in front of them. Before his government positions, Teddy had been a
captain of industry. Now all that authority was asserting itself.
The loudspeaker began crackling. Simultaneously, data that had been collected and stored for this
moment flooded across the screens. The main screen flickered into life and the picture quickly resolved
into the face of Astronaut Singh. He wore the standard issue plain blue coveralls, and looked worried. He
was in the Command Module, the part of the spacecraft that remained in orbit above Mars.
'London Control, this is Mars 97 Orbiter. Time 11:02 Zulu. Update: have not, repeat have not, been able
to re-establish contact with the Lander. This is not, repeat not, a technical fault. I have no transponder
response from Lander. Am forwarding all data collected from the surface. Please advise. Over.'
By the clock mounted on the wall, Staines worked out that the signal was already five minutes old.
Computers began chattering as more information from the Command Module reached them. Quickly, the
staff at Mission Control readied their response. It was quite a skill, coming up with the best possible
response, keeping the time-lag to an absolute minimum, but at the same time sending as much useful
information or instructions as possible. Within a minute they had transmitted their response.
'Mars Orbiter, this is London Control. Time 11:08 GMT. We confirm communications lost with surface.
Advise redeployment of survey satellites. Show us the surface of the Mare Sirenum. How are you all up
there? Over.'
Page 10
It was going to be a full ten minutes until the brief response. 'Well done, everyone,' Lord Greyhaven
congratulated the scientists, leaning awkwardly over one of the consoles to shake Theo Ogilvy's hand.
Something about that was bothering the Home Secretary until Theo Ogilvy stood up to make an
announcement, interrupting his train of thought.
'There is nothing more we can do for the time being, ladies and gentleman. If any of you need a coffee or
to stretch your legs then do it now.' A few of them left, but most stayed at their posts.
The Doctor bought a bunch of violets from the flower seller by Charing Cross tube station as Benny
studied the note he had been passed again.
'Do you know where Chesterton Road is, then?'
'No, but that lad knew that I'd be able to get to it in plenty of time.' The Doctor ducked into a newsagents,
Benny followed in his wake. Her ballgown was getting her funny looks now.
The Doctor had found the rack with the street maps and tourist guides on it.
'Ah, there we are.' He flicked through to the right page. Benny smiled wanly at the young Asian woman
at the till. 'And that's the nearest tube station.' He measured out the distance with his thumb. 'Only about
two minutes' walk away.'
Benny looked at him in his frock coat, eyes gleaming as he leafed through the A-Z, still clutching that
bunch of violets in his hand.
'Have you any idea why he wants to see you?' she asked tentatively.
'No,' the Doctor said happily, replacing the A-Z. 'Do you?'
'Well ... I was just wondering if he'd want me to come along.'
'What do you mean?'
They stepped out of the shop and out onto the busy pavement. The Doctor stood waiting for the answer,
forcing the pedestrians to flow around him.
Page 11
Benny collected her thoughts and began. 'Doctor, your new body is very ... well, I say very, that doesn't
mean that I personally think ... I mean, compared to the way you used to look, of course, but not
everything goes on looks. But when it comes to the initial, y'know ... ' She blushed, realising she might
be implicating herself here.
'Bernice, I don't understand what you are trying to say.'
'What I'm saying is that he might just want to see you because he fancies you.'
The Doctor looked blankly at her. 'Don't be ridiculous.'
'Who's being ridiculous?'
A big, fat man walking past glanced at her dress and smirked knowingly. Benny replied with one of her
more severe frowns.
The Home Secretary stepped over to Ogilvy.
'Anything I can do, Professor?'
Ogilvy smiled wanly, 'There's nothing any of us can do for the moment.'
Staines nodded and returned to Greyhaven's side.
'What do we do, Teddy?'
'We wait. All is not lost.'
'How can you say that? Those poor men.'
Suddenly, in front of them, there was a commotion.
'Sir! Signal from Mars.'
'Mars Orbiter to London Control. 11:14 Zulu. Roger that. Estimated one hour eighteen minutes to realign
camera. We're fine, Professor, don't worry. Will contact when satellites redeployed. Over.'
The sense of relief was tangible. It didn't last.
Screaming, and shouting.
'Airlocks!' one of the astronauts was yelling over the sound of rushing wind.
'Sir,' one of the scientists shouted from the next row of controls. 'The airlocks just opened of their own
accord. All the interior hatches have been blown.'
The Home Secretary was aghast. 'My god ... how?'
Greyhaven leant over the microphone and said calmly. 'Singh, this is at London. How did the airlocks
open? Over.'
Page 12
Ogilvy shook his head. 'There's a five minute delay, Lord Greyhaven, look at the clock.'
It was twenty-five past eleven. Singh had sent his message five minutes ago. Greyhaven's question
wouldn't arrive until half past. It had already happened.
'Can we close the airlocks from here?'
Theo Ogilvy ran over to one of the control panels, the one just in front of where Staines and Greyhaven
had been standing all this time. 'The airlock override is here, but it will be five minutes before ... ' he
stabbed the control, because it was the only thing that he could do.
Staines looked up to see Singh staring into the camera, his clothes whipping as the air from the cabin was
blown out past him.
'London,' he croaked, trying to suck air into his lungs, 'There's nothing - '
He lost his grip, and was hurled backwards in a storm of loose items: plastic cups, clipboards, sheets of
paper. There were no signs of the other three astronauts.
'I've lost lifesigns from the Command Module.'
'Air pressure zero.'
There was absolute silence at mission control.
'It's over,' the Home Secretary whispered.
'No,' Greyhaven said, determined. 'We continue.'
'How?'
'We continue,' he repeated firmly.
Eve opened up the door to their hotel room with her keycard. With all the interviews and other footage in
the can, they'd come back to the hotel, dropped the tapes off and had lunch - lamb, as Lord Greyhaven
had suggested. That afternoon they would take a taxi over to the editing suite they leased from one of the
satellite stations based in Docklands and edit everything into shape. One advantage of working in
England was that you could spend all day working on the report for the lunchtime news.
'I'm going to get this make-up off and have a shower,' Eve announced, holding the door open for Alan.
He thanked her.
Page 13
He and Eve had been working together for a couple of years, and this wasn't the first time that the
cheapskate network had put them up in the same room. At least it was a twin room this time, and quite a
large one. There was a chance for some privacy: not like that guest house in Berlin. It had always been
awkward for Alan - he was a married man, and a pretty shy one at that. Alan never held anything back
from his wife Melanie - he'd told her about the logistics of working abroad for a network who's foreign
affairs desk was still trying to save money after spending so much covering the Gulf War. Melanie knew
that it was part of her husband's job description to spend a lot of time alone in close quarters with his
reporter.
'Unzip me, would you?' Alan obliged, and Eve stepped out of her dress.
She had danced semi-professionally while was at college and was used to getting undressed in front of
other people. More than that, she had nothing to worry about when she did. Back home, Melanie read
magazines full of pictures of thin, toned women and articles saying that she shouldn't worry because not
everyone could look like a model. Melanie was good-looking, but she was a thirty-seven year old
waitress with three kids. Eve was twenty-five with a hundred thousand dollars in the bank, a personal
trainer and membership of a gym. When Alan was at home, he lay in bed with Melanie, telling his wife
that she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen, but they both knew it wasn't true.
The funny thing was, Eve was more jealous of Melanie than the other way around. When they'd covered
some event at EuroDisney, Alan and Eve had shared a double bed thanks to another booking error.
They'd got drunk and had a big heart to heart. If nothing else it proved that their relationship was going to
stay Platonic no matter what. Eve had told Alan that she envied him his wife, she didn't have anyone
back home. Whenever she met someone now, she could never be sure whether they wanted her or her
fame. So she stayed lonely.
Eve was standing there in that lace underwear she'd paid a thousand dollars for in Paris. Alan was the
only person who had ever seen her in it.
Page 14
'Alan ... ' she warned.
He frowned and looked around the room.
They had been burgled, by experts. They were both good at spotting the signs. As a matter of routine Eve
left little bits of sticky tape on doors and on her suitcases to see if they'd been tampered with, and she was
obsessive about noting exactly where she'd left her stuff. Over the years, Alan had begun to share this
paranoia - it wasn't just mad dictators who didn't want their dirty little secrets exposed. In their time,
Alan had had material stolen by the owners of a rat-infested old peoples' home and even by the manager
of a fast-food restaurant who paid below minimum wage.
He was already checking his videotapes. 'Someone's been here, but they've not taken anything,' he
announced. The combination on the case had been altered, it had shifted slightly.
'The tapes could have been wiped.'
He shook his head. 'It's a hell of a lot easier to take them or smash them up. I'll check, though.'
Eve was looking through her notes and clippings. They'd picked the lock of her document wallet, but
they hadn't removed a single disk or piece of paper.
'This is depressing,' Eve moaned.
'Why?'
'Nothing's been taken. Someone thought we were on to them, so they burgled our room, but they couldn't
find a single thing. They didn't even trash the place to warn us off.'
Eve slumped on the bed.
Chesterton Road was a five-storey Georgian terrace that a hundred and fifty years ago would have been a
row of town houses for affluent families. Since then times had changed and the rich had gone elsewhere -
the buildings had been converted into flats, and regular maintenance had fallen by the wayside. Now the
street had a vibrancy to it that the Victorians would have frowned on - the doors were painted in a
rainbow or different colours, and hanging baskets and bright pots were scattered around, brightening the
place up even more.
Page 15
The Doctor and Bernice had walked uphill from the tube station and quickly located the right road.
Finding the green door after that was simple enough - it was about halfway along the street. If it hadn't
been lunch time there would be builders up on the roof, dropping slates down the big plastic chute into a
yellow skip. The Doctor rang the doorbell.
The Doctor checked his watch. They were two minutes early.
The intercom buzzed. 'Come up. Flat Two,' a gruff voice told them.
The door unbolted itself. The hallway inside was unfurnished. Bernice followed him in and closed the
door behind her.
'Upstairs,' she told him.
The Doctor climbed the stairs, two at a time. Bernice lagged behind. 'Do try to keep up,' he called down
to her.
The door to Flat Two was at the top of the second flight of stairs. The door was already ajar. He walked
in, brandishing his bunch of violets.
'Oh, at least knock,' he heard Bernice plead as she reached the top of the stairs.
The flat was small. Three rooms and a little hallway linking them.
First, the Doctor stepped into the kitchen. There was a neat little breakfast bar as well as a gas cooker and
a big fridge-freezer. On the fridge door there were half a dozen photos and a couple of postcards. Happy
smiling couples in a park. The Doctor moved aside to let the newly-arrived Bernice examine the pictures.
'That's him,' she said, pointing.
'Yes, I know,' the Doctor said impatiently. His fingers found something. A packet full of gold rings. He
pressed one of them up to the polythene bag, and was disappointed to discover that they were just plastic.
'Curtain rings,' Bernice scowled.
'They might be important. Or they could come in useful.'
Bernice sighed. 'I suppose if we had to break into anywhere disguised as interior decorators ... '
The Doctor had pocketed the bag and had moved on to the next thing.
Page 16
The door to the flat slammed shut behind them. Bernice looked worried by that, so he assured her that it
had just been a gust of wind.
They went through into the front room, a combined bed/sitting room. A computer sat on a big desk in the
corner, there was a small bookcase full of chunky computer manuals and square-bound magazines. A
couple of posters were hanging there: a detail from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel showing God and
Adam and a black and white picture of Kermit the Frog in Calvin Klein underpants.
A sofa bed lay unfurled along one wall, a duvet with an Op-art pattern was arranged over it. The body of
the young man who had passed the note to the Doctor lay half-in and half-out of the bed. His eyes were
closed. The Doctor gently prised out the knife that had killed him, a single blow between the ribs to the
heart.
Behind him, Bernice swore under her breath and began searching the room.
'There's a man dead here, Bernice,' the Doctor reprimanded her.
'And your fingerprints are now all over the murder weapon,' she replied, more than a hint of
apprehension in her voice. She found a card with a magnetic strip and a photograph. 'His name was
Timothy Todd, and he worked at the Space Centre at Devesham.'
The Doctor didn't look up. The man was so young, he couldn't long be out of university. 'A life has been
taken here. He died less than five minutes ago. The murderer was still here when we rang the doorbell.
That was his voice we heard.'
Bernice was opening up a plastic box full of computer disks. 'He must have been a programmer at the
Space Centre.' Every single disk had been snapped in two then put back in the box.
'We have to tell the police,' the Doctor protested.
The sound of sirens was dopplering along the main street.
'Don't you see, Doctor? Someone's already told them. We've been set up. He worked at Space Centre,
and he wanted to tell us something.'
Page 17
'He already has,' the Doctor corrected her, 'Violets.'
'Very useful,' Bernice answered as she began hunting through the bookcase. 'Every cassette has been
smashed, too.' She held up the tangled remains of Twang: More Than Thirty Years of John Smith and the
Common Men.
'Commander Michaels said that there was a beautiful violet sky. Then five minutes later he said
Condition violet should now be in place, you've had your ten minutes.'
Bernice stopped in her tracks. 'A code phrase?'
The Doctor nodded. 'Telling Mission Control to cut the live feed because there was a problem that they
couldn't tell the TV audience about.'
The Doctor stepped over to the window, laying the knife down on the desk. The sirens had stopped,
which meant that the police had arrived. He narrowed his eyes. At the end of the street a patrol car had
been parked behind a van, in an attempt to obscure it. Two uniformed officers, a PC and sergeant were
making their way down this side of the street, again trying to keep out of view. There was no sign of any
other police activity. They are responding to a 999 call.
Bernice was hunched over the magazine rack. 'But Tim passed you the note before then. It was while we
were waiting for the astronauts to come out.'
'Yes,' the Doctor declared triumphantly. 'He knew that there was going to be a problem before Michaels
did.'
'Who's Who and What's That?' Bernice gasped.
'Where?' the Doctor asked.
'No. It's a fanzine - for UFO-spotters and conspiracy theorists. I've seen copies of this at my dad's place.
It's gone upmarket since 1983. Look, glossy paper and a colour cover.' She pulled it out of the magazine
rack. The Doctor twisted his head to take a look at the cover. There was a photograph of a thundercloud
over a ruined tower, and a bold caption: 'Storms Over Avallion: Exclusive Photos from Carbury'. Bernice
held the magazine upright so that the Doctor could get a better look. Two computer disks plopped out.
One storey below them, the front door crashed open.
The Doctor dropped the violets, scooped up both the disks and pushed Bernice towards the door. 'Come
on!'
Page 18
They reached the door just seconds before the police did. Vital seconds. Without needing to be prompted,
Bernice dived the other way, hurtling up the next flight of stairs. The police were still too startled to react
as the Doctor ran past them. They quickly regained their wits, and now one was shouting at them to stop,
the other was calling for assistance.
Bernice had reached the end of the next landing, and she continued to climb. The Doctor's mind raced as
he wondered what to do when they reached the top. If there was a firehose ...
The policeman chasing them was getting out of breath. The other had stayed behind to check the flat.
Ahead of him, as she reached the next staircase, Bernice was also slowing. There were more sirens
outside: a police inspector arriving with a couple of colleagues, possibly also an ambulance. Within ten
minutes vanloads of uniformed men would surround the place.
They reached the top landing. It was identical to all the others, except that the door to the flats was
missing. Bernice ducked inside and the Doctor followed, the policemen behind swiping at him.
They were in roofspace, or would be if there was a roof. Skeletal wood beams arched over them, the road
was fifty feet below. This being London there weren't any convenient flat roofs, everything sloped at an
alarming angle. Bernice hopped from duckboard to duckboard with the assurance of someone who hadn't
thought through what she was doing. The Doctor followed her, trying to match her grace.
The policeman hesitated for the first time. 'Come down,' he called after them. He was staying firmly
inside.
Bernice had reached the waste disposal chute.
'That's how we get down!' In one fluid movement she grabbed the edge of the chute, pulled her legs up
and pushed herself down. The Doctor allowed her a couple of seconds, before following.
The Doctor bounced from the sides of the chute.
Page 19
The surface was rough, composed of bucket-like segments. It was meant for bricks to drop down, not
people, and whoever had designed it had clearly not worried too much about the state of the bricks at the
end of the process.
The Doctor crashed into a mattress on top of a half-full skip, narrowly avoiding his companion.
Bernice groaned, pulling her dress back into a more decorous shape. Her hat had disappeared at some
point and she was covered in bruises and grazes.
The Doctor produced a handkerchief and dusted her down. 'Are you all right?'
She rubbed her head, nodding. 'That'll teach me to come up with escape plans when I've spent the
morning drinking champagne.'
The Doctor helped her upright. 'We were lucky there was a mattress.'
'No we weren't,' Bernice said enigmatically.
A huge smile crossed the Doctor's face. 'The murderer ... the real murderer escaped this way. He would
have passed us on the stairs otherwise. When did you work that out?'
'Somewhere between the third and second storey.'
He helped her clamber up and over the side of the skip. The Doctor managed to get out under his own
steam. Bernice was uninjured, and had no difficulty running. They walked straight past three empty
police cars.
'We need to find a computer to read these disks,' Bernice said.
'Yes, in good time,' the Doctor replied. 'First of all, you need to change out of that dress.'
Bernice raised an eyebrow. 'Why?'
The Doctor clutched the lapels of his frock coat. 'My dear Bernice, you're far too conspicuous in that
outfit.'
The Dying Days - Chapter Five
Page 1
The World At One
'This is the World at One, I'm James Naughtie. The headlines: I'm on the surface chaps. The Mars 97
mission has reached the Red Planet. Much more on that in a moment. On a related but far less happy
note, it has just been announced that the last Mars astronaut, Colonel Alexander Christian has escaped his
high security prison and is on the loose in Kent. Police say that he is believed to be in the Canterbury
area, and warn members of the public not to approach him, as he is armed and dangerous. Twenty years
ago, Lex Christian savagely murdered his crew on the return journey from Mars with an axe. Police are
ruling out the possibility that he was responsible for the death of Space Centre technician Timothy Todd,
23, who was found stabbed to death at his flat in South West London. They want to question a couple in
their thirties who were in the area at the time.'
'What is the world coming to?' Alexander Christian sighed, stoking his pipe. They were sitting in the
spacious lounge of Lethbridge-Stewart's house in Pyecombe. The Brig's wife was in the kitchen making a
pot of tea and a spot of lunch. They'd been listening to the Test Series, but Lethbridge-Stewart wanted to
check the news.
'They can't have any trace of you, Lex,' the Brigadier told him. 'That means that we can concentrate on
the matter in hand. Now, what you encountered sounds very much like an Ice Warrior to me.'
Page 2
Christian shifted in his sofa. The idea that Alistair had left the Scots Guards to fight aliens took a little
getting used to. He'd heard of UNIT, of course, back when he was in the Space Service, but had always
assumed it was a peacekeeping force or something of the sort. 'What's an Ice Warrior, then?'
'That's what Miss Grant called them.'
'Josephine Grant?'
'That's right. She was on my staff for a couple of years. Her uncle worked for the UN.'
'Good heavens, it's a small world. I knew her when she was doing her A-Levels. I think she blames me
for failing General Science.'
Doris Lethbridge-Stewart came in with a tray piled high with sandwiches. 'Talking about the good old
days again, Alistair?' She was younger than her husband, but just as self-assured.
'You have a lovely pad here,' Christian told them, 'I didn't think that a Brigadier's pension would run to
this.'
'That's a sore point,' Doris said sweetly. 'If they'd promoted him to General when he retired like they
usually would have done, it would be over ten grand more.'
'Spoken like a true economist,' Alistair chuckled. 'You see, Lex, my secret is out: I'm a kept man. Doris
here inherited the place from an aunt, and her salary more than looks after the both of us.'
'I'm not working today because of the Mars Day holiday,' she explained. 'I'll probably put a couple of
hours in with the laptop this afternoon, though.'
Christian smiled, pretending he understood what she was talking about.
'Whyever weren't you promoted?' Christian asked.
'Politics,' the Brigadier replied curtly. 'Now, let's get back to these Ice Warriors, shall we?'
Christian looked over to Doris. 'Is she ... ?'
Page 3
'Am I security cleared?' Doris interjected, 'No, but I don't need to be. Once you've heard one story about
how UNIT didn't know what was going on until the Doctor turned up and saved the day you've heard
them all.'
The Brig harrumphed. 'Actually, Doris, we did manage by ourselves more times than not. The Doctor
wasn't around when the Bandrils tried to destroy the ozone layer, was he?'
'No dear.' Clearly this was another sore nerve.
'We managed to beat the Drahvins without him, didn't we?'
'Yes dear, so you've said.'
'Well, then, there you go.'
'I'll just be in the study,' she said sweetly, kissing him on the temple. She took her mug and disappeared
upstairs.
'Who is this Doctor, then?' Christian asked.
'He was my Scientific Advisor back in the seventies,' the Brigadier explained. 'He had ... particular
expertise in the field of alien life forms. Miss Grant was his assistant for a short while.'
Christian had worked it out. 'So, she found out about the Martians while she was working with this
boffin.'
'Yes that's right. Now, UNIT never encountered these chaps, but the Doctor and Miss Grant did on their
travels. I always used to debrief her when she returned. Something to do with the planet Paladin, as I
recall. It sticks in the memory because I remember Miss Grant telling me that at first the Doctor thought
that these Ice Warriors were up to no good, but in the end it turned out they were on the side of the
angels. It was usually the other way round.'
Christian shook his head. 'I've seen the fiends, Alistair. They are savage creatures, warlike. We infiltrated
one of their cities - everything there is run like a barracks. As far as I could gather, these Martians were
fighting a rival group. You should see their weapons and what they can do with them.'
The Brigadier took a swig of tea. 'It makes you wonder what the Martians would make of it if they
landed in Bosnia. Or Belfast, for that matter.'
Page 4
The Doctor smiled benignly at Sal, the shop assistant at the boutique. The radio news was being piped
out of the shop's PA system, but the young woman wasn't paying attention to it as the detailed
descriptions of the two murder suspects were read out, right down to Bernice's ballgown.
'Are you going to be much longer?' the Doctor asked his companion.
'I'm done now,' the voice came from behind the changing room curtain. It swished back to reveal Bernice
in a pair of jeans and a bright orange polo-neck shirt.
'Not terrifically original, but stick to what you know, that's what I say. I'll wear these now, but I'll need a
bag for my old stuff,' she informed the assistant, handing over the bar tags.
'OK. How will you be paying?'
'Doctor ... '
The Doctor rummaged in his pockets and produced the money.
Bernice was hovering over the jewellery rack. 'Hey, it's ages since I wore these.' She tossed a big pair of
gold hoop earrings onto the counter. 'These, too, please.'
The Doctor took out the last of his money.
Page 5
Bernice put the earrings on as they walked out of the shop. The Doctor took the bag with the ballgown in
it. 'Are you sure we can't get back to the TARDIS?' she asked.
The Doctor shook his head. 'It's right outside the National Space Museum. We'd never get across the
Square without being spotted. We'll have to find a computer elsewhere.'
She took the bag back from him. 'Getting access to one can't be that difficult, even in 1997.'
The Doctor drummed his fingers over his mouth. 'No, no, not at all. The trouble is that we don't know
how long we'll need to study the data. We need somewhere like a library or a university.'
'How about an Internet Cafe?' Bernice suggested, from halfway across the street. She was heading to a
shop with a bright neon sign flashing on and off.
'A what?' the Doctor asked, following her across.
He stepped into what would have been an ordinary cafe, except for the personal computer sitting on each
table. The place was about half-full. Its proprietor, an overweight little man, stood behind a gleaming
counter, his attention occupied by the big wall-mounted television. The Doctor followed his gaze,
fascinated by what he saw on the screen. A man in odd clothes and a woman in a tailored suit were
standing in an American street. He was trying to convince her that he was a time traveller and that in the
next twenty-four hours the world would come to an end. She thought he was mad.
Page 6
'What is that?' the Doctor asked, a little worried. The time traveller seemed sincere enough.
'Twelve Monkeys,' the cafe owner said. 'Cool film. It's just come out on sell-through. How can I help?'
'We'd like a couple of cups of tea and access to a computer terminal.'
'Sure.' He passed over the price list. 'Have you surfed the net before?'
'Not like this, no.' The Doctor admitted, searching his pockets. 'I've only got ten pence,' he announced.
The cafe owner shrugged. 'Looks like you won't be losing your net virginity this afternoon, then.' He
turned his attention back to the movie.
'We don't have money?' Bernice asked, aghast.
'We spent it all on your clothes.'
'You should have said.'
The proprietor glared at them. 'If you can't pay, could you at least keep quiet? This is a good bit.'
'If you'll excuse us one moment,' the Doctor said, smiling. He took his companion to one side. 'Couldn't
you ... persuade him?'
'How?' Bernice scowled.
'Well, you're not a little girl anymore...'
'I beg your pardon?' she snapped, before remembering the urgency of the situation. She bit her lip. 'OK.'
Bernice leant forward, and flashed her eyes at the proprietor, who dragged himself away from his movie.
'I don't have any money, but I think I have something you might find of interest.' She lent forward and
whispered into his ear, before pulling back. 'Do you want that?' Bernice asked softly.
'If you'll do that for me,' the fat little man said in all seriousness, 'then you can have as much connect
time as you want, and free cappuccinos.'
Page 7
'I'm on the surface, chaps'. Two other astronauts followed him out, and they spent some time bouncing
around, getting used to the idea that they were on an alien planet. 'Keep that camera pointing that way,
Bob. There's a beautiful violet sky,'
Eve yawned. After the tenth time, even men on Mars lost their novelty value. 'Top the report with it.'
'Yeah, you're right,' Alan conceded, stabbing the pause button. 'Then establishing shots of the museum.
Your commentary over that leading to the interview with the Mission Controller ... '
'Theo Ogilvy.'
'Ogilvy, that's it. Cut out his waffle, concentrate on the technical stuff, then finish with Greyhaven.'
'No, no,' Eve objected, 'Finish on me updating the progress - we want it to be current. I'll phone the office
at the Space Centre and get the latest news just before we do the uplink.'
Alan rewound the tape. 'Any word on where we're going next?'
'Kyle wanted me to investigate the Loch Ness Monster.'
'I hope you told him to - '
'I did, Alan, don't worry. I'm not get lumbered with all that Real-life X Files crap. I convinced him that
we should do a feature on Lord Greyhaven.'
Alan looked up, a smirk on his face. 'Did you indeed?'
'The guy's a national hero here, and he's pretty big back in the States, too. Remember him on Nightline?
He lives in a stately home, but he's a brilliant scientist and a billionaire businessman. Good pictures,
topical. People need heroes nowadays.'
'Wow, yeah, he's sort of a cross between Batman and Alfred the butler. And luckily he gave you the
number for that flashing red phone of his.'
'That too,' she laughed, 'and don't even think of bringing the Bat-Pole into the conversation right now.
We'll get this done, then check the file on Greyhaven, see what we can find.'
'Sure. Whatever.' Alan turned back to the screen.
Page 8
'Bernice, I don't think that man has ever been so happy in his life.' The Doctor said as he typed in the
guest log-in.
'He's got Jason to thank for the last half hour.' Benny slotted the first disk into the drive.
'Really?' The program manager came up. The Doctor double-clicked on the right icon.
'Oh yes, I did all sorts of things with Jason that I'd never have dreamt of doing before. Going to an allnight
Star Trek movie festival was one of them. I'm amazed that I could remember so much about the
plots of the ninth and tenth films. We might not have any money, but that's the sort of information money
can't buy. I've not just altered the web of time or anything, have I?'
'I wouldn't have thought so,' the Doctor murmured. 'And two-thirds of the way through the tenth film ... '
Benny nodded. 'Yes. It's very poignant. They knew it was his last one, you see. They could get away with
all sorts of stuff.'
Pictures and text scrolled across the screen. Benny could tell straight away that it was a map of Mars.
The information was gradually becoming more detailed. Finally the Mission Badge flashed up onto the
screen, along with a caption: SEALED ORDERS. MISSION DIRECTIVES. APPROVED 2/1/97.
A huge smile spread across the Doctor's face. 'These are satellite photos taken by Mariner and the Hubble
Telescope of the Martian surface. This shows the landing zone and the parameters of the geological
survey.' The picture zoomed in on the Mare Sirenum. 'Timothy Todd knew that there was going to be
trouble. So he must have already known about the archway.'
They scanned the screen for a minute or so, eventually agreeing where the arch would be located. There
was no sign of it on the pictures.
Page 9
'How well do you know that area, Bernice?'
Benny shrugged. 'It was ten years ago, and I was underground a lot of the time.'
'What about the War?'
Ninety years from now, Earth and Mars would fight the Thousand Day War. Bernice had been born in
the twenty-sixth century, and by then the War was ancient history. It was still infamous for its particular
brand of brutality: millions of human troops over-ran Mars, driving the natives to the brink of extinction
with weapons that had long been banned on Earth. 'Fighting was mostly concentrated around Olympus
Mons - where Jackson City is now. There weren't any active nests under the Mare Sirenum, and it was on
the wrong side of the Vallis Marineris, so it escaped nuclear attack. That's one of the reasons our
expedition went there.'
The Doctor pointed at the monitor. 'So the terrain is much the same in the twentieth and twenty-sixth
centuries. The Lander is there. They've just gone underground. So where did they end up? Are they close
to where your expedition went?'
Benny nodded. 'They are right in the heart of the Fields of the Dead. Virtually every cavern there has a
tomb in it.'
'I thought the Martian Lords were cremated on funeral pyres.'
'Funeral customs change. At one point Marshals were entombed in insulated pyramids. It was a status
symbol: water is rare on Mars. The Marshals were frozen inside coffin-sized blocks of ice, then sealed
into the crystal spires.'
'So water is a sign of material wealth on Mars. Like the Pharaohs surrounding their mummies with gold?'
'Exactly the same, and the ritual has the same origin.'
'Yes.' The Doctor's eyes were shut as he tried to assemble all the information. Finally, they snapped open
and the Doctor swiftly slipped the second disk into the drive.
'Timothy knew there was going to be trouble, but there aren't any clues on that first disk. So he left us
two disks.'
The Mission Badge flashed up, along with the caption: SEALED ORDERS. MISSION DIRECTIVES.
APPROVED 12/12/96.
'The same information?' Benny asked.
'This was completed three weeks before,' the Doctor muttered. His eyes narrowed. 'More than that: look,
originally the Lander was going to go to the Sinus Sabaeus.'
Page 10
Benny leant over, struggling to remember her Martian geography. 'That's thousands of kilometres away
from the Mare Sirenum. I don't know much about it, they aren't of any archaeological interest, in my time
it's one big retirement village. The nearest I ever went was the casinoplex at Deucalionis.'
The Doctor rubbed his chin. 'So the landing site was changed, just before the launch, and the astronauts
were ordered away from an unpopulated area right into the heart of one jam-packed with subterranean
Martian buildings.'
'Wait a minute,' Benny objected, 'We didn't know about the Fields of Death until we got there in 2565, so
there's no way anyone in 1997 could know about them.'
The Doctor looked at her. 'You'd think that, wouldn't you? It's something of a coincidence, though.'
'Are you saying that the astronauts knew they would find the tombs?'
The Doctor frowned. 'No. Commander Michaels was genuinely surprised. But someone at Space Centre
knew what was going on. Someone who uncovered evidence of Martian civilisation on the Mare Sirenum
twenty years ago. They have kept that information secret for a generation. Whoever it is is prepared to
kill to keep it a secret. They killed the man who gave us these disks, and all he seems to know is that the
landing site was changed. We have to tell the authorities.'
Benny took a deep breath. 'No-one's going to listen to us while we're murder suspects. I get the feeling
that if we end up in a police cell we won't get to call our lawyers for a very long time.'
The Doctor leapt from his seat, flinging his chair back. 'We can call UNIT!' he shouted.
Benny was on her feet, her finger over her mouth. 'UNIT the top secret organisation?' she whispered.
The Doctor looked crestfallen. 'Yes. They'll have the facilities to analyse the soil samples, too. I think
we're getting going to the bottom of this.'
Page 11
There was a pay phone tucked away in the corner of the cafe. They stepped up to it. The Doctor fished
out his 10p piece and lifted the handset. He paused. 'There's one problem: I don't know their number.'
Benny rolled her eyes.
'Well, I can't just call directory enquiries, can I?' the Doctor retorted, as if it was her fault. 'No-one's
meant to know that they exist.'
'There must be someone you can call.'
The Doctor stared wildly for a moment, then clicked his fingers. 'Of course, yes. Why didn't I think of
him earlier? Hold out your hands.'
Benny did as he asked. The Doctor was rummaging through his pockets and producing his usual
assortment of junk: a cricket ball, an elephant feather, a bag of kola nuts, a big ball of string, a piece of
the True Cross, even a dog whistle. He handed everything but the string to Benny. Finally he found what
he was searching for: a piece of vellum. On the front was a letter written in the Doctor's handwriting. A
couple of strings of numbers and characters were scrawled in felt-tip on the back.
The Doctor dialled the first of the numbers.
Before the first ring, Benny thought of something and quickly cut the connection.
'Bernice!' the Doctor cried.
'We can't phone him,' Benny insisted. 'He used to be a senior military man, with access to the deepest,
darkest secrets of the twentieth century. Hell, there are things that he saw that still haven't been
declassified in my time.'
The Doctor frowned. 'I know that. I was there, too. That's why we're phoning him.'
'So don't you think there's a good chance that his line will be tapped?'
The Doctor's shoulders had slumped, like a child who'd just been told he couldn't have an ice cream.
'Yes,' he conceded.
'I'm sorry, but we can't get in touch with him. They've seen both of us. We can't risk implicating him.
They could kill him.'
Suddenly the Doctor's sad eyes were wide open. 'The other number, what a stroke of luck!'
He dashed across the room and flopped in front of an unused terminal, straightening out the parchment.
He began tapping out the number.
Page 12
'Yes, Prime Minister. No, everything is running very smoothly in your absence. Everything is going to
plan. How are our American cousins? Excellent. Talk to you tomorrow. Goodbye.'
Staines passed the handset to his PPS, who replaced it. 'That was the Prime Minister.'
'Yes, Home Secretary,' the civil servant replied understandingly.
'Just checking up to make sure you were running his country properly?' the gruff-voiced man in the
trench coat asked. He and his colleague had arrived halfway through the conversation. He was holding
the samples case.
Staines grimaced. 'Something like that, yes. As you heard, I told him that everything was going to plan.'
All four men in the room laughed.
'Won't NASA be monitoring the transmissions from Mars?' the PPS asked. 'They'll know about the
Lander.'
The gruff-voiced man chuckled. 'Over the years, we've got the hang of jamming the lads at Cape
Canaveral. They'll be getting signals that they think are from Mars.'
'Frightfully advanced technology, Simon,' Staines assured him.
'Actually, Home Secretary, the technology's been around since the seventies. We developed it at the time
of the Viking missions and it's stood us in good stead since then. Remember the Mars Observer a couple
of years ago?'
Staines didn't. 'The upshot is that the Americans don't know about what happened to either the Lander or
the Orbiter.'
'The Orbiter?' the gruff-voiced man said.
'Yes, there was a terrible accident with the airlocks. The whole crew was killed.'
The other man shifted uncomfortably. 'But the plan was to - '
Page 13
'It was an accident,' the Home Secretary snapped. 'I regret losing any more astronauts than we had to, and
I appreciate that it makes things more complicated. I also regret having Alexander Christian running
around the country terrorising people. The plan will still go ahead.'
'But without the Martian artefacts - '
'But we have come too far to stop now. The alien technology would have been nice, it would have cut
some corners, but we can still achieve our objectives without them.'
The Home Secretary took the sample case from the big man and checked it.
'Good work.' He took a couple of the test tubes and put them in his breast pocket.
'Is there any sign of Christian?' the other man asked.
'Not yet, no,' the Home Secretary replied, more than a hint of irritation in his voice. 'He could be a
problem. And after all that trouble we've gone to prevent any leaks from the Space Centre.'
'He's too late to do anything now,' the gruff-voiced man grunted. 'Who can stop us now?'
Bambera slit open the seal on file CCC and began to read. The sensitivity of the document meant that she
was sitting in the 'reading room' of the UNIT HQ records department and that she had been searched to
make sure she wasn't carrying a pen or a camera. She was the only person in the building, perhaps in the
country, with the security clearance to read it, so she couldn't get some eager young corporal to do this
damn research job for her. The windowless room was little bigger than a cupboard, and was bare apart
from a desk and wooden chair that scraped the floor whenever it moved.
The file was quite a fat one compared with the few others that Bambera had read from the seventies.
UNIT had been in joint charge of security at the old Space Centre with the Space Security Department at
the time of some flap. It took her an hour to establish that one of the early Mars Probes had made contact
with an intelligent species on the surface of Mars. Initially, there was something of a misunderstanding,
and the BEMs had kidnapped three human astronauts, but after that there had been peaceful contact with
them. The business had Lethbridge-Stewart and the Doctor's fingers all over it.
Page 14
The aliens returned to their own star system.
They weren't from Mars, then? Bambera found the 'Know Your Enemy' summary.
Subject: Name Unknown.
Planet of Origin: Unknown
Social Structure: Unknown
History: Unknown
There wasn't a photograph or even an artist's impression.
Bambera eventually found the threat assessment.
The Ambassadors are thousands of years more advanced than us. It was clear at our last
meeting that they are quite capable of destroying all life on this planet, but they chose not
to on that occasion. A small team of academics and scientists have made some cultural
exchanges with the Ambassadors. One of the few things the team has determined is that
the Ambassadors feel that our race is not ready to share the secrets of their advanced
science. Further contact is limited by the fact that the Ambassadors are a plutonium-based
lifeform. Any direct physical contact with them is lethal to human life. The team's opinion
is that we can offer no effective defence against the Ambassadors if they turn hostile. Their
ships are several miles long and capable of projecting immeasurably powerful beams of
energy.
Something was appended to the document.
3/6/80. Transmission received from the Ambassadors. 'Our survey is complete. We are
leaving this solar system.' Astronomers report a large object leaving Martian orbit for
interstellar space at great speed.
There had been no contact with them since then.
Brigadier Bambera realised that she had wasted the last three hours of her life.
Page 15
Eve had just phoned Mission Control, and apparently they had not demonstrated any of that British
politeness. As she told Alan, it was a complete change of policy since this morning, when the Brits had
bent over backwards for the news crews - helping to arrange interviews, issuing all the journos with a
glossy press pack. Alan had got hold of mugs, T-shirts and even a couple of model kits for his kids.
When it had come to interviews and the press conference, they'd answered every question with a handy
soundbite.
But when Eve had phoned them to ask for a mission update, the woman at the other end simply read out
a curt pre-prepared statement that said nothing except about the landing itself. When Eve had tried to
press the point, the woman at the National Space Museum had put the phone down on her.
Alan wasn't too worried: it had saved him a job - their report was now complete, without the need to tape
an update. It would be ready for the satellite uplink in five minutes.
Eve was on the phone to Lord Greyhaven, chatting to him as if they were old High School pals. The way
she was twirling the cord of the phone around her finger only made her look more like an excited
schoolgirl. Finally, she put the phone down and hurried over.
'I have to love you and leave you. Lord Greyhaven wants to talk to me about this feature.' She paused for
effect. 'Over dinner.'
'Hey, I'll come along, discuss some shots with him,' he joked.
'You'll be OK, won't you?' she asked, with a serious expression on her face.
'Sure - I'm sure I'll survive on my own here, even if there are only five TV channels. I might check out
that Thai place round the corner from the hotel, I hear it's real good.'
Page 16
'Don't wait up!' she called, scooping up her handbag and almost running out the door. She almost
bumped into an unkempt young man who sauntered into the suite. He took Alan by the hand.
'American news network, right?'
'Yeah, hi.' Alan stood up.
'My name's Oswald. Have you noticed yet?'
'Noticed what?'
'Run the VT. Look closely this time.'
Alan shrugged and played back the report again. As the astronauts began jumping around the surface,
something caught his eye. He paused the picture and stared at the screen.
'It can't be ...'
'Yes it can.'
Alan switched on the printer and ran off a screen grab.
'Alistair, darling, you have a new email message.'
The Brigadier brightened. 'I'll be right there,' he called up the stairs. 'Be back in a moment,' he told
Christian.
Lethbridge-Stewart climbed the stairs, a little more stiffly than once he would have, and found Doris
sitting in her study, surrounded by her bookcases. The light in here was excellent, and that was important
when she spent so long staring at that computer screen. The sun shone through her hair, and she looked
lovely. The mood was broken somewhat by the strains of the Neighbours theme tune coming from the
little portable set that Doris kept up here.
He clapped his hands together. 'Where's my message then, Doris?' His wife might get a dozen messages a
day from her office, other companies and fellow dwellers on the Internet, but the Brigadier considered
himself fortunate if he got one message a week.
Doris got out of her seat for him. 'In your folder, as always.'
'Right you are.' He reached out for the mouse and used it to move the arrow on the screen until it was
over the right place. He pressed the little button on top of the mouse.
'Double-click,' Doris prompted.
'I know,' the Brigadier said irritably, correcting his mistake. It was a little awkward with his hands.
Page 17
Page 18
The message came up. Alistair might have gradually been losing his other faculties, but his eyesight was
still pin-sharp.
' Encrypted File?' the Brigadier asked, 'Is this from the UN?'
Doris shook her head. 'Not necessarily. Quite a lot of businesses scramble their messages, and virtually
everyone has access to the software.'
'Can we decode it?'
'The computer's already done that for you, look. Who's Bernice Summerfield, then?' his wife asked,
'An old flame?'
'No skeletons in the cupboard there, Doris. Miss Summerfield is a friend of the Doctor's from a long time
ago. This message comes from him.'
'Really? Not an axe-murderer, then?'
The Brigadier felt his stomach churn.
'Alistair, I've just been watching the news. That's Alexander Christian downstairs, for heaven's sake.'
'Lex was in the Scots Guards with me. When I was promoted to Brigadier, he was made Colonel in my
place. He's a brilliant pilot, one of the best tacticians I've ever met. I wanted him in UNIT, but the Space
Service made a move for him first.'
'You trust him?'
'Yes.'
'Then I trust him. I'm going to hide our axe, though.' Doris put her hand on his shoulder. 'I trust you,
darling, I'm sure you've got your reasons for bringing him here, I just wish that you'd told me.'
Lethbridge-Stewart nodded. 'I'm sorry. This message is more bad news. It looks as if the Doctor's got
himself into a bit of a scrape and he needs my help.'
'Where is he?'
'London. Lex and I had better meet him there, straight away.'
'So you won't be home for dinner?'
Alistair kissed her on the cheek. 'I'm afraid England needs me.'
Chapter Six - Chapter Six
Page 1
Close Encounters
The lift door slid smoothly open and Eve Waugh stepped out into Lord Greyhaven's office. She hadn't
known what to expect of it - the headquarters of Greyhaven's company, EG, was an unprepossessing
Victorian edifice near the Old Bailey. On the way up she had pictured the office one of two ways. It could
have been a room like Sherlock Holmes' with antiques on the mantelpiece, leather-bound chairs and oil
paintings on the wall. Either that or a chrome and steel symphony of state-of-the-art technology with a
wall of flatpanel TVs. In the event it was a messy compromise of both styles that was rather less than the
sum of its parts.
From this building, from this room, EG, a multinational string of electronics companies, component
manufacturers and the like all across Europe were all co-ordinated. It wasn't a large company by
international standards, but it was influential. The company's main asset was its chairman, who was
standing by the window, talking to a couple of men in trench coats. His office gave an impressive view
out over St Paul's Cathedral.
'That will be all,' he told the two men. There was a bulky canvas kit bag on the desk, which the taller of
the two men took with him as he left. 'Oh, could you ask Adele to bring in a pot of coffee?' Greyhaven
called after them.
'Very good, Lord Greyhaven,' the tall man responded gruffly. He glanced at the new arrival appreciatively
as he passed her.
'Good afternoon, Eve,' Greyhaven said.
'Hi.' She looked around the office, taking it in. The desk was mahogany, and looked like an antique. 'This
room is a lot smaller than I thought it would be.'
'We British are a modest race, Eve: we don't share the American taste for ostentation.'
'You're a billionaire, sir, I think you're allowed to buy yourself a new carpet.'
'I'm only a dollar billionaire,' he noted lightly, removing a couple of tumblers and a decanter from a small
cabinet.
Page 2
She moved towards the high-backed chair in front of the desk.
Greyhaven chuckled, pointing over her shoulder. There was a closed white door.
'I have a flat... an apartment here. It's a little less formal. You don't mind that?'
'No, not at all,' she said in a giddy-schoolgirl voice that she immediately regretted.
Greyhaven walked over to the door and held it open for Eve.
'Again, not very large, but a useful pied-a-terre. It makes commuting to work easy, if nothing else.'
The room was almost filled by a vast leather sofa and a low glass table, much of the rest of the space was
taken up by a little kitchen unit. Two doors led off: bathroom and bedroom, Eve guessed.
They walked over to the sofa together. Greyhaven sat down; Eve hovered for a moment. There was
another good view of the Thames from here. Hanging on the wall was a neat row of photographs:
Greyhaven with other senior politicians and scientists and various social events and public occasions.
'Is that the Queen? Sorry, that's a really dumb question.'
He watched her as she scrutinised them. 'A touch of ostentation, I'm afraid.'
The same fine middle-aged woman appeared on a couple of the photographs. 'Your wife?'
He smiled. 'Yes. Sit down.' He was pouring a generous double whisky for her. She sat close to him and
took a sip of the whisky. As she had expected, it was the best she'd ever tasted.
'Does your wife know?' she asked.
Greyhaven arched his eyebrow. 'Know what?'
She leant over him, kissing his cheek, a little awkwardly.
Page 3
'Doctor!'
The Brigadier came jogging across the park. Behind him was a flash of yellow. Yes! - it was Bessie, the
sprightly yellow roadster which the Doctor had used as transport while on Earth, a long time ago now.
The Brigadier had taken good care of the car over the years.
A tall man the Doctor didn't recognise was sitting in the passenger seat. The Doctor and Bernice hurried
towards the Brigadier, both checking the small park for anyone who might have seen the old soldier
arrive. They met around a hundred yards from the car. Lethbridge-Stewart was a little out of breath, and
far too formal a chap to want a hug. They shook hands instead.
'You recognise me?' the Doctor asked as they set off for the car.
'Of course. You were wearing that face in Hong Kong, remember?'
The Doctor boggled. 'I was?'
'You must remember Hong Kong back in '88, when we discovered the secret of the Embodiment of Gris.'
'I didn't even know that there was an Embodiment of Gris,' Bernice muttered.
The Doctor looked blankly at his old friend. 'I think that must have happened in my future.'
The Brigadier chortled. A couple of decades ago, the Doctor would have needed to explain such a
temporal paradox in more detail. Nowadays, Alistair was almost relaxed discussing them. After all he'd
been through, he knew as much as anyone how convoluted time travel could become.
The Brigadier reached over to shake Bernice's hand. 'Good afternoon, Miss Summerfield. Now - I've aged
twenty years since the last time we met, but you haven't.'
Page 4
She smiled weakly.
'Bernice has got married since then, Alistair - you and Doris came to the wedding.'
'Really? That was in my future, I take it, Mrs - ?'
'I'm still a Summerfield.' Bernice was a little uncomfortable discussing her marriage. It was going through
a bad patch at the moment, the Doctor remembered. 'And yes, it was in the future: 2010.'
The Brigadier looked a little surprised. 'I'm still around in thirteen years time, then?'
'Not only that,' Bernice assured him, 'you've never looked better.'
The Brigadier grimaced. 'That's what people have started saying to me now. I imagine it means that I'm
on the way out. God knows what I'll be like a couple of decades from now.'
'Old soldiers never die, Alistair,' the Doctor said softly.
'Neither do Time Lords, Doctor, eh? Now, you two, about these Ice Warriors...'
The Doctor and Bernice both stopped and stared at him.
The Brigadier looked like the cat that got the cream. 'That is what you were about to tell me, I take it?'
They had reached the car and the Doctor recognised the Brigadier's companion. 'You're full of surprises
today, Alistair.'
'You're Alexander Christian,' Bernice announced, betraying some considerable discomfort. 'I've just been
reading about you.'
'Nothing bad, I hope?' he asked lightly. The Doctor found himself grinning and shaking his hand.
'It seems that Mr Christian has been misjudged.' The Brigadier clambered in to the back seat. 'You drive,
Doctor.'
'I was framed,' Christian explained. 'I found out things on Mars that I shouldn't have done. I'll tell
everyone when we get to UNIT.'
The Brigadier had got comfortable, and was clearing a space for Bernice. 'We're only five minutes away
from UNIT's London Office here. After your email message, I phoned Bambera. They're expecting us.'
'Well,' the Doctor said breezily, 'we mustn't keep Winifred waiting.' He located the ignition podule and
started the engine.
Page 5
The two men dressed as workmen reached the roof of the National Space Museum.
Pigeons scattered as they walked towards the edge of the roof.
'Dish Seven,' the gruff voiced one announced.
His colleague nodded, taking a pair of clippers from the pocket of his overalls.
'I don't understand why we still need to do this.'
'Neither do I. That isn't going to stop me.'
They located the dish, identifying it by the little panel screwed to the back. Together, they unplugged the
coaxial cable at the back.
The gruff voiced man opened up his canvas kit bag and removed a brass cylinder the size of a Thermos
flask. It was surprisingly light, with a socket at either end and a neat row of switches along its side. He
adjusted the settings, then plugged it into the dish. His colleague connected the other end to the cable.
They eased the device into place, tucking it out of sight.
A bright yellow vintage car turned into an anonymous-looking car park underneath an imposing
Whitehall office block.
In a third-floor window opposite, one of the watchers took a photograph, the other made a note into a
dictaphone.
'Six oh-five. Four entering. Three male, one female. Yellow vintage car, make unknown, registration
Whisky Hotel Oscar Eight.'
Alan watched Oswald on the floor of the editing suite, rummaging through Eve's press pack. He'd seen
the contents for himself at the Museum, when they'd been handing out the packs. Glossy photographs of
the crew, with biographies on the back; maps of Mars; artist's impressions of what a Mars Colony might
look like; description of Mars. Alan saw the piece of paper that he wanted, a glossy card bearing a
diagram of a space suit.
Page 6
Alan and Oswald pulled it out, placing it alongside the screen grab he'd printed off. He ran his finger
along the blurred image. Oswald showed Alan the air line. A corrugated white tube, the diameter of a
vacuum cleaner hose. A hose that on the picture in front of him had come free from its socket and was
flapping about.
It was a single frame of videotape. With the air line disconnected, the next few seconds should have seen
the astronaut collapse, gasping for air. His blood vessels would have burst, and his eyes would have
started to bulge as though he was being strangled. His colleagues should have bounced over, trying to
keep themselves from panicking. They'd be slotting the pipe back into place, pulling him back to the
Lander, knowing that it was already too late to prevent permanent brain damage.
That wasn't how it had happened. The astronaut had bounced out of shot like a kid in a playground, live
on a billion television screens.
'See?' Oswald said excitedly. 'Whatever that guy is breathing, it didn't come from the tanks on his back.'
'The pictures are fakes,' Alan said incredulously. These pictures of British astronauts that they'd all been
watching on TV a few hours ago weren't taken on Mars at all.
'That's not true. The Mars 97 is real enough, in fact those pictures prove it. The Apollo missions were
faked by Disney, sure, everyone knows that, but - '
Alan rounded on him, almost yelling the information on the press sheet he had just found.' The Martian
atmosphere is chiefly carbon dioxide, with virtually no oxygen or hydrogen. Some scientists believe that
it might, in the long term, be possible to make the Martian atmosphere like that of Earth. This process is
called 'terraforming', and a number of experiments will be carried out on the Mars 97 mission. Explain
that.'
Oswald snorted. 'You believe that propaganda?'
Alan turned on him. 'As a matter of fact, yes I do believe a wealth of scientific evidence over some
fruitcake who thinks that the world's flat and that Elvis had crash-landed at Roswell.'
'I love you too, Alan.'
Page 7
'How do you explain the fact that that man is breathing nitrogen and he isn't dead?'
'The Martian atmosphere is breathable. Thin but breathable. Why do you think the British government
would invest billions of pounds trying to set up a colony on a planet without a breathable atmosphere?'
'It says that here that they will terraform it.'
'Alan, listen to what you are saying. Even heard of the ozone hole? Mars' atmosphere is one big ozone
hole. If British scientists could fix an ozone hole and turn the main greenhouse gas into lovely fresh
oxygen, they'd fix the atmosphere we've got down here first.'
Alan ignored him. 'The Mars 97's a fake, like that Di video last year. The whole Mars Project is just
another crummy British sci-fi drama. This is the story of the decade.'
A billion people had seen those pictures; he couldn't be the only one to spot that the astronaut hadn't done
his suit up properly. He couldn't be the only cameraman who'd spent the last few hours staring at the
picture.
He couldn't wait for Eve.
They were in the briefing room deep in the heart of the UNIT Offices in London. Bambera had ushered
them all down here, where her senior officers - two captains, two sergeants - were waiting.
Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart looked around the room. It was a far cry from his day when budgets were
tight and he, Benton and Yates could solve the world's problems with a mug of cocoa each and a
telephone between them. This was just the Whitehall Office - heaven knew what UNIT HQ looked like
now.
A long, black conference table ran the length of the room. The far wall was a bank of video screens of
various sizes. Scrolling readouts, video pictures and computer graphics were constantly flashing up and
renewing themselves. The Doctor and Mrs Summerfield had supplied some of the information: computer
disks with Mars data, given to them by some chap at the Space Centre. Two sets of near-identical data
were flashing all over the place. It was all terribly confusing.
Page 8
A prim young corporal was sitting at the far end of the desk, tapping instructions into a keyboard that
controlled the displays.
Alistair looked around at the three people he'd brought along. Bernice sat to his left, looking a little
uncomfortable. The Doctor paced the room for a moment, before realising that he was also meant to be
seated. Both seemed out of place in such a spotless, disciplined place. Alexander Christian sat at
Lethbridge-Stewart's right side, much more at ease. The Captain to his right was more nervous.
Bambera stood in front of the multimedia display. 'OK. Here's how I see the situation. There was some
flap at the Space Centre. The astronauts discovered a doorway made by extraterrestrials. Since then,
there's been a clampdown at Mission Control. I've been trying to get them to return my calls for five
hours now, and they won't. A couple of press contacts say they've had no luck, either.'
'If they've encountered evidence of alien life, they're doing the right thing to keep it secret,' one of the
Captains noted.
Bambera nodded. 'I agree - and it wouldn't be the first time that the British government had covered up
ETs and kept UNIT out of the loop. So I phoned NUIT HQ, Paris and got them to listen in on the Mars
transmissions. Corporal - '
The Corporal controlling the display pressed a control on the desk and the loudspeakers began burbling
with standard comms traffic between the Lander and Orbiter. The voices of the astronauts would pipe up
every so often. Everything sounded perfectly normal.
'This is a live feed. They haven't even mentioned the archway, so it didn't lead anywhere interesting. End
of story. Right?'
'Wrong,' the Doctor declared. Now he was sitting draped over a chair, his feet on the desk. 'When did the
astronauts enter the tomb?' he asked the room.
'About ten fifteen,' Bambera supplied.
The Doctor peered at the clock - it was twenty past six.
He leapt to his feet. 'We have a little under forty hours before the invasion.'
Page 9
'Invasion?!' Lethbridge-Stewart was not the only person to express his surprise at the Doctor's
pronouncement.
He knelt down by Summerfield, grabbing her shoulders, staring straight into her eyes. 'You know your
Martian culture, Bernice. What's the punishment for tomb robbery?'
'Disturbing the tomb of a Marshal is just about the worst sacrilege under Martian ecclesiastical law,' she
said. Lethbridge-Stewart found himself picturing little green men in dog collars.
The Doctor was nodding his head. 'It's the human equivalent of bursting into Westminster Abbey and
digging the place up with a bulldozer.'
'I suppose,' she conceded, aware that everyone in the room was staring at her. Lethbridge-Stewart smiled
encouragement at her. The spark of recognition passed between them - here the Doctor goes again.
'So what's the penalty?' the Brigadier prompted her gently.
'Anyone caught in there would face summary execution.' Summerfield realised what she was saying.
'Those astronauts are dead.'
Something pulsed at the very back of Lethbridge-Stewart's brain, primal sorrow for the astronauts, their
families, the whole human race.
'Yes,' the Doctor was insisting, 'But it's worse than that. The Martians don't just punish the criminals, do
they?'
Summerfield blanched. 'The robbers' entire clan would also face retribution: massive reparations, the loss
of territory and industrial facilities.'
The Doctor addressed the room like a prosecuting counsel. 'Those astronauts have stirred up a hornet's
nest. Without knowing it, they have just condemned the entire human race to death. Warships will already
be on their way.'
One of the Captains laughed, the same that had spoken before. He was a young lad, with blond hair. 'And
you've got evidence for that, I suppose?' He'd probably only just been seconded to UNIT, he still had that
swaggering scepticism that all the new recruits had for the first couple of months.
Page 10
'He has, Captain Ford,' Bambera nodded. 'Eye witness evidence. I saw them entering a cave myself. Space
Centre denied that ever happened, they threw me out when I tried to watch the video link. In the absence
of any other explanation, and in the light of his experience, I am prepared to entertain the Doctor's
assertion that the astronauts found a Martian tomb.'
'What about the radio transmissions?'
'Faked.'
Everyone turned to face Alexander Christian.
The Brigadier leant forward to explain. 'We have had the ability to fake space-to-surface transmissions
since my day. A military satellite, designation Haw-Haw, was put up by the Black Star rocket in 1971. It
was capable of jamming extraterrestrial signals and broadcasting messages that looked like they came
from deep space.'
'Who controls this satellite?'
'It always used to be the Space Security boys.' Alexander Christian informed the room. Bambera nodded,
jotting down a note.
The young UNIT Captain straightened. 'With respect, sir, can we prove these transmissions are faked?'
Bambera scowled. 'We can try. It should be straightforward enough to match voice patterns and so on.
See to it when we've finished here, Captain Ford.'
The Doctor was holding his hand up, like a schoolboy in a classroom. 'Brigadier,' he interrupted, 'there
must be a genuine signal, too. Try retuning to find the real telemetry from the Orbiter - it shouldn't be too
difficult to find.'
Bambera nodded.
Captain Ford was objecting again. 'Ma'am, even if the transmissions are fakes, it doesn't prove we're
dealing with aliens. There aren't any records of Martians in the UNIT archive.'
'We've never faced them before,' Lethbridge-Stewart informed him.
'The Doctor and I certainly have,' Summerfield interrupted. It was the first time she had spoken unless she
had been answering a question put to her, and she was aware of the sceptical looks around the room,
unsure whether to continue.
Page 11
The Doctor had his feet on the desk, his hands were folded behind his head. 'Bernice is from the twentysixth
century,' he explained, delighting in the astonished expressions this revelation earned him. 'By then,
the human race has colonised Mars and displaced the native Martian population. Bernice is an expert on
Martian civilisation and culture. With the greatest respect, time is pressing.'
A couple of people at the table looked bemused by the revelations, but they'd seen enough in their time
with UNIT to at least keep an open mind. They took their lead from Bambera, who was taking all the
information in her stride.
'Doctor, I'll need some sort of proof of Martian involvement before I can even think of asking to deploy
UNIT forces. And I need some evidence - anything - that points to a wider conspiracy. I'm afraid the
MoD will not believe the words of an escaped psycho. No offence, Colonel Christian.'
'None taken, Brig,' Alexander said lightly.
The Doctor was staring at the television screens, and knowing him, Lethbridge-Stewart imagined that he
was taking in every piece of information, trying to find a clue in there. 'At the moment,' the Doctor
blurted, 'because of the manned mission, almost every telescope in the country is pointing at Mars. Get
them to check their records - at some point today there will have been a disturbance on the Martian
surface. Check the photographs, and you'll see it bears an uncanny resemblance to an ICBM launch or a
Moon rocket.'
'Do it, Corporal,' Bambera ordered. The prim Corporal could do that from her box of tricks, too, it
seemed.
Bambera stiffened. 'OK, here's the score: if the Doctor is wrong, and there aren't any Martians, no-one
will ever know. Space Centre has everything pretty well covered up, and there's no problem. But, if there
are Martians, UNIT need to know about it. From this point, we'll assume for the sake of argument that the
Martians are out there and that they are mad with us. So, Doctor, Professor Summerfield, what are these
Martians going to do?'
Page 12
'Can't we tell them it was an accident?' Ford objected. 'We didn't even know that there were any Martians,
let alone what their laws are.'
Bambera fixed the Doctor with a stare. 'I take it that ignorance of the law is no defence?'
'No,' the Doctor intoned gravely.
'What's all this about forty hours?' the Brigadier asked. 'It takes four months to travel to Mars, yes?'
The Doctor shook his head sadly. 'Martian science is far in advance of that of the human race.' Lethbridge-
Stewart expected the Doctor to say something of the sort.
His old friend stood up, abruptly, and began pacing the room again. He ended up at the head of the table.
All eyes were on him. 'From launch on Mars to arrival here, it will take just under forty eight hours.'
The Doctor flashed a smile, and stabbed down at the corporal's keyboard. All the pictures on the video
wall snapped off. 'That was very distracting. Now, by my calculations, the Martians will be in Earth orbit
by Thursday lunch time. They will declare their intentions, presumably via radio. If they are not given
what they ask for, they will take it by force.'
Bambera straightened. 'And that is it?'
'Isn't it enough?' Benny asked.
'Word coming in from Skywatch Control, Brigadier. They've retuned to the new frequency.'
'Now we'll have some evidence for you, Winifred,' the Doctor shouted triumphantly.
The signal from the Orbiter was piped through the loudspeakers again. This time there weren't any voices,
just the steady bleeping of the computers on Earth and Mars talking to each other.
'There's no sign of the telemetry from the Lander, ma'am.'
'The Lander has been destroyed along with its crew,' the Doctor declared, almost casually. 'And the war
rocket has shown up on the photographs, hasn't it?'
The Corporal tapped a control and the video wall filled with astronomical pictures, images of Mars.
Page 13
The prim young woman checked her own screen. 'Our watchers report that the Orbiter is still there, and
there's been no sign of a spaceship launch from the Martian surface. We have triple confirmation of that.'
The Doctor's face fell. 'Well,' he said, a note of uncertainty in his voice, 'keep looking, won't you?'
Eve was surrounded by her silk dress, the leather sofa, his wool suit. The smell of the whisky and the
leather and his aftershave. Lord Greyhaven - Edward - had none of a young man's urgency, and was
content to hold her and kiss her face and mouth, if that was all that she wanted. She straightened a leg,
and together he half-pushed, she half-pulled down until she was laid the full length of the sofa, her head
on the armrest. Her hand on the back of his neck, his skin rougher than anyone's she had known before.
His weight on her, pushing her further down into the cushions. The smell of coffee.
She opened her eyes and there was a tray full of coffee pots and cups on the glass table. His secretary had
come in with them and left without making a sound. Eve shifted up onto one elbow, about to say
something.
Greyhaven eased himself back, until he was upright. He placed a hand on her side, just beneath her
ribcage.
'I have something for you,' he said very seriously. He leant over her to get to the tray.
'Coffee?' she asked, laughing.
'That too. If you'll excuse me, I just have one little thing to do.'
She moved her legs, allowing him to stand. He crossed the room, closing the door behind him. After a
moment, she could hear his voice drifting across from his office. One side of a conversation.
Eve looked around guiltily, as though she was being watched. Then she made a decision to listen in. She
tiptoed across the room. 'We have crossed the Rubicon.' Edward informed someone that she couldn't see.
Eve eased the door open and peeked through the crack. Edward was alone.
Page 14
Page 15
'Understood. But how?' It was a man's voice, and she recognised it. Edward was addressing a hands free
telephone, or intercom. There was a speaker on the desk that hadn't been there before. It came as a relief
that Greyhaven wasn't talking to himself.
'I pride myself on my resourcefulness. You will see.' Eve edged back behind the door, aware that this was
a private conversation.
'If you are sure, then I am sure, Teddy.' The line clicked, dead.
Edward had picked up a small brass box from his desk, squeezing its side. A faint warbling sound started
up. Greyhaven slipped the box into his jacket pocket and pressed something on his desk. A panel slid
back into place, concealing the intercom he'd been talking to. Greyhaven gathered up another little box
from the desk and then straightened, heading back her way.
Eve dashed back to the sofa, and had arranged herself on it as he opened the door. Edward was carrying a
long, thin box, which he passed over to her as he sat down. The sort of box jewellery came in. Eve pulled
herself up, a little clumsily. Inside was a gold necklace.
'Not too ostentatious, I hope.' He passed it over.
'It's beautiful.' It was understated, elegant and worth a small fortune. 'When-?'
'Adelle, my secretary chose it for me this afternoon. She has more taste in that area. Try it on.'
Eve lifted her hair, letting him wrap it around her. It was heavier than she had expected. When he had
finished, he withdrew, looking a little uncomfortable.
'It's so expensive.'
'I'd much rather spend my money on my friends than on my carpet.'
She leant over him, kissing him on the forehead, then the bridge of his nose. He shifted, allowing her
closer.
Page 16
Half a world away, the Prime Minister checked his tie in the mirror.
This was going to be a big speech. There had been a lot of uncertainty for the last couple of years. But
with the British and American elections out of the way, things were going to settle down for a while. This
speech would set the tone for Anglo-American relations, and he wanted to grab the imagination with it,
not just say the same old things about 'special relationships'.
The Prime Minister always got nervous before a speech, whether he was addressing the United Nations or
the Women's Institute, and it had become a habit to come to the washroom, splash his face with water and
check his appearance. The wash basins in the White House were relatively lavish affairs: large and
spotlessly clean.
The washroom door swung noisily open. It was his bodyguard.
'Is everything all right?' the Prime Minister asked, reaching for the hand towel.
The bodyguard shot him twice, once in the chest and once in the back of the head.
Alarms were sounding around the UNIT Offices. Bambera's phone rang. The Doctor watched silently as
she picked it up and listened for a couple of seconds before replacing the receiver.
'Corporal, patch through the datafeed from Skywatch One.'
That was the radar station in Essex that kept its dish pointing upwards. Twenty years ago it had been able
to detect an artificial object a million miles away. Who knows what its range was now?
A roughly cylindrical object was in plain view, and no more than 200,000 miles away. It was moving fast
across the screen.
The Doctor leapt to his feet. 'We're too late!' he gasped.
'It is now on a direct heading for Earth,' the Corporal announced.
The Doctor stared straight at Bambera, pointing at the screen. 'Your people want proof? That is pretty
compelling evidence, I would say.'
Lethbridge-Stewart turned to face his old friend. 'Doctor, you said that we had two days.'
Page 17
The Doctor grabbed a handful of his hair and stared at the screen. 'Martian spacedrives are notoriously
slow. I don't understand how they have got here so quickly.'
Alexander Christian rubbed his chin. 'It's simple old chap. The radar signal was jammed. It's been on its
way here all this time and no-one down here was any the wiser.'
The Doctor pressed his face up to the video wall, calculating trajectories and velocities. 'Yes, of course.
Don't you see, Brigadier? It means that this has been planned: the Martians launched their revenge ship a
day and a half before the astronauts even set foot on Mars.'
'Skywatch confirms UFO on heading for Northern hemisphere.'
'But how did the Martians know that the Lander was heading their way?'
'They must have picked up the transmissions from Mars 97,' Bernice suggested.
The Doctor whirled to face the video screens, a little concerned. They were all missing something
obvious. A cylindrical object on radar; faked radio signals; no telemetry from the Lander. He turned back
to the group.
Captain Ford's former scepticism had evaporated. He was also staring at the screen, unable to take his
eyes from it. 'So how long have we got?'
The Doctor glanced up at the screen. 'Fifteen minutes, maybe twenty.'
Bambera snatched up the phone. 'We'll need a global state of emergency. Captain Ford, contact the
Secretary-General and the Prime Minister. Tell them Cromwell. Tell them Ultimate.'
Back in the Second World War, 'Cromwell' had been the codeword for the German invasion of Britain.
An invasion that had never come. 'Ultimate' must be some sort of codeword stressing the urgency of the
situation.
'The PM's in Washington. We'll need the Home Secretary.'
'Whatever,' she snapped.
'Skywatch confirms UFO on heading for Western Europe.'
'Brigadier - it's New York for you.'
'That was quick.'
Page 18
The Secretary-General appeared on the screen. 'Winifred. I've just received word from Downing Street.
Now you're declaring a Cromwell Ultimate. What on Earth is going on there?' She had a pleasant Irish
accent.
Bambera scowled at the screen. 'Secretary-General, we have reason to believe - '
'Ten minutes ago, I had the Home Secretary on the line. He says that you've got Alexander Christian in
there.'
Brigadier Bambera was a little taken aback. 'Yes we have, he - '
'They have formally requested the suspension of UNIT operations in the United Kingdom pending an
investigation. You are not above the law, Brigadier.'
Bambera pulled herself up to her full height. 'Madam, we have a global security alert.'
'Well that's just it. There's nothing on the radar, no anomalous radio transmissions. The sky is clear,
Brigadier. In future, before you tell everyone the world's about to end, kindly check your sources. Provide
me with concrete evidence and hand over Colonel Christian to the British police. Do that, and I'll
reconsider. End.'
The screen went blank.
'We need to warn the public,' Bernice said quietly.
'That is the last thing we will do,' Bambera snorted. 'Can you imagine the panic when we announce that
not only do aliens exist, but they're about to attack?'
Bernice was scathing: 'Don't you think they'll be panicking anyway in a quarter of an hour when the war
rocket lands and Martian battle tanks pour out?'
'Can't we at least set off air-raid sirens?' Lethbridge-Stewart suggested. 'Get as many people as we can
into shelters.' The Doctor looked around. For all their brisk efficiency, for all their expertise, there was
little that the people in this room could do to protect their citizens.
'The Martians won't get that far,' Bambera announced, dialling a short number. 'Missile Control?'
'Missile Control here.' The reply was relayed around the conference room.
Page 19
The Doctor opened his mouth to object, but Bambera was already barking instructions into her
microphone. 'We need a surface-to-space ICBM strike. Those are your co-ordinates now. Authorisation:
Seabird One. Dayword: Electron.'
'Denied, UNIT HQ.'
'Denied?' Bambera snarled.
'Skywatch confirms UFO heading for the United Kingdom,' the Corporal called out.
'Direct orders, United Nations, ma'am.' The line went dead.
The Doctor sighed with relief. 'Any attempt at violence will be met by the Martians with superior
firepower.'
Captain Ford was still staring at the radar screen. 'Couldn't we contact another country? Another branch
of UNIT would have the authority. Call NUIT in Paris.'
'Sir, we can't ask the French to start firing nuclear missiles over British airspace. What if one fell short?'
'Won't other countries start taking things into their own hands and arrange their own nuclear strike?'
'They won't,' Lethbridge-Stewart said, more in hope than certain knowledge.
'Can't we try talking to them?' Bernice asked.
'Do you speak Martian. Mrs Summerfield?'
'As a matter of fact - '
'UFO is now in the atmosphere. Trajectory confirmed.' A string of numbers ran across the computer
screen.
'Calculating course,' the Corporal said.
'It's heading for Trafalgar Square,' the Doctor announced. 'Brigadier, you have to get us down there.'
'UNIT engagement protocols - '
' - the Doctor knows all about them, Captain,' Lethbridge-Stewart interrupted, 'in fact he helped me to
draft them. We need a containment team down there to evacuate the public, we need military units to
keep them out.'
'I am aware of what we need, Brigadier,' Bambera bawled at him, 'but I have just been given a direct order
from the Secretary-General to stay put.'
'This is far more important than the petty concerns of your planet,' the Doctor yelled.
'I agree, but - '
Page 20
'Tracking computer confirms the landing area as Central London.'
The Doctor looked up at the ceiling. Far, far above him, the Martian spacecraft would be visible from the
ground now.
'We're too late,' he whispered. He darted for the door. 'Come on, Bernice!'
Night was falling over London.
It never got dark in the city. The street lighting became diffused with the air pollution, and the sky glowed
a muddy orange. On most nights you could see the Moon, and some of the brighter stars, but nothing
much else. So few people ever looked up.
A black shape appeared among the clouds, parting them like a plough. It was vast, larger than any of the
buildings it passed over.
Warning buzzers had already sounded at Air Traffic Control stations around the city. Airspace had been
cleared, as best it could. Police stations were beginning to get the first of their phone calls from worried
citizens.
Alan dialled the number of the Newsdesk.
'Gloria, it's Alan in London. I know I'm too late for the evening news, but I've got a story for you. Yeah -
you'll want to flash it. Check the pictures of the - '
The line was beginning to crackle. Alan scowled at the phone, unable to believe that the story of the
century would slip through his fingers because of a dodgy telephone.
'The line's terrible,' he told Oswald.
'It's the government listening in. They're on to us. We'd better get moving!'
The young man was swinging his head from side to side, checking to see if anyone was watching the
phone box. Alan ignored him.
Page 21
'Check the pictures of the Mars Landing,' he shouted into the phone. 'Look at the air lines. One's
disconnected. It's the story of the century: the Mars Missions are a fake. The Brits haven't been to Mars at
all. Tell the world!' He slammed the handset down, knowing that he'd just made history. Oswald was
waving at him.
'Alan, look up there, for Christ's sake.'
Alan did as Oswald said, and saw a vast, dark shape coming down through the clouds over the Thames.
For the first couple of seconds, those that looked up and saw it thought it was an aircraft in trouble. But
after a moment of panic, they realised it couldn't be. It was perfectly silent. It wasn't a zeppelin, either: the
hull was clearly made from thick metal plates, riveted together, and it must have weighed many hundreds
of tonnes. It was drifting down, apparently effortlessly. In reality the underside of the object was lined
with tiny rocket vents which were pulsing with bursts of magnetic force.
Far below, television pictures and computer monitors began to shimmer. Car radios and phone lines
began to crackle. Every audio and video tape in Central London was wiped. Cutlery drawers were
rattling, every loose piece of metal across the city began jiggling up and down.
People were beginning to look up. Cars stopped, the crowds on the streets began to point up into the sky.
Every burglar alarm and car alarm went off.
The Sumerian MechInfs had wiped out the Mongol Militia, and now they were advancing relentlessly
towards the Mongol capital, Doug City. The three hundred year campaign was reaching its inevitable
conclusion and only an act of God would save him now. Still Emperor Doug fought on.
The VDU rippled, then the computer tried to reset itself. Every other machine in the Cafe was bleeping as
they rebooted. Doug looked around at the denizens of his Internet Cafe, all of whom were glaring at him
as though the freak electrical surge was his fault.
'The end of Civilisation,' he chuckled.
Page 22
Eve Waugh often woke in an unfamiliar bed.
This was the first time she had found herself in a married man's room wearing nothing but a ten-thousanddollar
necklace. It was the first time she'd slept with a member of the House of Lords. It was the first time
for a long time that she'd shared a bed with anyone. What would her mother think?
Although the curtains were drawn, she could see that it was still only the early evening outside.
Edward had risen and dressed while she dozed. She was dimly aware of him getting out of the bed,
kissing her shoulder as he left. Ten minutes ago? She could hear him outside in the living room, boiling a
kettle.
Eve sat up, brushing her chest where the segments of the necklace had dug little marks into her skin. She
checked her watch as she scooped it up from the bedside table. It was seven in the evening. She'd been
asleep for a couple of hours. The night was still young.
Edward's bathrobe was hanging up by the bed. Eve stepped over to it. The carpet felt as worn as it looked.
She toyed with the idea of putting the robe on. It smelt of his aftershave. She decided not to wear it. If it
was seven, his staff had gone home, and besides they'd proved very discreet. So she walked through to
where he was, wearing nothing but her new necklace and her watch.
Edward was standing at the window, looking out over the Thames. He was immaculate in his wool suit,
he'd even brushed his hair and fitted the handkerchief to his jacket pocket. As she walked in, he turned to
face her. She hardly saw his reaction to her.
There was a UFO coming up the Thames. She ran over to the window, pressing her palms to the glass.
Five storeys up, she got a better view of the alien machine than most. It looked like... it didn't look like
anything from Earth.
Page 23
Eve stared up into the twilight sky and tried to fit the object into her own frame of reference. There was a
resemblance to a Civil War ironclad, its prow reminded her of the head of a swordfish. It was built from a
dark metal, like cast iron, but it glittered. The portholes looked like a fly's compound eyes, and it was
possible to see through the smoky glass that the interior was lit in languid red, like emergency lighting.
Something was shifting around in there: dark, diffracted shapes that were impossible to interpret. It was
vast.
It was following the course of the river, heading upstream. It barely cleared Tower Bridge and passed
over HMS Belfast on the river. It was possible to guess its size now it was coming alongside the
Greyhaven Building. It eclipsed Guys Hospital and London Bridge station, so it was larger than the two
combined. That made it a kilometre long, perhaps two hundred metres broad. A dozen times bigger than a
Jumbo Jet.
Edward placed a hand on her bare shoulder. 'It's heading across the city. Get dressed. We have to get to
Mission Control,' he said softly.
Police cars were racing through London.
It was so large that it was visible right across the city. The pavements, the parks and the rooftops were full
of people staring up at it, trying to work out what it was. Loudmouths were proclaiming it to be a
publicity stunt for a movie, a hot air balloon, a Jeremy Beadle wind-up. No-one was listening to them.
EastEnders vanished from ten million television screens, replaced by a live feed from the roof of the
BBC. The picture jumped around a bit at first: there was no commentary. There were dozens of people up
there, all looking upwards at an object in the sky. Some were pointing, others were talking. There was an
urgency about the image that every viewer found compelling. They edged closer to the screen, trying to
ignore their children who were asking what was going on. The object passed overhead, drifting over the
Strand. They heard Nicholas Witchell's voice telling them that this was a genuine news programme, and
the object on their television screen was an alien spacecraft.
But everyone could see that for themselves. This wasn't a model, a computer graphic or any other kind of
special effect. It wasn't a hoax, a mass hallucination, a scare story, a dream, a practical joke, a fossilised
polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon or a science fiction drama.
It was an alien spacecraft, coming to rest ten feet above Nelson's Column.
The Dying Days - Chapter Seven
Page 1
Work, Rest and Play
By eight o'clock in the evening, British Summer Time, on Tuesday, May 6th 1997, everyone in the world
knew that there was an alien spacecraft hovering over London.
Back in the late sixties the United Nations had agreed what would happen if mankind encountered alien
lifeforms. The experts agreed that the First Contact, as they called it, would be a faint radio signal from
deep space. It followed that the First Contact would almost certainly be with a radio telescope facility
somewhere in the world, or perhaps a military listening station. The alien radio signal might be many
hundreds of years old: radio waves travelled at the speed of light, and so even those from the nearest star
would be over four years old. That meant that the human race would have time to carefully compose its
response - this wouldn't be a conversation with aliens, more like an exchange of letters.
So it was agreed: the staff of the radio telescope that picked up the message would pass it on to the
Secretary-General of the United Nations. A team of experts would translate the message (any aliens
trying to contact us would have considered the language barrier, and would keep the message
straightforward - using basic mathematical or geometric concepts, perhaps, or a series of simple
pictures). This translation would then be made completely public. The world would decide what response
to send, and the world would send only one reply, leaving aside all cultural, political and economic
differences.
Page 2
Few of the people drawing up the First Contact Protocol thought that it would work like that in practice,
and when the time came it didn't. For many centuries there was some debate about exactly when First
Contact between mankind and aliens took place. The Martian Invasion of 1997, of course, was always
cited as the definitive moment, but it had become clear years before then that the major governments had
positive proof of the existence of extraterrestrial life. Aliens had visited mankind for thousands of years,
leaving their trails across the archaeological strata and their subtle influence on human development.
Visitors from other worlds were worshipped as gods or hunted down as monsters through the centuries.
In the late twentieth century, as the human race began to venture out into space, they had reached a level
of scientific understanding that allowed them to interpret the old legends and superstitions. They also
now possessed a level of technology that allowed aircraft and radar to sweep the skies for unidentified
flying objects. Alien spacecraft and other artefacts began to arrive on Earth with alarming regularity.
The year that the United Nations drew up the First Contact Protocols, the governments of half a dozen of
its member states were already concealing the existence of aliens from their citizens and from each other.
The UN realised that such insularity was dangerous, and that if one country were to acquire alien
weapons or other technology, then this would destabilise the carefully balanced world order. During
Waldheim's term as secretary-general, restricting access to alien science became just as much a priority
as preventing the proliferation of nuclear technology. A policy decision was made at the very highest
levels of government that the public should not be informed about any alien 'incursion', regardless of its
significance.
This level of secrecy means that historians were never able to reach a consensus over when what they
call 'The Real First Contact' was made. Some still preferred to count the Arcturan Treaty of 2085. That
had been an official, peaceful contact. The first time that human and alien sat down and talked, rather
than attempted to commit genocide.
Page 3
The Martian Invasion was yet another demonstration of the shortcomings of the First Contact Protocols,
not least because the designated Contact Group, the local UNIT contingent had just been suspended.
With the Prime Minister in the United States, there was some confusion among the British authorities
about who exactly was meant to initiate contact with the aliens.
The result was chaos for the first hour. A million people descended on Trafalgar Square, desperate to see
the alien vessel. A million more attempted to flee the city, convinced that the world was about to come to
an end. The authorities were caught in the middle as two million of their citizens stampeded.
The scheduled editions of Wildlife at One and The Cook Report had been postponed. BBC1 and ITV
were both showing the same image from different angles: the prow of the UFO hanging over Nelson's
Column, pointing down the Mall straight at Buckingham Palace. The main body of the vessel was
hanging directly over the Strand. Learned commentators and experts tried to find the words to match the
image. They failed.
'What are our options, General?'
'We can do little to contain the information, Mr President. Every station has been broadcasting pictures of
the object for the last half hour. The FCC are pulling as much as it as we can, but the word is out.'
'I'm not worried about the damn coverage, General, I'm worried by the alien spaceship. A nuclear strike
is out the question, I know, but - '
'With respect, sir, I don't think we should be ruling out the nuclear option at this stage.'
'It's a hundred metres above London, General.'
'Sir, a pre-emptive nuclear strike might prove to be the only effective method of destroying the Hostile. I
am not recommending that at this stage, but we can't rule it out.'
'Understood. What do you recommend?'
Page 4
'Firstly, sir, we need to mobilise the National Guard. We need troops in all the cities, and additional
forces in the air, ready to deploy them wherever there is trouble.'
'You think that the aliens are going to attack us?'
'That I don't know, sir. So far, there's no evidence either way and the situation seems contained in
London. What I know is that at any moment riots are going to break out from here to Los Angeles.'
'I think you're underestimating the American people. There was a study done under the Carter
administration which concluded that when confronted with indisputable evidence of alien life, most
people's reaction would be one of awe and quiet contemplation.'
'That report was wrong. Mr President, our system of government operates on a very simple principle: the
people trust the authorities to keep them safe. They can wake up every morning, believe what they read
in their newspapers, take the kids to school, drive to work, earn some money that they can spend how
they want, go to the park without being bombed, eat their lunch without being poisoned. They pay us
taxes, we keep them safe. Now, what we have there on CNN, in glorious colour and NICAM stereo
sound, is proof that we can't protect them. We don't know what it is, what it can or will do, who's in
there, where they even came from. Mr President, our people aren't safe anymore. When they realise that,
a lot of them will get angry, a lot of them will get frustrated. Some of them will take to the streets.'
The President rubbed his chin. 'Mobilise the guard.'
They'd been forced to abandon Bessie halfway up Whitehall, the streets were full of people and it would
be quicker to get to Trafalgar Square on foot.
'This is madness!' the Doctor shouted back to Benny over the noise of the crowd. 'All these people,
heading towards the Martian ship like moths to the flame.'
Benny apologised to the Rastafarian girl whose foot she'd just stood on. 'Doctor, I hate to point this out,
but we're trying to get there, too.'
Page 5
The Doctor turned around, continuing to walk backwards without even slowing. Unlike Benny, he wasn't
having any problem slipping through the throng. 'We are doing so out of scientific interest, and because
we might prove invaluable as impartial negotiators in this little dispute.'
Benny squeezed past two of the fattest men she had ever seen and came up alongside him. 'How do you
propose to start the negotiations, Doctor?' she asked sweetly. 'By shouting up at them?'
'I don't think my voice would be loud enough,' the Doctor said in all seriousness.
They could see the ship properly for the first time.
It took Benny a couple of seconds to realise that the reason the hull was strobing with bright blue light
was that it was being photographed by thousands of people, all using flashbulbs. She hoped that the
Martians, from a planet in perpetual twilight, didn't take the bright light as some sort of attack. The
flickering glare of the flashbulbs made the Martian ship appear even more nightmarish than it already
was. The ship was too large to take in at one attempt: it just left impressions of a surface like that of a
seashell or a snail, fins like a deep-sea fish.
Despite that, Benny recognised the basic design of the spacecraft - Martian rockets had remained
unchanged for a hundred thousand years. The Martians had followed the pattern of technological
development familiar on ten thousand worlds throughout the galaxy, and they had evolved many
millennia before the human race. The Martian Industrial Revolution had taken place at the same time as
the Pliocene on Earth. On her expedition, Benny had discovered the remains of documents a million
years old that were evidence of Martian space travel.
The Martians, the Ice Warriors as the Doctor insisted on calling them, would have conquered the solar
system, even the galaxy, but for the lack of resources on their home world. Energy sources were scarce,
few of the necessary metals were present in sufficient quantities. Martian astronomers knew that both the
Earth and the asteroid belt were abundant with mineral wealth, but other planets remained tantalisingly
just out of reach.
Page 6
One of her contemporaries had suggested that another reason why the Martians never developed their
space travel was that their military culture was never geared to rocketry. The Martians lived in nests and
cities deep underground, and such dwellings were scarce and impossible to attack from the air. Wars
were fought to capture such possessions and territory, not to destroy them. The Martians favoured sonic
guns and germ warfare, not 'dishonourable' bombs that destroyed civilian populations and turned whole
cities into radioactive craters.
'Why aren't the Martians doing anything?' Benny asked.
'The same reason that there was a delay when the human astronauts landed on Mars,' the Doctor shouted
back at her, 'the ship's crew are acclimatising to the gravity and the temperature. They are probably a
little confused by their reception - they will want to assess this crowd, try and work out whether it's an
army or not.'
'What made them pick London?' Benny asked.
The Doctor slipped through a group of German tourists. 'They must have tracked the source of the radio
transmissions to the Orbiter: the Martian ship took a direct course for the National Space Museum.
Something of a coincidence, otherwise, isn't it?'
The mass of people was almost stationary now. Most of the men and women had began to realise that
they weren't going to get much closer. Or they had chosen not to - the object filled the sky, and every
detail on its hull was visible from this distance. Sections of the flank were covered in wicked-looking
spines. People were hesitating, holding still.
So, as the crowd became denser and denser, it became easier to move through it. Benny realised that she
and the Doctor were the only people really trying. Everyone else stood staring at the sky. Benny found
herself following the Doctor right into the Square itself.
Page 7
Page 8
Benny was tall enough to see over most heads, and by the time they had reached the crowd-control
barriers she had built up a picture of what was happening. The police were clearing groups of people
from around the Column itself. They'd also cleared the Strand, and a steady line of emergency vehicles
was streaming up the long road. Benny wondered idly what the Martians made of the convoy of large
vehicles swarming beneath them with flashing lights and wailing sirens. The TARDIS was still sitting in
the middle of the Square where they'd left it. Its technology was way beyond that of the Martians, so
there was little chance they could detect its true nature.
The Doctor was pointing past it. 'Over there, Bernice. The army.'
A couple of army vehicles were also there: large trucks, personnel carriers, nothing like a tank or even an
armoured car.
'Excellent,' he enthused. 'They're thinking. They are trying not to antagonise the aliens. The helicopters
are keeping their distance, too.'
Benny cocked her head. Over the burbling of the crowd, the wailing of the sirens and the ever-present
noise of the traffic in the distance, she could hear helicopter rotor blades.
'Good, good.' The Doctor whirled around, scanning the rooftops.
Bernice looked up. The Martian ship blocked out a quarter of the sky, its stern almost, but not quite,
disappearing over the horizon. 'This is good?'
'Well, the Martians have been here half an hour and they haven't wiped us out yet - that's got to be a
promising sign.'
'The big ship-mounted Martian sonic cannons take thirty-five minutes to power up.'
The Doctor looked up at the ship and then back down to her. 'Really?'
She nodded, biting her lip. They were right up against the crash barriers now. The chains securing them
together were rattling.
The Doctor bent down to examine the phenomenon. 'Magnetic repulsion. Fascinating - a side effect of
the magnetic flux that keep that ship afloat, no doubt.' He held the nearest padlock still and unfastened it
with the sonic screwdriver and ushered Benny through the new gap. All this was achieved without
drawing any attention from either members of the crowd or the nearest policemen.
Page 9
Before she had time to worry about that, they were heading across the Square. Like the crowd, the
policemen and soldiers were all looking up at the ship. Here, they were directly underneath it, watching
the winking lights at various points along the hull.
One group of policemen was standing right in front of the TARDIS door. Even if the Doctor had wanted
to get inside he couldn't. It wasn't on the agenda, anyway, in fact the Doctor seemed unaware of the
presence of his time machine.
'That's Eve, isn't it?' he asked. Benny followed his line of vision.
Lord Greyhaven's Aston Martin drew up just outside the Scotland Yard mobile command centre. A
police officer opened the door for him, a young Army lieutenant for his passenger.
Staines was there already, waiting for him.
'What is it, Teddy?' he asked, glancing upwards.
Greyhaven raised a finger to his lips. 'Have you met Miss Evelin Waugh?'
She was young and blonde, and wearing a clinging silk dress. He remembered her from before at the
Space Museum. Most of the men there would remember her. 'You're a lot prettier than your namesake,'
the Home Secretary giggled.
'Gee, thanks,' she replied. She had an American accent.
'Miss Waugh is a journalist,' Greyhaven said, the merest hint of a warning in his tone of voice.
'Oh, the place is crawling with those,' the Home Secretary joked. 'There's a Yankee cameramen over
there.' He gestured vaguely towards the outside broadcast vans that were massing by the National Portrait
Gallery.
The woman looked up at Lord Greyhaven. 'Brilliant: that's Alan, my cameraman. Edward, I've got work
to do: I'll see you later,' she told Greyhaven quietly, brushing against him as she hurried away.
'I say, Teddy, have you and she... ?'
Lord Greyhaven was staring up at the vast belly of the spacecraft. 'Is that really the most pressing
question on your mind, Staines?'
Page 10
'I asked you what that was before, and you didn't tell me.'
Greyhaven glanced up, nonchalantly. 'That is a Martian spacecraft.'
'However do you know?'
Lord Greyhaven looked at him witheringly.
Staines rounded on him. 'This wasn't the plan, Teddy. The Martians were just meant to send back the
plans for the equipment in the Mars 97. They weren't meant to kill the astronauts in the Orbiter, they
certainly weren't meant to come here in person.'
'Why wait four months? And why settle for blueprints? I agreed that it would be easier all round if they
brought samples of their technology themselves. They can provide moral support for our little venture.
Don't you want to meet our friends from Mars? Besides,' he chuckled, 'they didn't kill the crew of the
Orbiter, that was a terrible accident.'
It took the Home Secretary a few moments to decipher Greyhaven's sarcastic tone. 'You opened the
airlocks?' Staines asked, with a mixture of anger and incredulity. 'From here, by remote control?'
He remembered Greyhaven leaning over an instrument panel at Mission Control, to shake a man's hand.
Had he brushed against one of the controls then?
Lord Greyhaven chuckled. 'My dear chap, what sort of a fellow do you take me for?'
Staines straightened. 'But why?'
'They would have died soon anyway. This was the most humane way.' Staines imagined the astronauts in
space, trying to breathe frozen nothing, millions of miles from the nearest human beings. 'But I read that
people explode in space. The vacuum.'
'Nonsense,' Greyhaven said dismissively. 'Staines, it needed to be done. We need the Orbiter there. Think
of it as our insurance policy. Better still, don't think about it at all.'
Greyhaven checked his watch and looked up.
There was a bellowing noise from the Martian craft, which squealed around Trafalgar Square, bouncing
of the buildings, making everyone jump. There was absolute silence, absolute stillness. After a couple of
moments, nothing else had happened and the relief from the crowd was audible. A couple of groups
began laughing.
Page 11
Then the message started. It echoed down from the ship, from a public address system, and on a number
of radio frequencies:
'WARRIORS UNDER THE BANNER OF THE UNITED KINGDOM HAVE VIOLATED THE TOMB
OF OUR GREAT MARSHALL KYRUUL OF THE ARGYRE CLAN, UNDER THE SACRED
SANDS OF THE MARE SIRENUM. THESE CRIMINALS ATTEMPTED TO STEAL THE
TREASURES WITHIN. THEIR SHAMEFUL ACT IS ONE FOR WHICH THE WHOLE CLAN
MUST BE PUNISHED. IN ACCORDANCE WITH OUR LAW, ALL TERRITORIES, MINERAL
RIGHTS AND THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE CLANS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM ARE NOW
FORFEIT. THE UNITED KINGDOM IS NOW UNDER THE RULE OF THE HEAD OF THE
ARGYRE CLAN, THE LORD XZNAAL, AND ALL ITS CITIZENS ARE SUBJECT TO MARTIAN
FEUDAL LAW. YOU HAVE ONE HOUR TO AGREE TO THESE TERMS. AT THAT TIME, YOUR
LEADER SHALL COME HERE IN PERSON AND SUBMIT TO OUR REGENCY.'
There was silence.
The Doctor squinted up, something on his mind. The crowd was getting louder.
'The voice... ' he said.
It hadn't been the usual Martian grunt, it had been beautifully modulated, a little quiet, perhaps, the hint
of a lisp, but it sounded almost human. 'That's because the speaker was in his native atmosphere,' Benny
explained. 'He wasn't gasping for carbon dioxide.'
The Doctor turned back to her, his mouth open. 'I know that,' he said, almost scathingly, 'what I want to
know is where he learnt English. Specifically the human names for Martian geographical features on
Mars.'
'Good point.' Benny looked over at him. This Doctor could rush in where angels fear to tread, he could
drop everything at a moment's notice without a plan or a scheme or a hint of a master plan, but that didn't
make him a fool. 'Could they have monitored human radio transmissions?'
Page 12
The Doctor was staring up at the ship again. 'That's probably it.' The question no longer interested him.
'Are you looking for a way in?' she asked. The Martian ship was two hundred feet above them, its hull
was five-metre thick alloy, there was a gun port every ten metres behind which a sonic cannon was
powering up. But the Doctor could get in anywhere if he wanted to.
'No,' the Doctor stated.
Benny's face fell. 'No?'
He turned to her and grinned, showing all those teeth. 'Why look for something you've already found?'
The emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council sat back and listened to a replay of the
Martian declaration. One of the members was a great deal more agitated than the others.
'Surely we must seek clarification?'
The French delegate leant forward and began speaking. The translations took a moment to catch up. 'The
message is clear, Ambassador Campbell. The Martians' only dispute is with the clans of the United
Kingdom.'
There was a babble of discussion around the huge crescent-shaped table.
'Does this mean that the Martians are not threatening the human race, only Great Britain?' one asked.
'It would certainly seem so,' another agreed.
The British ambassador straightened. 'Am I to understand that you are considering this a domestic United
Kingdom matter?,' he asked incredulously. 'Are you seriously suggesting that these creatures will stop at
targeting my country, and that yours will all be safe?'
'That would certainly seem to be a conclusion that we can draw from the Martian declaration.'
'We have no intention of the whole world being dragged into an interplanetary war.'
'Do you think that the Martians can distinguish between the British and the rest of humanity?'
'You mean they might attack us through ignorance?'
'Or they might think that we are all part of the United Kingdom.'
There was further murmuring around the table.
Page 13
After twenty minutes of debate, the United Nations agreed to broadcast a request for clarification. They
used the radio frequency that the Martians had. The Martian response was almost immediate:
'OUR ONLY DISPUTE IS WITH THE CLANS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM. WE HOPE TO LIVE
IN PEACE WITH ALL THE OTHER RACES OF THE EARTH. HOWEVER, SHOULD OTHER
HUMAN CLANS ATTEMPT TO ATTACK MARTIAN TERRITORY OR INTERFERE WITH THE
INTERNAL AFFAIRS OF THE MARTIAN DEPENDENCIES, THEN THIS WILL BE TREATED AS
AN ACT OF WAR AND WE WILL RESPOND IN THE APPROPRIATE MANNER.'
The television commentators and their pundits weren't sure what to make of the announcement. The
relief of those outside the British Isles was tangible, and the message of peace was taken as a very
encouraging sign. The crowd in Trafalgar Square were more ambivalent. Over the objections of the
British contingent, the European Parliament issued a statement welcoming the Martians, and stressing
that the EU had no hostile intentions towards 'our Martian neighbours'.
The President of the United States found himself outnumbered by people advising him to appease the
Martians. Many countries issued statements that renounced violence as a general principle, and hoped
that the Martians would not resort to it. Most didn't make any statement at all, hoping not to draw
attention to themselves. Across the world, harassed politicians appeared on television screens, declaring
that their own countries were not under immediate threat, but that all was being done to defend their
borders if the Martians did attack.
Page 14
Throughout the world, military leave was cancelled, bases were put on full alert and units were
mobilised. Tensions mounted, and the areas prone to rioting did indeed riot. Television commentators
from Utah to the Ukraine assured their viewers that there appeared to be one Martian ship and it was
staying firmly in London. Within the hour, the tone had changed to one of wounded pride: why hadn't the
Martians chosen to come to Paris, New York or Moscow?
Brigadier Bambera had spent the last three-quarters of an hour on the telephone, calling up as many
senior military men as she could. Most seemed to know that UNIT's activities were officially suspended,
but in the light of recent events, they were talking to her anyway.
The Martian ship hovered on the video screens, each showing a different TV channel, each showing a
slightly different angle of the vast spacecraft. All but one channel showed the ship itself: ITN had
resorted to 'artist's impressions' of the aliens.
While the eyes of the media were on the enemy, the Army were dusting off their invasion plans. There
was a lot of dust on them. it was over fifty years since there had been any realistic possibility that a
foreign power would invade Britain rather than obliterate it with nukes. During all that time, the British
Army had kept itself busy with minor skirmishes, training exercises, Northern Ireland and peacekeeping
for the UN. The theorists and strategists had spent a lot of their time running war games, planning what
they would do in the unlikely event of an invasion of British soil. The computer simulations had proved
that the war time plans had been broadly along the right lines.
Page 15
It was a simple idea, borrowed from the terrorists, guerrillas and mercenaries that the Army had spent its
time fighting. Elite soldiers would, as the sexist phrase had it, 'kiss their wives and disappear', heading
underground to carefully prepared safe houses and secret hideouts. Caches of weapons and other
equipment were buried around the country. These soldiers would continue the fight behind enemy lines,
helped by carefully-vetted locals with good knowledge of the terrain of their area. Each group would
operate like a terrorist cell, to prevent infiltration. These 'Auxiliary Units' would sabotage bridges and
railway lines, monitor enemy troop movements, blow up strategic targets.
All around the country, men were kissing their wives goodbye and disappearing.
Captain Ford was on his way to UNIT HQ in Windmill One-Nine. Because of their unique position, the
staff at UNIT HQ would liaise with other countries, provide an 'underground railway' for men and
materials. Ford would remove the communications equipment from HQ and take it to the rendezvous
point outside Windsor.
Bambera's husband Ancelyn had been in Durham, on a pilgrimage to the tomb of St Cuthbert. Now he
was heading to Balmoral with an SAS team to evacuate the Queen and Prince Phillip. The submarine
Prometheus was waiting to take them to safety. The Prince of Wales and his sons had been on the royal
jet when the Martian ship entered the atmosphere. Instead of London, the jet had ended up in Madrid.
Other members of the royal family were also being accounted for. Ancelyn would be going with the
Queen to Canada, protecting the rightful sovereign and the descendants of the rightful sovereign as his
sacred oath demanded.
Bambera would never get the chance to kiss her husband goodbye. She put the phone down.
'We are with you,' Lethbridge-Stewart said. Alexander Christian nodded his consent.
'With respect, gentlemen, no. Go home to your family, Alistair. We'll manage.' Bambera couldn't look
them in the eye as she said it.
'No.' Lethbridge-Stewart said firmly. 'This is our fight, too.'
She smiled. 'Good.'
Page 16
The Foreign Office was being deluged by messages from around the world, all of which welcomed the
Martian's peaceful intentions towards the rest of the world. The Cubans were the first to welcome the
new administration and hope for future co-operation. Emergency sessions in parliaments, congresses and
palaces around the world concluded that a 'wait and see' policy would be most prudent.
Greyhaven consulted his watch.
'A quarter past eight. It is time.'
'Time?'
'With the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary in Washington and the Chancellor of the Exchequer in
bed with a nasty bout of food poisoning, you're in charge, Staines.'
'M-me?'
Greyhaven nodded. 'And the Martians did say that they wanted the leader to go up in person.'
'Er... Teddy.'
'I'll accompany you if you wish, Home Secretary.'
'You're going up there?' It was Veronica Halliwell, the head of MI5.
'There's little choice, is there, Director General?'
'Will you be armed?' she had done her homework. Greyhaven had done his National Service, and still
practised his marksmanship from time to time.
'No, thank you, commander. That's a big ship, and one handgun won't make too much difference in the
lions' den, will it?'
She nodded. 'As you wish.'
'Have you raided the UNIT Offices yet?' the Home Secretary demanded.
'Sir, we need everyone at our disposal here. Besides, it's complicated. UNIT facilities have special status,
we can't just wade in.'
'Director General, they have Alexander Christian in there. They are harbouring a multiple-murderer.
Criminal acts don't get much more clear-cut than that. Now, I want you to raid their office, and I want
you to do it now.'
'Sir!' a young soldier was running over with a radiophone. 'It's Washington, Home Secretary.'
Page 17
Greyhaven leant over the soldier and unplugged the telephone's battery. 'Oops, we seem to be having
technical difficulties. It must be interference from the Martian ship. Are you coming, Staines?'
'Yes, I suppose so.'
Greyhaven walked over to his car, and unlocked the boot. He pulled out an Adidas sports bag.
'Are you going to challenge them to a game of squash?' Halliwell asked witheringly.
Greyhaven didn't reply.
'Get Christian,' Staines ordered her sternly, before he followed Greyhaven across.
'What's going on?' Benny asked.
A hatch was dilating open on the underside of the craft. The light inside wasn't that bright, but it stood in
stark contrast to the gloomy metalwork of the rest of the ship. The crowd were getting agitated, perhaps
thinking that it was a weapon of some kind. A black disc appeared in the hatchway, and it began
descending in a perfectly straight line.
The Doctor stared up. 'They are sending down a platform. A lift car, I would imagine.' He checked his
pocket watch. 'Dead on time. The message said that they wanted the British leader to surrender in
person.' The crowd were pointing and muttering.
Benny was looking down at the ground. 'I don't see the Queen or Mr - Hang on, that's the Home
Secretary. And that rocket man, er... '
'Lord Edward Greyhaven,' the Doctor supplied.
'Who died and made him boss?'
The Doctor considered Bernice's question for a moment, before he remembered that it was a figure of
speech.
'This is no time for flippancy, Bernice,' he chided her.
The disc had reached the ground. Lord Greyhaven and the Home Secretary walked over and stepped onto
it. Before they had stopped moving, the disc was rising steadily into the air. There were appreciative
gasps from the crowd.
Page 18
The floor closed underneath them, like the iris behind a camera lens, shutting off the dizzying aerial view
of Central London. Greyhaven and Staines stepped down from the magnetic disc.
The chamber they were in was quite pleasant, bland almost. It was large. The high ceiling was the first
thing that Staines noted. That and the lighting, which was a sort of diffuse pink. The room reminded the
Home Secretary of the Commons Chamber. It was about the same size, and great swathes of a green
tarpaulin-like material lay neatly folded along the walls. The colour was almost the same shade as the
benches that lined the Commons.
'This isn't too bad, is it?' He called over to Greyhaven nervously. Teddy's attention was fixed on the only
door. Slowly he began walking towards it, that sports bag of his in his hand. Staines followed. Around
them the air was filled with the whirring of mechanisms, the rattling of pipes. The door was almost the
size of a garage door, and it was made from frosted glass.
A deathly red light was glowing on the other side, almost like firelight at the end of the evening, when
only the embers remained.
Something shifted behind the glass, a great, square shape moving slowly through the gloom. A machine
of some kind, he thought. It was impossible to see it clearly.
'Do they know we are here, do you think?' Staines felt nervous again.
The door retracted.
Page 19
Standing framed in the doorway, bathed in red light, was the worst thing that Staines had ever seen.
It looked like a barnacle encrusted deep-sea creature, a monster from the depths. It hissed, struggling for
breath as it dragged itself forwards out from a bank of mist.
It was well over seven feet high and was as broad as Staines was tall, with vast shoulders, like an
American footballer or a medieval knight. It was a hunchback, with a mass of thick plating piled up onto
its shoulder blades. It was skin, though, not armour. Crocodile skin, with ridges and bumps all over it.
The torso and stomach were covered in a curved carapace like a tortoise's or turtle's.
It moved towards them, lumbering on legs as thick as a human torso and bulky, flipper-like feet. Wiry
green-black hair sprouted from the gaps in the armour-plating - tufts of thick fur at the ankles, the elbows
and the shoulders.
Its head was bigger than a motorcycle helmet, was roughly the same shape, and looked like it had been
carved from a block of stone. Its eyes were red, the colour of burning coals, but they were concealed far
behind two plates of thick, protective glass, like semi-visors. Staines peered up at the face, unsure
whether what he was looking at was the creature's head or some kind of space-helmet. There was a gap in
the faceplate below the eyes, and through it, softer, gnarled skin was just visible. This parted, revealing
two rows of fangs packed together between thin lips. A red tongue, forked like a snake, flickered over the
front teeth.
Staines screamed.
The Dying Days - Chapter Eight
Page 1
Death and Diplomacy
'Ssilence that creature,' the monster hissed, raising a claw like a giant crab's. The voice filled the room.
'Be quiet, Home Secretary,' Greyhaven ordered. Staines clamped his mouth shut, although whimpering
noises continued to escape.
Greyhaven tried to ignore his colleague and turned to the monster. 'Lord Xznaal, I presume?'
'Lord Geryahavunn,' it whispered. The Martian looked down at Staines. Although this monster was
incapable of facial expression, or even of moving its head, somehow it managed to communicate its
disdain. 'Thiss iss the leader of the United Kingdom clan?' it barked.
Greyhaven looked down apologetically at Staines, who was cowering behind him. 'Upon your arrival, the
clan leaders fled their lands. They left behind this fellow. He is a good man, but he is surprised and
frightened by your appearance.'
'You are not?' it grunted.
Greyhaven looked the monster up and down. 'I admit that you are not how I pictured you. Your voice has
also changed - the effects of the Earth atmosphere you have provided for us in here?'
'That iss correct.' It paused to draw breath. 'How did you picture uss?'
Greyhaven laughed. 'As a powerfully-built member of my own race,' he admitted.
'Likewisse,' the monster chortled, lifting its head back to bark a laugh. 'We have only ever sseen your
people in their sspace-armour.'
'Y-you know this creature?' Staines asked.
'Show some respect, Home Secretary. This is Lord Xznaal, leader of the Argyre Clan. He controls
territory the size of Arizona.'
Page 2
Page 3
'Larger, now,' Xznaal reminded them.
'Indeed.' Greyhaven conceded. 'Which reminds me.' He bent down and unzipped his bag.
'Are you concealing a weapon?'
'Yes,' Greyhaven said simply.
The Martian lurched at him with surprising speed, batting him out of the way. It probed the inside of the
bag with a claw, lifting out what it found. Xznaal held it between powerful pincers, examining it. 'A
mace?' it asked.
'The mace!' Staines exclaimed.
Xznaal swiped the air with it experimentally. 'It iss consstructed from a ssoft metal. It would disstort
when ussed in combat.'
'That is not the point ... my Lord,' Staines explained. 'That is the symbol of parliamentary power in this
country.'
'A ssacred object?'
'Near enough, yes,' Greyhaven said smugly.
Staines walked over to his colleague. 'Where the hell did you get it?'
'The House of Commons, Staines, naturally. You should have asked me how I got it. 'Greyhaven turned
to Xznaal. 'Possession of this gives you at least some claim to political power. We will have to examine
the full constitutional position.'
Staines grabbed Greyhaven's shoulder. 'What is happening here?'
Greyhaven shook him off. 'A coup d'etat,' he explained. 'With the support and assistance of a foreign
power.'
Xznaal bent over Staines. 'Thiss human iss unaware of the plan?'
Greyhaven shrugged. 'The Home Secretary here knows that my followers have been plotting a coup,
using Martian technology. He did not expect the creators of that technology to turn up in person. In fact,
he thinks that your race is extinct.'
Page 4
'Now might be a good time to tell me.'
'Very well,' Greyhaven said,'Over twenty years ago, the crew of Mars Probe 13 encountered Xznaal's
people, the native race of Mars. Alexander Christian and his crew infiltrated a subterranean city, and
were caught spying in a scientific research facility. Christian was the only one to escape. As you know, I
was Minister of Science at the time, with responsibility for both the Mars programme and Space
Security, and so it fell to me to sort out a potential diplomatic disaster. Once the language barrier was
overcome, the Martians demanded two things: Christian's extradition, and an assurance that we would
stay away from their territory. The extradition proved a logistical problem - the Prison Service would
have blown their budget for the next hundred and twenty years transferring Christian sixty million miles.
Eventually Xznaal agreed that we could keep him imprisoned here, but that we mustn't ever release or
debrief him. We have stuck to our agreement.'
Xznaal grunted his approval. 'If a Martian had been caught at Aldermasston or Ssellafield, would you
have been sso lenient?'
'Almost certainly not,' Staines admitted quickly. 'And now the Martians are angry at us because the Mars
97 breaks the other side of the agreement? But Teddy, you were the driving force behind Mars 97.'
Greyhaven and Xznaal shared a laugh.
'My dear chap, why do you think that we haven't been to Mars for over twenty years?'
'Lack of funding? The money could always be spent better elsewhere.'
'Nonsense. Think about the prestige of being the first country to put a man on Mars. Think about all the
mineral wealth in the asteroid belts, think about the possibilities of a military base on the Moon, or a steel
works in zero-gravity. There are energy sources and minerals in this solar system that would provide the
solution to all mankind's problems; the population boom wouldn't be a problem if we could move people
to Mars or Venus. Would a few billion pounds really be better spent on social security for a couple of
million layabouts on one small island?'
'Mars is uninhabitable, Teddy. It doesn't have an atmosphere, it's highly radioactive.'
Greyhaven laughed. 'If Mars is uninhabitable, Home Secretary, what, precisely, do you think that is?'
'Things might live there,' Staines blurted,'but not humans.'
'Congratulations, David, that is precisely what I want people to believe. Before the mid-seventies, most
scientists thought that Mars might be capable of supporting life. The Mariner probes didn't rule it out.
Why do you think Britain wanted to go to Mars back in the seventies? Because it was the only planet in
the solar system, other than Earth, that might be fit for colonisation. Now, I agreed with Xznaal that no
Earthman would land on Mars, and it wasn't too difficult to wind down the British Mars Programme - the
death of Alexander Christian's crew made it a great deal easier. But the last thing I wanted was some
American or Russian mission there. I may have some clout in this country, Teddy, but I have very little
influence on NASA policy. So the British Space Centre reported back that Mars was uninhabitable, we
released reams and reams of scientific evidence proving that Mars wouldn't support a human colony,
that there was far too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Almost straight away, without question,
the international scientific community accepted our version of events. Only the Americans weren't sure -
until one of MI6's double-O agents went to Cape Canaveral and substituted the real data collected by
Viking with our fake. Their plans for Mars missions have been more half-hearted since then, much easier
to sabotage. The best they've come up with in twenty years is a fossil that might be from Mars. Even if it
is, do you know what they thought the fossil was? The waste products of single-cell creatures. Three
billion year old bacteria pooh that may or may not be from Mars.'
'But ...'
'Be quiet, Staines. You want to know the truth, then here it is: For twenty years, elements of the British
security services have been active throughout the rest of the world covering up one vital fact about Mars:
you or I could walk on the Martian surface without the aid of a spacesuit. Yes, it's normally as cold as a
Scottish winter, and the air is thin, but any reasonably fit man with a pair of gloves and a woolly hat
could live there. '
Page 5
The crowd were beginning to disperse. Necks were getting cricked, it was getting late and the UFO was
just hanging there doing nothing. The police had sealed off the area, so no-one else was getting in. There
were still many hundreds of thousands of people in and around Trafalgar Square, but the crowd was
appreciatively thinner than it had been. Those that remained where quiet again, expectant. Someone was
proclaiming that Jesus was the one true saviour, another that the end of the world was nigh, another that
he was selling soft drinks.
Everyone else stood or sat, listening to the radio, looking up at the spacecraft or down at the police and
military presence. The Evening Standard had published a late edition, with ten pages of eye-witness
reports and photographs. Virtually everyone in the crowd had bought a copy, hoping that it would
explain what was going on.
It didn't, of course.
The Doctor was staring up, his eyes screwed up. He was holding the sonic screwdriver out in front of
him.
'Now what are you doing?' Benny asked, tucking her newspaper underneath her arm. None of the
policemen or soldiers had seen them yet, but surely it was only a matter of time.
'Knocking,' the Doctor said quietly.
A series of grunts and barks filled the reception chamber of the Martian ship, making Staines jump.
Greyhaven's was a more measured response.
The voice swirled around them. It was the same 'holographic sound' technology that the Martians had
used to communicate with Greyhaven for twenty years. Alexander Christian had brought trinkets back
with him - a Martian walkie-talkie and a couple of electronic keys. These were based on a form of silicon
unknown on Earth, but which could be crudely duplicated. Greyhaven had built the communicator in his
office himself, and currently only that prototype existed.
Page 6
The Martian leader turned to Greyhaven. 'A human in the crowd iss ussing a ssonic device. You
informed uss that your race had no ssuch technology,' he spat.
'We haven't,' Greyhaven said coolly.
Xznaal hissed an order into the air.
A globe materialised in the space between them: a hologram. The image was a panning shot of the
crowd, presumably from a camera mounted on the hull. Now the picture moved with more purpose, and
began zooming in on a section directly below them.
Standing by a police box was a man and a woman. She was tall and leggy, and had adopted a tomboy
look: short hair and a baggy, garish jumper. Her companion was just as striking: a man with shoulderlength
hair in a full-length Victorian housecoat. They were both peering upwards at the ship. He was
holding something aloft - a microphone, perhaps, or a measuring instrument of some kind.
'I know him,' Greyhaven said quietly.
'Who iss he?' Xznaal demanded.
'He was at Mission Control this morning. Do you remember, David?'
The Home Secretary shrugged. 'Yes, I think so. It was the chap that didn't know who you were.'
Greyhaven silenced him with a glare.
'I sshall desstroy them.'
'No!' Greyhaven shouted.
Xznaal hissed his displeasure.
'Xznaal, everyone on the planet is watching this spacecraft. There are a million people down there in that
crowd. At the moment, they are nervous. They don't understand the benefits of co-operation with the
Martians. Their reaction will be the same as Staines' - horror, terror.'
Xznaal stepped back. 'That iss how it sshould be,' he wheezed.
'If you open fire, all the human clans will panic. My people will work with you willingly, given a little
time. Better, surely, that my soldiers capture the man. That way you could question him.'
'You are a wisse counssel, Gerayhavunn. We sshall bring those humans aboard. 'He barked another order
into the air.
Page 7
'A hatch is opening,' Bernice informed him.
The Doctor adjusted the settings on the sonic screwdriver. 'Can you see if there's anyone on the
platform?' he asked her.
She was rubbing her neck. 'Not yet - wait a second. No, it's empty. And it's heading towards us.
The crowd were getting boisterous again.
The disc was about eight feet across, about six inches thick. Rivets ran along the underside. As it dropped
below head height, the Doctor could see that the upper surface was coated with a stippled material. There
were no other features, such as a control box or a communications panel,
The Doctor stepped up onto the deck, helping Bernice to do the same.
'It works on a very simple principle: there are magnetic ray projectors mounted along the hull of the ship.'
'There isn't even a handrail,' she moaned.
'More serious problems are at hand,' the Doctor informed her.
The disc began rising. Bernice was unsteady on her feet, trying to keep upright. The Doctor had no such
difficulty.
'Try to stand still,' he advised her,'Admire the view.'
London glittered beneath them. The neo-classicism of the National Portrait gallery looked good picked
out by spotlights and street lamps. Beyond it was the London Coliseum, behind them Admiralty Arch
and the imposing buildings of Whitehall.
Bernice was on her knees, looking a little green around the gills.
'I'm not very good with heights,' she explained.
'Neither am I,' the Doctor comforted her, gazing at the Houses of Parliament about half a mile away.
Westminster Abbey was sitting next to them, as ever. There were military units there, presumably ready
to defend the bastions of democracy and English life if the Martians attacked.
Bernice pulled herself back, trying to straighten up. 'It's not often you get the chance to throw up over a
million people.'
'Throw up what?' the Doctor asked, distracted by Big Ben ringing half past eight. Traffic was flowing
along Westminster Bridge and Piccadilly just as it would be on any other night at this time.
'Never mind. I think I'm all right, now. 'She glanced up at the spaceship. 'It looks even bigger now,
doesn't it?'
'That's because it's closer,' the Doctor explained patiently.
'I know,' Bernice replied through clenched teeth. The hatchway opened above them, and the disc passed
through it.
Benny pulled herself to her feet as the hatch closed beneath them. The two politicians who had come up
before them hadn't made it any further than this first reception chamber. She wondered whether they
realised that the room was little more than a storage area. In the Martian scheme of things, such details of
etiquette were very important, and it was probably the Lord's idea of a joke. Martian humour was
occasionally elusive to humans, and most of it got lost in translation.
The Lord - Benny was still trying to remember his name from the Declaration - towered over the
humans, as might be expected. The nobility of the Argyre had not adopted the sleeker bio-armour that
most of the Martian clans wore by this time. That gave a couple of important clues to his character: he
was a soldier, not a diplomat, he was a reactionary, he wasn't too concerned by the fashions of his people.
He was also large, taller and broader than even most of his fellow Martians. A great crack on his
shoulder blade had been crudely patched up, and the carapace had long grown back over it, leaving a
dark green scar. Unlike many of the Martian nobility, he'd been on the front line, fighting shell to shell
with his men.
Page 8
The Doctor was moving forward. Benny caught his arm. 'I'll do it,' she offered.
The Doctor nodded, stepping aside. 'Xznaal,' he reminded her.
Benny stepped off the disc and walked calmly up to the Martian, keeping her head bowed. 'Dass hunnur,
ssli hoos-urr, Xznaal.'
'Ssperr hunnur urr tass.' The reply came automatically, but Benny thought she detected a grudging tone in
his voice. He'd also left off the honorific form. 'You know of us. 'he wheezed. It was a statement,
delivered with a hint of suspicion. Benny wondered for a moment whether she'd betrayed too much
knowledge.
The Doctor stepped forwards. 'Good evening, my Lord,' he glanced back at Greyhaven. 'My apologies.
Good evening, my Lords. I am the Doctor, and this is my friend Bernice Summerfield. I believe that you
need my help.'
'Inssolent commoner,' Xznaal hissed, straightening his claw. Nestling in the patch of green hair at his
wrist was a stubby metal tube. It flowed out of the joint, like a protruding bone rather than something that
had been grafted on. It was a weapon, of course, a sonic disruptor.
The Doctor stared right down the barrel. 'You, sir, may be a Lord of Mars, but I am a Lord of Time. You
will show the respect due to me.'
'A Gallifreyan?' Xznaal whispered. He lowered his arm, and bowed his head.
The Doctor's lip curled until he was almost sneering. 'That's right. As I was saying, you need my help.
Tell me everything you know.'
The Doctor stood there, listening to them as first Xznaal, then Greyhaven recounted their versions of
events. The Home Secretary, Staines, was hanging on every word as well. It didn't need an expert in body
language to tell that he was terrified. Benny watched the Doctor closely. Before he had changed, he
rarely referred to his home planet, and had never used it to pull rank on anyone. On the other hand, it was
the perfect way to gain the respect of a Martian noblebeing.
Page 9
Xznaal and Greyhaven had been in contact for over twenty years. Throughout that time, Greyhaven had
kept mankind away from Mars, and Xznaal had sent him the odd snippet of technical information.
'Lord Gerayhavunn hass kept hiss sside of the bargain,' Xznaal concluded, inhaling loudly. Greyhaven
had been happy to relate his part in the scheme, the Martian had been more reticent. 'Now we sshall keep
ourss. With our ssupport,' he wheezed, 'he sshall rule thiss country ass he sseess fit, and,' another
hiss,'together we sshall ussher in an age of interplanetary co-operation.'
'All it needs is this Martian ship,' Greyhaven proclaimed, flinging his arms wide. 'We've got supporters
on the ground, we've got troops and equipment, but with just one Martian war rocket, we can suppress
any opposition. But we don't need guns, we don't need bombs. Just think: a thousand new factories,
pouring out technology that's a century ahead of anything on the market at the moment. It's the start of a
new Industrial Revolution, with Britain at the forefront! Jobs, prosperity, security, international prestige
and power. Not just international: Interplanetary! Interstellar! Intergalactic! Together, humanity and the
Martians will travel to the stars hand in hand.'
'Oh yes, Lord Greyhaven,' the Doctor shouted, although he was almost face-to-face with him. 'I can see
what's in it for you. You think you'll go down in history as the man who put the Great back into Great
Britain and the sofa back into the United States of America. The suns will never set on the British
Empire.' He turned to Xznaal. 'But you won't be going hand-in-hand anywhere. Martians don't have
hands. What exactly do the Martians get from this deal?'
Benny could imagine Xznaal's eyes narrowing behind his visor. 'Marss iss in itss dying dayss. Over a
million yearss of civilissation, of technological progressss, iss coming to an end.'
'Your mineral wealth is exhausted,' Benny said. She'd seen the worked-out mines, the metal stripped
from old buildings to complete new ones. At one point, the Martian civilisation had spread from the
poles almost to the equator. Something had caused massive retrenchment even before the Thousand Day
War. Most archaeologists agreed that there must have been an ecological disaster.
Page 10
Xznaal faced her. 'Ssummerfield, my entire planet iss exhaussted.' He paused to draw breath. 'For
centuriess there hass been no new metal, no new ssource of energy. 'Another pause. 'All Martian life iss
dying from the ssmallesst plant to the largesst beasst of burden. Our blood is thin, my people infertile.
Within a century, our world will be dead.'
'So you want to plunder Earth?' the Doctor countered.
'There's no question of plunder, Doctor,' Greyhaven snapped. 'We will open a trading relationship with
the Martian people. Both planets will benefit.'
'In the lasst few centuriess, our major citiess have become depopulated. Our people are impotent and
disseassed. Our fieldss are barren. Lord Geryahavunn hass been assssissting uss.'
'Staines,' Greyhaven prompted.
The Home Secretary pulled a test tube from his jacket pocket.
'Martian soil,' Benny said. It was one of the tubes from the crashed helicopter, or one very similar.
'Not quite,' Greyhaven said, taking it from his colleague. 'Martian soil is little more than rust. It's mildly
radioactive and completely sterile. You have as much chance as growing crops on the hull of this
spaceship as in Martian soil.'
He handed the test tube to the Martian Lord. 'But when Xznaal's men analyse the contents of this test
tube, they will discover that our scientists have reintroduced biological agents that make the soil fertile. It
is a simple chemical treatment process.'
Xznaal's held the tube in his vast pincers. 'Our sscientisstss theorissed that ssuch a processss would
exisst, but without raw materialss, it remained just a theory.'
'One of my refineries is already producing the fertiliser. To human eyes it is a laughably cheap
procedure, but it will save an entire planet. Soon, space freighters built by British Aerospace will be
transporting the fertiliser, and raw materials like it to Mars. '
Page 11
The Doctor straightened. 'Not Martian warships?'
Xznaal hissed. 'Thiss will be the only war rocket needed to ssecure our interesstss here. Thiss iss not an
invassion, Doctor, thiss iss a trading partnersship.'
'The Martian ship is here for the same reason we maintain the garrison on Gibraltar,' Greyhaven
explained.
'Exactly,' Staines brightened. He was plucking up his courage now. 'I must say, Teddy, I was a little
sceptical before, but the more I hear, the more it sounds like an excellent idea.'
'I take it Staines gets to keep his job in the new order?' Benny said.
'Oh yes. He will be Home Secretary and Chancellor, I will be the Prime Minister, serving Xznaal as head
of state.'
'This doesn't sound very democratic,' the Doctor noted. 'Don't the British people get a say in all this?'
'No,' Greyhaven said coldly. 'There is nothing to discuss. Once the situation has stabilised, dissenters
may be allowed to emigrate.'
'And if they don't want to?'
'Then they won't be allowed to dissent. The ill-informed opinions of a rabble won't stand in the way of
mankind's destiny. People want strong government, they want security, they want a better standard of
living. Do you seriously think that the current generation of politicians can provide that when they spend
most of their time arguing amongst themselves over trivia and they are afraid to look beyond next week,
let alone into the new millennium? No offence, David.'
'None taken, Teddy.' The second half of the speech was almost word-for-word what Staines had put in
his electoral address.
The Doctor's mouth was open, ready to object when there was a rumbling noise far away from them.
Another sound the same. Benny turned to the Doctor, who was frowning.
'Lord Xznaal,' a disembodied voice echoed, 'we are under attack.'
The Martian roared, turning to face Greyhaven.
'What is happening?' the human asked. He couldn't speak Martian.
Page 12
'Vissual,' Xznaal barked. A hologlobe lit up between them all. It showed the underside of the Martian
vessel. The engine cowlings at the rear were flaring and flashing with tiny explosions. A combination of
anti-aircraft fire and surface-to-air missiles, and quite a fierce attack. The compartment that they were in
was at the other end of the vast craft, and they could feel the blasts.
'Are we threatened?' Greyhaven asked.
Xznaal was studying a damage report that was scrolling across the screen. 'No,' he concluded. 'You told
me that you had your country'ss military under control.'
Greyhaven squirmed a little. 'I also said that there were bound to be military units that remained loyal to
the old regime. Can you focus on the source of the attack?'
Xznaal hissed the order, and the image switched to the scene below. The crowds were dispersing, or
rather they were fleeing up the Strand in panic. The picture panned around, locating and zooming in on a
trio of soldiers nestling on the roof of a building. They had set up a mortar, and were firing it at the
Martian ship as fast as they could reload it. The operator of the camera quickly found a couple of similar
groups.
'Nine men,' Greyhaven spat, 'hardly a full-scale rebellion. Look there, my boys are already moving in on
them.'
'They are UNIT troops,' Staines was musing.
'UNIT?' Xznaal asked, raising a claw.
'A United Nations force,' the Home Secretary said.
'The foreign powers are united against us?' Xznaal roared. 'They dare to defy my will?'
'I m-mean,' Staines couldn't finish. The Doctor and Greyhaven were both glaring at him.
The Martian Lord scrutinised his human ally. 'Thiss iss Earth'ss ressponsse?'
The Doctor clutched the lapels of his frock coat. 'You see, Xznaal? Humanity has united against you.
You can't defeat the entire human race, not with one war rocket.'
Page 13
Xznaal sucked air through his teeth, as if he was in physical pain. 'Then humanity sshall ssee the full
might of the Martian war machine. 'He took a deep breath and began to bark an order to his gunner.
'Bring the cannons to bear on the crowd. Wipe them out, level the -'
'No!' the Doctor shouted.
Xznaal hesitated.
The Doctor fixed Xznaal with a stare. 'This is an historic opportunity. Greyhaven is right about that,
whatever his failings. Seize the moment, negotiate peace with the humans. You said it yourself, Xznaal,
your planet is dying. Humans might be less advanced than Martians, but the gap is only a matter of fifty
years or so and they're catching up. The two planets will wipe each other out, and you know it.'
Xznaal hissed.
'Let me broker a fair peace between Earth and Mars,' the Doctor pleaded, 'the whole of Earth, the whole
of Mars. A settlement that isn't reliant on sectional interests.'
'What of your interests, Doctor?' Greyhaven said calmly.
The Doctor turned to face him, narrowing his eyes.
'You're an alien, are you?'
'Well, yes and no,' he replied evasively.
'You're not from Earth. You're certainly not from Mars.'
'That's right,' he conceded.
'Then what right do you have to interfere in our affairs?'
Xznaal's head was cocked to one side. 'The Time Lordss are forbidden to interfere under the termss of the
Galactic Consstitution,' he muttered suspiciously.
'Yet this Doctor does,' Staines piped up. 'Now, my knowledge of the law might be limited to that of the
planet Earth, young man, but it sounds as if you are outside your jurisdiction.' He clearly had no idea
how ridiculous he sounded.
Page 14
Xznaal scratched the bridge of his noseguard with the tip of his claw. 'Are you acting with the authority
of the High Council?'
'Not explicitly,' the Doctor conceded a little uncomfortably,' but if I were to contact them, then I am sure
they would authorise my actions.'
Xznaal lifted his claw, twisting it around so that the great pincers were pointing at the Doctor's head.
'Then we will have to enssure that you don't have that opportunity.'
There was a hiss from the intercom system.
'Lord Xznaal, a human aerocraft is approaching. Tactical analysis indicates that it is rotor-propelled, and
heavily armed. It poses a threat.'
The hologlobe displayed it, a helicopter gunship coming in low over the buildings.
There was a tap on Benny's shoulder. The Doctor was standing next to her, nodding towards the door.
She nodded and edged towards it with him. Xznaal and Greyhaven were studying the image intently.
'It may be time to demonstrate our power,' Greyhaven conceded.
Benny had backed into the glass door. While the Doctor was still fishing for the control, Staines glanced
their way. 'They are escaping!' he spluttered.
Xznaal's arm arced up, sweeping through the hologlobe and nearly batting Staines aside to get a clear
shot.
'Deep breath,' the Doctor whispered to Benny.
The Martian's gun burst into life, and there was a noise so loud, the air pulsed.
Benny stared at it, saw the flash of the muzzle.
The Doctor's hand was on her neck, tugging her down.
The transparent door crazed as if someone had just driven a juggernaut through it.
Both she and the Doctor were through the doorway before the shards of glass had finished falling. Benny
squeezed her eyes shut to protect them.
Page 15
It was like diving into a swimming pool - the air was so much colder out of the reception chamber. More
than that - the amount of available oxygen had just become rather more limited. She opened her eyes to
find that it was much darker, too.
The Doctor ran through the wide corridor, used to the light and thin air. She followed, already wheezing.
He was moving with a reassuring confidence.
The Martian ship rocked. Presumably the helicopter was beginning to loose off its air-to-air missiles.
The Doctor was clambering up a ladder, the rungs of which were almost a metre apart. She followed as
best she could, her chest tight.
The Doctor pulled open a hatch above his head, and warm night air seeped in.
'We're moving!' Benny shouted. She hadn't realised until she poked her head out of the hatch.
'I know,' the Doctor replied. 'Heading towards Whitehall.' He was already outside, standing astride, like a
ship's captain at the wheel. Benny clambered out, pulling herself up by tugging the tails of his frock coat.
When she was out, the Doctor kicked the hatch shut and held the sonic screwdriver over it. Something
fizzed and sparked. They were perched on one of the ship's fins.
The drive systems were silent as a hot air balloon's. Underneath them, though, the noise was horrendous.
It was a chaotic mix of gunfire, artillery and screaming civilians caught in the crossfire.
The flash of gun muzzles and the crump of grenades. The Martian ship hadn't fired on the surface, not a
single warrior had left the ship. The fierce fighting down there was strictly human versus human.
Benny felt safe up here, she realised. This ship should have been the focus for the attack, but nothing
seemed to be troubling it. Benny would much rather be here, two hundred feet in the air, with a million
tons of Martian armour between her and the ground, than down on the streets.
A helicopter that she hadn't even heard exploded half a mile ahead of them. Its rotor blades were backlit
by the burning fuselage as it plummeted down somewhere between Horse Guards Parade and St James
Park.
Page 16
The Doctor stood there, watching it fall through the night sky.
'What do we do?' she called.
The Doctor began striding over to the edge, quite a distance. Benny tried to keep up and quickened her
pace. After a few moments, she caught up with him, almost going over the side in the process. For the
briefest moment there was nothing beneath one of her feet but a two-hundred foot drop down to the war
torn streets of SW1.
'How do we get down?'
He turned to her, a sad smile on his face. 'Ask me again in a week's time,' he replied.
The ship was slowing down again, turning through about thirty degrees,
'Doctor, I know everything there is to know about Martians, why don't I know about this? Even if we
beat Xznaal tonight, the historical implications of this are huge. Why didn't I know? There were Martians
at my wedding and no-one mentioned this, no-one at all. And I met Bambera a few years from now. That
time we fought your evil duplicate at Buckingham Palace. Why didn't she recognise me then, if we'd
already met?'
The Doctor stood for a moment, watching the fires burning in St James Park. A couple of air-to-air
missiles streaked past, like fireworks. There was fresh gunfire, but from much further away, South of the
river.
Benny realised that he wasn't going to answer. 'Did you know this was going to happen?'
He didn't hesitate. 'No.'
'Before you changed, you seemed to know everything about everything.'
The Doctor turned to face her, firelight reflected in his face and his hair. 'No-one knows everything there
is to know about everything. No-one knows everything there is to know about even the smallest, simplest
thing. '
Page 17
'You always used to have something up your sleeve. There was always a plan. You used to say that you
could never be too careful.'
'In the end he learnt that he was right. However much you plot, however much you try to think ahead, to
second-guess, to predict what will come, you'll never get everything exactly right. How can anyone
rewrite history when no-one can even read it properly?'
Benny looked out over the city. They'd passed the worst of the fighting, which hadn't spilled out much
further than Trafalgar Square itself. Whole sections of the city were blacked out. The power must be
down. The more she saw, the more Benny wanted to stay up here above it all.
The ship was descending. The Doctor peered over the side. 'We're barely clearing the rooftops now. This
may be our only chance - it's not too far.'
To prove his point, he leapt over the edge.
Benny gasped, hurrying over to where he had been.
The roof was so close, it almost caught her out - literally only three feet away. The Doctor was already
on his feet, brushing himself down. It was a sloped roof, but he'd landed on quite a solid-looking ledge.
The ship was moving at walking pace. Benny had to jog along it to get back level with the Doctor. She
jumped across, trying to see the manoeuvre as a one metre hop rather than a five storey drop. This was no
more dangerous than running for the bus, she told herself.
Her feet found the ledge, although the Doctor needed to steady her.
'Well done,' the Doctor congratulated, grinning.
The Martian ship continued to drift past. The mortar attack and the helicopter hadn't even scratched the
wax-like coating, let alone the metal beneath.
Benny realised that she'd been clinging to the Doctor rather more intently and rather longer than she felt
fully comfortable with. He grinned down at her.
'How do we get down from here?'
Page 18
'That's easy,' the Doctor replied, pointing over to the metal fire escape.
Benny's feet were still trying to find the ground when she felt the Doctor's hands on her hips, lifting her
down.
'Come on!' the Doctor shouted, grabbing her arm and pulling her along.
Benny looked up. The Martian ship was still only travelling at walking pace, but it drifted over the
rooftops with the inevitability of a thundercloud. The whole sky was dark metal, twisted into alien
shapes. They jogged underneath it, clearing its underside.
'Don't look back!' the Doctor yelled at her.
Benny swung her head forwards. 'The UNIT office!' she shouted. The ship was heading straight for
UNIT. Half a dozen troops in body armour and powder-blue helmets were coming out of the door,
setting up position.
'Halt or I fire!' one shouted, until the Doctor waved a UNIT pass underneath his nose.
'Get clear, Lieutenant, there's nothing you can do,' the Doctor bellowed, still moving for the door.
The sound of hatchways retracting, metal grinding against metal.
The soldiers stood their ground, levelling their machine guns.
'They're using sonic cannons!' Benny called back. 'You haven't a chance.'
She was through the door, now, into the deserted reception. It was brightly-lit, with a reception desk that
curved smoothly around. Large pot plants were placed around the area to reinforce the impression that
this was just another governmental agency. The illusion was spoilt when the Doctor reached over the
desk and flicked the switch that opened the entrance into the rest of the building - there weren't many
quangos whose office doors were built from three-inch armour-plating.
Page 19
She followed him through, trying to close the door behind her.
'There's no time,' the Doctor cried, grabbing her wrist.
There was a sound like a heavy metal band testing their amps, ready for an open air concert. Even though
she had been clutching her head, it left Benny's ears bleeding and unable to hear the screaming of the
guards outside.
She stumbled after the Doctor, trying to remember how long it took a sonic cannon to power up between
shots. She could hear it cycling up into audible frequencies.
The second blast smashing into the front of the building, shattering not just the glass but the stone and
metal supports. They were aiming low, firing diagonally down right at the base of the building, she
guessed, the place a lumberjack would aim his axe if the UNIT Building was a tree.
'Don't look back,' the Doctor screamed at her, pulling her through the office. She barely heard him, and
was dizzy now. Had her inner ear been damaged by the blast?
The office had already been evacuated, so quickly that top secret information was still displayed on
computer monitors. Outside, the entire facade of the building was sliding and crashing to the ground onto
the bodies of those poor men on the pavement outside. It bought them a little time: the Martians would
wait for the dust to settle before -
The third blast removed the armoured doorway along with the wall on which it was mounted. The desk,
the plant pots and everything in the four storeys above the reception exploded or crashed down onto
something that had exploded. The sonic cannon was cutting through the building like a loaf - hacking off
slice after slice. It was as savage as it was methodical. Clouds of dust raced past her, as though they too
were trying to escape.
As they passed through the door on the back wall, the next blast caught the office, obliterated everything
within it. There was a terrible wrenching sound as tonnes upon tonnes of cracked and brittle masonry
plummeted through the ceiling. Benny's back was pelted by tiny pieces of rubble.
The next blast would catch up with them. That was Benny's first thought. The second was that the room
they were in now was a landing, with a broad stairway and a lift shaft. The Doctor was brandishing the
sonic screwdriver. The thick lift doors slid open.
Page 20
'Down!' he ordered.
'What do you mean dow-'
He shoved her through the doorway.
There wasn't a lift car. Benny was falling through the dark. She pulled her feet together and kept her
hands at her sides, trying not to tense up. What sort of lifestyle was it where you instinctively knew what
to do if you find yourself in freefall without a parachute?
She hit the top of the lift car a little awkwardly. The Doctor joined her a second or so later. They'd only
fallen twenty feet or so. It was enough to escape the next blast, which roared overhead in a hurricane of
rubble. The force of the blast kept the debris in the air, rather than letting it drop down the shaft after
them. It also caught the lift cable, making the car they were on rock as if it was on a rough sea.
The Doctor had adjusted the sonic screwdriver to make it into a cutting tool and was burning through the
roof of the lift.
Above them there was a series of explosive bursts, like grenades.
'The gas main ...' she whispered.
There was a rushing noise, a flash of light. She could picture the wall of flame rolling across the landing
towards them.
'Excellent,' the Doctor exclaimed, glancing up. 'Quickly,' and together they dropped into the lift car.
Almost as they hit the floor, the doors slid open with a chime. The Doctor ushered her out.
It was the UNIT underground car park. They'd come in this way, and Bessie would be down here
somewhere. The power was down, and the room was lit by dull pools of emergency lighting. For the first
time, Benny looked back, and her face was caught by the rush of hot air coming down the lift shaft.
A burst from the sonic screwdriver and the doors slid shut as the first flames rolled down past them.
Page 21
The Doctor and Benny stood in silence, catching their breath as the fire raged safely behind the thick
metal doors. The metal warped, the paint blistered, the doors rattled on their runners, but they held. The
Doctor passed her his handkerchief, and she wiped the blood from her ears.
'What a stroke of luck,' said the Doctor. 'That fire means that the Ice Warriors won't be making any little
visits down here in person.'
Twenty feet above them, another section of the building collapsed. And another.
'It also means that we are trapped down here.'
Powerful lights snapped on, twin beams fixing them from the other side of the low-vaulted car park.
'Oh, I wouldn't say that, Mrs Summerfield,' a familiar voice called.
Benny squinted past the source of the sound. The Brigadier was sitting in the driver's seat of Bessie. The
light came from the car's headlamps.
They hurried over. 'They wouldn't let me go with the assault team, so I stayed down here. This level was
designed to withstand a nuclear blast - judging by the tactics of that space rocket the gunnery officer
doesn't even know we have a basement.'
'He's covered us with tonnes of rubble, but that just means we're even better shielded,' the Doctor
informed her with a grin.
'And buried in,' Benny repeated.
It was the Brigadier's turn to smile. 'Mrs Summerfield, when we built this place twenty-five years ago,
we didn't forget to build a door. There's a way down to the Northern Line so wide you can drive a tank
through it.'
He glanced over at the pair of Chieftains lurking in the corner, then back at the Doctor.
'In the circumstances, I think that Bessie here might be a better choice. We need speed. '
Page 22
'Where's everyone else?' the Doctor asked him.
'Those not involved with the assault moved out: they've gone to safe houses. Bambera is heading for
Windsor with her staff.'
The Doctor was puzzled. 'They left you behind?'
'I stayed,' the Brigadier said simply. 'For you.'
'But the risk -'
'Doctor, Bambera might not realise it, but you are the only person on this planet that can stop those
things. That makes you our most valuable asset. And, of course, you're a friend. The enemy have secured
the capital. There's nothing more that we can do here for the moment. Let's get out of London, to safety
and you can work out how to stop this without any more loss of life.'
The Dying Days - Chapter Nine
Page 1
Our Friends From Mars
Wednesday, May 7th 1997
The exact sequence of events of the previous night was still confusing, and the newsrooms were still
assimilating what had happened.
Lord Greyhaven and the Home Secretary had gone aboard the Martian ship. Some unconfirmed reports
suggested that another two people, a man and a woman, had also been taken aboard. It was around then
the attack on the Martian ship had taken place. A group of soldiers had opened fire with mortars, some of
these had fallen short and caused panic in the crowd. All this time the Martian ship had remained
immobile, and apparently it hadn't been damaged in the attack. Later, a statement from the Ministry of
Defence said that the soldiers firing on the ship had been acting against direct orders, and had not been
part of the force sent to the Square to contain the crowd.
Supporting this official line, the main body of soldiers moved in on those firing at the ship. Some
civilians - reports varied, but probably only a handful - were caught in the crossfire. This had caused a
stampede, limited looting and a couple of power failures. The rebel soldiers had commandeered an
assault helicopter. When it was sent against the Martian vessel, it was finally provoked into opening fire.
Some sort of energy ray destroyed the helicopter that had locked on to the alien craft, and then the
Martian moved a little way into Whitehall to demolish an office building with the same weapon. The
soldiers had commandeered the office block to launch their attack on the Martians.
Within half an hour, the spacecraft had returned to its position. The fighting was already over by ten
o'clock and the third Martian Proclamation:
'PEOPLE OF THE UNITED KINGDOM. YOUR ASTRONAUTS COMMITTED A TERRIBLE
CRIME, THROUGH THEIR IGNORANCE. THIS SHOULD NOT BE THE WAY OUR RACES
FIRST MEET. LET US PUT TODAY BEHIND US, AND WORK TOGETHER. WE HAVE MUCH
TO OFFER ONE ANOTHER. YOUR FELLOW HUMAN CLANS ABANDONED YOU, YET YOU
FOUGHT FOR YOUR BELIEFS. THIS WE RESPECT. WE HAVE TALKED TO YOUR LORD
GREYHAVEN, HE IS A BRAVE, BOLD MAN. LET US LIVE IN PEACE, PEOPLE OF THE
UNITED KINGDOM AND OF MARS. '
Tensions on the ground had noticeably lessened by the time Lord Greyhaven and the Home Secretary
emerged, broad grins on their faces.
Page 2
Greyhaven, surrounded by the world's television cameras explained that there had been a terrible
misunderstanding, but he and Staines had quickly come to an arrangement with the Martians. There were
many exciting opportunities ahead. The few thousand people still in the Square cheered him as he made
his way from the area.
Every paper led with a full page photograph of the alien ship hovering over London. There wasn't a great
deal more variation in the headlines. 'We are not alone' was used by a couple of them. The Mail had
'UFOria'. The Telegraph had 'ET Our Friends, But The EU Are Not'. The Independent printed the
declaration of peaceful intent in full. The Mirror had 'Mars: Planet of Peace'. Only The Times seemed to
remember the Mars 97 with 'Britons on Mars, Martians in Britain'.
They weren't looking at what was happening in the rest of London or in Washington. News of the Prime
Minister's assassination came too late for the papers. Before anyone had time to take in the tragic news, a
press statement announced that evidence had been uncovered by MI5 of a conspiracy underway to
overthrow the entire British political system and to kill the Prime Minister. Members of Parliament and
other figures were arrested, some service chiefs had been suspended from duty. The conspiracy went
deep into the civil service, the armed forces and both Houses of Parliaments. Many prominent people
were involved, a number of whom were still at large. Under the circumstances, it had been agreed to
dissolve Parliament, pending a full investigation.
Any other day, the greatest constitutional crisis since the Restoration would have dominated the
headlines and thrown the country into panic, perhaps even civil war. Today, though, people were too
busy rejoicing that the Martians were here and that they had come in peace to even notice.
It was light at six o'clock.
The police would tell you that at that time, London's streets are almost empty. The street sweepers and
delivery men haven't quite started work, the trains haven't started arriving. Taxi drivers sit dozing in their
ranks. In the big hotels, the kitchen staff are gearing up for breakfast, but the foreign night porter is still
on duty and only a handful of the guests have received their alarm calls. Cafes and markets are beginning
to open, but they don't have customers.
Page 3
This morning something was different, and it took a moment to work out what it was. It's like breathing:
you do it all the time, of course, but every so often you're sitting down, relaxing, reading perhaps, and
you become conscious of it. You feel every inhalation rushing through the hair in your nostrils, you feel
it easing down your throat and inflating your lungs. You breathe out, acutely aware of your diaphragm
contracting. For a while you forget how to breathe without thinking about it. In moments like that, you
visualise all the other things your body does without telling you. The blood pumping around your brain,
the skin cells you're shedding, the food that's slowly being turned into shit in your stomach, and then you
think about the chemicals flashing and winking in your brain that make you what you are. You sit there,
wondering if you'll ever be able to concentrate on anything else again, or whether the steady rhythms of
your body that have been there all your life will keep you in a hypnotic trance forever. Two minutes
later, you've forgotten all about it again, and turned back to your book or television.
The difference was the traffic. The sound of cars was normally there in the background. Not the noise of
individual engines revving or vehicles whooshing past with car radios blaring, but the flatter, more even
sound of tyres against tarmac, a dull sound like rushing wind that's always there in every town centre.
The invisible cars that are forever somewhere in the distance. The sound that is somehow the same
volume whatever the time of the day or night.
In London, more than any other city in Britain, it is ever-present. It pervades every shop, every house,
every office. There isn't a window that doesn't pulse, or a pavement that doesn't hum with the vibration.
Even on the platform of a Tube station, deep underground, it's there. No-one ever notices unless they are
by themselves, sitting in a park or waiting for a train that never comes.
But when it's not there, it's as though the city is holding its breath, or its heart has stopped beating.
There were sounds - burglar alarms that were still ringing, car alarms that hadn't yet run down. Every so
often a police siren would wail past. Loudest of all was the birdsong.
A helicopter passed overhead.
Alexander Christian ducked behind the police box, scanning the sky as it receded into the distance.
Page 4
Page 5
When he had finally broken cover, and walked down Whitehall, he realised that something was missing.
It took a couple of seconds for him to register that it was the Martian spaceship. If only it had all been a
dream, he thought, before wondering where the ship was now.
The burnt-out shell of the police mobile HQ was the only remaining police or army vehicle in Trafalgar
Square. The corpses had all been removed, but the ground was littered with patches of blood and spent
cartridges. A copy of the Evening Standard blew past.
He wondered when Bambera had noticed that he'd gone. Her plan was that he would head to Windsor
with a group of the UNIT boys. Christian preferred to stay in London. He'd never been one to run away
from a fight.
He'd expected more troops on the ground, but he soon realised why the area was so deserted - the whole
of Whitehall, the Square and the Strand had been sealed off, along with a few of the back streets. The
manpower was concentrated on keeping people away from the area. Even so, it was short work to find a
gap in the defences and make a way out. Within ten minutes, he was in Covent Garden.
There couldn't have been many, Alexander mused, who had stolen the petty cash box of the United
Nations Intelligence Taskforce. It had about seventy pounds in it - a fortune twenty years ago, barely
enough to live on now. He didn't have any jewellery or even a watch to barter with. He'd be able to buy
food and travel around the Tube if it was operating, but not buy any new clothes or items of kit.
Apart from a couple of sugar cubes, he hadn't eaten since yesterday afternoon at the Lethbridge-Stewart
place, so the first order of business was breakfast. Covent Garden had gone upmarket since his day, but
he still managed to find a greasy spoon cafe without too much difficulty. Radio One was playing the
latest music - Christian hadn't been 'with it' twenty years ago, so it came as no surprise that the music
now was louder and more unpleasant now than ever before. Two burly young men were discussing the
form guide in their newspaper at one table, a young girl was sitting by herself at another. The proprietor
was a lanky Greek chap, who took Christian's money and disappeared into the back to make his fry-up
without saying a single word.
'You got a light?' the girl asked. She had an East End accent, long dyed-blonde hair that she kept loose.
Page 6
He took out a match, and sat next to her. He lit her cigarette, then his own pipe. She wore a tiny cropped
T-shirt that might have been sprayed on. It wasn't too difficult to work out what she did for a living. She
was fourteen, fifteen at most.
'What were you doing last night?' he asked.
'Same as everyone else,' she said non-committally, 'watching the telly and hoping Jeff Goldblum was
around, know what I mean?'
He smiled, as if he did. 'The spaceship's gone now.'
'It's over the Tower.'
'The Tower of London?'
'Yeah.' She dragged on her cigarette. 'D'ya want to buy me breakfast?'
'That's all I'll be buying,' he said.
'Fine.'
Christian went over to the counter and shouted through that he wanted another meal. The Greek emerged
ten seconds later with both plates and took some more money from him.
The news was coming up, Christian listened out for it.
The girl sat there, taking her time over the bacon. 'What d'you think?' she asked.
The news bulletin came on - a group of MPs and senior army men had tried to launch a coup last night.
This had been countered by loyal army units, and after fighting in the streets around Whitehall last night,
most of the plotters had been arrested. Parliament had been suspended, and until the situation had
stabilised, there was to be a Provisional Government led by Lord Edward Greyhaven. To prevent the
escape of the remaining plotters, all ports and airports would be closed for two days. In the interests of
law and order, the major cities would be under curfew during the hours of darkness for the next week or
so. People should remain calm, and go to work as normal.
Page 7
'They didn't even mention the Martian ship,' Christian laughed, unable to believe the gall of it.
'I'm scared,' the girl said, stubbing out her cigarette and pulling out another.
'Everyone is,' Christian said, finishing off his fried egg.
'I like that Lord Greyhaven, though. I think he'd make a good Prime Minister.'
'You're not worried about the curfew affecting business?'
She smiled as she chewed, her mouth was full. 'I'n't he bold? I don't just work nights. I'm in what they
call a recession-proof industry. Whatever happens I'll be OK.' She had a tiny bruise on her temple, scars
on her wrists, and underneath that T-shirt he could see her ribs. Christian wanted to hold her, to take her
little body and give her a hug. If he could just take her home, give her a bath and a comfortable bed to
sleep in she'd be safe. But that was what she wanted silly old men like him to think, wasn't it?
'I'm sure you will,' he replied, getting up.
'Thanks for breakfast.'
'Thanks for talking to me.'
By seven o'clock, the phone lines of the Japanese Embassy on Piccadilly were jammed. Across London,
all the embassies were fielding calls from worried tourists. At any given time, there were tens of
thousands of Japanese in the United Kingdom, seeing the sights of London, Stratford, Bath and York.
None of them wanted to be in a country occupied by a hostile alien lifeform. Most of these tourists were
middle-aged, rich and respectable, the remainder were the children of rich businessmen. Either way,
there were many powerful people at home scrutinising the actions of the embassy. The beleaguered staff
were fortunate that the phone system had crashed last night - the London exchanges could only deal with
local calls.
The embassy staff were quite busy enough trying to establish what the situation in Britain actually was.
Tokyo had demanded clarification as to who was in charge, whether the situation was stable, whether
Britain was still honouring treaties and trade agreements.
Page 8
Mr Fukuyama and his wife had been among the first to arrive in person at the embassy. They were keen
to leave the country. Before he had retired, Mr Fukuyama had worked in the local tax office, so he was
used to a steady stream of phone calls from irate people. He volunteered his services to help take the calls
from his fellow tourists. The embassy staff gratefully agreed. They were trying to charter a fleet of
aircraft to get their citizens out, but then so were all the other embassies, and for the moment at least the
airports remained completely closed. A dozen Japanese film crews were in Britain - most of these were
now within the embassy itself.
It was unusual for Eve to be a bystander in a television studio, it felt odd to be standing behind a
television camera.
It was a little after eight o'clock. Lord Edward Greyhaven, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, was
sitting at a desk in front of a bookcase full of fake books, in a BBC studio, recording an address that
would be broadcast that morning and at intervals throughout the day. First he recounted the events of the
previous night, how a group a soldiers and politicians had attempted to attack the Martian ship. The
Provisional Government had been established because they were now in a new era: the existence of real
live Martians presented an opportunity that the old system would have been slow to take advantage of.
He explained the benefits of co-operation with the Martians and how alien technology would help Britain
and eventually the world.
'Politicians often promised jam tomorrow if only we'd make sacrifices today. The time has come, if you'll
pardon the expression, to feast on Martian jam. I am pleased to announce that thanks to the savings that
the simplification of government allows, my first act as Prime Minister is to cut both VAT and income
tax by five percent. We shall be building new factories in the depressed areas of the North East and
Wales, with many more to come. We were promised a more prosperous future - well, it's 1997 and high
time that we had the future. Welcome to the prosperous today. Thank you.'
The director was beaming. 'Excellent, Lord Greyhaven, excellent.'
Edward stood, unclipping the mike and tucking his speech back into his Wallace and Gromit ringbinder.
'That should calm things down a bit.'
Page 9
'And we're really cutting income tax?'
'That was Xznaal's suggestion, yes.'
'But how do we balance public spending and all that sort of thing?' Staines asked, unafraid to hide his
past life as a junior treasury spokesman.
'Xznaal said that he could. He says he also knows ways to reduce pollution and unemployment, traffic
congestion and global warming.'
'Crikey. I suppose as well as all those spaceships and holograms and other gadgets, the Martians have
also had millions of years to perfect chartered accountancy.'
Greyhaven smiled forgivingly. 'That must be it. What is the state of the nation, Staines?'
'Things are a little more subdued than we thought, Teddy. Problems at the ports, of course, but they are
logistical ones: thousands of people with nowhere to go. We've promised full compensation to
holidaymakers and tour operators. We'll need to do something about repatriating foreigners.'
'Will you indeed?' Eve asked archly. She hadn't known the Home Secretary long, but already had a welldeveloped
sense of hostility towards him.
'Only if they want to go, Eve,' Edward said hurriedly, brushing her cheek with his hand. 'David, I'll need
to talk to you later about tracking down the Doctor and Christian - one o'clock?'
The Home Secretary nodded.
'The Doctor?' Eve said. 'Mid-thirties, dresses like he's read too much Dickens?'
Greyhaven turned to her. 'The very fellow.'
'I saw him at the Space Museum, he thought he recognised me. I'll keep an eye out for him. So what's on
your agenda, then?' Eve asked.
'I am in meetings with Lord Xznaal for much of the rest of the day, that's why I'm recording my message
now.'
Page 10
'So I won't be seeing much of you?'
He brushed her cheek. 'I promised you the first American interview with the new Prime Minister.'
'You know that everyone wants to see Xznaal, too. Where's the meeting, Downing Street?'
'The Tower of London. Xznaal has taken a shine to it and so the Martians will be based there. We've
called in some refrigeration engineers to adjust the climate for them. A simple process, apparently, and
the Tower will be fully converted in three days.'
'Mars is a cold world,' Staines informed her.
'Yes,' she said, trying to match its coolness. She turned to Edward. 'Any chance of a talk to Xznaal?'
'I think that might be counterproductive for the moment. If Staines' reaction is typical then the public
might react unfavourably towards our new allies. Let's just wait until things have settled down a little bit.'
Greyhaven had described the Martians as large reptilian creatures. They sounded quite palatable - fifty
years of science fiction B-movies and corny TV series had prepared the way. They might look a bit like
Klingons, but they didn't act like them - Klingons didn't help cut tax and set up trade agreements.
'I think you might be right - but people want to know all about them. What about their history and their
culture? Never mind all that fuss about the Martian fossil last year. Everyone said that that was the
greatest scientific discovery of the century. Guess that'll teach people to wait until the end of the century
next time.'
'This certainly knocks what the Americans found into a cocked hat,' Staines simpered, smiling knowingly
at Eve. She grimaced back at him.
Page 11
Greyhaven nodded to her. 'I think you are right. I'll check with Xznaal, and try to set up a meeting
between the two of you. A documentary about their history will help people to understand the Martians
better.'
Eve tried to stay calm as she was handed another world exclusive.
By nine o'clock, the breakfast television and radio programmes were drawing to a close. The news
editors had been careful not to do anything that might lead to accusations that they had instilled panic in
the population. They concentrated on the awe-inspiring prospect of a peaceful alliance with a hitherto
unknown race. Reports about the political situation were downplayed in favour of more offbeat coverage:
UFO cranks, science fiction writers and comedians got a great deal more airtime than constitutional
lawyers, politicians or police chiefs. In the national interest, no-one asked where the Queen had got to -
only she had the power to dissolve Parliament and to confirm the appointment of a Prime Minister.
EMAIL MESSAGE
From: Power Commission Ltd, London
To: PCL, Washington
Subject: Business Development, United Kingdom
Date: 8/5/97:10.15 BST
Greetings Abe,
It's been a busy day here, but things have calmed down now. As you know, the server went down about
eight, approximately the time the UFO turned up! The engineers were here already, and they knew all
about the fault, because they were in touch with the manufacturers. About nine PCL employees were
down in Trafalgar Square, the rest of us were out of town. There were a lot of tourists there, and they
watched two politicians going aboard for a pow-wow. There was a carnival atmosphere in the Square.
Our business partners are in the dark about long-term prospects - some of them are optimistic. PCL will
maintain its operation here.
Regards to the kids,
John.
Eleven o'clock British Summer Time is six AM in Washington.
Pentagon officials had been trying to determine the situation in the United Kingdom all day. International
phone calls to Britain were proving erratic, although they had other means of contacting their embassy.
Page 12
Every intelligence analyst that could be spared was being flown to Langley. A host of agencies from the
IMF to Omega Sector were put on stand-by. UNIT ONE, the Creative Intelligence division of the
American branch of the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce was co-ordinating the groups, while UNIT
THREE was liasing with NASA and the White House on the feasibility of a counterstrike on Mars itself.
CIA analysts were treating the situation as an invasion, and the Provisional Government as a puppet
organisation. It happened in third world countries all the time - some faction would receive funding from
another power and topple the incumbent president, tyrant or whatever. The foreign power always had a
purpose for doing that - strategic, economic or political reasons.
The military capability of the Martians was unknown. Their ship had arrived without registering on
radar, but there was no evidence from the spy satellites that there was more than one ship over the UK,
and there wasn't a mothership in orbit, as far as anyone could tell. The ship was a kilometre long, so there
could be thousands of Martian troops onboard. It was armed with energy weapons and armour plating,
but the ship hadn't demonstrated what analysts called 'Clarke Level' abilities: technology so advanced
that it defied current scientific knowledge.
The PCL email was the first news from UNIT.
Oswald held up the printout of the PCL message.
'I can't believe you managed to intercept this. Doug, I think you may just have become the first person to
hack into UNIT.'
Doug raised his finger to his lips, looking around the Cafe. The place was busier than ever following the
Invasion - with most phone lines down, email was the only way to send an international message. And
you could only do that with some highly illegal hacking into the BT system. 'I didn't do anything.'
'You know about UNIT?'
'Only what I read in FT. The paramilitary meet the paranormal, and go in all guns blazing. So this
message is in a UNIT code?' If anyone knew it was Ozzie. Oswald was a regular at the Cafe. Although he
was only twenty-three, he was an expert on the alien incursions that were still meant to be a secret. From
the Abominable Snowmen to the Zygons, Oswald knew his stuff. He'd even spoken at conventions in
America.
Page 13
'Not a code as such. It's a simple system based on key phrases. It's been in use for years. '
'It's comic book stuff. I don't understand why they didn't just use a secure line or encryption.'
Oswald nodded thoughtfully. 'That's the scary thing. UNIT clearly no longer have access to the
equipment, or they have been compromised. They'd only use this method as a last resort. It's meant to
look like an ordinary business letter to any censor or monitor. It's the sort of crypto a Third World
country would use, not an European one.'
Doug tried not to think too hard about that. 'So what does the message mean? I've worked out that PCL is
UNIT, Abe's the ... President?'
'That's right. Power Commission is the United Nations, strictly speaking. Server is the local
government, engineer means soldier, manufacturer means foreign power. It's really hokey.'
Doug was reading back the message. 'So what they're saying, this bit here, about the engineers already
being in contact with the manufacturers, is that the British military were in league with the aliens?'
'Yeah. Told you so.'
'So now you're saying that you knew this was going to happen all along.'
'Well, if you remember, last week I did tell you that the Martian atmosphere was breathable.'
'Sure, just before you told me that Elvis died in November 1995 of diabetes.'
'I played you his last CD,' he laughed, 'what more do you want?'
Oswald scrutinised the printout again, for theatrical effect more than anything else. 'Reading into it, the
two guys who went into the saucer were in on the deal, and those that weren't have been rounded up and
put in prison. That's the in the dark bit.' He paused. 'The conspiracy runs deeper than I thought.'
Doug laughed, and began wiping down the counter. 'Yeah, but whaddya going to do?' he said in his best
Homer Simpson voice.
Page 14
Oswald fixed him with that intense stare of his. 'We fight back.' He motioned around the Cafe. 'From our
state-of-the-art command centre.
At one o'clock precisely, David Staines was let into the Prime Minister's office deep within Number 10
Downing Street.
Greyhaven looked at home already, sitting at the same place as his illustrious predecessors. On the
staircase up to the PM's study there were paintings and later photographs of all the previous occupants of
the office, rows and rows of portraits. Like most Britons that passed them, Staines could recognise a
dozen or so, the list becoming more complete as he reached the top of the stairs and the twentieth
century. He paused at the last photograph. He and the Prime Minister had never been close politically,
but they respected one another. Staines had no idea that Greyhaven had been planning to kill him.
There was still a constitutional problem - Greyhaven couldn't just make himself Prime Minister
regardless of how many Martians backed his leadership bid. The British constitution being what it is,
there was some dispute about what conditions needed to be met - the dissolution of Parliament muddied
the waters still further. One thing was for certain: just because Greyhaven had the mace didn't mean he
was the Prime Minister. For the moment, officially, he was still only the Acting-Prime Minister.
Staines chose not to draw attention to this. 'Prime Minister,' he oozed.
'Home Secretary.' Greyhaven was studying a typed report and didn't look up at first. Finally, he granted
Staines his full attention. 'What is the mood of the country?' he enquired in the tone of voice you would
normally used to ask after the health of a maiden aunt.
Staines had spent the morning receiving police, army and intelligence reports from around the country.
'It's settling down. The country is nervous, as you'd expect, but most people went to work as normal.
London's more subdued. We've had some problems in the North - rival army units fighting on the streets
in Manchester and Bradford.'
'Our support?'
Page 15
'All the army units and police chiefs that we contacted beforehand have stayed true to their word. They
are helping to keep a lid on things, and at the moment their men are following orders. We've had a few
objectors, but not enough to affect operational efficiency. We've got enough people on the ground.'
'Yes. Half the staff at Downing Street were unwilling to serve here, or they're in mourning. I had to order
out for lunch. Still, it always was part of the plan to slim down the government machinery. The
opposition?'
'Taken by surprise, unaware quite how close we can keep tabs on them. A number of barracks and bases
have sealed themselves off and put themselves on full alert, but they aren't moving against us. We've got
control of the communications and surveillance networks, so we'll be able to mobilise against them very
quickly. So far there hasn't be a single report that the no fly order has been violated by civilian or
military aircraft.'
Greyhaven nodded. 'The bases will be trying to contact each other - keep a very close watch on them. If
they start moving, we might need Xznaal to enforce our authority. What else?'
'The SNP are organising a demonstration in Edinburgh tonight. They claim that constitutionally, they are
not bound by the terms of the peace treaty with Mars and that England is ignoring them.'
'Big deal. Next.'
'The Archbishop of Canterbury is urging people to remain calm, but not fully to co-operate with the
Provisional Government until the situation is more clear. There were vigils at quite a few churches last
night. There would be, I suppose.'
Greyhaven raised an eyebrow. 'Really?'
'Well, it's one of the Big Questions, isn't it? Life on other planets. Do you think that Xznaal's a Protestant
or a Catholic? The Pope has sought an audience with him, you know.'
'Everyone wants to speak to him, David. Which reminds me: the first few rooms of the Tower will be
refrigerated this afternoon. Xznaal will be holding a reception there at seven. You're invited, of course, as
are a number of our colleagues. Could you see that they are warned about his appearance? At the same
time, make sure that the press don't know about this - I don't want any telephoto shots of the Martians.'
Greyhaven passed across the guest list.
Page 16
Staines scanned it. 'Miss Waugh will be there, I see.'
'She will,' Greyhaven said levelly.
'But not your wife?'
'My wife is at home, David, a hundred miles from here. How I choose to conduct my private life is my
own business.'
Staines could see the newspapers' reaction to the discovery that the Prime Minister had a mistress. The
tone of Greyhaven's voice suggested that he wasn't concerned, that he thought the papers had better
things to be talking about. The Home Secretary knew better. He didn't dare say anything, but made a
mental note to have a word with a couple of his friends in Fleet Street.
'Yes, Prime Minister,' he said.
'The foreign situation seems to be stable - no-one wants to pick a fight with the Martians. Xznaal's
proclamation was clear and unambiguous. Too clear, if anything. I'm still not sure what he's planning to
do with the American airbases. As for his plans for Eire if the IRA attack our boys...' he shook his head
disbelievingly. 'It's been a while since we put the Dail to the sword. And, do you know, despite the Eurosceptics
I don't think that the British government has ever threatened to smite the EU before.'
'Teddy, I'm worried.'
Greyhaven frowned in mock-concern. 'Are you, Staines?'
'Yes. You've opened a can of worms. You're using Xznaal to control the country and to crush our
enemies, but how do you plan to control them? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes, eh, Teddy?'
'I have my means,' Greyhaven said firmly. 'The Martians serve a useful purpose for the time being, but
once our power base is secure, we won't be needing them.'
'You can destroy them?'
'If it proves necessary. It's only one ship, Staines, it wouldn't last long against the RAF. I have the
situation under control. Can you say the same about Alexander Christian, or the Doctor?'
Page 17
Staines chuckled. 'Surely now the Martians are here we don't need to - '
Greyhaven leapt from his chair and grabbed the lapels of the Home Secretary's jacket. 'Those two are the
greatest threats to what we are doing here. Find them, Staines, and kill them.'
'You don't want them captured?'
'So that they are brought here and I can tie them up while I boast about my plans? No, I want them dead.
Post that to all police and army units.'
Staines made a note of that. 'Is there any more business?'
'That will be all, thank you Home Secretary. See you at seven.'
Just before three o'clock Eve Waugh received a phone call. She was in her hotel room with Alan, getting
ready to go to the Tower of London. They were talking through their plans: they would try and charm
Xznaal into granting an interview.
'How do you dress to meet a Martian warlord?' Alan asked her.
'Edward told me to treat it like any other state banquet.'
'That helps,' he chuckled.
'Your tux will be fine,' she assured him.
'And I'm taking my camera but keeping it in my bag?'
'That's right. Don't even try to sneak a shot of the Martian, you might cause an interplanetary diplomatic
incident.'
The phone rang. Eve answered it and spoke for a couple of minutes.
'Don't change just yet,' she told Alan when she'd finished. 'Where's Canterbury?'
Alan checked his road atlas. 'About an hour away, I think. South of here.'
'That was the Doctor. He says he wants to talk to us. He's told us exactly where he is and says he wants to
meet us at four-thirty. We can get there and back in time for seven?'
'No problem at all, if we leave quickly. I'm sure that your friend Greyhaven would like to know where
the Doctor is. Are you going to tell him?'
Eve hesitated.
NEXT WEEK: God save the King.
Chapter Ten - Chapter Ten
Page 1
An Englishman's Home
The Doctor had lit a fire, shaking the match until it went out.
Benny and the Brigadier sat in front of it, nursing the mugs of cocoa he had just made for them. It was
getting dark outside, the sun was already dipping behind the orchard. For the moment, they kept the
curtains open, watching the view. If Bernice had been in one of her periodic melancholy moods, or if
she'd had something a bit stronger to drink than cocoa, she was pretty sure that she would see something
deeply symbolic about the blood red sky. The Brigadier was sitting in the Doctor's favourite armchair, so
the Time Lord sat down on the sofa, alongside her.
'Miss Waugh is late,' the Brigadier said, a gentle warning in his voice.
'If she was going to call the authorities, she would have done that already,' the Doctor replied.
Their journey to Allen Road had been along something of a scenic route, avoiding the motorways, Aroads
and big towns. It hadn't helped that the Doctor had got them lost somewhere south of Maidstone.
Tempers had become frayed, but they'd ended up in Adisham just before three o'clock. The Doctor had
stopped off at Mrs Darling's shop to buy some milk and bin bags, and to make a quick phone call. Then
they'd driven up to the House and parked Bessie safely undercover in the garage. Only then had the
Doctor revealed that he'd just told Eve Waugh, the American journalist, and anyone tapping her line,
exactly where they were.
'Why did you call her?' Benny asked.
He had looked puzzled. 'We need allies. Help. She's a talented young lady, and people in America will
listen to what she has to say.'
She and the Brigadier had looked at each other, unsure whether to trust the Doctor's judgement or to run
to the hills. After half an hour of cheerful domesticity away from the rioting and alien devastation, they
had become more relaxed. The landscape here was peaceful, unchanged by the Martian Invasion. From
here it was easy to believe that the spacecraft over London was a mass hallucination or purely a local
difficulty for the capital to deal with.
Page 2
They didn't need their umbrellas, the Martian ship hovering overhead sheltered them from the light
rainfall. There were a couple of dozen of dignitaries: politicians, businessmen, soldiers. All of them were
supporters of Greyhaven's cause. They were his co-conspirators, the people who had facilitated his rise to
power, although none of them had been let in on the full scheme. Now they were helping to ease the
transition between the old government and his regime, and to ensure their continuing support they
thought they were being rewarded with a state banquet. For the moment, they were delighted just to be so
close to the Martian ship, London's newest tourist attraction.
Greyhaven hadn't really thought about the Tower of London before. It had sat there in the London drizzle
for almost a millennium, and for most of that time it had been a part of the landscape. A thousand years
ago the squared-off Norman architecture of the White Tower must have been as striking a symbol of
alien occupation as the Martian warship was now. A thousand years before that, Roman biremes had
ploughed down the Thames, and to the eyes of the ancient Britons they must have seemed like Martians
with their gleaming armour, their strange customs and advanced technology.
'The ravens have gone,' Greyhaven said. 'The Yeoman warders took them away. They and their families
voted to leave rather than serve the Provisional Government.'
'What's more, your little American friend isn't here.'
Greyhaven checked the crowd, already aware that Staines was right. The Home Secretary hadn't finished
his analysis. 'She must have found something that's more important than her first sight of a Martian.'
'Indeed,' Greyhaven said acidly.
Xznaal watched the small gathering on the hologlobe. The head of his scientific research division,
Vrgnur, was standing opposite him, studying the image.
'Humans take some getting used to,' Vrgnur said.
'Indeed,' Xznaal grunted back. The human body was a stunted parody of the Martian form, but with an
endoskeleton. Many centuries ago, Martian scientists had concluded that an oxygen-breathing lifeform
was a theoretical absurdity. Xznaal found himself wondering what effect a sonic blast would have on
such a creature. Without even a shell to crack open, the damage would be entirely internal. Every one of
those brittle bones would shatter like pottery. Every nerve would burst. It would mean instant death, even
at the lowest settings, Xznaal was sure of that. The only question was if human physiology was
sufficiently developed for them to feel pain as they died.
Page 3
'Nothing as bizarre ever evolved on Mars. Would your authorise the capture of a couple of specimens for
study?' Vrgnur was one of the clan's foremost scientists, and his insight into human anatomy would be
invaluable.
'That might be considered... undiplomatic, for the moment,' Xznaal answered. 'Soon it will be possible.'
It was time for him to meet these creatures. Xznaal stepped up onto the magnetic lift platform.
'You will really honour such creatures with a ceremonial banquet?' Vrgnur asked.
'They do have some degree of sentience. Their chieftain, Lord Gerayhayvun, tells me that this ceremony
will secure my legal claim to this world.'
'They are cattle, my Lord. Would you ask an animal permission to enter his cave?'
'We have not yet established a firm grip on this world,' Xznaal warned. 'Until then we shall treat the
humans as we would any serfs won in battle, with courtesy. Activate the magnetic beam.'
Vrgnur reached across to the large lever mounted on the wall, yanking it to release the exit hatch. It slid
open beneath Xznaal, and the platform began descending gently.
Below him, the humans were staring up, murmuring. They had gathered on an area called 'Tower Green',
within both sets of curtain walls.
The heat.
He had waited until nightfall before emerging, and the light level was almost exactly right. But the heat
was overwhelming. As he floated down towards the ground, Xznaal found himself gasping for breath,
sucking in warm, wet air. For the first few instants, until he was used to it, breathing Terran air was like
drowning in soup. It was an odd sensation: the thick air was rich with nitrogen, but so much more
besides. Earth was a whole new world of smells: the air was damp and fetid like a rubbish dump, the air
buzzed with smell of loam, and dung and choking petrol fumes. This planet was meant to be vibrant and
alive, but stank of rotten fruit.
Page 4
He remembered his childhood, eighty-five years ago. He'd been in the plantations of the Mare Sirenum
and had become lost among the withered bushes, yet another failed attempt by the farmers to grow food
in the barren Martian soil. To a child's eyes, the plantation was a secret garden, a miracle blossoming in
the sands. He'd found a winter berry, a vivid orange against the ash-brown branches. He'd reached into
the tangle with his claw, snipped the berry from the vine. It had been so beautiful, and looked so tasty.
Xznaal took a bite from it, only to discover that inside it was black. It had putrefied inside, without
leaving any external sign. He had swallowed what he had bitten off, so that he would never forget that
moment.
Was this planet a rotten fruit, lush from the outside, but foul and worthless within? Xznaal remembered
his history. In the Early Period, Martian cities would have smelt like this. Instead of being endlessly
recycled, food waste and plant matter was left in the streets. On hot days, the streets would buzz with
insects, the weak would die of diseases caught from the scraps left lying in ditches and gutters. The
rubbish piled up against the bastions and glacis of every building was - and this was the image that stuck
with Xznaal from that distant schoolroom - teeming with tiny worms and bacteria. No Martian day was
as hot as even this Terran night, no city was ever as large as London. That smell was life, digesting the
rubbish and filth of other life. What a world this was where even the night air sang with chemicals and
buzzed with energy.
The platform had reached the ground. The humans were unsure how to react to him, and most contrived
to both back away and lean forward. It amused him to think of their animal emotions trying to cope with
something entirely beyond their comprehension.
The stench. The dreadful milky stench that these humans all had. They were aware of their pungent state:
they tried to disguise it with ethanol and plant extracts, but this only made the rancid smell all the more
powerful. He had noticed it before when Gerayhayvun and Xztaynz had come aboard, here there were a
dozens of them, all with different odours. He imagined their bodies, crawling with insects and bacteria.
Xznaal was dizzy, bombarded with so much that was new. He stepped onto the green flooring material,
realising at the last moment that it was plant matter, soaked with water.
'Gerayhayvun... ' he wheezed.
Page 5
He was becoming adept at distinguishing between individual humans. Clearly even they had difficulty
telling each other apart - they all wore slightly different arrangements of cloth over their bodies. This was
an odd custom that served no defensive purpose. It must be a system that allowed easy identification, like
the heraldic designs on Third Period siegewalkers. Lord Gerayhayvun's head was distinctive because it
showed signs of disease - his hair was drained of colour, finer and more patchy than many of his
associates. It was a symptom of extreme age, white hair, yet Gerayhayvun had lived only sixty years -
Terran years, he reminded himself. The cold, sterile air of Mars had its advantages, then: what remained
of Martian life wouldn't burn itself away, or rot from infections and plagues.
Xznaal reeled.
'Lord Xznaal,' Gerayhayvun exclaimed. The human lord and two colleagues rushed forwards to keep
Xznaal upright, clasping his shell with their vestigial, quadfurcated claws. Despite the greater gravity of
their home world, their bodies were frail, but the heat where they laid their hands stung him, forcing him
to steel himself. He had been here a full Earth day, and grown almost used to weighing three times more
than was normal, but combined with the temperature and the smell and the air like soup, it was all too
much.
'Inside the Tower you will find the conditions more suitable,' Gerayhayvun said.
Xznaal nodded groggily, and began stepping forwards, his feet dragging against the turf.
'Killing life,' he grunted, his head lolling.
'It's only grass,' Gerayhayvun explained. 'Plenty of that here.'
The humans were relaxing as he passed, clearly not seeing him as a threat. Many were making gurgling
noises.
'A drunken rhinoceros,' one human muttered. More gurgling.
Ears that could pick up a whisper on the imperceptible breeze of the Martian deserts were almost
deafened by the sound of human laughter. He snapped his claw, and was satisfied to see some of them
back off.
Page 6
The human fortress was so far away. He lifted his foot and swung it down in front of him. His other foot
scraped the ground. His shell was sagging, digging into the muscle clusters of his shoulder. Water fell
from the sky - tiny droplets pattering against his carapace.
Some of the humans were rushing on ahead, opening a portal for him. Three humans walked in front of
him, bearing swords. Those that weren't laughing at him seemed genuinely concerned. He half-stumbled
over the threshold, welcoming the fresh air inside. The humans in here wore more cloth, and had covered
their claws. Was their clothing designed to raise their temperature even further? The thought almost
made him pass out.
But he was inside now. The air was thick and cool, like the blood of an enemy.
'Is this more suitable?' Gerayhayvun asked him, clearly agitated.
'Yess,' he barked. He could feel his strength returning, his congestion clearing a little. The humans were
beginning to follow him in, and they gave him a wide berth. Their respect for him was returning, without
the need for him to enforce it. They were climbing tiny steps.
'Where are we going?'
'The Chapel of St John the Evangelist. Not far now. Will you be able to speak to them?'
'Ssoon,' Xznaal whispered.
'You will only need to say a few words.'
The Brigadier checked his watch.
'She's not coming,' he told the Doctor gently.
'No.' The Doctor had been staring into the fire for the last half-hour, and had hardly said a word. He
seemed tired, weary - not sleepy, like Benny, who dozed quietly in his lap with two mugs of cocoa and
just as much vodka inside her. The alcohol had come from her private reserve up in her bedroom. The
Brigadier wondered how long the Doctor had owned this house - he'd never referred to it during the
seventies, but he often disappeared for days at a time in Bessie. Perhaps he had been here.
Page 7
'If you need some shut-eye, Doctor, I can keep watch.'
The Doctor shook his head, smiling. The Brigadier had seen the Doctor sleep from time to time over the
years, but he remembered those long vigils in the UNIT labs where the Doctor would spend thirty, forty,
fifty hours at work, without even a tea-break, discovering the cure for a plague or assembling some
magical gadget from household junk. When they'd been setting up his lab, the works department had put
a little bunk in the corner. The very next day it had been piled high with computer parts and components
from a car engine.
'We've been here before, Doctor. The aliens have landed, they've tried to destroy the world and we beat
them. The only difference is, back when I was in charge, we always managed to keep it a secret.'
'And they didn't even make you a general,' the Doctor chuckled.
Lethbridge-Stewart looked down at his half-full glass of vodka. Mrs Summerfield might be able to knock
back her drink, but he was taking it easier these days. 'No. Office politics.'
The Doctor was watching him. 'General William Lethbridge-Stewart came down from Scotland with
King James.'
The Brigadier perked up a little. 'Yes, yes, I know. Have you met him on your travels?'
The Doctor shook his head.
'They arrived at London in 1603 to a glorious parade, a magnificent spectacle, according to family
legend. It was seen as the glorious union of the English and Scottish crowns. James the Sixth of Scotland
would become James the First of the United Kingdom. The English aristocracy fell over themselves to
greet their new master. And do you know what? When King James spoke, not a single one of them could
understand his accent. For the first few months he needed a translator.' The Doctor laughed out loud, and
Alistair found himself chortling.
'There was a General Lethbridge-Stewart at Naseby and at Waterloo. My father died in the Sahara,
fighting Mussolini alongside Montgomery. A dozen generations of fighting men.'
Page 8
And there will be a dozen more,' the Doctor said.
Alistair's expression flickered. 'No, I don't think so. My daughter may be talking to me now, but I don't
think she'll ever let Gordy join up.' He paused, looking down at Bernice, so peaceful in sleep. 'Thank
God.'
The Doctor didn't say anything.
Alistair sighed. 'The world has changed. My father could remember reading about the Wright Brothers'
first flight. I remember him bringing home a piece of Bakelite to show us. It was like moonrock. You
know what Bakelite is, don't you?'
'Plastic,' the Doctor replied.
The Brigadier nodded. 'Forty years ago, I was a lieutenant in Africa. I got lost in the jungle, and stumbled
across a Themne village called Rokoye where most people had never seen a white man before. For a
while I lived there, in a place where half of the women died in childbirth and where you were considered
a traveller if you walked for more than a day. They were good people, but were probably less advanced
than the Britons when Julius Caesar invaded.' He paused. 'It's a long time since I thought about my time
there. There are great chunks of my life that I don't - or can't - talk about. I've made a career from
keeping a lid on my memories.'
The Doctor's eyes narrowed. 'So what made you think of Sierra Leone now?'
'Because last week I watched the Channel Four News and learnt that the Themne are wiping out their
neighbours with attack helicopters over oil rights.'
'You blame yourself for that?'
The Brigadier looked into the fire. 'I don't know. When I was back in Britain, I used to read about all
those groups who were trying to free Nelson Mandela and think that they were wrong, that he was a
communist terrorist and that the world would be a better place without people like him running around.
Apartheid was wrong, I knew that, but that didn't make everyone who opposed it right.' He hesitated
before changing the subject. 'Do you remember Crichton?'
'Colonel Crichton, the head of UNIT in the eighties. I only met him a couple of times.' The Doctor's
expression remained neutral, but Alistair sensed disapproval in his voice.
Page 9
Page 10
The Brigadier nodded. 'He was promoted to general two years ago, after a fracas involving the Yeti. It
was only the third time he'd led men into battle against extraterrestrial forces. They promoted him, but
they never promoted me.' He paused for a moment before knocking back the vodka.
The doorbell rang, startling them both.
They looked at each other sheepishly - both thinking about the hordes of monsters they'd fought over the
decades, only to end up here being frightened of doorbells.
Lethbridge-Stewart had already reached for his gun. The Doctor shook his head. 'Ice Warriors don't
knock,' he assured his friend.
The Brigadier nodded, but kept the pistol close to him. 'I'm coming with you.'
The Doctor extricated himself from the dozing Benny and made his way through to the hall. The
Brigadier stayed behind him, far enough back to get a clear shot if that proved necessary.
The Doctor reached the front door. He glanced back at the Brigadier, who was standing by the
grandfather clock. It provided him with partial cover, and with something to conceal his gun behind.
The door opened to reveal a pretty blonde thing standing on the step. She didn't have a hair out of place,
she wore a haute-couture dress and a gold necklace that would break the bank for most people. A hairy
chap behind her looked a little more nervous. He was carrying a big bag with a shoulder strap - it was
almost certainly just his camera equipment, but there was room in there to stow a bazooka.
'Miss Waugh,' the Doctor beamed, 'good of you to join us.'
She smiled, kissing the Doctor on the cheek. 'I'm sorry we're late. The motorway was at a standstill -
police roadblocks at every junction. It was causing tailback, fender-benders, chaos. Who's this?' she
asked, looking over at him.
The Brigadier introduced himself, but didn't shake her hand.
'UNIT... ' Miss Waugh breathed. 'You were the head of UNIT in this country during the seventies.'
Page 11
'That's meant to be classified,' Lethbridge-Stewart joked. Twenty years ago, only a handful of people had
known that information, but nowadays it was an open secret. His picture had appeared dozens of times
over the years in various newspapers and books.
The Doctor hurriedly introduced the woman and her cameraman, Alan, to him. The Brigadier watched
them carefully, and asked them to leave the camera bag and Eve's mobile phone in the hall. They agreed,
and the Doctor led them through into one of the dining rooms, so as not to disturb Ms Summerfield.
The humans were taking their places around tables. They were divided into groups of six or seven.
Xznaal was sitting in a chair designed for a human.
Xztaynz was talking to Gerayhayvun. They were speaking quietly, but Xznaal could hear them. 'You
can't be going through with this?'
'Of course I am.'
'That is not the Archbishop of Canterbury.' Xztaynz waved a withered claw at a human animal in flowing
purple robes, who was muttering the words of some pagan ceremony.
'Oh, he's near enough,' Gerayhayvun said breezily.
A hundred human eyes were watching Xznaal, with a mixture of curiosity and respect. The tables were
piled high with food - steaming animal carcasses, vegetables, fruit.
Xznaal had read an oath, and this had been the cause of some consternation in the crowd. Now the purple
robed human came forwards with a gold implement. He was a priest of some kind.
'If you could move onto King Edward's chair,' he prompted, indicating the adjacent seat.
'Why?'
Page 12
'Because that is how the ceremony goes.'
Xznaal grunted and complied.
Once he was settled, the priest held out a gold implement and lunged at Xznaal with it. The Martian
caught the priest's wrist, making the human scream.
'What iss thiss?' he demanded.
The priest was in some pain, indicating that human nervous development had reached a more highlyevolved
state than Xznaal had thought. 'It i-is the Anointing Spoon, your, er, your majesty,' the human
bleated.
'I ssee. Explain the ritualss ass you perform them.'
'As you wish. The holy oil has been stored in the Ampulla, now it has been transferred to the Anointing
Spoon. I dab oil onto your er, hands, your breast and the crown of your head. This is the most sacred part
of the ceremony. It was first performed in 785 on Egfrith, King of Merc- '
'Enough explanation. Continue.'
The priest ushered in a couple of human helpers. 'Now the investment of the royal robes and other
ornaments, each of which symbolises a part of your kingdom, physical and spiritual.'
'I ssee. You want me to wear thesse garmentss?'
The priest held out a white, sleeveless piece of cloth. 'This is the Colobium Sindonis, this,' he lifted up a
thick gold cloak with crimson lining, 'is the Supertunica, or the Dalmatic - '
Xznaal struggled into them, ripping the first. The heavy cloak was enough to keep him pinned down on
the throne. He waved his claw to indicate that he was still conscious.
A human touched Xznaal's feet with tiny gold spikes.
'You are now a knight of the realm, Sir Xznaal,' the priest explained. 'A necessary condition for your
coronation. Now, if you could take the Sword of Offering - ' Xznaal took it in a single claw and
examined it. Unlike the ceremonial swords of Mars it had clearly never been used in combat, but it was a
great deal more ornate - the hilt and scabbard glittered with gemstones: diamonds, rubies, sapphires and
emeralds. Unsheathing the blade, Xznaal was pleased to see that the sword was of the finest steel.
Page 13
'With this sword do justice,' the priest intoned, 'stop the growth of iniquity, protect the Holy Church of
God, punish and reform what is amiss and confirm what is in good order and so faithfully serve our Lord
Jesus Christ in this life, that you may reign forever with him in the life which is to come.'
'I am to sshare my throne with this Jessuss Chrisst?' Xznaal bellowed. 'I will accept no joint ssovereignty.
Bring thiss Chrisst here. I challenge him to a duel, with weaponss of hiss choossing.'
Gerayhayvun hurried forwards. 'No, no, my Lord - your majesty. I'll explain afterwards.'
Xznaal nodded, glaring. 'You will do that.'
The ceremony proceeded. The sword was removed and laid on a flat table. The priest explained what was
happening. 'The earl who is the greatest of those present, in this case Lord Greyhaven, will carry the
sword naked before the king.' He turned to the humans. 'The price of the sword belongs to the Altar,' he
declared. He turned back to Xznaal. 'The peer who carries the Sword of State now exchanges it for the
sword you were bearing just then, the Jewelled Sword for one hundred shillings.' Greyhaven placed a bag
of coins on the table and handed over a larger sword. The human required two hands to lift it.
'Thiss ceremony iss ludicrouss. Iss thiss really how it iss done?'
'It is, and I agree,' Gerayhayvun called over. 'But it is necessary.'
Xznaal turned back to the priest. 'The hilt of that ssword hass beasstss carved upon it,' he observed.
'Explain.'
'They are the lion and the unicorn, your majesty. Symbols of this land.'
'Undersstood.' Xznaal was beginning to feel more groggy.
'These are the Armills, symbolising sincerity and wisdom.' Two gold bracelets bearing stylised flower
designs. Next, the priest handed a gold globe the size of an impact grenade. 'Now, receive this Orb, set
under the Cross and remember that the whole world is subject to the Power and Empire of Christ our
Redeemer.'
Page 14
Xznaal snorted, causing the priest to step back. 'Er, the Coronation ring is now placed on the fourth
finger of the right hand and, er... ' He waved the ring feebly around Xznaal's claw.
'Leave it,' Gerayhayvun snapped. 'We'll worry about that later. Just give him the sceptres and get on with
it.' Two gold rods were handed over - one apparently symbolised Kingly power and justice, the other
was the rod of equity and mercy.
The priest said some prayer, and then held up a crown. It was gold, with the cross and fleur-de-lys motifs
that appeared on many of the artefacts.
'This is St Edward's crown, your majesty. It dates back to the time of Edward the Confessor, as far as we
can tell. When I place this upon your head, you will be the rightful King of England.'
Xznaal hissed his pleasure. As the crown was lowered, the first few voices were raised. Nervous at first,
the human crowd gradually got into the spirit of the occasion.
'God save the King!'
'God save the King!'
'God save the King!'
Trumpets and cannons were sounding in salute. Xznaal hoped that his gunnery crew didn't think of it as
an attack.
'The moment that you sit on that throne, your majesty, you will take possession of the kingdom,'
Gerayhayvun informed him over the clamour.
Xznaal moved eagerly over to the next chair, throwing himself down. It didn't even creak under his
weight.
'All hail King Xznaal the First,' Gerayhayvun said quietly.
Xznaal couldn't stand, not weighed down by robes and baubles. The power of his voice was
undiminished, though, and he roared for attention. The crowd fell silent. He had prepared the speech that
followed, perhaps spending more time on it than was appropriate when addressing beasts. 'Martian
legendss sspoke of great hallss full of treassure where the greatesst warriorss went to when they died.' He
said. The humans strained to hear him. 'Truly thiss iss ssuch a place.'
Page 15
The humans slapped their paws together, apparently a sign of appreciation. Xznaal let the noise die down
and then continued. 'On Marss, water is rare, frozen solid. Here it fallss from the ssky. If you humanss
were to arrive on a planet where it rained gold, you might be able to imagine your delight. But could you
desscribe your feelingss - could a mammal even experience the intenssity of emotion - if the native
lifeform offered no ressisstance and told you that poolss of gold covered two-thirdss of the world'ss
ssurface, that they had a word for ssuch a phenomenon, ssea? Your world is unlike ourss. The land and
the ssky and the ssea crawl with life and mineral wealth.'
A human was talking to Gerayhayvun, bending over him, talking quietly into his ear. Apparently the
other humans couldn't hear the conversation, but Xznaal caught every word. It came as no surprise, then,
when Gerayhayvun tried to get his attention. Xznaal finished quickly.
'Everything here iss in ssuch abundance. Even the horizon is further away. I look forward to ruling you,
my ssubjectss. Thank you for your human hosspitality.'
Once they were sure that Xznaal had finished, the guests slapped their claws together. Gerayhayvun leant
across to him.
'My office has just taken a call from a friend of mine. She has found the Doctor. He's about a hundred
miles from here, the police are on their way.'
Xznaal exhaled, pulling himself upright. 'Do you not want to be in on the kill?' he asked.
'It would be nice to see the grin wiped off the Doctor's face,' Xztaynz offered.
Xznaal hissed his satisfaction.
All four of them sat around a big oak dining table. There was an uncomfortable silence for a moment.
The Doctor took a deep breath. 'The Ice Warriors did not come here to avenge the memory of some dead
clan chief, that was simply -'
'Wait a minute,' Eve objected. 'Ice Warriors?'
Page 16
'The native race of the planet Mars,' the Doctor explained rapidly, 'The name is a rough translation of
their own term for themselves, although literally it's nearer Polar Bears. In the future, some people
prefer to call them Indigenous Martians, but that's an ugly phrase coined in a rather ugly period of
colonial expansion.'
'Like Red Indians and Native Americans,' Alan said suddenly. 'Even the politically correct term
imposes European cultural assumptions.' He looked over at Eve, pleased with his analysis. It was the first
thing he'd said.
'Quite,' the Doctor continued. 'Now, the Ice Warriors claim to have come here to punish humanity for the
crime of tomb robbery. This only provided the pre-text for the invasion, and in fact the Martian war
rocket was waiting in a powered orbit above the dark side of Earth's moon.'
Eve was still waving at him to slow down. 'How do you know all this?'
'Don't worry about that for the moment. Let me just explain what's happening. A number of people here
in the United Kingdom have been involved in a conspiracy with the Martians.'
'Like who?' Eve said scornfully.
'Who has benefited most in the last twenty-four hours?' Lethbridge-Stewart asked them.
'Greyhaven?' Alan suggested.
'Precisely,' the Doctor said triumphantly.
Eve was shaking her head. 'Edward's not in league with the Martians. He brokered peace.'
'You know him?' the Brigadier asked.
Eve nodded, clearly preoccupied with something. 'I was researching a profile of him, and I'd met him to
arrange an interview.' She paused. 'If he is working with the Martians, then he has good reasons.'
Page 17
The Doctor looked her straight in the eye. 'I can't be sure what his motives are. Perhaps they are noble,
perhaps he thinks that what he has done will benefit the British people. He wants to make his country
great again, he wants to be its leader. What I do know is that to achieve his aims he has allied himself
with a warlike alien power and overthrown the elected government of this country.'
It was the Brigadier's turn to speak. 'He's almost certainly implicated in the assassination of the Prime
Minister. We've uncovered evidence of a conspiracy dating back over twenty years. Greyhaven has been
using his influence all that time, collecting allies and equipment.'
'You make him sound like a Bond villain,' Eve objected.
The Doctor gestured helplessly. 'Greyhaven isn't relevant, anyway. Xznaal will use him as long as he's a
good little puppet, and kill him the moment he steps out of line. Greyhaven has given them a foothold,
and now he's served his purpose. At the moment, we aren't sure what the Martians are planning, but
whatever they are going to do, they won't be stopping at the English Channel. The Martians want the
Earth, and they'll kill the entire human race if they have to.'
Alan looked puzzled. 'If the Martians can build spaceships and they're hostile, then why haven't they
tried to invade Earth before?'
The Doctor peered up at the two Americans through his fringe. 'Believe me, they tried.'
'Do you have any evidence for any of what you are saying?' It was clear that Eve knew that the Doctor
was telling the truth, but that she found it almost impossible to cope with what he was saying.
The Brigadier knew as well as anyone what Eve must be feeling at the moment. Nearly a quarter of a
century ago, back when he was a Colonel, he'd met the Doctor for the first time. In less than an hour
everything that Lethbridge-Stewart knew to be true, his entire world-view, had been challenged. Friends
were enemies, there were monsters, demons and things that existed out in space that man couldn't
comprehend. From that moment until his retirement, Lethbridge-Stewart only knew two things for
certain: the world depended on him, and he could trust the Doctor.
'No,' the Brigadier said, 'We have no proof. That's why we called you here. Together we can travel the
country and collect the evidence.'
'You can send it back to America, show the world what is happening here,' the Doctor said, a gleam in
his eye.
Page 18
Eve was defensive. 'What is happening is that Britain has formed a mutually beneficial alliance with an
advanced alien race. I'm telling you that if that ship had appeared over Washington, the President would
have done just the same.'
'This isn't the bold new future, it's chaos,' the Doctor shouted.
Lethbridge-Stewart tried to remain calm. 'I used to work with the United Nations, as you know. I still
attend reunions, I talk to this generation of soldiers. Have you ever talked to anyone who was a
peacekeeper in the former Yugoslavia? Do you know what frightened them most? It wasn't the bombing,
the snipers, the shelling or the piles of dead children. It was the fact that they were patrolling towns that
looked like English towns.'
The Doctor was staring into the distance, as though he was looking into the thoughts of each and every
soldier. 'They walked through the rows of semi-detached houses, all the burnt-out Volvos and petrol
stations and primary schools, and they saw how fragile it all was. Yugoslavia used to be where they went
for their holidays, but only six months later there were minefields on the beaches, and blood down the
white concrete walls of all those big seafront hotels.'
'The Martians are here,' Eve insisted, 'But nothing else has changed. The Archers is still on twice a day,
the milkman still brings you bottles of milk, the BBC is still funded by the licence fee. People are quite
capable of turning Britain into Bosnia without any help from aliens.'
The Doctor was trying to communicate his urgency to her, while also remaining patient. 'It's calm in
London. Too calm. The streets are deserted, because no-one dares to come out. But have you noticed
how the television and radio is keeping very quiet about the rest of the country? From what we can
gather, whole regiments and police forces are refusing to co-operate with the Provisional Government. It
doesn't matter - there are quite enough who will do the Government's work for them. In a week's time, if
we don't stop it, this country will have slid into chaos and civil war.'
Eve was shaking her head again. 'Look, some people find it difficult to deal with the Martians. I'm
freaked out, and it isn't even my country. But they aren't an army of occupation - they haven't left their
ship yet. In a week's time people will be used to having the Martians around. Edward says that they are
here in peace, and there's proof of that: if the Martians were going to wipe us out, they would have done
it by now.'
Page 19
'Listen to what you are saying,' the Doctor insisted. 'The only reason the Ice Warriors haven't wiped us
out is because it suits their purposes not to. If things don't go their way, they'll destroy London, then
Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol, Edinburgh - '
She glanced at her watch. 'You don't know that.'
'Wait a moment,' Lethbridge-Stewart said, 'Are we keeping you?'
'I'm sorry?'
'Why did you look at your watch just then?'
'I... '
Lethbridge-Stewart levelled his gun at her. 'Doctor - it's a trap!'
The Dying Days - Chapter Eleven
Page 1
That Which Does Not Kill Us...
Staines tried to adjust the headgear that Xznaal had given him, but however much he twisted, it was still
uncomfortable. It was like a smoke hood, but apparently it was an automatic gill that allowed humans
to breathe the Martian atmosphere. Teddy was perfectly at home in his own hood, and didn't seem
worried by the intense cold that had begun to nibble at their feet.
They had travelled up to the Martian ship, but this time they had ventured far further than just a reception
chamber. Nothing in the Martian ship could be classed as 'small', but this was certainly cramped
compared with the vast deserted corridors and echoing hangar-like chambers they had walked through to
reach it. It was almost boxy, in fact.
'The C Cube,' Xznaal said. In his own atmosphere, his voice was perfectly normal, there wasn't any of
that hissing and grunting.
'The what?' Staines asked, trying to sound intelligent.
'Command, control, communications,' Greyhaven explained patiently, 'the three things an army needs on
the battlefield.'
Xznaal indicated his pleasure. 'From this room, I can conduct a campaign.' His claw rammed against a
control.
The walls lit up with charts, maps, aerial photographs.
'We will be in Adisham in two and a half minutes.'
'We're moving?' Greyhaven was surprised. Staines was too, of course, but that almost went without
saying. To see Teddy disconcerted was a rare thing indeed.
Xznaal hissed a laugh, and an image globe lit up in front of them. It showed the Kent countryside
hurtling along underneath them. Staines steadied himself.
Xznaal punched another control. The image changed, showing what looked like an aircraft hangar. There
were some odd-looking vehicles in the background: some looked like giant desk lamps, some like great
camera tripods. What really grabbed Staines' attention were the pair of Martians in the foreground, both
of whom were assembling something from tubes of metal and thick, canvas-like material.
'It looks like they're putting up a tent,' Staines declared.
Page 2
'Shut up, Home Secretary,' Greyhaven ordered.
But to his satisfaction, Staines saw that he was nearly right. As they completed the task with practised
claws, he saw that they were assembling -
'Hang gliders?'
'That is right,' Xznaal said.
Greyhaven was a little taken aback at first. Staines watched the Acting-Prime Minister as he peered at the
globe. 'I suppose that the technology is useful. Easily stored, no fuel requirement, radar-invisible, silent.'
The Martian pilots were strapping themselves into their harnesses.
'Lord Xznaal,' Staines began hesitantly, 'you seemed... uncomfortable at the Tower. Won't your men find
it too hot for combat?'
'They will not be at full strength, but our scientists have increased the dosage of intravenous coolant.
Their strength and constitution is still far greater than a mere human or Gallifreyan. We are here.'
'Why are you only sending two warriors?'
'Why waste more resources on such a simple matter?'
Xznaal touched another switch. At some unseen signal, both pilots began running along the hangar. The
back wall opened as they arrived and they leapt into the darkness.
Benny half-filled the kettle and took it back over to the power point. The Doctor and the Brigadier were
in one of the other rooms, and by the sound of it, Eve had finally turned up. Benny was not a vain
woman, but out of basic courtesy she couldn't face visitors until she was a little better-presented. Benny
flicked on the kettle and searched for the coffee jar, wondering when she'd reached the age when one
vodka gave her a hangover.
The Ice Warrior on the patio suddenly seemed more important, somehow. He turned to face her.
'Doctor!' she screamed, diving behind the sink.
Page 3
The kitchen door pulsed and shattered, showering her with splinters of wood and shards of glass. The Ice
Warrior was fumbling with the remains of the door frame, trying to get himself into the house.
Benny yanked the kettle off the counter, pulled the lid off and hurled the contents at the intruder's face.
It would have been enough to leave a human disfigured, probably blinded. The effect on a Martian was
even more dramatic. It splashed across the warrior's forehead, steaming rivulets running down the ridges
and grooves of his domed helmet. Water dripped over his chin and down the chinks in his neck.
The Martian screamed a terrible scream, massive lungs expelling every ounce of breath over jagged
teeth. He sank to the floor, his claws flailing, unable to reach where the boiling water had hit him.
Benny watched him, not out of any sadistic desire, just the opposite. She hadn't killed him. Martians were
stronger than that, but that just meant that his agony wouldn't be over for a very long time.
A claw flapped to the floor, shaking the room. Benny was about to move to help him, when he began
hauling himself up, straightening his thick legs.
Benny realised that she hadn't killed him, she'd only made him angry.
She spun on her heels and fled into the house, hoping to get to another exit.
It was around then that she heard the front door being wrenched off its hinges.
The image was infrared. Five bright light sources were scattered at various points in the house, all of
them moving at great speed. Two dimmer shapes were lumbering inevitably towards them.
'Wait!' Greyhaven called. 'Do they have orders not to attack Eve and her friend?'
Xznaal grunted. 'They have.'
'And can they distinguish between individual humans, at night, in combat conditions?'
Page 4
Xznaal chuckled. 'We shall see, won't we?'
The Doctor and Brigadier were almost at the front door when the Ice Warrior came crashing through it. It
moved slowly, deliberately, breaking down the wooden panels with slicing claw-blows.
The Doctor stepped forwards, his arms held out. 'I only wish to talk,' he said softly.
The Ice Warrior lunged for him. The Doctor side-stepped, and flicked the light switch. The Martian
reeled, dazzled by the 60 watt bulb.
The Brigadier had time to aim and fire twice before it had even reacted. Both shots glanced harmlessly
off its shoulder blade.
'Why did I know that was going to happen?' the Brigadier asked wearily.
The Doctor grabbed his sleeve. 'Come on! We have to find Bernice.'
They ran back through the drawing room, turning on every light they could find a switch for. The
Martian charged after them like a bull elephant. There was no sign of Eve or Alan. 'We almost had them
convinced,' the Doctor shouted after the Brigadier.
'That's as may be, Doctor,' the Brigadier panted, 'But she's also the woman who betrayed us.'
They reached the French windows, opened them and ran out.
Only then did they see the Martian ship hovering above them.
'You have them in your sights,' Xztaynz exclaimed. 'Fire that ray thing of yours.'
'No! It might be Eve.' Gerayhayvun shouted.
In infra-red the humans were brilliant white against the dark background of the foliage.
Xznaal turned to them both. 'To use the sonic cannon would be most unsporting.' He pointed a claw at
the house, which showed the dimmer shape of the warrior moving relentlessly towards them. 'Besides,
my warrior has found them.'
Page 5
Xztaynz was peering at another part of the display. 'Your other chap has someone else cornered.'
The wall in front of Benny pulsed and the plaster and picture frames shattered and showered to the floor.
She dived left and began leaping up the stairs. The steps creaked underneath her feet as she pounded up
them.
The Martian below her was still groaning in pain. He lashed his claw, knocking out the banisters and
almost taking off her feet. She was more nimble than the warrior, but he was quite capable of climbing
stairs. Sure enough, he began plodding up after her.
She was gaining valuable time, but he was going to be able to corner her in the end. If they had waited a
couple of years there would be no problem - Ace had spent a lot of time here in the early twenty-first
century. Her bedroom combined the ambience of a student room with the sheer practicality of the Royal
Armouries, filled as it was with posters of pop bands and nasty-looking military hardware. There would
be all sorts of big guns Benny could have used. Ten years before all that, and the room-that-would-be-
Ace's contained nothing but a wardrobe full of fur coats and the most dangerous thing in there was the
dead bluebottle on the window sill.
Benny kept running upstairs, hoping to think of a plan before she ran out of floors.
The Ice Warrior was advancing across the patio towards them, pushing aside the garden furniture. It
moved around the pool of light from the kitchen window. Its eyes burned red in the shadows. The
Brigadier and the Doctor backed away from it. Every so often, Lethbridge-Stewart would fire off a shot
at it, in the vain hope of slowing it down or hitting a vital spot. The Martian spacecraft hovered over
them like a vulture, its gunports gaping open.
The Brigadier looked across to the Doctor for guidance. His friend was playing around with the sonic
screwdriver.
'I thought that thing was a tool, not a weapon?'
The Doctor looked up. 'If you'd ever been hit over the head with a wrench, you'd know that the one can
often be the other.'
Page 6
Page 7
He held the screwdriver aloft.
'Halt!' he ordered the Ice Warrior. To the Brigadier's amazement it did. A moment later he realised why:
there was a gun of some sort on its wrist and now, for the first time, it had a clear line of sight.
'Listen to me,' the Doctor insisted, squeezing the sonic screwdriver. An ultrasonic whine filled the air.
'Your weapon fires waves of sonic energy. This device works on the same principle. Not only will it
counteract your shots, it will return them to their source. You.'
The Ice Warrior moved its arm a little, adjusting its aim.
'If you fire that weapon the only thing you'll destroy is yourself,' the Doctor warned.
The Martian must have heard him, but it gave no indication that it had done so. Instead the tube on the
Martian's wrist lit up, and the air was filled with a hissing noise like air escaping from a burst tyre.
For a moment nothing happened.
Then the Martian contorted as if it was its own reflection in a fairground mirror. It tried to grab its head,
but couldn't control its limbs. Finally there was a great crack, and the Martian's shell burst open in a
single line from shoulder to pelvis. It fell to the floor, all the light gone from its eyes. Martian blood and
tissue was gushing from the wound.
'Well done, Doctor!' the Brigadier congratulated him. 'Now we can rescue Bernice.'
The Doctor nodded, horrified by what he had done. 'I can't guarantee that the power supply will deflect
another blast,' he said absent-mindedly.
'Still,' the Brigadier said, 'it will give the gunners up in that ship pause for thought before they loose off
any shots.'
There was silence in the C Cube.
'What happened?' Greyhaven asked.
Page 8
'The Time Lord is operating a sonic jamming field. Our energy weapons will be reflected if we use them.'
'And one of your warriors has just been killed?' Staines whimpered.
'Yes. The Doctor will die for that action.'
Benny had ended up in her room, right at the top of the house. There was nothing up here but memories
and alcohol.
She closed the door, and tiptoed across the room trying not to make a sound. She'd managed to lose the
Ice Warrior for the moment: she could hear him crashing around on the floor below, looking for her in
the bathroom. It wouldn't take him long to work out where she had gone.
The attic room. The honeymoon suite. She and Jason had taken this room, made it their own on the few
times they'd stayed here. The Doctor had left them alone as she and her husband moved the stuff up here
from her old room on the floor below.
She picked up the box of matches sitting on the little fireplace and remembered a dozen mornings
squatting by the fire with a match trying to get the damn strips of newspaper in the hearth to light.
Meanwhile Jason lay under the duvet pretending to be asleep while he was watching her out the corner of
his eye. She'd light the fire, then scurry back to the bed and he'd pull the duvet open and let her in.
And now the room was empty. Just her, a crate of vodka and a bed that was too big for one person.
The Ice Warrior was coming up the short flight of stairs.
Benny pulled one of the unopened bottles from the box and unscrewed the top. Supermarket vodka this,
nothing special. The Doctor, of course, was a bit of a connoisseur and wouldn't touch anything that didn't
smell of Red Army engine oil. She wasn't fussy.
Benny just had time to take a swig as the Ice Warrior crashed through the door. He had to bend down
almost to a crouch to get in, and seemed to fill the room.
She stood, a little awkwardly.
Page 9
'Hello,' she said weakly, holding up a lit match. 'Beware the power of my mighty weapon. Sorry, it's the
best I can do.'
Like all Martians, he was instinctively nervous around fire, but he wasn't going to stay scared for long.
He had scars all along one side of his head where the water had splashed it. Nasty green weals hadn't
quite finished forming.
Benny winced as her match burnt down to her finger. She dropped it and lit another.
'Look, I hate all this fighting,' she said in his native tongue. The sentiment was actually quite difficult to
get across in the Martian language, their love of all things Thanatotic meant that it was pretty close to
doublethink: 'good things are bad' and all that. 'Couldn't we just sit down over a bottle of voddy and talk
it through?' She held up the bottle by way of demonstration.
'No,' the Martian replied. 'This must be to the death.' He used an unapologetic form.
Benny threw the bottle at him. He caught it, snapped it in half between his pincers. Almost a litre of
perfectly good vodka splashed over his claw and massive forearm.
'You must die now. I will not prolong your agony.' the warrior said. His breath wafted over her, cold as
the draught under the door on a winter's day. He was being charitable in the circumstances, considering
the pain he must be in. Then again, the scars gave him something to brag about. No doubt in a couple of
years there would be legends among the Argyre clan about how he'd ventured to the lair of the
Summerfield, bitchqueen of Earth, a mighty twelve-armed, six-breasted harpy and how he had slain her
in single unarmed combat.
'Please,' Benny pleaded, 'I don't want to kill you.'
He grunted a laugh and extended his claw, which still dripped with Smirnoff.
Benny dropped the lit match onto it and jumped past him out of the door.
His screams followed her down two flights of stairs and along the hall.
The room at the top of the house was a giant, flaring mass.
'What's going on?' Xztaynz was shouting.
Page 10
'You've lost the other one as well?' Gerayhayvun said.
'Be silent!' Xznaal ordered. 'Respect the fallen warriors.'
'They've killed both Martians?' Gerayhayvun said, respect in his voice.
'They have,' Xznaal confirmed. 'The Gallifreyan is a threat to our operation. He must be destroyed.'
'You must deploy more warriors,' Gerayhayvun insisted.
'And watch them die? I respect life, Lord Gerayhayvun.'
'You seemed unconcerned when it was Eve that was at risk,' the human argued.
Xznaal grabbed Gerayhayvun's neck in his claw and pulled him off the floor. The human weighed less
than his arm and was easier to lift. 'Terran life,' Xznaal roared, 'is of no concern. Earth crawls with
animals. Remember that, my Lord.' He dropped Gerayhayvun to the deck. 'We must use another method.'
He tugged at a control. 'Vrgnur, meet me in the Dispersion Chamber. Helmsman, increase altitude to ten
thousand metres.'
Bernice clambered over the remains of the front door.
The Doctor ran over to her and gave her a hug.
'Fire,' she cried. 'Bedroom on fire.'
The Doctor pulled back from her, and pointed up to her window. It was dark up there.
'But I... '
'The house can look after itself,' he assured her. 'Are you all right?'
She nodded. 'I killed him,' she sobbed.
'We had a spot of success down here, too,' the Brigadier said cheerfully. He indicated the warrior's body.
'His disruptor backfired,' Bernice shuddered, her hand over her mouth.
Page 11
'We can fight the Martians, but not the police,' Lethbridge-Stewart said. 'The warship might have got here
first, but the police and army won't be far behind. Now let's get Bessie out of the garage and move out.'
Xznaal had been silent as he led them through the ship to the Dispersion Chamber. Even the name of the
place made Staines nervous. He wondered what was going to be dispersed.
A huge hatch rumbled open. Xznaal stepped in, with Greyhaven close behind. Staines could think of
nothing better to do than follow.
The room was large, lined with vast metal drums and cylinders. They looked like grain silos, or huge gas
bottles.
A hatch at the other end of the room rattled open. Another Martian stomped in, a metal tube the size of a
pillar box cradled in its arms. Staines realised that this was only the second Martian he had seen up close.
Although an impressive sight, it was slightly smaller and slimmer than Xznaal. Its shell was a lighter
shade of green.
'This is my scientist, Vrgnur,' Xznaal barked.
Vrgnur laid the tube on the deck and beat his claw against his chest - a salute, rather like the ancient
Roman style. That formality completed, the Martian began connecting the metal cylinder up to a network
of thick plastic tubes.
Greyhaven leant towards the cylinder.
'What is this?' he asked.
'See for yourself.'
Vrgnur pulled at a hatch about halfway along the tube, which slid open. Greyhaven smiled at Staines and
stepped up to the cylinder.
He peered in.
'Nothing,' he informed Staines.
He took another look.
A red claw slammed against the glass. Involuntarily, he started and fell back.
Page 12
Xznaal caught him and gave a low, throaty chuckle.
There was a haze hovering in the middle of the tube. It looked like a column of steam from a kettle, but
was the colour of rose wine.
'What is it?' Staines asked, genuinely interested.
Xznaal was also regarding the phenomenon with fascination. 'We call it the Red Death. It is an
assassination weapon, a sentient poison mist. In the Martian atmosphere it is invisible.'
'A cloud with a will of its own?' Staines asked incredulously.
'If you like.'
'How does it work?' Greyhaven asked.
'A simple technique combining molecular re-engineering and artificial intelligence etherware. It has
merely an animal intellect.'
'But you can program it to kill?'
'Yes. This specimen has been programmed with the Doctor's DNA profile. Traces of his blood were
discovered in the reception chamber, when he was cut by falling glass. The Red Death will hunt him
down and kill him.'
'Will it know where to look?'
Vrgnur lurched to a control panel. 'We will unleash the Death here, at an altitude of ten kilometres. The
mist will disperse throughout the immediate area. When it locates the Doctor it will gather and feed.
Once the Doctor is dead, the Red Death will instantly decompose into its natural elements.'
Xznaal twisted a great wheel, and the mist hissed out of the chamber, out of the warship.
'Now we will watch and wait.'
Birds were falling from the sky. Owls and sparrows, gulls and thrushes. They were dropping like stones.
Page 13
The Doctor stopped the car.
There was hail too, or so Benny thought at first. They she realised that the droplets were dead insects of
every kind.
'Everything's dying,' the Doctor was muttering.
'It's some sort of poison gas,' Lethbridge-Stewart said, staring up into the dark sky.
Benny looked up, holding her hand up to shelter her face from the steady pelting of tiny bug carcasses.
There was a storm cloud above them, growing larger with every instant.
'It's descending.'
'We can't hang around,' the Brigadier said.
The cloud was drifting over the rooftops of Adisham like thick smoke. It was almost invisible in the
darkness, but in the pools of light underneath the street lamps it billowed like volcanic ash.
'All those people,' the Doctor cried out. 'All those poor people.' He jumped from of the car and began
running back down the road towards the village.
'Doctor! What are you doing?' Benny screamed.
He whirled around, now he was jogging backwards. 'I have to save them if I can. Whatever you do, don't
follow me. Alistair, get Bernice to safety.'
'Doctor!' Benny screamed, 'Come back! You'll be killed.'
'Goodbye!' the Doctor called.
The Brigadier grabbed her arm, prevented her from leaving the car. 'You heard what he said.'
'Do you agree with him?'
Page 14
'No,' he admitted grimly as he slid across to the driver's seat. 'But I trust him. Come on!'
As Bessie sped away up the hill, Benny turned back, watching the Doctor recede into the distance. The
thick cloud was engulfing the buildings now. The screaming had started.
'Vrgnur, report!'
The scientist was hunched over his instruments. 'My Lord, the Red Death is reacting with the increased
levels of oxygen and biological activity in the Terran atmosphere. It has entered a feeding frenzy and is
multiplying at an astonishing rate.'
Gerayhayvun was on his feet. 'It's attacking that village. Can't you control it?' he squealed in his own
language.
Xznaal narrowed his eyes. The Death was a thick fog now, billowing down the hillside.
'It is operating on instinct, sir, I can't restrain it.'
'Show me what it sees.'
The hologlobe switched its image, showing a disjointed view of the human settlement. It was like a
compound eye: hundreds of circles, each containing a different viewpoint. Every single one was filled by
images of humans and their animals running in the streets, terrified. Xznaal watched as the cloud picked
them off, swirling around their heads, grasping their nostrils, forcing itself into their mouths and lungs.
'This is horrible,' Xztaynz was crying.
'It is unavoidable,' Xznaal said calmly.
He ran down over the village green, past the Bull's Head, keeping control of his breathing. The red mist
was everywhere: hanging around the police station, wafting over the cottages on Donkey Lane and
around the roof of Mrs Darling's corner shop. The Doctor shooed the ducks from the duckpond as he
hurried past them.
Page 15
A car had smashed into a row of cottages. The Doctor ran over, but the driver had died of suffocation
long before the crash. Through the windows of every cottage the Doctor could see men and women, their
dead faces lit by the flickering of their television screens. All around him he could hear the screams of
men and women, the cries of children, the barking of dogs. From the direction of Pond Hill, humans were
calling out for help, mourning their loved ones or simply cursing the thing that had brought death to their
little village. The cloud was picking them off one by one, not even letting them finish their lament.
Adisham was almost silent.
What could he do?
The Doctor stood there, listening to a whole town die. He stared up at the sky, at the red fog and the dark
shape of the Martian warship far above them. Tendrils of vapour curled around walls, licked around the
ground, searching with bloodhound devotion. It was a sentient gas, programmed for one purpose.
Hunting him.
It was meant for him and wouldn't stop its killing until he was dead.
That meant that there was only one thing he could do to stop it.
'There's the Doctor,' Greyhaven announced, clearly affected by the carnage he was watching.
'Where?' Xznaal snapped hungrily.
Greyhaven pointed out one of the images.
The picture rippled, filling with an aerial view of the Doctor half-running, half-stumbling along a main
street littered with human corpses. He was running towards the cloud, waving his arms.
The Red Death was getting nearer and nearer.
'It's almost as though he wants to be found,' Staines observed.
Page 16
Xznaal leant forward, almost dipping his head into the hologram. 'You can feel its hatred of him,' he
hissed, his pincers clattering together in anticipation. 'Kill him!' he shouted, 'Kill the Doctor!'
He was at the corner of the main street. The red cloud was surging towards him like a tidal wave,
breaking over the roof of Mrs Darling's little shop. It had gathered itself together, and now it was lit from
within. Tiny lightning flashes revealed billowing crenellations and blossoming stegosaur spines built up
from layer after layer of blood-red fumes.
There was a crashing from inside the building. There was someone in the shop, directly in the path of the
cloud. Some instinct within the gas knew it too. It paused and began scuttling across the roof. It had
clearly decided that it could have some sport with whoever was in the building, and then be able to return
to its primary target. The Doctor jogged ahead and peered in through the window.
The door was locked, but that didn't pose a barrier to someone with a sonic screwdriver. Once inside, the
Doctor closed the door behind him and switched on the light.
There was a plaintive miaow from underneath a collapsed row of shelving.
The cat had probably brought the shelves down on himself - he was a heavy old thing. It was Stevie, the
big white moggie that Mrs Darling had owned for as long as the Doctor could remember, which was a
very long time indeed. He was blocked in on all sides by shelves weighed down by heavy tin cans. The
Doctor moved a couple of tins aside, and cleared a way through. Stevie looked dopily up at him, as
though he'd been planning to bury himself alive and wouldn't tolerate such interference in his sleep
patterns.
The fog was thickening outside, enveloping the building. The Doctor didn't have long.
He prompted Stevie, trying to tempt him out of the hole by smacking his lips and rubbing his fingers
together. He'd never worked out why, but universally cats seemed to recognise that as meaning come
here. The cat struggled to comply, but still couldn't move. The Doctor tried to ease the shelving unit
back, but it was wedged against the wall.
A sickly red mist crept past the shop window, pausing there.
If there was a chance that the Doctor could save a life, then he would always try.
He had to work around the cat, to dislodge one shelf rather than the whole unit. He began removing tins.
Page 17
The Doctor could end wars, repel invasions, track the villain to his lair, expose master plans and wipe out
evil across the universe of time and space, he could do all that before breakfast.
A tendril of cloud slapped against the window pane with surprising strength, but not enough to crack the
glass.
The cat looked up, its eyes wide, its ears swept back. Get out, it was warning him, Save yourself.
But if the Doctor couldn't use his unique abilities and special powers to save the life of one little cat, then
what was the point of having them?
The cat looked at him, cocking his head to one side, acknowledging the Doctor's help for the first time.
'I won't leave you,' the Doctor assured him.
Because when it comes down to it, doctors save lives and any life is worth saving.
Death came drifting through the cracks in the doorframe.
The Doctor eased the shelf up, opening an escape route. Almost before he had finished, the cat had
scurried away, over the counter. For an instant it paused, granting his saviour one of the rarest things in
the universe: feline gratitude. And then he had gone, out through the catflap in the back door.
The Doctor grinned.
There was a crackling, popping sound like bacon under a grill.
The Doctor stood, brushing a cat hair from his frock coat.
It was forming and reforming the whole time, but there was a central mass there, a writhing, sulphurous
thing with a hundred eyes, all watching him.
Tendrils of crimson vapour wafted towards him, sensing a trap.
It smelt of cigarettes, of exhaust fumes, of week-old dustbins. It smelt of decay. It smelt of Death.
Page 18
The Doctor straightened, his hands behind his back.
Time Lords have many lives and that means that they die many times. That didn't mean it was ever easy.
Death moved tentatively, finding no fear from its prey. It instinctively knew that in killing him it would
kill itself.
The Doctor knew now that someone else would liberate Britain from the Martians, someone else would
confront the traitors, organise the rebels and destroy the monsters. He had no regrets, why would he? For
twelve hundred years and in every corner of time and space he had helped others to hold back death, he'd
helped them to go forward in all their beliefs. Then by their own achievements, their own heroism, their
own sacrifices, his companions - his friends - had proved his actions right. He could wish for no better
epitaph.
The Doctor prepared himself.
Death drew itself into a red circle around him, filling the whole of the shop, hissing all the time.
'Hello,' the Doctor said softly, holding out a paper bag. 'Would you like a jelly baby?'
It was steeling itself to pounce, savouring the moment. It began tensing panther muscles made of smoke.
A carnivore mouth was forming, vaporous jaws and hazy fangs.
The Doctor smiled, and welcomed Death as it swept over him.
The Dying Days - Chapter Twelve
Page 1
The No Doctors
Thursday, May 15th 1997
Benny stretched her arms and yawned.
When she opened her eyes, the Doctor was standing there, his umbrella in one hand, a tray full of
breakfast things carefully balanced in the other. She was in her room at Allen Road, the one opposite
Chris Cwej's on the first floor.
'Good morning, Benny,' he said, standing in a shaft of warm spring sunlight. 'I've brought you some
strong black coffee and lightly-done toast, just how you like it. I'm afraid that Chris has taken the last of
the marmalade.' His face wrinkled up. 'Are you all right?'
She shook herself. 'I've just had a dream.'
'What do you remember?' he asked, clearly curious about such a human little thing. The Doctor was the
sort of person that had dream sequences instead of dreams: his subconscious continued to plot away even
while he was trying to get some shut-eye. No wonder he rarely slept.
'I don't think it was anything significant. It was so vivid. You know the sort of thing? A dream that goes
on for so long that when you wake up you have to spend the first few minutes working out what's real.'
He smiled. 'The sort of dream that haunts you all morning?'
'Yeah.' She sipped her coffee. 'Where's Jason?'
The Doctor frowned. 'Who?'
'My husband.'
The Doctor grinned a goofy grin. 'Ms Summerfield, you are renowned throughout the galaxy for your
singular lack of interest in that sphere of human affairs.'
Benny munched on the toast. 'Lack of success, rather than interest, I assure you. I dreamt I got married.'
Page 2
'A white wedding, with guests from across time and space, all getting on perfectly well together despite
their different creeds and histories?'
'Yes,' she admitted glumly. 'Simple girlie wish-fulfilment, I suppose. There was even a unicorn there.
The man I married was a bit of a rough diamond with a heart of gold and a roving eye, but he loved me
and only me and I loved him back. We interrupted our honeymoon and found dad. He was running a
teashop in Berkshire. I got a professorship. A real one that I earned.'
'It sounds like a nice dream,' the Doctor said wistfully, 'if a little far-fetched. I wish I had dreams like
that.'
Benny hesitated, and sipped her tea. 'Well, yes and no. It all went sour after that. Roz died. I had an
argument with Jason and we split up. Chris left you. Then ... wasn't this coffee a minute ago?'
'Then?' the Doctor prompted.
'Then you changed.' She looked over at the little man, frowning. 'And the government were working with
the Martians and we were framed for murder and the Martians invaded and they blew up UNIT HQ and
dropped a poison gas on Adisham and all the animals were dying and the people and the Brigadier was
driving me away in Bessie and I couldn't stop you and you went running into the cloud and then you - '
Extract from the memoirs of Professor Bernice Summerfield I woke, screaming.
I was bolt upright with a rough hand over my mouth, in the darkness. Holding me down.
'Bernice,' a firm voice was saying. 'It's all right.'
I had stopped screaming, my mouth hoarse. I lay there, my heart pounding, pumping all that adrenaline
around and around my body.
The rain was pattering against the corrugated iron roof of the officer's mess. It was the middle of the
night.
'Are you all right?' Alistair asked me.
Page 3
I slumped back. 'I've just had a dream.'
'The Doctor?'
'The Doctor.'
It was light just before six.
I was woken by the sound of the radio. The UNIT operators were collating information from the
resistance cells, making a list of enemy positions and activity, just as they had been when I went to sleep.
The toothpaste and soap were in the provisions box and I made my way outside. I didn't take my gun,
and knew that would earn me a reprimand from Alistair when I got back.
I pulled the door open and stepped outside. The privates on guard duty saluted me, which I admit gave
me a bit of a thrill. The air was chilly and there was a haze of mist still hanging around. The ground was
still damp from the overnight rain.
As you can imagine, I was at a low ebb. The Doctor had come back as someone else, and then just as I
was getting used to him, he'd been taken from me, and this time he wouldn't be coming back.
This was my second morning here. It had taken us a week to edge this far around London, avoiding the
main roads. We had arrived in the area yesterday afternoon, and the UNIT people had been expecting us,
or Alistair at any rate. The Royalist encampment had been set up in a natural dip in the earth, a clearing
surrounded by woodland deep within Windsor Forest, south of Windsor itself. In it sat a dozen tanks and
as many Harrier jets, not to mention armoured cars, jeeps, trucks and motorbikes. The hardware was
either tucked underneath the trees or covered in camouflaged netting. We had known where it was, but
driving along the track straining to see it, the camp had been completely invisible until we were within
twenty yards - by that time, a dozen snipers concealed in or among the trees could have picked us off. If
that wasn't impressive enough, the base would also be virtually invisible from the air - not that anything
was flying. The Provisional Government were enforcing a strict 'no fly' rule, at the insistence of the
Martians. Bambera's men didn't have to worry about satellites, either: the resistance movement's first
action was to disable the surveillance network. This had been a disconcertingly easy task, they told us,
with a little covert help from the CIA.
Page 4
There were a dozen resistance bases like this. All of them were well away from the population centres,
but close to the motorway network. The military were keeping their heads down, collecting intelligence,
content to stay hidden. Despite all the soldiers and their hardware here it was a world away from the
chaos of the Martian Invasion.
The officers' mess was an old garage on the edge of the site, at the end of a mud track, off a disused
country road. A decade ago someone had used it to fix up cars, it had probably been a barn or something
of the sort before then. The UNIT troops had set up temporary stalls that made the garage look like the
casualty department of a hospital, but did allow some form of privacy. The other troops slept in bivouac
tents. The thrusting young archaeologist in me yearned for the romance of sleeping under the stars, but
secretly I was rather glad to have walls and a roof around me.
There was already a well-trodden path to the ladies, really nothing more than a screened off section of
stream with makeshift chemical toilets and shower stalls. On arrival, I'd been surprised to see how many
female soldiers there were there. Including Brigadier Bambera the commanding officer, there were about
twenty. The precautions in place to keep the men and women from, ahem, 'fraternising', were rather
comical. The girlies had their own little area of the camp, and the men weren't allowed in there.
Fascinating from an anthropological view. Bambera and I slept in the officer's mess, suitably screened
off from our male colleagues. Thankfully, none of the other women were about their ablutions when I got
to the stream. What little contact I had had with them had convinced me that they weren't really my kind
of people.
I was right at the edge of the camp, so I had to check that there was no-one hiding beyond the perimeter.
That done, I decided to wash in the stream itself. When I was sixteen, I had lived out in the woodlands
beyond the walls of Spacefleet Academy. My exploits there had become legendary among the travellers
and traders of a dozen galaxies. 'See that woman at the bar?' they'd say, interrupting some vital business
transaction, 'Don't talk to her, she's forever going on and on about how she lived out in the wild and how
she became a bit of a guru to the other students'. 'Oh yeah,' one of their companions would invariably
reply, 'Her boyfriend kept tortoises, and he had - ', ' - freckles and a wicked laugh!' everyone would shout
out in unison.
Mockery is the sincerest form of jealousy. Besides, the skills I had picked up then had come in useful
time and time again. I sat on a fallen tree trunk, cupped my hands and drank a mouthful of very cold
stream water. It was too cold to wash properly, so I settled for wiping my face and neck.
Page 5
The echoing, rumbling noise of an aeroplane overhead broke the still of the morning. The first repat
airliner of the day, taking another five hundred people back to their home country. The flights had started
yesterday, all from Heathrow. It was like the Berlin Airlift in reverse, wave after wave of plane flying
due south until they were over French airspace, and then off in all directions. The radio news said that
there were half a million people camped at the airport - they'd need a thousand jumbo jets in total. That
probably wasn't far off Heathrow's normal capacity. The other airports weren't being used to simplify the
task, apparently. According to all the reports we had received not even ProvGov planes were in the air,
they'd only flown once, a quick sortie over Edinburgh.
A week ago, I'd been waiting for the Brigadier on the road out of Adisham. We'd been sitting in Bessie,
parked in a lay-by that overlooked the village and we cheered as the red poison gas dispersed. The
Doctor had managed to do that within ten minutes of his arrival. All the police cars and army vans that
had been sent to Adisham to track us down had ended up as disaster relief. The Martian ship vanished
over the horizon, heading back to London at a speed the Brigadier found incredible. On the radio -
resistance frequencies, not the BBC - we learnt that about a hundred people had died, not the couple of
thousand it might have been. The village had been completely sealed off. A week later, as I washed
myself in a cold stream, the village was still surrounded by a police cordon.
So, the Doctor had saved everyone in the nick of time, and any minute now he'd appear and cheerfully
underplay his achievements. The Brigadier and I bored ourselves silly recounting the number of times
that had happened. When the Doctor didn't emerge straight away, that was fine, too. The Brigadier
assured me that it often looked like he'd died, but he hadn't really, it had all been a misunderstanding.
Tell me about it, I'd replied. The Doctor had cheated death so often that death didn't play anymore. He
was alive, and he'd catch up with us sooner or later.
We didn't believe it, even then.
As I sat in that forest, the Martians and the Provisional Government were in London, preparing the
second stage of their plan.
Xznaal moved slowly through the large chambers of the East Wing of the National Gallery. After a week
he was almost fully acclimatised to England. He could almost feel his veins coursing with the blood
coolants developed by Vrgnur. The first sunlight of the morning was creeping through the skylights.
Xztaynz was waiting for him in the green-walled Sackler Room, and was baring his stumpy human teeth.
'Morning good, Kingman Snal,' he began.
Page 6
'Your Martian improvess, human.'
'Thankie, my liege.'
Xznaal grunted. It offended him to hear his language desecrated by a lower lifeform. The conversation
would have to continue in the crude human dialect. 'The domesstic ssituation remainss volatile. Why?'
'The rabble are trying to take advantage of the new government. The riots are being orchestrated by
extremists. We'll capture the ringleaders. With your help, we've completely removed the enemy
stronghold at Portsmouth. If you would authorise the use of the warship again - '
'That attack wass in retribution for the incident at Gatwick.' He paused to suck in more air. 'Our operation
there wass dissrupted. One of our sshuttlecraft was desstroyed.'
Xztaynz faltered. 'Yes, I heard reports. But your crew?'
'My crew wass unharmed.' Xznaal barked. 'But all the livesstock esscaped.'
'How did it happen?'
Xznaal didn't reply. The Terran weapons were primitive, but they had penetrated the war rocket's armour.
Xznaal had always known that his ship would be unable to withstand a nuclear blast, but last night
human conventional rocketry and artillery had proved a great deal more effective than Martian military
intelligence had suggested. It was a worrying development, but one that only confirmed the urgency of
his endeavours.
'That iss of no importance. I will not authorisse the usse of the warsship except where Martian interesstss
are directly threatened.'
'But Adisham - '
'The Time Lord wass a threat to Martian operationss. Enough of thiss: what of the other human clanss?'
'The foreign situation has stabilised, as we knew it would,' Xztaynz continued. 'Very few embassies have
closed, and now that the foreign nationals are beginning to return home, and it's clear that it's business as
usual - '
'Enough. Lord Gerayhayvun informss me that you are an expert on human art.'
Page 7
The human shifted from one foot to the other, as it was wont to. 'I know a little. The curators here will be
happy to help us if my knowledge proves imperfect. This place is so much more impressive without the
mob surging around it in their backpacks and T-shirts.'
Xznaal looked around at the high ceilings and long galleries. Normally this place was open to humans of
all ranks. He understood that as the British state owned the exhibits, all taxpayers had free access to view
the finest Earth art acquired in a millennium of conquest and commission. A noble arrangement for such
a savage race. When he returned to Argyre, Xznaal vowed to throw open his own galleries to his
subjects. The first exhibition would be one of human painting, weapons, flowers and sculpture.
He turned to the canvas on his right. 'What iss thiss one?'
'The Hay Wain. By Constable.'
'I like it. It sshowss the bounty of your human flora and fauna. Have it removed and taken to my
chamberss in the Tower. Thiss one iss by the ssame artisst?'
'Correct, your majesty.'
'That one too. And that big horsse.'
'The Stubbs? Yes, King Xznaal.' The Home Secretary motioned to the curator and repeated the order.
When the curator had gone, Xztaynz turned back to Xznaal. 'Your majesty, I was at Television Centre
yesterday. The documentary on Martian history is proceeding very well. The photographs you provided
of the last Marshall's funeral were very powerful.'
'Yess.' They showed the funeral barge moving up the Araxes Canal into the Fields of the Dead. Every
Lord was there, their armour bedecked in gold. Xznaal had stood shell to shell with even his bitterest
rivals, the leaders of the clans of Thaumasia and Erythraeum, united in grief for the ruler of all their
people and in support of the new Marshall, the boy-king Paxaphyr. The funeral of a Marshall was such a
contrast to the normal austerity of Martian life.
'I had no idea that your civilisation was so old. Hundreds of thousands of years. It makes human history
seem so insignificant.'
Page 8
'Indeed,' Xznaal whispered. 'Report on the consstruction of the sspace freighterss.'
'Er, yes, that is ahead of schedule. The first shipments to Mars will begin at the end of the month.'
'Good,' Xznaal said.
'If I might return to the subject of Martian culture. I couldn't help noting an Egyptian influence. That
fascinates me. It seems that your people and ours have encountered one another before.'
Xznaal shuffled around to face the Home Secretary. 'Egyptian?'
'An ancient Earth clan. But Egypt is a hot country, too hot for Martians, I would have thought. Luckily,
we've got a lot of Egyptian pieces at the British Museum. I brought a catalogue.'
Xznaal took the document, tried to manipulate it in his claws. It slipped between his pincers and dropped
to the floor. Xztaynz bent down to pick it up, holding open and in front of his eyes. Xznaal studied the
pictures. Ancient human artefacts, all bearing crude, but recognisable images.
'You worsship thesse godss?' Xznaal hissed curiously.
'Heavens no, I'm Church of England,' Xztaynz gurgled. 'No-one has worshipped this lot for thousands of
years.'
Xznaal glared down at him. 'They will,' he ordered. 'You will insstruct your teacher casste to include
religiouss insstruction in the curriculum.'
'Martian religion?'
'Reformed Martian, yess.'
Page 9
Xztaynz gurgled again. 'I'm not sure the Archbishop of Canterbury would like that.' His face was
contorted into a rictus.
Xznaal angled his head and exhaled. 'Then behead him and replace him with one loyal to uss. I thought
you were a politician.'
Extract from the memoirs of Professor Bernice Summerfield:
I finished my ablutions and began to trudge back up to the officer's mess. My thoughts at the time were
preoccupied with how I could escape. I'd decided that my best bet was to build myself an interstellar
distress beacon and signal for help. That was the current plan, the only real flaw with it being I hadn't
even the slightest idea how to build an interstellar distress beacon. I knew that I wanted to try and contact
my father, but wasn't sure where to start. He'd be lying low, too low for me to find on my own. Failing
that, I told myself, I could stay in Windsor Forest. Why would anyone want to leave such a peaceful
wood, with deer and squirrels, for motorways and town centres with a roadblock at every junction?
I slid the door of the mess open and stepped inside. Most of the soldiers were up now. One of them had
made us all a mug of tea. I took mine gratefully. The two Brigadiers were checking their maps.
Lethbridge-Stewart doing so while he shaved. The radio transceiver was still on, but now it was playing
the Radio Four Breakfast Programme. The presenters' voices were unfamiliar. There had been purges at
all the broadcasters and newspapers. For the most part, UNIT had used the radio only to listen to
messages, they'd maintained their own radio silence for almost the whole week. We couldn't afford to
draw attention to ourselves.
'Portsmouth has fallen,' Alistair announced grimly. 'In the last hour or so. The Martian ship attacked the
docks, they sank every ship there. All the Royal Navy buildings were demolished with that ray thing of
theirs.'
I sat down, unable to think of anything to say. There were many tiny resistance cells, but only a handful
of real strongholds still stood in England: Bristol, York, Aldershot, Manchester and here in Windsor.
Perhaps a couple of others. The one at Portsmouth was the best-defended. The coup leaders included
senior officers of the Army and RAF, but the Royal Navy had been almost untainted. The ships around
the British coast had moved in to defend Portsmouth, to maintain a foothold on British soil and to keep
the supply lines open. Now Portsmouth had fallen.
Page 10
'Scotland's our best hope now,' Captain Ford noted. The Provisional Government's tacticians had been
most anxious to secure the capital and the further north you went, the less their grip on power.
Unfortunately, that didn't rule out airstrikes and rapid deployment of men parachuting in. Or the everpresent
threat that the Martian ship could up sticks and attack any city in the country within minutes.
'It's the first time they've used the Martian ship since Adisham,' I noted. 'It's been over London for the
whole week, hasn't it?' I moved over to the Brigadier. He'd unfolded a big map of the South of England
over Bessie's bonnet and had marked off intelligence reports in red felt-tip. He'd been careful not to note
down the location of the resistance groups they knew about - a basic security measure, but not
necessarily one that would have occurred to me. The resistance cells were doing a good job in tracking
ProvGov troop movements, and they had an almost complete record of where the Martians were. So far,
the resistance had agreed not to attack any military targets, simply to observe them.
Bambera consulted a notepad. 'Not quite, Professor. The Martian ship headed this way on Saturday - we
thought it was coming for us, but it went straight past before returning to London. It was sighted over
Bradford during the rioting there on Monday night. Yesterday it was tracked over Surrey. But it's never
been used in combat before.'
I rubbed my forehead, already tired again only half an hour after waking up. 'The Martians probably see
the riots as a spectator sport. Up there they had the best seats in the house.'
The Brigadier slammed his fist down on Bessie's bonnet. 'Damn this!' he shouted.
We stood in silence for a couple of seconds, glaring at each other.
Tactlessly, the radio continued to reel off its propaganda. ' ... Staines reiterated that the Provisional
Government is offering a full amnesty for anyone leaving the rebel encampments. In the north, York is
under siege. Our correspondent on the ground there observes that medieval walls won't hold back the
tanks for long. Another walled city, Chester, surrendered unconditionally on Tuesday evening when an
outbreak of cholera ... '
'It must be a good sign that they haven't bombed York to oblivion,' Lethbridge-Stewart said hesitantly.
Page 11
'Yes,' I said, recognising that the old man was trying to stay friends with me. Tempers had become frayed
quite a few times over the last couple of days. We both knew that the Provisional Government was
capable of winning without firing a shot - all they had to do was cut off the water and electricity supplies,
prevent any food from getting in and wait. Parts of the country that weren't resisting were finding that life
was going on pretty much as normal. That was enough of an incentive to co-operate with the new
government for most people. Even the foreign travel ban wasn't being badly-received: the government
had fully compensated holidaymakers, and businesses had received various assurances. It was frustrating
just sitting here, hoping that the woods around us weren't full of Government snipers.
'What are we going to do?' I asked, trying to sound constructive.
'Professor Summerfield, you will need to brief us about the Martians and their technology. We'll need to
know how long we can expect to stay hidden.' Bambera said all that without even looking in my
direction.
'Fine. Look, they are a civilised race. We can talk to them.'
A couple of the officers laughed, but Lethbridge-Stewart was nodding. 'You're right. But I think we
should negotiate from a position of strength. Show them what we're made of.'
Any other time, I would have cracked a dark joke about spilt blood and guts, but it wasn't appropriate.
'Brigadier,' Bambera said darkly, 'we are in no position to take back London. Especially not with that
Martian ship there. We should wait here until we know more. Professor Summerfield is the expert on the
Martians. Let's hear what she has to say.'
I scratched my collarbone. 'Now? OK.'
The officers pulled their chairs around to face me. I smiled nervously - this wasn't quite how I had
pictured my inaugural lecture as a real professor. For one thing, I'd planned to down a stiff brandy
beforehand.
I began by sketching in a brief history of the Martians. Nothing too detailed, just a rough explanation of
the feudal system that had kept Martian civilisation carefully balanced for the last million years.
'So the Martians have been around for more than a million years?' one of the senior RAF men
interrupted. 'Surely by now they'd have evolved into superbeings or conquered the galaxy? If they had
ships like that a million years ago, why didn't they conquer the Earth then, back when we were only
monkeys?'
Page 12
Page 13
I chuckled. This was traditionally the first question a human asked in any lecture about Martian history.
I'd done the same fifteenish years before. 'You're judging their civilisation in terms of your own. There's
a lot to be said for a stable society rather than a progressive one. The Ancient Egyptian civilisation
thrived for thousands of years without a single new invention, they hardly even improved on their
existing stuff. The only thing that changed in four thousand years under the Pharaohs was the
introduction of the chariot, when the Phoenicians attacked. Or was it the Assyrians? I forget.' A number
of the officers were shuffling impatiently, so I shunted off that particular train of thought. 'Anyway, the
Martians are exactly the same, only their stability has been forced on them by a lack of resources. Mars is
in what we archaeologists call a state of decay: they've lost advanced technological knowledge - or it
sits in libraries gathering dust - because they have no use for it. What's the point of knowing how to build
an atom bomb if there isn't any plutonium? Or a silicon chip if there isn't any silicon? Or a log fire if
there aren't any logs?'
There was a murmuring around the room. They seemed excited by this. I'd stolen the last bit from a
textbook that wouldn't be written for four hundred years. I enjoyed appearing all-knowing, having a
roomful of military men hanging on my every word. They were lucky I didn't get my spoons out and
start playing them.
'So in many ways, we are at an advantage?' Bambera asked.
I nodded sagely. 'Oh yes. Humanity is in the middle of a rapid stage of technological progress. Within a
hundred years, we'll have overtaken the Martians in a number of key areas.'
Another round of murmuring.
'Don't get carried away,' I warned. 'Just think how easy it would be to conquer Victorian England using
Harrier jump jets and nuclear submarines.'
The officers were apprehensive again.
'The Doctor built a sonic jammer,' the Brigadier said, trying to keep the spirit of optimism stoked up.
'That reflected the Martian's energy ray back at them. I take it that we can't do that yet?'
I shrugged.
'If we had the right frequency we probably could,' one of the technicians said. 'Problem is we don't have
the frequency.'
Page 14
'We need to strike before they consolidate their position,' Lethbridge-Stewart said. 'They could be
preparing a giant occupation fleet on Mars.'
I shook my head. 'They have the technology, but not the raw materials. That one warship represents a
massive investment of time and energy - think of all that metal and fuel. There's probably a year's entire
clan defence budget tied up in it. Britain found it a lot easier to build the Mars 97 than Xznaal did to
build his warship.'
Lethbridge-Stewart frowned. 'So that's not the spearhead, that's the entire invasion?'
Captain Ford was nodding. 'Our intelligence suggests that the Martians are staying put. The Provisional
Government is preparing consignments of raw materials for export to Mars: steel, timber, fertiliser.' He
swept his hand over the map in front of him that had all of the production sites marked off.
Lethbridge-Stewart was trying to concentrate. 'Surely they'll use Earth's resources to build more
warships? I would have thought that would be logical. Only then would they send for reinforcements. So
we have to strike now, before more of those things are operational.'
Bambera frowned. 'Strike where? Look, they aren't building anything at the moment. If they started, they
can't build any of those things overnight, or in one place. You are right to be concerned: we'll pass this on
to the other cells, get them to watch out for unusual activity at aerospace factories, shipyards, that sort of
thing.'
'I want to go into Windsor,' Lethbridge-Stewart announced, 'We need more detailed maps.'
Bambera chuckled, presumably by the thought that an elite military force needed to pop to the shops for
supplies.
'I'll try and phone Doris, too,' he whispered across to me.
'No,' I said firmly.
He frowned. 'Why not? Do you think the Martians will be monitoring phone calls?'
'Not the Martians. They are a noble warrior race, and such tricks are beneath them. I'm worried by the
humans.'
The soldier considered what I was saying, then nodded. I took Lethbridge-Stewart to one side. 'Take
Bessie,' I offered.
Page 15
'I wasn't sure whether - '
'Take the car. If you need to make a getaway, you'll need it.'
A smile flickered across his face. 'Thank you, Benny. If I'm not back by nine-thirty, then I won't be
coming back.' He lifted the map off the bonnet, and handed it over to her.
'Er, do you mind if you fold this up, Alistair?' I asked, 'I never really got the knack.'
When the Brigadier looked at me, there was a twinkle in his eye. 'Truth to tell, Mrs Summerfield, neither
did I. When I joined the army I made it my business to get promoted quick smart so that someone else
could do all the folding for me.'
We turned back to the main group, and the Brigadier passed the map back over to Bambera, who began
to fold it without being asked.
'Look after yourself,' I chuckled as Lethbridge-Stewart climbed stiffly into the driver's seat.
'Of course I will.'
A couple of corporals were pulling open the door for him. Bessie shot silently out and off onto the dirt
track.
Bambera was shaking his head. 'Shame.'
'That's why they call them The Blunder Days, ma'am,' Captain Ford said. 'He thinks we can go in, all
guns blazing.'
The sniggering continued for a couple of seconds until I rounded on them. 'At least he's doing something.
At least he isn't sitting in a wood, waiting for the Martians to find us.' They looked blankly at me.
'Professor Summerfield,' Bambera said sharply. 'I've read the files: back in the seventies, Brigadier
Lethbridge-Stewart repulsed a couple of small-scale incursions. I've read his reports, and he relied on
two things: luck and the Doctor. Since we've not had any luck, and your friend turned out to be halflemming
on his mother's side - ' her voice trailed away.
'I'm going for a walk.' I announced levelly. A witticism had just occurred to me, one of those peculiar
expressions Ace would come up with. 'Sod this for a game of soldiers,' I called back as I headed for the
door.
Page 16
I took my mug, leaving them to compile their reports and sit around on their assimilations. I felt an
overwhelming urge to get out of the camp, to be on my own. Without thinking, I wandered out beyond
the perimeter and found myself a sheltered spot facing away from the camp. I sat with my back to a tree
trunk, my eyes closed. A hundred yards away, a line of black-clad Provisional Government troops with
raised rifles marched forwards as if they were directed by Eistenstein himself, gunning down everything
in their path. At least they could have been doing for all I cared. This wasn't my timezone, it wasn't even
my own home planet.
There was a dull shape in my chest, something that a week ago had been a sense of loss. I had spent the
week crying, not for one lost Doctor but two. I found it difficult to mourn for the young man who had run
off into the red cloud, frock coat flailing. Although Alistair recognised his old friend, I only saw a
stranger - irritating new habits and mannerisms, virtually nothing of the old body language. Carefree
instead of careful. A little brother or first boyfriend, not a father. It wasn't just him - his death had robbed
the universe of all future Doctors, young and old, fat and thin, bald and hairy. Now the Doctor had gone,
we would have to sort all this out on our own.
It was a daunting prospect. Where did one begin? What would the Doctor have done? He'd have tried to
talk to the Martians, he'd have made them see reason. If they couldn't do that, then he'd use their own
weapons against them. He'd find out what the Martians were really planning and he'd stop it, once and
for all. He wouldn't use guns, he'd talk to them. And he'd have sorted it all out in about an hour and a
half, two hours tops.
And he'd make it all look so easy.
A twig snapped behind me, but before I had time to turn, I was pushed down onto the floor.
'Don't move.' It was a lanky man in a tattered business suit. He was holding me down, and he had a knife.
'Stay still or I kill you. Keep quiet.'
I nodded. The man waved the knife a little closer, betraying his nervousness, rather than his resolve.
'Good morning,' I replied.
'I said shut - '
I grabbed his wrist, slammed it against a tree trunk and kicked his feet from under him. He toppled over,
and I stuck my knee in the back of his neck. It had been a while since I'd had cause to use my Aikido, and
so I was rather gratified that I could still lift my leg so high.
Page 17
'Let me go,' he screamed. 'Civilisation.'
'What?' I scowled.
'Civilisation. It's the end of the world. The end of everything. Ten days ago I was a civil engineer. Now
look at me.'
I considered my options, then stood. 'You're talking about being civilised. So let's cut out all this knife
and kung-fu crap and talk.'
The man scrambled to his feet. I held out my hand and we introduced ourselves. The stranger said his
name was Raymond Heath.
'OK, Ray. You were a civil engineer. Where?'
The sound of boots crunching through undergrowth. Soldiers from the base were hurrying to my aid,
taking up positions behind me.
'Are you OK, Professor Summerfield?' one of the lads asked.
'Yes thank you, private.'
The soldiers stayed alert, scanning the wood to make sure my assailant was on his own.
'Carry on,' I told Ray quietly.
'I worked at the EG refinery, just outside Reading.'
'The what?' I asked.
'EG. You know: one of the Greyhaven companies.'
So I listened.
Lethbridge-Stewart was slotting coins into the pay-and-display machine. While the mechanism whirred,
he checked the car park. No-one was watching him, except a three-year old with a balloon.
Page 18
As far as he knew, neither he nor Benny's photograph had appeared in the press or on television in the
last week. Perhaps the authorities thought that they had died in Adisham. More likely, with the Doctor
dead, they weren't considered a threat any longer. The Brigadier had reached that conclusion himself, but
he'd rather hoped that UNIT would pose more of a threat.
Lethbridge-Stewart quickened his pace a little, passing through a row of trees to the main street. He used
to live in Gerrard's Cross, so he'd been to Windsor his fair share of times over the years. The streets were
as busy as he remembered, there was even a school party making its way over to the Castle. London was
less than an hour away, just along the M4. The population of that city was living in fear, under curfew,
with a kilometre long warship hovering over them. Here, people were going about their daily business. A
quartet of Etonians passed him, moaning that the BBC had cancelled last night's X Files 'due to recent
events'.
Lethbridge-Stewart could see the WH Smiths sign now. He continued towards it, pausing every so often
to look into other shop windows. This was a simple technique. If anyone was following you, they'd have
to stop as well, or walk straight past you. You could also check the reflected image of the other side of
the street, without having to look directly at a potential tail. As part of his basic espionage training, he'd
walked down Oxford Street, from one end to the other. Half a dozen MI5 man were trailing him. His
primary goal was to shake them off, the second was to identify as many of them as he could at the debrief
afterwards.
The point was, of course, that he couldn't do either. If you walk down a street, people look at you. If you
are going to Smiths, chances are a dozen others are too, so they'll be walking down the same pavements.
At the debrief, he'd been honest enough to admit that he couldn't spot anyone who was definitely
following him. He described a couple of the people he thought might have been MI5 agents, all of whom
had been innocent passers-by. He got points for honesty, and realism. Despite all his weaving in and out
of shops, he doubted that he'd shaken off the men following him. He had managed to drop out of sight
for almost a full minute, more than enough to pass over or drop off any documents he might have been
carrying. He'd passed that part of his training.
He walked into Smiths, checking the dozen or so shoppers. He paused at an empty newspaper rack.
'Excuse me,' he asked the nearest assistant, 'but - '
'Oh there aren't any,' she said in a sing-song voice.
Page 19
'The government have banned them?'
'S'pose.'
'You don't seem terribly interested,' he informed her.
'Don't take much interest in it. Politics,' she explained. 'You know beef's safe to eat, 'no it isn't. It's all
made up. Everyone eats beef again now, don't they?'
'I never stopped,' Lethbridge-Stewart informed her.
'Even though it might turn your brain into a sponge? A load of people stopped eating it for a couple of
weeks, but only when it was in the news. It'll be the same with the Martians. Already is. I'm used to them
now, and they ain't that bad.'
Lethbridge-Stewart continued on to the 'local interest' section. There was a shelf there full of Ordnance
Survey maps. He picked up a couple for north of here. If they wanted to prevent being captured, they
needed the best knowledge of the terrain available. With the right intelligence, they could evade the
Martians and the Provisional Government forces for months. The resistance would be able to collect
intelligence data and keep one step ahead of the enemy.
Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart frowned. And then what would they do? Wait for the Americans or the
United Nations to bail them out? It wasn't going to happen. With every passing day, the international
situation was more stable - the governments of the world were finding it easy to accommodate the
Martian presence. The resistance needed to strike, to hit right at the centre of the Provisional
Government. But with London under martial law, how could they? And how could they do that without
provoking Martian retaliation? Britain wasn't just at war with itself, it was at war with another planet. No
wonder no other countries were going to get involved.
The Doctor had been right: the Martians wouldn't stop at Britain. They had to be beaten back. But he was
just one old man, standing in a newsagents worrying that someone would recognise him. He didn't even
have enough money to buy all the maps he wanted to. What could he do on his own?
Page 20
He could fight.
The Brigadier realised that he wasn't on his own. He had UNIT, he had half the British army and, despite
what that girl had just said, he was sure he had virtually all the British people.
He could lead.
Oswald and Dave had been staring at the packet for almost the whole hour since the postman had
delivered it. There was a rather odd instruction on the back: DO NOT OPEN - WAIT ONE HOUR. The
mystery had intrigued Oswald, and fifty nine minutes later the padded envelope was still sealed. Early
on, they'd established that it contained a videotape.
'It's probably from a charity for menks traumatised by having their entire video collection wiped by a
giant Martian UFO.'
Oswald was weighing the packet in his hands. 'The ship clearly generates an intense magnetic field.'
'Clearly.'
They turned. A tall man in a neat blue suit had just come through the doorway. He looked like a pilot or a
soldier, but he was old - fifty-five at least. He had a peculiar angular face. Dave was sure that he
recognised the man from somewhere.
The man took his pipe from his mouth. 'Good morning, lads. I believe that you have a package for me.'
Extract from the memoirs of Professor Bernice Summerfield 'We have to stop them.'
Lethbridge-Stewart was shouting so loud we could hear him from outside the mess. The soldiers on the
door were a little more hesitant with their salutes, and they were clearly embarrassed by the noise.
We stepped into the old barn. Bambera and Ford were glaring at Alistair.
Page 21
'There's nothing I would like more than to stop them,' Bambera said curtly. 'But I will not send my men
on a suicide mission. If you've assembled the command staff simply to - '
'The Martians won't stop at Dover, you know. The world is at stake here.'
Captain Ford pointed to his charts. 'Brigadier, as soon as we know the full extent of the Martian plan, we
can begin to sabotage it. Guerrilla tactics: block their convoys, blow up their factories. Ferment civil
unrest ... '
'Until?' Lethbridge-Stewart asked.
'What do you mean?'
'Why are we playing at being the French Resistance? Who are our allies, who will help us?'
'No-one is happy with the Martian presence,' Bambera reminded him. 'The EU imposed trade sanctions to
prevent the export of Martian technology. The UN would have passed that Alien Non-Proliferation
Resolution if it wasn't for the Chinese veto.' With only six weeks to go before the British were due to
leave Hong Kong, the Chinese were going out of their way to stay on good terms with the Martians. The
United Kingdom's membership of the UN was officially 'under review', but in reality little had changed.
They hadn't even lost their seat on the Security Council.
'The government-in-exile are rallying support for us. The Queen is in Washington at - '
'The US Congress has already agreed not to interfere in Britain's internal affairs. They want the
Martian technology. The EU members haven't withdrawn their embassy staff. Bambera, we are on our
own. We have to take the lead.'
'How?' she said scornfully.
Lethbridge-Stewart began to explain the plan that he had formulated on the way back from town. 'The
Provisional Government is based in London, but we know that their military forces are all in the north, or
heading up there. They are going to secure the northern cities - Manchester, Leeds and York are all
Royalist strongholds. At the moment, the Provisionals can't even think of moving north of there, and so
Scotland's almost untouched, apart from the air-raid on Edinburgh.'
Page 22
'One snag here, Brigadier,' Bambera reminded him. 'The Martian ship is hanging over London. It would
make short work of anyone that tried to attack the capital. That's why we've not moved before now.'
'We're not just at war with one ship, Brigadier, we're at war against an entire planet,' Captain Ford
reminded everyone.
'Not the whole of Mars,' I corrected. 'Just one clan: the Argyre.' They noticed me for the first time.
Lethbridge-Stewart hadn't finished with Bambera. 'The lads in Portsmouth damaged the Martian ship. It
can be done, with surface-to-air missiles and heavy artillery. They are not invincible.'
Bambera straightened and faced me. 'You know your Martians, Professor. Did we really manage to sting
them?'
I thought about the question for a moment, realising that the lives of all the men in the camp depended on
my answer. 'Yes,' I said finally, 'They don't have forcefields or anything like that.'
'So an air strike could knock the Martian ship out of the sky?' Ford asked.
'In theory, if they could get close enough. The Martian gunners will know the planes are in the air before
your own radar operators and they'll be able to keep better track of them once they are flying. If you
could get around that somehow, the big problem would be the magnetic engines: they don't emit heat, so
heatseekers wouldn't work, they do generate magnetic flux, which would play merry hell with your
guidance systems.'
'What about a nuclear strike?' the Brigadier asked.
I grimaced. 'Thinking of calling your old friends on the Revenge? Hobson, wasn't it?'
He narrowed his eyes. 'How the devil did you know about that?'
I smiled. 'It's a long story. Yes, a nuclear strike would work, and I doubt the Martians would have any
more of a defence against an ICBM than you have. It would also kill about a million Londoners straight
away and another two or three million over the next ten years.'
Page 23
'I was only speaking hypothetically,' Lethbridge-Stewart told me.
'Glad to hear it.'
'We won't have to fight the Martian ship,' Lethbridge-Stewart announced. 'Not until we've re-taken
London.'
Bambera was rubbing her forehead. 'How are we going to do that?' she asked wearily. 'No. Cancel that.
Alistair, I appreciate that you're trying to help, but throwing ourselves at the Martians like the Charge of
the Light Brigade won't help anyone. We sit tight.'
'No we won't,' I said firmly.
The officers were all glaring at me. I motioned for my companion to come forwards. It looked like he
had been crying.
'This is Raymond Heath. He's got a story for us.'
'H-hello. I was a civil engineer at the EG Plant just outside Reading. We were making a fertiliser, all very
hush-hush. Lord Greyhaven was in personal charge of the project, and he told us that what we were
doing would eventually be used on Mars. We assumed he meant when the humans colonised it.' he
paused. 'Really it was for the Martians themselves. On that first Friday morning, a Martian shuttlecraft
arrived at the plant. A Martian scientist, Vrgnur took over, and anyone who objected was killed. Vrgnur
stays in his shuttle, but the whole refinery is patrolled by Government troops with machine guns. Noone's
allowed to leave - we had to sleep in the canteen.'
The assembled officers were all staring at him, making him even more nervous than he naturally was.
I smiled at him, trying to put him at his ease. 'But if all you were doing was making fertiliser ... '
Ray became more animated. 'But we weren't. The project changed when the Martian arrived. Now we
were growing some bacteriological weapon. A red gas.'
I stepped forwards again. 'This is the poison gas that the Martians used on Adisham - it's what killed the
Doctor.' The members of the audience that had known the Doctor shifted in their chairs, Lethbridge-
Stewart included. I continued: 'Adisham was just a test. I think the gas is the weapon that the Martians
will use to destroy humanity.'
Page 24
Ray nodded. 'They were testing the gas on prisoners. They would turn up in Prison Service vans and be
led into the - ' he broke off. 'This was happening in Berkshire. It still is. They forced us to do it, at
gunpoint. I - ' he was having difficulty speaking now. I put her arm over his shoulder.
'They were gassing prisoners?' Captain Ford asked quietly.
I nodded. 'Fifteen miles away from here, and then burying the bodies in mass graves. Ray managed to
escape, he's been wandering the countryside ever since.'
'But how did the Martians manage to set all this up without anyone knowing?'
'The Home Office must have helped set it up,' Bambera said. 'They must co-operating with this. People
knew.'
'And now we know,' I said quietly. 'So do we stay here and let it carry on?'
There was fire in Lethbridge-Stewart's eyes. 'No. We fight it,' he said. 'We fight it and we stop it. In
twenty four hours, the last Martian will have left British soil.'
'How, exactly?' Bambera asked.
The Brigadier broke into a broad smile. 'I'm glad you asked me that question ... '
The Dying Days - Chapter Thirteen
Page 1
Earth Attacks!
Friday, May 16th 1997
'What's the latest from Portsmouth, Simon?'
'Our boys have picked up about a hundred survivors, Prime Minister. There are some photos on your
desk.'
Greyhaven found the pictures next to the proposed new designs for banknotes. He stared at pictures: piles
of rubble where buildings once stood, ships pitched over onto their sides, with great cracks and punctures
in the metal. More victims to Xznaal's brutal efficiency. He'd never done it himself, but Greyhaven knew
that some small children poured water over ant nests, to watch them suffer. The ants wouldn't be able to
comprehend what was going on. Perhaps they had ant religion, with a complex set of beliefs regarding
divine behaviour. Even if they found a way to communicate with their destroyer and asked him 'why?'
they wouldn't get a proper answer. The best they could hope for would be 'why not?'
He hadn't been back to the Greyhaven Building overlooking the Thames since the night the Martian ship
had arrived. The cleaner would have made the bed, and removed every single trace that Eve had ever
been there, except perhaps for an empty jewellery box. Watching banks of red fog rage around Adisham,
Greyhaven could have destroyed Xznaal then and there, but he decided to wait. The Martians still had
their uses. Xznaal had told him that he would not be manufacturing any more of the Red Death -
although Greyhaven suspected that the decision had more to do with the fact that the Martians couldn't
predict or control the behaviour of the gas.
'Are there any of the leaders?'
Simon flipped through the report. 'None. We've found the bodies of a couple of Admirals and Generals,
but no sign of the resistance command staff. They must have been in one of the other strongholds.'
'A package for you, Prime Minister,' a man announced. He had come into the room without knocking.
When the Prime Minister looked up, he saw why. It was Alexander Christian, clean-shaven in a neat blue
suit, holding a small parcel.
Page 2
Simon lunged for him, and then fell back, unconscious, dragging a tea service onto the carpet with him.
The sound of the crash brought a quick response, but the large man who came through the door was dealt
with equally swiftly, slumping to the floor with a gruff groan.
Christian had kept the parcel in his right hand the whole time. Now he handed it over to the Prime
Minister. Greyhaven didn't even try to reach for the pistol or panic button in his desk.
'Good morning, Lex. Is that an axe in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?'
'You deserve to die for what you did to my crew, and what you did to me.' Christian said curtly. 'I spent
twenty years in a cell because you sold Britain out to the Martians. You're not the only one who's spent
twenty years making plans.'
He pulled out a handgun, held it up.
'Believe me, if I was going to kill you, you'd be dead by now. Open the envelope.'
Greyhaven tugged out the videotape that had been slotted snugly inside. There wasn't a label on it, or a
note. It had come from Crawley, according to the postmark. The delivery address had been scrawled out,
but it wouldn't take a forensics team long to uncover it.
'A picture speaks a thousand words, Prime Minister,' Christian said in a low voice.
Greyhaven moved over to the little television and VCR in the corner of the room. The television screen
rippled with thick diagonal lines.
'The tape's blank,' he said. Then a thought occurred to him and he flicked a little switch on the back. It
was a couple of seconds before the picture flashed up. When it did, it showed a flat expanse of concrete.
The tape was an NTSC recording. He didn't look back over his shoulder.
Instead, Greyhaven concentrated on the tape, trying to work out what he was watching. There was a
timecode along the bottom: 5/14/97 09.05. It had been taken the day before yesterday.
Page 3
The picture was jerky, the cameraman was trying to move it around in a tight circle. He was probably
undercover. There wasn't a soundtrack. The Martian ship was drifting overhead, like a storm cloud. The
cameraman kept it in shot for five or six seconds, then brought the camera around. Greyhaven could see
now that the ship was floating over a runway. He glanced down at the envelope again. If it was sent from
Crawley, it seemed logical that this was Gatwick Airport. But Gatwick had been closed since the
Martians arrived. All the airliners had been transferred over to Heathrow to help with the repatriation of
the tourists.
The picture jerked again, and there was a disorientating zoom to a row of blue Transit vans parked by a
hangar building. There were policemen there, opening up the back of the vans. It was blurred, a little too
far for the camera to pick out many details.
The cameraman must have realised. The picture flickered, and now the timecode read 9.12. He had
moved to within a hundred yards or so. There were about a hundred men lined up, all in blue and grey
overalls. There must have been two dozen policeman watching over them, all of whom carried pistols or
rifles.
There was another zoom. The front of one of the Transit vans now filled the screen. The white lettering
was very clear: HM PRISON SERVICE. The first two letters had actually been scraped away, but their
outlines were still visible.
The picture now panned back up to the underside of the Martian craft, and it took a moment for the
cameraman to adjust the focus. A hatch was retracting at the front of the spaceship. As the red light
began creeping out from the opening, Greyhaven could make out a dark shape the size of a large house.
The shape detached itself, and began drifting downwards. It was boomerang-shaped, and built from
glistening dark green metal. It was a shuttlecraft of some kind, and only took ten or fifteen seconds
before it had descended the short distance to the runway. The picture panned down with it.
The policemen were ushering their prisoners forwards towards the shuttlecraft.
The picture dissolved into static. Greyhaven tried fast-forwarding the tape, to see if there were any more
clips. The rest of the tape was blank.
Greyhaven's face was ashen. 'What are they doing with those prisoners?'
Alexander Christian watched him carefully. 'You don't know, do you?'
'No.'
Page 4
'That shuttlecraft was destroyed shortly after those pictures were taken. You didn't know that, either, did
you?'
'A Martian ship was destroyed?'
'That's the reason they attacked Portsmouth. Revenge for their loss. They are vicious, war-like. They'll
destroy everything, you included.'
'I can control them.'
'You're too clever to trust Xznaal, old chap, and we know you've got something up your sleeve. Whatever
it is, use it now. You won't get another chance.'
Extract from the memoirs of Professor Bernice Summerfield
Much has been written about the Battle of London, very little of it by people who were actually there, as
I was. The day began sitting in the officer's mess of the UNIT encampment, a map of Berkshire hanging
on one wall, a map of London on the other. All of us knew that we would be writing history. We were
full of that gung-ho spirit that seizes all sections of a population at time of war. Whatever your politics,
whatever your thoughts about the rights and wrongs of the situation, you are always glad when our
boys win and the enemy's boys don't. It's always been the same from the streets of ancient Uruk to the
common room of a twenty-seventh century university. You forget that the enemy feels the same, you
forget that every civilisation, even your own, falls in the end. I'd seen empires topple - including my own,
but that's another story - yet I was swept along as much as anyone.
'This will be a two-pronged attack,' Lethbridge-Stewart announced. He seemed ten years younger, I
thought. There was a bounce in his step, determination in his voice. The other soldiers were listening to
him now.
He slapped his swagger stick against the first map. 'Step One: a small assault team led by Captain Ford
takes out the refinery. Ray has agreed to go along, and he'll show you where to plant explosives for
maximum effect. Primary objective is to destroy production facilities and any stocks of gas already
prepared. The secondary objective is to capture the Martian scientist, Vrgnur.'
Page 5
I raised my hand, and the Brigadier took my question. 'Could I go along with that group? I'm the only
one who can talk to Vrgnur, and I know a little about Martian shuttlecraft.'
Lethbridge-Stewart nodded. 'That's where your expertise will be most useful,' he agreed. 'Now, we know
that the warship hasn't come back to the refinery since it dropped off the shuttlecraft. That means that the
warship doesn't have the gas on-board and if the Martians want to use it, they will have to go to Reading
to collect it. Because the gas in crucial to their plans, it also means that when the refinery is attacked,
they'll rush to defend it.'
Lethbridge-Stewart crossed the room, passing the rows of officers. 'And that leads us to stage two. All
Royalist units will converge on London. We'll move in along all major routes - our forces will head
straight down the M4 and at the moment the bombs go off destroying the refinery, we'll be in
Westminster.'
Bambera had kept quiet ever since she'd handed over command to Lethbridge-Stewart, but now she was
speaking. 'The Martian ship might stay behind to guard London, even if the refinery is threatened.'
I shook my head. I'd talked this through with Alistair, and we had agreed what would happen. 'The
Martians are interested in themselves, not humans. When the refinery is threatened, they'll move.'
'And when that happens,' Lethbridge-Stewart said, 'our aircraft will attack it. They'll try to box it in, and
bring it down. If that doesn't work, they should at least delay its return to London.'
'That still leaves the Provisional Government,' Bambera said. 'A lot of their forces are committed in the
north, I know, but there are plenty left behind. They'll know we are coming - we can't keep half a dozen
military convoys a secret.'
Lethbridge-Stewart smiled. 'They will know we are coming, Brigadier Bambera, because we will tell
them. We will tell the world.'
End of extract
Xztaynz was showing Xznaal some 'medieval' art. The religious subject matter and naive rendering failed
to interest him. One more day, and they would have visited every room in the National Gallery, and seen
every painting that was not publicly displayed. The National Portrait Gallery sounded unpromising - all
those rows upon rows of ugly primate faces - and so they'd skip that. Next week, they would scour the
British Museum. The large fossils and Egyptian exhibits were going to be of particular interest, Xznaal
could see that just from the catalogues that Staines had supplied. The walls of his palace on Earth, the
White Tower, were now lined with human art from this place.
Page 6
A human came towards them, with that nervous scuttling motion that they had. Xznaal recognised that
this was a female. They were smaller than the males on the whole, and wore brighter cloth. This one had
red talons, and they were sharpened. No doubt this was to protect her offspring from predators until they
had finished dropping from her mammal body and were able to defend themselves. It seemed a most
unhygenic arrangement. She was holding a communicator in her paw.
'Good morning, Home Secretary. Er... Your Majesty.' Whenever he left the confines of his ship, Xznaal
was always careful to wear the Imperial State Crown, as now, yet for some reason the humans failed to
accept this symbol of authority. The human race lacked the discipline and respect for their leaders of a
civilised people.
He waved a claw. 'Good morning.'
'This is Miss Helmond,' Xztaynz explained. 'What do you have to tell us?'
'The Royalist terrorists have launched an attack on London, Home Secretary. Our spotters report that
they have blocked off the M25 and they are moving in on most of the major routes.'
'That's suicide,' Xztaynz objected. 'It's a co-ordinated assault?'
'They've taken over local radio stations, there's going to be a broadcast at mid-day. That's the same time
that the Queen... the, er, ex-Queen,' she corrected herself quickly, 'will address the UN General
Assembly.'
Xznaal hissed. 'What iss happening?'
'They can't possibly succeed, your majesty. We outnumber them, we are holding a string of defensive
positions, we have the warship, we - '
'Enough. We will return to the ssafety of the Tower. Have Gerayhayvun join uss there.'
Extract from the memoirs of Professor Bernice Summerfield
Bessie streaked through the countryside at an implausible speed. The UNIT Land Rover following them
was struggling to keep up.
I tried to dredge up what I could remember of the local traffic laws. None of the carefully-designed, nonculturally
specific road signs that lined the route made the slightest bit of sense to me.
Page 7
Beside me, Ray was hanging on for dear life, unable to put his trust in the sophisticated inertial
maintenance system that the Doctor had installed. The two soldiers in the back - Captain Ford and
Sergeant Jenkins - were also looking a bit green.
'Professor,' Ray whimpered, 'I'd feel safer if there was a seat belt.'
'Are we nearly there?' I asked. We'd been on the road for twenty minutes so we ought to have been by
now.
'Nearly.' Ray seemed subdued.
'Are you OK?' I asked. We were all nervous - even the trained fighters. Combat was like public speaking
or acting - if you aren't nervous, you're not only doing something wrong, you're too stupid to realise.
'Benny,' Ray asked, 'Are you really from the future?'
'Yes,' I replied.
'So we make it? Humanity survives? We are your ancestors, and this is all ancient history to you.'
'It doesn't work like that,' I said.
'But it must do.'
'No.'
'So what happens if this doesn't work?' Ray asked.
I thought about the question and tried to remember what the Doctor had told me about such things. The
trouble was, he had said something slightly different every time I had asked. 'I don't know,' I admitted.
'I'll just be an anomaly, a glitch in the system. Something for future historians to ignore or come up with
wild theories to explain away. I guess I'll just be retconned.'
Ray paused for a moment. 'I don't mean just for us. We'll die, I know that. But what about my kids?'
'This will work,' I assured him. 'This has to work.'
Page 8
Ray's voice was even softer than normal. 'But what if it doesn't?' he repeated. 'It's a fair question,' he
added.
Captain Ford leant forward. 'We'll succeed,' he said, with such a sense of certainty that I almost believed
him myself. 'But if we didn't then mankind would survive - the Martians can't fight us in the deserts, can
they? They'll stick to the Arctic areas: Scandinavia, Alaska, the Falklands. We'd have strongholds and
hideouts. Just think about all the army bases around the world, all the nuclear submarines. The Martians
might be more advanced, but that didn't stop the Afghans from beating back the Russians or the
Vietnamese from defeating the Americans. When the human race is forced to fight for its own territory,
we fight.'
My mind raced with images of Rome falling to the Vandals, fuel air bombs sucking the oxygen from
Iraqi air raid shelters, Daleks killing half the human population of the galaxy and overrunning whole
planets without even leaving their ships. Billions had died defending their home territory. But despite all
the wars, all the invasions and killing, the human race had survived. Arguing with the Captain's
sentiments seemed childish, cowardly. I found myself wondering how many young soldiers down the
ages had died not wanting to speak up and say that they were scared.
'It's almost time for the broadcast to start.'
As the digital clock on the dashboard flipped over to midday, I turned on the radio. I'm copying the next
bit from a history book, a fat blue paperback with a scary eye on the cover. As the author died five
hundred and thirty one years ago, I doubt he'll mind, and even if he did he's out of copyright, so nerr. I
have to resort to the history books for this part of the story, because at the time we were driving to the
refinery, I was unaware of events elsewhere in the country and the rest of the world.
SAS teams and other elite squads had secured the radio transmitters. In every town and city with a
resistance cell, people knew that something was coming, that something was going to be broadcast at
midday. Photocopied fliers were placed on car windscreens. In St Helens Square in York, the Town Crier
read a proclamation to a crowd of Royalists. Elsewhere, loudspeakers were set up, and hastily-arranged
press conferences were held in loyal embassies around the world. They were told that the resistance was
going to make an announcement.
Page 9
At mid-day, they heard a voice that they recognised. An Oscar-winning actor, reading from Henry V.
Next a recording of Ray, explaining about the poison gas and Adisham. After a few second's silence,
Lethbridge-Stewart spoke. He introduced himself, then:
'I am the commanding officer of the force that will liberate London. Not just from the Martians, but from
those that betrayed you to the Martians. I serve Xznaal, Greyhaven and the rest of their Provisional
Government notice: this is their last day in office. Our army is already mobilised. It is a small force, but
it is larger than Henry's at Agincourt, and we have right on our side. The Provisional Government has
lied to you: its members have been in league with the Martians for many years in their attempts to gain
power. Now they have power, they use it against their own people: the air-raid on Edinburgh, shooting
on civilians in Bradford, cutting off the water and electricity supplies in Chester and York. Thousands of
people have died, but this is only the beginning. I saw for myself the effect of the Martian gas on
Adisham. Unless they are stopped, the Martians will wipe out mankind with their new weapon.
I don't mean to scare you: rest assured that the Martians can be stopped. With your assistance, they will
be stopped today. We would ask those Londoners wishing to evacuate to head south, down to Kent.
Those who wish to join us are equally welcome - you can help us by cutting power and
telecommunications lines, by barricading the smaller roads and by preventing the Provisional
Government's security forces from barricading the major ones. Hopefully, we will not have to fire a
single shot to end the Martian Occupation. It is now a quarter past twelve. Our tanks will be in Ealing,
now. God willing, the Provisional Government will have fallen within the hour.'
The speech finished, the broadcast cut to live coverage of the Queen's address to the United Nations. She
had been informed of the effort to retake London and had given it her blessing. Her speech began by
wishing Lethbridge-Stewart and his men luck. As she spoke, her advisors were outside, preparing to hand
out press releases and lobbying ambassadorial staff.
Without any help from UNIT, details of the damage inflicted on the Martians in Portsmouth and the
location and plans of the EG refinery had found their way to New York via the Internet. Pictures, text
and sound files were downloaded onto the new computer newsgroups and bulletin boards that had been
set up around the world. These had eventually found their way to the world's military and media.
At an emergency session of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the President ordered that if the Martian ship left
British airspace it was to be shot down, by any means necessary.
Page 10
Unaware of events elsewhere in the world, half a dozen trained UNIT men followed Ray through the
refinery and I followed the soldiers. Ray knew which routes the guards patrolled. The place was
swarming with them, apparently, but I didn't see a single one. The troops were hand-picked by Captain
Ford and moved through the base swiftly and silently. No doubt if we had come across any of the patrols,
the UNIT men would have dispatched them with the same efficiency - each carried an automatic pistol
with silencer, and enough knives to fill a cutlery drawer. Our main weapons were the packs of thermite
explosive we carried in special belt pouches. Even I had three packs - each was about the size of a
paperback book but packed enough punch to bring down a house or blow open a tank. The UNIT boffins
had told us that the high explosive generated enough heat to incinerate even the most deadly nerve
agents. When I had challenged them, suggested that they might free the Martian gas rather than destroy
it, they were proud to announce that mankind had devised much more virulent materials than the
substance released over Adisham. The bombs would work, if enough of them were planted in the right
locations.
Back in Windsor Forest, as soon as Lethbridge-Stewart had finished his briefing, Ray had drawn a map
for the refinery assault team. He'd helped to build the plant four years ago, and he knew virtually every
pipe and wire. To me, the refinery complex looked like an alien city, with pressurised skyscrapers and
pipelines instead of pavements. In a way, of course, it was an alien city: the first Martian colony on
Earth. The silos had been designed by Vrgnur for the sentient gas, and duplicated conditions on Mars.
Behind the stainless steel, Vrgnur had been propagating something entirely inimical to man. At the time I
knew little about the Red Death. Later, I would have time to search the ancient Martian texts and I would
learn of an assassination weapon capable of passing through the narrowest gap in relentless pursuit of its
target. In the scarce atmosphere of Mars it was subtle, invisible. But when it fed on the abundant
elements of Earth's atmosphere, it became bloated and bloodthirsty.
Page 11
I ran my finger along a polished pipe no thicker than my arm. Just the slightest crack, just the tiniest
break, and it would escape. Everything would die from the smallest microbe to the last blue whale. That
didn't frighten me so much as the knowledge that the thing in these silos had killed the Doctor.
The UNIT force began splitting up, hurrying along carefully-prepared routes.
End of extract
The box on the screen informed Dave that 87% of the information he had been amassing had been
released into cyberspace. It would be appearing on various bulletin boards and inboxes.
'There's a crowd gathering,' he noted. They'd been listening to the radio, and they'd heard Lethbridge-
Stewart's proclamation. Now a steady stream of people was heading up towards Whitehall.
'The Brig's a legend,' Oswald continued. 'Some skywatchers think he's a myth, a codename. UNIT go in
for that: the scientific advisor is always called the Doct- '
Dave grabbed his arm. 'Come on.'
Lethbridge-Stewart checked his watch. 12.20 and they were in Chiswick. They were a little ahead of
schedule. He was sitting besides Bambera in the staff car. Three of the tanks headed the convoy, then the
armoured cars. The staff car was next, followed by the Land Rovers. The other two tanks brought up the
rear. Motorcycle outriders were scouting ahead.
Outside, crowds were beginning to line the streets. It reminded Alistair of a royal visit. Some people
were even waving little plastic Union Flags. Ordinary people were falling in behind the military convoy:
policemen and firemen, even postmen in their uniforms. Socialist Workers and members of the British
Legion weren't walking hand-in-hand, but they at least had common purpose.
'You were right,' Bambera conceded. 'it looks like we've got a fair few people on our side.'
'There's no sign of Government forces. We'd have expected a road block by now, at least.'
Page 12
'Perhaps they are weaker than we thought,' Bambera suggested.
The radio crackled. 'Greyhound, this is Trap Seven.'
'Receiving. Where are you?'
'Tower Hill. There's quite a crowd gathering. It's like the Royal Wedding, sir.'
'Spare me the Dimbleby commentary, Corporal. How many people and what's their mood?'
'Thousands. It's a carnival.'
'Any sign of the Provs?'
'They are keeping a cordon around the Tower, they've sealed off Downing Street. Defensive positions
only at the moment, sir. We've had a lot of defectors.'
'Very good. Inform me if the situation changes.'
'Roger that, Greyhound.'
Bambera was smiling, not a common sight. 'It looks like we've got all sorts of people on our side.'
The Prime Minister looked out over London. Through fifty-one millimetre 13 ply laminated glass was
the familiar skyline, with its familiar Martian warship.
It was so big. On the way to one of his meetings with Xznaal he'd stopped off at a newsagents by
Fenchurch Street station. The shop was selling postcards showing the capital's latest tourist attraction.
That had been on Saturday morning, not more than thirty-six hours after the invasion. Not that there were
many tourists in London any longer. Before the Martians had come, the Tower of London had two
million visitors a year - millions more buzzed around it without wanting to pay to get in. Now the streets
and pavements around the walls were all but deserted for the first time in centuries. Many Londoners had
fled the city to the Home Counties. The evacuation hadn't been orderly, dozens had died under the
wheels of cars and vans and lorries charging away from the Capital, on both sides of the road. Most were
living with friends or relatives, or in guest houses. All the foreigners had gone, too. London hotels were
empty, facing ruin. Walking along the deserted streets, the only language you heard was English. It made
the city seem smaller, less alive. It was alive now. Even behind the bullet resistant window pane - no
glass was truly bullet proof, four shotgun blasts at close range would be enough to penetrate it - the
Prime Minister could hear the sounds of Londoners in Trafalgar Square, demonstrating against him.
Page 13
'Mussolini once said that ruling Italy was easy,' Greyhaven said.
'He was a friend of yours, was he?' Christian asked, adjusting his pipe.
'He said it was easy but utterly pointless,' Greyhaven finished. He reached into his pocket, checking for
something he knew was there. 'Mussolini had a vision that his country could be great again, but he was a
fool and he allied himself with a monster. He ended up strung from a lamp-post by a mob of his own
people.'
Alexander Christian stood there, impassive. Greyhaven smiled at him, not expecting a response. Finally,
the Prime Minister tapped at his intercom.
'Tell me, how would I get to the Space Museum from here without those rioters tearing me apart?'
'We can arrange an escort, Prime Minister.'
'Do so. I will be downstairs in two minutes.'
Greyhaven combed his hair into place and slipped a fountain pen into his pocket. 'If you'll excuse me,
Colonel, I have work to do.'
Extract from the memoirs of Professor Bernice Summerfield
The Martian ship was unguarded. It was exactly as Ray had described it, and as I had expected from my
excavation of the ship's graveyard at Tharsis. It was a V-wing, roughly the same size and shape as the
pinnacle of human aviation at the time of the invasion, the B2 stealth bomber. It was built from a
glistening green ceramic material, the name of which eluded me. I caught Ford's attention, and motioned
that I was going in. Ford indicated that he would finish planting his explosives before joining me.
There were two ways into the shuttle: the main hatch at the front, and the cargo doors on the underside.
Both were open. I chose the latter, edging forwards. A couple of fork lift trucks sat snugly in the shadow
of the Martian craft. Without even realising that I had slipped into Sherlock Holmes mode, I deduced
from the tyre tracks that the fork lifts had been active recently. The cargo hatch looked like the bomb bay
of a Lancaster bomber. As I approached the opening, the cold air from inside was wafting down.
Page 14
I ducked underneath one of the cargo bay doors, poking my head up into the body of the ship. The
shuttlecraft's hold was tiny, and there was only dim Martian lighting, but I could see that it had been
packed solid with metal cylinders. Captain Ford was already out of sight and I certainly couldn't call out
for him. The tiny UNIT walkie-talkie in my pocket was also useless for the moment - we'd agreed at the
briefing that this phase of the operation was being conducted under the strictest radio silence.
Everything was going according to my plan - the one that I hadn't shared with UNIT. I took a last look
around to make sure that no-one had seen me, then pulled myself up into the shuttlecraft. I sat on the
edge of the hatch for a moment to congratulate myself for being so quiet. It took a moment for my eyes
to adjust to the twilight, and I could feel the goosebumps developing on my legs and arms. It wasn't
uncomfortably cold, though. The magnetic engines were on, and throbbing with power. Like every
machine of its complexity, the shuttle was on the brink of being alive. Noises that the ship's builders
couldn't have explained surrounded me, a hiss there, a clank here.
I was heading for the communications rig. All Martian equipment is bulky. The communicator was the
size of a telephone box, too big to slot into the cockpit. They tucked it away down here. I turned the
corner.
The vast Martian scientist filled the alcove. He had his back to me. I edged away, trying not to make a
sound. Vrgnur hadn't seen me and was deep in a hissing, grunting conversation. I wasn't sure, but it was
almost certainly Xznaal on the other end of the line. Like any language, there was a world of difference
between the textbook Martian grammar and the colloquial form. The sound didn't carry very well in the
thin air, either. Despite all that, I could tell that the conversation was coming to an end.
I backed into something solid, the size of a tree trunk. I pulled back, thinking it was another Martian, but
it was merely a metal tank. I caught myself from screaming, sighing with relief, laughing and from
making all the other little noises I was planning at that moment.
The gauge said that the cylinder was full to capacity. I bent over to double-check, resting my hand on the
side of the container. Almost before my fingertips had touched the cold metal, whatever was inside
surged towards them, clattering against the side like a bird in a cage.
I realised what it was.
Page 15
Outside, Captain Ford and his men were planting explosives around an empty refinery. The poison gas
had already been piped into the shuttle. The thing that had killed the Doctor was in here with me.
End of extract
'Sir,' the human female Hellmond squeaked. 'I've just had a phone call from Downing Street. The Prime
Minister isn't going to the Tower. His car is being escorted to Trafalgar Square.'
'What?' Xznaal bellowed, sweeping around.
'Did he explain why?' Xztaynz asked quietly.
'He is going to the Space Museum, sir,' the female said.
Xznaal glared down at the two humans. 'Why?'
'I have no idea,' Xztaynz muttered. He struggled with some mental activity - a feat of memory, perhaps.
'Unless he... he said something about an insurance policy, and that... the Orbiter.'
Xznaal's eyes narrowed. 'We musst follow him.'
Extract from the memoirs of Professor Bernice Summerfield
Have you ever heard the expression her mind raced? In adventure stories, when faced with
insurmountable odds and imminent death, the author tells us that the heroine's mind races. My mind
did no such thing. It sat there, nursing the mental equivalent of a hamstring injury. The primal instinct in
these circumstances ought to be flight or fight - kill or run away. I stood there.
I managed to muster enough presence of mind to duck out of sight as Vrgnur detached himself from the
communications alcove. In something akin to his native atmosphere, his breathing was quiet - I hoped
that I could say the same about myself: Martian hearing was acute, possibly sharp enough to pick up the
sound of a human heart slamming against a ribcage. Although I couldn't see or hear Vrgnur, I could feel
his vast bulk moving across the deck of the shuttle, the metal reverberating with each footstep. Vrgnur
paused, close to me. There was a wrenching sound, a pneumatic hiss and then the cargo bay doors
slammed shut. I was trapped in here, alone with the Martian.
Page 16
Within seconds, Vrgnur was lumbering out of the hold, away from me. Relief seemed like a rather
small word to describe what I was feeling. The Martian scientist was heading away from the hold to the
cockpit. I checked my watch. I had only a little over a minute to get clear before Captain Ford set off the
bombs.
I eased myself out of my hiding place and tried to find the control that opened the cargo hatch. It wasn't
difficult - the lever was four foot long, and bright red. It wouldn't have been out of place in an oldfashioned
signal box. To Vrgnur, releasing the control would have been as easy as changing the gears of
a car. But humans found it less easy, as I quickly discovered when I tried to apply all my weight to get
the thing to budge.
Reader, I swore.
The sound echoed around the cargo hold, and didn't go away however much I wished that it would or
however much I gritted my teeth.
Twenty seconds later, I still hadn't been killed by a Martian, so I decided that Vrgnur hadn't heard me. He
would be safely strapped into his pilot's cradle by now, a chunky visor over his eyes, his claws tugging at
the controls. Which would mean...
The shuttlecraft lurched skywards on a column of magnetic energy. At precisely that moment, I could
hear the rumble of explosions outside. It was like being caught in a tidal wave.
As a train begins slowing at the end of every journey, when it's coming into the station and everyone is
standing up, draping their coat over their arm ready to leave, there's always someone who contrives to
pitch over and crash around, unable to manage even basic co-ordination. That person is generally me.
I tumbled to the floor, landing heavily on the metal deck.
Before I pulled myself up, I unzipped one of the pouches on my belt, and tugged out one of the thermite
packs. It was wrapped up in cellophane like a packet of cigarettes or a box of chocolates. I located the
little strip and unwound it, slipping the bomb from its wrapper. Like all military hardware, like most
things designed for men, it was black and ergonomic with little LEDs and ridges in the plastic so that it
was easy to grip.
Page 17
I checked the timing mechanism - usually the first thing to go on the things. The bomb was working. I
slid the control on the top, arming it. I could set the timer by tapping the little buttons, just like setting a
digital watch or a VCR, or I could just press the red button and save myself the wait. One explosion
would be enough to depressurise the shuttle. However much Vrgnur struggled with the controls, the ship
would drop like a stone and dash itself against the English countryside. I was actually reaching for the
button when I remembered my plan to end the invasion. I glanced back at the communications rig. There
was an adhesive strip on the back of the bomb. I attached the device to the nearest metal cylinder. For a
few seconds the gas scuttled away at it, but I was already crossing the hold.
Vrgnur had deactivated the communicator. I examined the display and tried to twist one of the dials. It
took a moment for my puny human wrists to get the dial to turn, but the holoplate began rezzing up.
Martians had different colour and depth perception to a human, but I had seen enough Martian murals to
work out what was going on.
I flicked a stiff switch, establishing the interplanetary carrier wave, then sat back - it was going to take a
while before I would be able to tell whether it was working. I didn't have a while. The logo of the
Martian Communicators Guild appeared in the hologlobe. I selected an open channel, cleared my throat
and began speaking in what I hoped the Martians would recognise as their own language.
'This is Professor Bernice Summerfield of the clans of the United Kingdom. Our world has been invaded
by the Lord Xznaal. Unable to win in combat, he formed an alliance with traitors and now skulks in his
warship, afraid to leave its confines. We have heard legends of the mighty warrior race of Mars, and
frankly we are shocked by this cowardly behaviour. He now loots and plunders our world for its
weapons, raw materials, and best soldiers. I can't imagine what he's planning to do with all of them. He
said something about going back to Mars and, er, what was it again? Oh yes showing that stunted git
Paxaphyr where he can stick the sword of Tubarr. Anyway, as I say, his warship is here now, along with
his finest warriors. All of them here. And not there. Just thought you would like to know that. Er...
byeeee.'
End of extract
I tugged the 'off' control, took a deep breath and waited. I had done all that I could for the moment. What
happened now depended on others.
Greyhaven parked his Aston Martin on a double yellow line and bounded up the steps of the National
Space Museum. The five-minute car journey had taken three times as long - they'd had to take a different
route to avoid the crowds of people converging on the Square as if it were the venue for the cup final.
The Prime Minister was waved through the various security barriers and into Mission Control. He paused
to catch his breath. Theo Ogilvy, the Mars 97 mission controller, was there.
Page 18
'Prime Minister, this is - '
Greyhaven swept past him, slotting a computer disc into a terminal and tapping a few keys.
Xznaal grabbed him and threw him against the back wall.
Greyhaven struggled to concentrate. They had got here first, but he had managed to reach the terminal.
Was his program running? Staines was staring at the bank of monitors. 'The Orbiter is still holding its
position.'
Greyhaven stood. The Martian towered over him. 'I know of your planss. Xztaynz told me.' Xznaal raised
his huge right claw and fired the gun on his wrist. The computer terminal pulsed and shattered.
'Staines isn't bright enough.'
'Oh but I am,' the Home Secretary said, stepping forwards. 'You were planning to send a signal to the
Mars Orbiter. You opened the airlocks before by remote control. You were planning to drop a bomb or
something.'
Greyhaven looked over at him, and when he spoke there was a tone of respect in his voice. 'The Mars 97
is powered by two atomic reactors. If the computers receive the right signal they can be set to misphase,
and send each other critical. From this room, by sending a simple command sequence, it is possible to
pilot the Orbiter to any point on the Martian surface and then detonate it. The explosion would be the
equivalent of a one hundred megaton bomb. You can probably guess which part of Mars I targeted.'
'The Argyre,' Xznaal grunted. The territory of his own clan. He checked the instruments once again. 'The
Orbiter has not moved. You have failed.'
The Martian pointed at Greyhaven's legs and fired his sonic disruptor. Every bone below the knee joints
shattered. The Prime Minister buckled, unable to do anything but scream for the first couple of seconds.
Staines was smiling. 'You thought I was stupid, didn't you Teddy? You underestimated me, you see.'
Xznaal ignored him. 'Why?' he asked.
Page 19
'Because you killed Eve,' Staines explained, trying to get back into the conversation. 'That blonde slip of
a thing. Really, Teddy, I told you that she'd be trouble.'
'Staines, you really are an idiot,' Greyhaven said through clenched teeth. 'The fact that my so-called ally
tried to murder an entire village full of innocent people, including a woman I was fond of didn't help, but
I've always known that this... thing would try to betray me. He thinks that we're animals. What were you
going to use those prisoners at Gatwick for? Medical experiments? Target practice? Food?'
The Home Secretary bent over him, smiling. 'The Martians need a workforce. You said so yourself.'
Greyhaven could feel himself blacking out, but forced himself to remain conscious. 'Their population has
seen rapid decline over recent centuries. Those criminals would have been put to useful work on Mars.'
Greyhaven's body was screaming at him, telling him that his only hope for survival was to lapse into
unconsciousness. Greyhaven knew better than that: he wasn't going to survive. He only needed a minute
more. 'Do you remember the words to Rule Brittania?'
Staines laughed. 'Of course. I even prefer it to Martian Albion.'
'Britons never shall be slaves.'
'Xznaal and myself are partners, Teddy. We knew that you'd try to double-cross us. The Martians are
helping to solve prison overcrowding - those men are the lifers, the habitual criminals, the least desirable
of the undesirable.'
'The scum of the Earth,' Xznaal hissed in agreement.
Staines was smiling his idiot grin. 'The Martians are our natural rulers, Teddy. They are superior beings.
Do you know how long Martians live? There are some alive now that were born when Shakespeare was
writing.'
Xznaal stepped forward.
'And you think that the Martians will let you have any power?' Greyhaven rasped. 'They see our state-ofthe-
art science - our computers, lasers and nuclear reactors - and they sneer at them. To Xznaal, the
pinnacles of human art are finger paintings. Our greatest philosophers speak platitudes not fit for the
playground.'
Page 20
The Martian raised his arm.
'It's going to kill the human race like a farmer sprays his crops, and with the same compassion for the
insects. I knew that all along. I also knew that the Martians were weak - most of them are impotent, those
that aren't are diseased or disordered. Look at that thing. Ask him why he needs constant blood
transfusions. Ask him whether that massive brain of his can function without stimulants.'
'Marss iss dying, itss people are dying.' Xznaal admitted. 'But we have thiss world, we will adapt it to our
needss. Vrgnur has prepared plans for the first colonies. Within a century, this planet will be Aressformed
- its temperature lowered, its atmosphere thinned. We will ssurvive. You think that your puny
human intellect iss a match for mine?'
Greyhaven laughed.
'Iss he deliriouss?'
'No, I'm not,' Greyhaven snapped. He tried to stand up, but couldn't. He settled for straightening his tie.
'King Genius, you have overlooked one small detail.'
'Indeed?' Xznaal hissed scornfully.
'Yes,' Greyhaven said, only needing to block out the pain just long enough to finish one more sentence.
'The fact it takes five minutes to send a radio message from Earth to Mars.'
Staines and Xznaal spun to face the monitors.
Greyhaven winced as he tried to grin. 'My signal should be arriving... now.' The room was becoming
dark, it was closing in on him.
The Orbiter's telemetry began to alter, the altitude was dropping. The retros were firing. The nuclear
reactors began redlining.
The computer interpreted the data, plotting the course of the Orbiter as it skipped down through the thin
Martian atmosphere. It was past the equator, streaking over the Vallis Marineris and the Noctis
Labyrinth, crossing the Mare Erythraeum several times faster than the speed of sound.
If the Martians lived underground, Greyhaven reflected, they probably couldn't hear the Orbiter slicing
its way down. The atmosphere there was so thin that sound wouldn't carry too well. But the perpetual
Martian twilight would be gone. The Martians were scared of fire, and now their sky was ablaze.
The Orbiter detonated, right above the Argyre. The signal ended abruptly.
Greyhaven was still laughing when Xznaal broke his neck.
Page 21
Page 22
From the memoirs of Professor Bernice Summerfield
A little over ten minutes after I had sent my message, a Martian Lord appeared in the hologlobe. Unlike
Xznaal, he wore his armour streamlined, complete with cloak. Moving in his own gravity, and breathing
Martian air, he was graceful as a dancer.
'Bernicesummerfield,' it said, 'I am Balgrar of the clan Thaumasia. Your news is grave. We Martians
value honour above all. Xznaal has shamed our race, and let me assure you that he does not represent our
people. He is the leader of but one clan, the Argyre, and their attack on your world was not sanctioned by
the Grand Marshall. Know then that all on Mars stand with you against the Argyre and that a punitive
expedition of war-barges is even now on its way to - '
The picture disappeared, vanishing in an explosion of static that almost made me jump from my seat.
'What the f- '
Martian hieroglyphs were flashing up across the screen. It told me that there wasn't a problem with the
hardware at this end and that it was trying to re-establish a link with the Martian communications
network. I bit my lip.
The screen flashed up an answer: there had been a massive electromagnetic pulse and all
communications would be impossible until the equipment was reset or replaced. I stared at the hologlobe,
and all I could think was that the static swirling around the three dimensions of the hologlobe looked like
maggots in a bucket.
There had been a nuclear explosion on the surface of Mars. Either the Argyre were firing them, or the
rival clans had launched them in retaliation. Either way, millions of Martians were dying as I sat there.
When Xznaal discovered that his home world was at war, that there would be nothing to go back to...
I had one option left. I was back across the room in seconds, my finger stabbing towards the detonator. I
didn't even think. It didn't occur to me that this might be the action that released the Red Death, that the
bomb might only crack the cylinder casing rather than obliterate the gas completely.
The merest moment's consideration and I might have realised that pressing the button would destroy
mankind.
I truly thought I had nothing to lose. But as one claw caught my wrist, another encircled my neck and I
was yanked into the air and away from the bomb, I realised that I was wrong. It could get worse. And at
that moment, as I felt Vrgnur's cold breath on the back of my neck, I knew that it was over. Whatever we
tried to do, however bravely we fought, wherever we hid, the human race was going to be hunted down
and driven to extinction by creatures such as this: a species cleverer than we were, stronger than us. More
relentless, more powerful. This was the end.
The Dying Days - Chapter Fourteen
Page 1
Look! - Up In The Sky!
The Brigadier's limousine arrived in Trafalgar Square shortly before one o'clock. Behind the UNIT
convoy was a column of people a mile long.
The Square had already been filling up. The crowd were safely behind the barriers that had been set up
the week before and had never been taken down. As Lethbridge-Stewart drove past, they cheered and
waved. It was all very reminiscent of a royal visit. Some people were even waving little plastic Union
Flags, others were clutching helium balloons. Most of them were clustered around the Column, sitting
alongside the lions like so many millions of tourists and revellers down the years.
A small UNIT squad had arrived twenty minutes before, and had set up a mobile HQ, recovered from the
underground garage of the UNIT office. The Brigadier found himself smiling, and then it dawned on him
why: the large grey van was parked alongside the TARDIS. Professor Summerfield had told him that it
would be there. That wasn't the same as seeing it. After all this was over, he would have the TARDIS
taken somewhere safe. He would have Adisham searched for the Doctor's body. An immortal race had no
need of funeral customs, but Lethbridge-Stewart would see that his friend was given a proper burial.
'That's odd.' Bambera had seen the police box, too, and she knew what it was, but it didn't hold the same
memories for her. She was busy scanning the crowd, assessing the level of danger, looking for the
enemy. All the things he ought to have been doing. 'The crowd are already facing this way, sir,' she
informed him.
Lethbridge-Stewart told the driver to park the car alongside the mobile HQ. 'Really?'
He did quick recce. Bambera was right. There must have been a couple of thousand people there, and the
vast majority were looking not at the vast Martian spaceship to the East, or towards Westminster to the
South. They were staring at the entrance to the Space Museum.
A young Corporal was opening up his door and saluting him. Lethbridge-Stewart went through the
formalities, then, 'What's going on?'
'There's a Martian in there, sir. Went in about twenty minutes ago with the Home Secretary, just before
we arrived.' Lethbridge-Stewart did what everyone else was doing, he stared at the door. So far, only a
handful of Martians had left the ship, the two that had been killed at the Doctor's house, the scientist and
Xznaal himself.
Page 2
'It's the leader, isn't it?' he asked. The Corporal nodded.
'How do you know?' Bambera asked the Corporal.
'There were a few people already here, ma'am. Not just that, the Home Office chauffeur and aide came
over to our side the moment we arrived. They are both still a bit shocked by it all.'
Lethbridge-Stewart nodded towards the mobile HQ. 'Those two are both in Trap One, I take it?'
'Sir,' the Corporal confirmed.
'Is the Square secure?' All around them, the rest of the UNIT vehicles had arrived, much to the delight of
the crowd. The soldiers, all of them so young, were jumping down, taking out all the carefully stowed
equipment. Their tanks were lining up outside Charing Cross Road station.
'Yes, ma'am. The Provisionals have all pulled back to defend Downing Street and the Tower, we've done
a quick sweep of the buildings. There's a column of Government tanks along the Embankment and
Thames Street. We have them under close observation from Trap Two, at Tower Hill. We can see over
the walls onto Tower Green from there.'
'Snipers?'
'None of theirs any more. We have men at both positions, sir, with strict orders not to fire unless ordered
to.'
Lethbridge-Stewart allowed himself to relax a little. 'Good man,' he concluded.
Bambera pointed over the tops of the buildings to the Martian ship. 'The plan was that the enemy ship
would move when the refinery went up,' she reminded him. That had been a little under five minutes ago.
'We also thought that it would prevent our build-up if it was still here, but they've just ignored us,' he
responded. 'The Professor was right: the Martians will only intervene if they are personally threatened. If
we fire on a Martian, that spacecraft will fire on us. They'll wipe us out.'
Page 3
'Perhaps they are just biding their time. They could start wiping us out at any moment.'
The Brigadier conceded the point, 'You're right. Now, I don't know my Martian military history, but I
know that on this planet many a battle has been lost because the superior force got complacent. They
don't realise just how hard we can hit them. We also know that they won't be using the gas.'
Bambera nodded. 'We've had word from Strike Command: the Harriers are ready, and can be here in four
minutes. There are anti-aircraft batteries at Spitalfields and St James Park.'
'Trap Two has a couple of artillery pieces,' the Corporal added.
Lethbridge-Stewart was fitting a radio earpiece. 'We stay in position. We do nothing to provoke the
Martians. We sit this one out if we have to.'
Theo Ogilvy had done his best, and he told Xznaal as much. Without the Orbiter, the nearest telescope to
Mars was the Hubble, circling the Earth. For the next three hours, its orbit kept it on the wrong side of
the planet to face the alien's home world.
All his professional life, Ogilvy had taken careful measurements, analysed blips in line graphs and
spectroscope readings. He'd studied sketch charts with all the majesty and grandeur of a dot-the-dots
puzzle, gasped in awe at blurred photographs of white pinpricks against a black background. Astronomy
was an odd science, one that saw men in tweed suits growing old staring up into the infinite, timeless
night sky in the hope of fathoming how the universe was put together. Every night, he and tens of
thousands of people like him would observe tiny coloured specks of light, sometimes forgetting that
every single one of those specks was large enough to swallow Earth and Mars without even noticing.
There were sunspots wider than the diameter of the Earth on each and every pinprick in the sky.
He was a thirty-eight year old bachelor, and the first time he'd even flown in a plane was a trip to NASA
three years ago, when he'd been appointed Mission Controller of Mars 97. He'd lived in Watford all his
adult life. Now, an alien was forcing him, at gunpoint, to show it photographs of Mars. An eight-foot
green reptile. But how could a cold-blooded creature survive in the sub-zero temperatures of Mars? How
could anything even remotely resembling a human breathe nitrogen? Why would a creature from a lowgravity
world evolve into such a powerful, muscular form? Ogilvy pushed all those questions to the back
of his mind and concentrated on the task in hand. But despite being in the global nerve centre for Martian
studies, the clearest image of the planet that he could manage to find was from tracking station 63 in
Madrid. It showed a new feature in the atmosphere, a vast brown/red cloud.
Page 4
'M-massive displacement of material,' Ogilvy stammered, not daring to look at Xznaal. 'Millions of
tonnes of rock and sand. Like the aftermath of a volcanic eruption. After Krakatoa, thousands of square
miles were covered in ash, and the whole world had spectacular sunsets for years afterwards.'
He glanced over at Xznaal, who was almost hunched. The Martian's head was low, the crown it had been
wearing had fallen off, and the only sign that it was still alive was the regular, asthmatic breathing.
'Ssunssetss?' it coughed.
Xznaal was pulling itself straight. It resembled a JCB or a similar piece of machinery - so much power,
in such a hard body. Xznaal's claws snapped open and shut, a gesture of powerlessness that Ogilvy found
disturbingly human.
'I... ' Ogilvy couldn't think of a single thing to say and turned to David Staines for support, but the Home
Secretary had vanished. Lord Greyhaven's broken body was still there. Ogilvy tried to form a smile, even
a weak one, but couldn't. He tried to say some consoling words, but none came out.
Xznaal was staring into the monitor again. Then it turned, and lumbered from the room. Ogilvy
swallowed, waiting until the Martian was out of sight, then he began running for the fire exit.
There was a scream from the crowd.
'Now what?' Bambera scowled.
The two Brigadiers turned back to the Space Museum. At the bottom of the steps was a Martian. Even at
Allen Road, the Brigadier had only seen the enemy as he was running from it, or shrouded in darkness.
All he knew was that they were heavily armoured, like an armadillo or a rhino, and that they were big. In
broad daylight, standing there, the Martian lost none of its majesty, indeed it looked even more powerful.
Everyone in the crowd was wild-eyed, they were clambering over each other to get a look.
The Brigadier unclipped his radio. 'This is Greyhound to all Traps. Hold your fire. Repeat: Hold fire.'
Page 5
'Is that the leader?' Bambera asked.
'Yes,' Helmond said quietly. 'Xznaal.' She was terrified that it would see her, even across the crowded
square. The Brigadier looked from the single Martian to the thousands of civilians. They were watching
the alien with awe, all of them aware that this was the most important thing that they would ever see.
They were mere footnotes in history, witnesses, not instigators and whatever else they did, wherever else
they went, this was the defining moment of their lives. None of them were important. For well over a full
minute, the great mass of people were almost deathly quiet.
The Martian didn't move, it stood there like a great, old tree or a statue hewn from a block of jade.
Below it, the crowd was shifting around, rustling like leaves. Some news was spreading among them.
'The warship's moving,' someone - a civilian or a soldier, Alistair didn't know - announced.
Alistair spun around. The metal sky to the East was turning slowly and drifting forwards. All around
them, UNIT radios squawked as the spotters around London began relaying the news. The Brigadier
checked his watch.
'The refinery?' Bambera asked.
'Why wait until now?' he replied. 'It's been nearly ten minutes.'
'Then that means... '
The warship was heading towards them, there was no doubt about it. The two Brigadiers were looking at
each other, hoping the other would think of something to do.
The warship eclipsed the afternoon sun over Trafalgar Square.
Below them, the crowd fell quiet.
As darkness dropped, the silence swept through the crowd like a Mexican wave. Alistair watched, and
felt the mood change. From his vantage point, he could see it all, the high spirits had become darker. A
group of young men were fighting each other in front of Dillons. The crowd were pulling back from the
Space Museum, some were trying to get away, and they jostled with those who were transfixed, watching
the sky. One spark and this crowd would erupt into terrible violence.
Page 6
Xznaal stood there, watching them too.
The warship had stopped, its prow hanging over the Space Museum, the vast mass of the ship hanging
over London and disappearing over the horizon.
The Martian lifted its slablike foot, the first movement that it had made.
The warship was blotting out the sun, making everything else around it irrelevant.
Xznaal swung forward, those broad shoulders slouching, its eyes turned blankly to the ground.
Far from the Martian the first bottle arced into the air. It dashed against the pavement, scattering the
crowd where it fell. Voices were being raised again.
The Terran gravity was taking its toll. Xznaal was like a medieval knight in a suit of armour. Clad in a
chain mail vest and plate armour weighing as much as he did, even a knight in prime condition had been
unable to fight for long. Many falling on their face into the mud of a battlefield would find that they
didn't have the strength to pull themselves back up. The weight of their armour would drag them down
and they would drown.
Xznaal took another step.
On the other side of the Square, there was a great crashing sound, shouts of surprise. The crowd had
uprooted a lamppost. A fight had started, a small incident at the base of Nelson's Column. It was
impossible to see who was fighting. As members of the crowd realised that there wasn't anything to stop
them: no police, no army, no laws, the violence spread like fire. Within seconds the crowd was a seething
mass of flailing arms, rising and falling.
With a great, rolling clank, a panel on the underside of the warship was grinding open.
The crowd were pushing against the crash barriers, right in front of Trap One. The metal fence was
buckling, scraping against the tarmac.
The crash barriers toppled, the front row of the crowd falling with them. Like a dam had burst, a seething
mass of humanity surged through the gaps in the barrier. Men were clawing their way over children,
women were punching and kicking their way to the front. The noise. Ten thousand shouts and screams
and cries, all merging into a monster voice.
Page 7
'They're going to kill us!'
'Run!'
'Got to get out of here.'
Lethbridge-Stewart turned to his men. 'Let them through. Try to help the injured,' he bellowed.
But it was the best that his men could do to stand their ground. They were trained in crowd control
techniques, the subtle and not so subtle ways that a man in a uniform could manipulate a mass of people.
None of the crowd were thinking, they only wanted to get away. So the UNIT men did the thinking for
them, channelling them off into three or four columns, slowing them down, spreading them out. Other
troops were clearing the bottlenecks, pulling the injured clear or making room for them.
The Brigadier was trying to keep track of the whole scene, from the activity of the warship to the
dynamics of the crowd. It was an impossible task.
'Something moving up there.'
As he looked up, a young woman collided with Lethbridge-Stewart, almost bringing them both down.
She was already on her way. He peered up, trying to catch his breath.
'It's the platform,' he called out. 'That lift thing. It'll be heading for Xznaal.'
The disc was dropping slowly but inexorably.
Bambera appeared at his side, the shoulder of her uniform jacket ripped. 'This could be our last chance to
take him out.'
The Brigadier shook his head. 'The Martians would retaliate,' he called.
The platform had dropped below head-height. Xznaal was still visible, towering over the crowd. The
Martian mounted the platform, a laborious movement.
The radio squawked. 'Trap Two to Greyhound. There's a mob of people heading for the Tower, sir.
They're throwing bottles and stones at the Government troops. They'll... sir, there's gunfire. Both sides.'
Page 8
The two Brigadiers looked over at each other. The sound of the shots was drifting across London.
Behind them, the magnetic platform was rising again.
'Prepare to move out,' Bambera shouted to her men. They began pulling back to the Land Rovers. A
pretty young lieutenant opened a car door for Lethbridge-Stewart.
'Sir,' one of the radio operators called back before he could get in. 'The spotters at Brentford report an
aircraft. Unknown design, travelling at supersonic speeds. It looks Martian.'
They could hear it, cutting a swathe through the air. Lethbridge-Stewart swung his binoculars around. A
large V-wing craft was approaching from the West. 'The Martian shuttlecraft.'
'The mountain has come to Mohammed, Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart.'
The Brigadier turned. There was a young man, wearing a duffle coat and long scarf, and behind him was
an overweight chap about the same age. The old soldier narrowed his eyes. 'Who the devil are you?'
'My name's Oswald. I've been working in London during the Occupation. Sending information out over
the Net. I know what's going on.'
'Thank God someone does,' Bambera muttered.
Oswald ignored her. 'The Martians have transported the gas from Reading in the shuttle.'
The Brigadier paled. 'We've been assuming that the only way to get the gas to London was using the
warship. We didn't count on them transporting it in the shuttle. It's heading for the Tower.'
Bambera was wide-eyed. 'So Ford's team failed? Now the Martians have the gas?'
'Yes.'
Lethbridge-Stewart was reaching into his jacket pocket. He handed Oswald a small card.
'Mr Oswald, could you do me a favour? This is my wife's business card. It has her email address. Could
you send her a message? Tell her that I love her. Thank you.'
Page 9
Oswald took the card and nodded. Lethbridge-Stewart shook his hand and hurried into his staff car.
Extract from the memoirs of Professor Bernice Summerfield
The doorway at the front of the shuttlecraft gave a pneumatic sigh and parted. The shuttle had landed on
Tower Green, right in the centre of the Tower of the London. It was a flat lawn, surrounded by two
towered curtain walls. Beyond the millennium-old defences, I could hear chaos: shouting, even sporadic
gunfire.
I began to step down the ramp. My wrists had been tied together with steel wire. It would have been an
uncomfortable binding for an Ice Warrior but to me, without the benefit of chitinous wristguards, it was
agonising. Vrgnur, my captor, wasn't following me down.
As I made my way down into the afternoon sun, I could see Xznaal waiting, standing alone in the middle
of the green. He had just stepped from that magnetic disc of his. Provisional Government troops, wearing
their ordinary Army uniforms were manning the battlements. There were snipers on the ramparts, ducked
behind the merlons. Beyond the walls I could hear sporadic gunfire. Down on Tower Green I was
sheltered from the bullets. Medics scurried along into place, ready for casualties. It wasn't a battlefield
yet, but it would be. It was reverse-archaeology: instead of scraping away the layers of history, these
people would soon be adding to them and centuries from now, someone would be cataloguing the
bulletholes in the walls, unearthing cartridges and dropped jewellery. Becoming excited when they found
an intact skull. But the archaeologist wouldn't be human, or Martian, and they wouldn't be studying a
living race.
The warship hung above it all. It was the first time I had seen it in daylight. This was a Warbringer, used
in former times as flying fortresses during the longest and most bloody crusades and military campaigns.
Although its gunports were open, there was no sign that the sonic cannons had been used or that they
were about to be.
'Good afternoon, Professssor,' Xznaal gasped.
'Good afternoon. I am sorry to hear of your loss.' I uttered a short Martian prayer of lamentation. The
original had been carved in the wall of a deep shelter during the Thousand-Day War, probably with the
tip of a Martian claw.
Xznaal exhaled slowly, a sound like a sigh. 'I ssensse that you mean what you ssay.' He sounded weary,
but not broken. He spoke in English.
Page 10
'Is there any more news from Mars?' I asked him.
'None.'
I couldn't feel sorry for him. I pictured the galleries and tunnels shattering, fragments of rock the size of
houses raining on the subterranean cities of the Argyre. I could hear a whole planet screaming as the
ground began to tremble. Crystal statues splintering, women and eggs being crushed, a population
running and screaming and dying, million-year old temples flattened. But I couldn't feel sorry for Xznaal
himself. I tried to rub my wrists where they were particularly sore.
As I reached the lawn, the shuttle's door hissed shut, sealing Vrgnur inside.
'Take tea with me,' Xznaal ordered. I nodded, taking my position at the side of the Martian Lord as he
lumbered away from the shuttle. I've always been tall for a human, particularly a woman, but my eyes
only came level with Xznaal's chest. I looked down at the Martian's legs. Great box-like sections of dark
shell parted and drew together as his feet lifted and fell. My own body seemed frail and withered by
comparison. I felt like a child walking beside a grown-up.
We walked up the Green towards a low stone plinth. It was almost certainly all that remained of a longdemolished
building, or a monument to an otherwise forgotten hero. A very large, flat tray sat atop it,
jostling with a silver tea service. Iced tea, naturally.
'Shall I be mother?' I asked, climbing up. I moved the teapot aside and discovered a patch of green paint.
'Er... this wouldn't be the original Haywain, would it?'
'I grew bored of it. Thiss way it sservess a practical purposse.'
'Martians are not a race to waste anything.'
'No.' I poured two cups of tea and spilt about three more, not bad going considering my wrists were tied
together.
Xznaal hadn't killed me. Normally, this would be good news, but I had learnt over the years that when
megalomaniacs don't kill you straight away it's because they plan to kill you horribly a little way down
the line, once they'd assembled suitable killing equipment. I was unsure whether I was expected to
conduct a conversation with my captor. I began by asking Xznaal why I hadn't been killed yet.
Page 11
'You vanquisshed a Martian warrior in ssingle combat,' the Martian whispered. There was a tone of
respect in his voice. Megalomaniacs were also the only people in the whole, wide universe that used
words like vanquished in everyday conversation.
'Er, yes. It's not something I'm terribly proud of.' But if it meant that Xznaal respected me...
'You desserve an honourable death. An execution.'
I nodded my head. 'Do I get to choose the method?'
Xznaal cackled. 'An exquissite idea.' He sucked some more air. 'How do you wissh to die, human?'
I made a show of looking around. My eye caught a wooden block and an axe. There was a little plaque:
The axe which is of the Tudor Period, was for long displayed at the Tower as the instrument of Anne
Boleyn's death, although in fact by her own choice she was beheaded with a sword. The block was made
for the last beheading on Tower Hill in 1747.
The trouble was, I didn't fancy the idea of beheading, however it was done. Nor gassing, stabbing,
hanging, shooting, electrocution, lethal injection or strangulation. Dying was an irredeemably unpleasant
idea.
'I choose old age,' I announced finally.
Xznaal seemed disappointed by the answer, as I had expected. Before one could join the Amalgamated
Union of Villains, Baddies and Miscellaneous Evil Persons one had to abandon any sense of humour.
The Martian Lord drew breath. 'From ssome of the implementss on dissplay in thiss fort, I knew that
your race truly iss ingeniouss when it comess to the artss of death.'
I thanked him, already knowing that Xznaal wouldn't be able to pick up on my tone of voice.
'The concept of torture, for example iss - '
Page 12
I yawned. It had reached that stage in the proceedings.
Xznaal cocked his head.
'The Victorians exaggerated all that,' I informed him. 'There aren't quite as many dungeons and torture
chambers here as they would have you believe.'
'I know that,' Xznaal replied, 'but thiss iss sstill the place where many human nobless were executed. The
Princess in the Tower, Lady Jane Grey... '
I was impressed by the level of the Martian's research, and told him as much. He accepted the
compliment.
Behind us, silently, the Martian shuttle began rising into the air. It passed overhead, arcing up towards
the warship. A hatch was opening up to welcome it. Neither Martian ship seemed concerned by the
prospect of a surface-to-air attack, and none came.
Xznaal watched the two vessels converging in silence. The shuttlecraft rotated on one of its axes, rising
the last few metres into the body of the warship. Above it, hydraulic clamps rattled out of their housings
and locked into place. I realised that I needed to keep talking to Xznaal.
'How goes the battle?' I asked after a slightly awkward moment.
Xznaal licked his lips, the Martian equivalent of a smile. 'The human ressisstance forcess are brave, their
tacticss show intelligence.'
'But they don't have the firepower to get in here and they don't stand a chance against the warship?'
'No.'
' It's bows and arrows against the lightning, anyhow, ' I said in an attempt at a Cockney accent.
Xznaal looked down at me.
'A quotation from an Earth book,' I told him, although I didn't tell him which one. He didn't seem to care.
'Why aren't you using the sonic cannons?' I asked.
'They are unnecessssary.'
Page 13
'Because you are going to use the gas?'
'Yess. Watch.'
As I cricked my neck upwards, the warship was beginning to rise.
'It will ssoon reach ten kilometress, the altitude for optimum dissperssion. Commander!'
A human army officer ran to Xznaal's side, saluting as he came. He looked at me as though I was
something he'd stepped in.
'Issssue your men with gass masskss,' the Martian ordered.
'Your Majesty.' The soldier saluted, hurrying away.
'As I understand it,' I said, 'gas masks won't protect those men.'
Xznaal gurgled. 'No. They will perissh. The Red Death will hunt them down. Imagine their terror when
they realisse their fate. That while they thought they were protected, they are in fact helplessss.' His
tongue was flickering over his fangs.
I found it easy to remain calm. Panicking wouldn't save the Earth, and it wouldn't save me. 'Is that
honourable?'
'It iss a ssimple matter of retribution. Gerayhavunn desstroyed my clan, I sshall desstroy hiss.'
'Balls,' I said, stopping in my tracks. 'You were producing that gas a week ago, and it was already on its
way to London when the nuke went off. You're a thug, a bully, not a warrior.'
Xznaal pitched around, stooping over me. 'Hisstory shall be the judge of that,' he growled.
'Who's history, Xznaal?' I shouted back. 'Your dead planet's or mine?'
Xznaal glowered at me. 'The time hass come for you to die,' he announced.
I put down my teacup. 'Executing me won't solve anything.'
'Not jusst you, Professor Ssummerfield. Your race. The time hass come for humanity to die.'
End of extract
Page 14
'She's talking to it.'
The Brigadier adjusted the focus of his binoculars. Professor Summerfield was dwarfed by the Martian
Lord. The two of them were strolling along a footpath, engaged in what looked like a polite conversation.
Around the Tower was a mass of people, crashing against the walls like a stormy sea. The Brigadier
turned his binoculars on sections of the crowd. Bottles and stones were being thrown at the Tower, but
the moat and the high walls prevented any of them from getting inside. So, the brunt of the anger was
focused on the tanks of the Provisional Government. Rows of riot police were holding firm as missiles
clattered against their plastic shields. Behind the front ranks of police were more heavily-armed units:
water cannons, mounted units, even tanks. It wouldn't take much more provocation before they were
wheeled out. Some of the Provisional security forces had machine guns. This could become a massacre,
and there was little the Royalists could do.
There was a young man propped halfway up a lamp-post, goading other young men in the crowd. There
was nowhere for them to take their anger.
'I want some thoughts about how we get into the Tower without the use of air power,' Lethbridge-Stewart
said. The walls had stood for centuries, but every so often an army or a mob had managed to get in there:
it had happened during the Peasants' Revolt and the Wars of the Roses. These days in normal
circumstances, if such a term could ever be used, a couple of SAS or other Special Forces squads would
abseil down from helicopters, or parachute in. With the Martian warship there, and the Provisional
Government intent to enforce the no-fly rule, the helicopters would never make it to London.
'That ship on the opposite bank... ' Corporal Baxter began.
'The HMS Belfast,' Bambera said, 'what of it?'
'Well do you think those guns are in working condition?'
One of the Captains sniggered.
'You have something to add?' Lethbridge-Stewart asked him.
Page 15
'No sir.' The Captain looked straight ahead, discipline restored.
'You know for a fact that the guns won't fire?' the Brigadier continued.
'No, sir.'
'Then do something constructive, Captain, find out.'
The Captain saluted and left the room.
A young lieutenant had her hand clamped over a telephone receiver. 'I'm trying to contact some of the
Beefeaters. They're all retired soldiers, and until last week they lived within the walls. Every one of them
resigned rather than serve the Martians. My betting is that some of them might know about a secret
passage, or a way under the walls via the sewers or the Tube.'
'Good work.' Lethbridge-Stewart turned to the others. 'What about a direct assault?'
One of the soldiers handed around copies of a glossy tourist brochure, requisitioned from the official
Tower gift shop. There was a detailed black and white aerial view of the Tower and its walls.
'Three entrances,' Bambera said.
'Four,' Lethbridge-Stewart corrected, pointing at Traitor's Gate. It was set low into the wall, facing
directly onto the Thames. 'We might be able to lead an assault from the river,' Bambera mused.
'There would be heavy losses,' the Brigadier responded.
'Professor Summerfield just isn't worth the sacrifice.' No-one said it, but everyone was thinking it.
'What's the spaceship doing?' Lethbridge-Stewart asked without looking away.
'Holding its position,' Bambera replied. 'Wait. It's rising!'
It was getting lighter outside. Sunlight began to stream over Tower Hill.
Page 16
'Look at this, Doug! I've got the Brig's email address, I've got his home phone number. What's this?
BN45 7ED. I've got his smegging postcode!' Oswald could barely contain his excitement. He was waving
the business card like it was a winning lottery ticket.
'The ship's moving,' Doug noted.
Oswald wasn't listening. 'I could get more for this than that box full of FHMs I bought last April. This is
worth more than my autographed copy of The Killing Stone.'
'Yeah, but you'll have to sell it fast. The ship's moving.'
Extract from the memoirs of Professor Bernice Summerfield
I glanced up. Although it had been making its ascent for a good few minutes, the Martian ship was still
filling the sky. When I turned back to Xznaal, he was studying a holographic display that hung level with
his head. I could see the mob outside, baying for blood. Rocks and bottles were being thrown at a line of
Provisional Government troops.
'Gunnery officer,' Xznaal grunted. 'Fire.'
For a moment I couldn't connect the words with what I was seeing. I looked up again. The Martian ship
looked like a gravestone.
And then the sky pulsed.
My teeth were rattling, my ears were ringing. A globule of sonic energy slammed down through the air,
impacting the ground on Tower Hill. Not the ground. It had hit the heart of the crowd. I could hear them
screaming over the sound of a hundred burglar alarms.
Xznaal gave a wheezing laugh.
'Fire!' he barked.
A second blast fell just the other side of the walls, right on the banks of the Thames. There was a geyser
of hot mud, a column of steam that shot fifty feet into the air. And, of course, there was screaming.
'Both planets could survive, Xznaal,' I insisted. 'You have the power to end this war.'
He turned to me, and growled words that sent a chill down my spine. 'I don't want to end the war. I want
to win.'
'At any cost?'
Page 17
He cocked his head to one side. He hadn't understood the question. I tried to put it another way. 'If, when
this is over, there are two Martians, but only one human alive, will you have won?'
Xznaal lifted his head. I saw him standing where he was now, bathed in moonlight in the ruins of
London, mist on the ground, the sky icy blue. His heavy claws were raised in triumph. The image was so
strong, so familiar, that try as I might, I couldn't see it ending any other way. I was crying even before he
had given his answer. I was only human, after all.
'That would be victory,' the Martian concluded.
End of extract
'They are firing on the crowd. We need an air strike,' Bambera declared. Before she had finished
speaking, there was another banshee wail, another tremor as a sonic blast hit home.
'We need a miracle,' the Brigadier replied, reaching for his radio. 'And this is our last chance to make one
happen. Greyhound to Eagle. Launch.'
Extract from the memoirs of Professor Bernice Summerfield
Xznaal grabbed the back of my head and forced it down onto the block. I turned my head as far as I
could without breaking my neck. The axe was in his other claw.
'That's a two-handed axe,' I told him. 'Don't I get a last request? Can I call my lawyer? At least let me
compose some famous last words. Sorry to babble on a bit, but if this is - as I believe it to be - it and
I'm going to die, then I'd like to spend my last twenty seconds on this Earth swearing and generally
kicking up a fuss about how unfair this all is and how I'm too young to die.'
I resolved to keep my eyes open.
Then there was the whisper.
'It ends now, Xznaal.'
The soft voice had come from all around us: echoing from the walls of the Tower, rumbling like thunder
in the distant mountains. The Ice Lord was looking around, trying to locate the source of the voice.
Page 18
Page 19
'Who are you?' Xznaal hissed. 'Sshow yoursself. Identify yoursself.'
'I am the man that gives monsters nightmares.'
I frowned. It was a loudspeaker, a public address system of some kind. The second time the voice had
spoken it had been at a normal volume.
'The Daleks call me the Bringer of Darkness.'
I couldn't begin to work out where the voice was coming from. It was getting louder, reaching a
crescendo.
'I am the Eighth Man Bound.'
Something was glittering, coalescing in the air over Tower Bridge. A face.
'I am the Champion of Life and Time.'
A long, angular face with a jutting chin and aristocratic nose, framed by a mane of brown hair.
'I'm the guy with two hearts.'
Thousand-year-old eyes and a child-like expression gazed down at us, smiling angelically.
'I make history better.'
There was a pause that contained worlds and histories immeasurable to man. Then four words, each one
louder than the last, each one drowning out the noise of the wind and the battle.
'I... '
My eyes were watering.
'Am... '
The Brigadier lowered his binoculars, his eyes wide.
'The Doctor!'
And it was.
The Dying Days - Chapter Fifteen
Page 1
Going Down in History
Extract from the memoirs of Professor Bernice Summerfield
I tried to bring my breathing back under control. The Doctor was a hologram, twenty feet high, his hands
behind his back. Xznaal had turned to face this vast apparition, which peered down at the Martian
Warlord like a parent disciplining a naughty child.
And there was someone pulling me away from the block. Alexander Christian. He put a finger to his lip.
Only my hands had been tied, and once I was upright I could hurry away under my own steam. I
followed Christian towards the cover between two buildings. According to one of the signs we passed,
we were heading to 'The Jewel House'.
Behind us, the Doctor's voice was rumbling again, filling the air.
'I am in your warship. Come and face me if you dare.'
The Martian Lord was straining to look up at the ship.
Eve Waugh and Alan were waiting for us. I hesitated. A mass murderer and the two people that had
betrayed the Doctor to the Martians. But why trap me like this, when the merest moment before Xznaal
had been able to deliver the killing blow? Besides, Christian would never work for the Martians. These
people were on my side, and there was a wall between us and Xznaal. I gazed out over Tower Green, saw
the Doctor's grinning face filling the sky.
Eve had a small pair of wirecutters, and she was snipping through the bindings on my wrist, one strand at
a time. Lex Christian was reloading his pistols, with the help of Alan.
'It's not a trick is it?' I asked the American journalist.
'No,' Eve laughed. 'That's him. He got aboard this morning when they were loading up supplies.'
I could picture the Doctor ducked behind a stack of crates, smuggling himself onto the magnetic lift
platform. Sneaking around the Martian ship, avoiding patrols, opening up inspection hatches.
'But ... how?'
Page 2
'When the Martians attacked your house, we only just made it out alive.' I decided that under the
circumstances it would be churlish to point out that Eve had been the one who had tipped off the
Martians in the first place. The last of the bindings fell away.
Another sonic blast detonated. Masonry and glass crashed. It had hit a building, then, rather than the
crowd.
'We headed back down to Adisham, but there was this terrible cloud.'
I nodded, rubbing the circulation back into my hands.
Eve continued. 'We could tell straight away that the cloud was being controlled somehow. Alan was
filming it, and it was seeking out people, killing them stone dead. Then we saw the Doctor.'
They'd got to the part of the story that I didn't know about.
'He was breaking into a shop with the sonic screwdriver. It turned out later that he was trying to save a
cat who had got trapped. The cloud caught sight of him, and it was like a shark scenting blood. It kind of
drew itself together and poured into the shop after him. We followed, and we found that the Doctor was
standing there, with the gas swirling around him like a hurricane. He looked so calm, so collected, and
then the cloud leapt at him, smothering him, pouring into his mouth and nose. It was horrible.'
Her voice was matter-of-fact, and there was no indication that she had been horrified, or had felt
anything at all. This was a woman whose job it was to report horrible things on a daily basis.
'As the last of the gas entered his body, the Doctor collapsed. Alan knows first aid, and he tried to help
him, but there was no pulse and he was already cold to the touch. The Doctor had shut down everything
that kept him alive: respiration, heartbeat, brain activity, lindal gland, reflex response. Apparently Time
Lords can do that.'
'It was the bit after that I wasn't too sure about,' I informed her. 'The happy ending aspect.'
Another sonic blast hit the Thames, sending up a jet of steam. It was almost certainly the first shot that
hadn't killed people. As the ship continued its ascent, we were getting more notice of the attacks - there
was perhaps a two second delay between the sound of the blast coming and it hitting the ground.
Page 3
'The Doctor had worked out that the cloud had been programmed to seek and kill him. When the gas
detected no life signs, the program was complete, the gas had no other purpose and it deactivated.'
'Yes,' I said slowly, pointing over at the hologram, 'but this overlooks one small detail... '
Eve brightened. 'Well it was lucky for him that we were there. Alan kept trying, and managed to
resuscitate him.'
'Only because of that Time Lord constitution of his,' Alan called over. 'No human could have survived
being dead that long. As it was it took him a couple of days to fully recover. We had to smuggle him out
of Adisham in the back of Eve's car.'
'Gosh,' I said. 'How's the cat?'
'It made it,' Eve assured me. 'We got back to London and met up with Lex there.'
I frowned. 'So, with the greatest respect, what has the Doctor been doing for the last week?' All this time,
people had been dying, the country had been in a state of civil war and the Doctor hadn't even shown his
face.
'Working to end the invasion,' Eve replied indignantly. 'He spent the first few days trying to find an
antidote for the Martian gas. There isn't one. We went to Gatwick, freed hundreds of prisoners. We have
no idea what the Martians were planning for them.'
I shuddered, remembering the tests conducted at the refinery in Reading.
'Xznaal's moving,' Alan called over.
End of extract
'T minus three minutes,' one of the lieutenants called from behind them. The Brigadier barely heard him.
He was at the bottom of the stairs now, and he could see the crowd massed outside. It was a riot out
there: windows had been smashed, cars overturned and set alight.
Another bolt of energy slammed home. The building shook, but the impact itself had been further away
than the last, on the other side of the Tower. Hopefully the crowd was thinner over there. Ambulances
were wailing their way across London, now.
Page 4
There was something rising into the air from inside the Tower.
'It's Xznaal,' he called out. 'Snipers - '
The Brigadier didn't finish the sentence. The sky pulsed.
'Take cov-'
The blast of energy slammed into the building behind him. Every pane of glass in the block shattered, the
supporting walls burst open. The Brigadier grabbed Bambera and tugged her down, then pulled his hands
over his head. They were thrown forwards, masonry and glass crashing around them.
Lethbridge-Stewart's earpiece crackled. 'T minus two minutes.' He could hear the words, so he was alive.
He pulled himself up, coughing and laughing. 'That was a close one. Is everyone OK?'
As the brick dust began to settle, he could make out Bambera on her hands and knees, shaking debris
from her hair. Standing behind her were half a dozen soldiers, with machine guns.
They weren't his men. They were Provisional Government troops.
The hatchway dilated closed, and Xznaal stepped from the lift platform into the main hold. He had spent
a week in the Tower, with its crude human attempts to replicate the temperature and humidity of Mars.
The genuine Martian atmosphere tasted odd: too dry, not rich enough. It was dark here, dull Martian
lighting simulating the conditions of his native world, and also the paucity of its energy reserves. All
around were silos and cylinders full of raw materials brought from refineries and mines the length and
breadth of this land. With the wealth of the Earth he could have rebuilt the Argyre. The diseases that
racked the bodies and minds of his people would have been cured, there would have been food and fuel
for all. He pictured Mars how it might have been: dry fountains running with water again, the zoos and
parks teeming with life.
The ceiling above him clattered. The hold of the Martian ship was vast, large enough to contain the
plunder from an entire military campaign. The pressurised vessel took up the entire roofspace. The Red
Death was inside, impatient to start its work, possessed of an overwhelming urge to be released. Xznaal
listened to the glorious sound, imagining the moment when he would pull the lever that freed the gas, the
action that would destroy all human life. First he would destroy the Doctor.
Page 5
He realised that the warship's cannons had been silent since he had stepped aboard.
'Gunnery officer, why have you stopped firing?' he barked into the air.
Something darted outside the chamber, behind the glass door. It was impossible to see it clearly. The
door retracted.
Standing framed in the doorway, bathed in red light, was the Doctor. He resembled a human male, with a
long, shaggy mane of fur. According to all the legends, the Time Lords were able to select their physical
frame. Why did the Doctor wear such a body, when he could choose the most magnificent armour, or a
form that glittered or shone like gemstones?
'Well, it might be something to do with this.' The Doctor tossed over a crystalline ball. Xznaal caught it,
seeing that there was a delicate mechanism at the globe's core. It took the Martian a few seconds to
identify the device as the main processor of the gunnery computer. The Gallifreyan's face was twisted so
that his teeth were bared. Vrgnur was behind him. But Xznaal's scientist was not the Doctor's captor,
rather his stance resembled that of a bodyguard.
The Martian Lord drew in a deep breath. 'Vrgnur, what is the meaning of this treachery?'
In his paw, the Doctor was holding a small holocamera, the device he had used to project his image. He
put that device in the pouch of his robe as he began walking the length of the room over to Xznaal. Inside
its storage vessel, the Red Death began scattering around, excited by the new arrival. Xznaal could hear it
scratching and clawing at the walls of its prison.
The Doctor glanced up the storage tank lining the ceiling before brandishing a small codex. 'I've made
some calculations.' He opened up the cover and began leafing through the pages of handwritten notes. 'I
even got your scientist here to check my working.'
'And what are your conclusions?' Xznaal growled.
Vrgnur stepped forwards. 'Lord Xznaal, the Doctor is a scientist of great skill. His calculations confirm
the results of the tests that I conducted on soil and water samples from Adisham. They show that the Red
Death hunts all Terran DNA, not just that of the humans.'
Xznaal grunted his satisfaction.
Page 6
'If we were to release enough of the Red Death to wipe out the human race, it would eradicate the entire
Terran biosphere,' Vrgnur concluded.
'The weapon is more effective than first we thought. Excellent. Shall we test your hypothesis?' He
reached for the release control.
The Doctor whirled to face the Martian Lord, his arms flailing. 'Once it has finished feeding, Earth will
be a barren rock, without even the smallest bacteria in the soil or microbe in the air. The Death will have
consumed even itself.'
'I care little for life on Earth.' Xznaal hissed, baring fangs glistening with saliva.
'You've lost control of the Earth, so you destroy it?' the Doctor shouted. 'That's the behaviour of the
playground, not the parade ground. You're not a warrior, Xznaal, you're a spoilt child.'
The Martian's claw snatched the release control.
The man in front of Lethbridge-Stewart was surely too young to have been a real general, despite the
uniform. There were six soldiers with him, eager young types.
'I am General Maybury-Hill, commanding officer of the government security forces,' he announced. 'I
offer you the unconditional surrender of myself and all my men.'
The general handed over his machine gun. The Brigadier rubbed his moustache. 'Accepted,' he said
finally.
'I will, of course, take full responsibility for my actions and those under my command. We will place
ourselves under - '
Lethbridge-Stewart held up his hand. 'With the greatest respect, General, you will do no such thing. What
you and your men will do is open the gates of the Byward and Middle Tower and you will do it in the
next thirty seconds. Step to it!'
Maybury-Hill saluted and hurried away to find a walkie-talkie.
Bambera watched him go. 'Technically, sir, he does outrank you.'
The Brigadier pulled the bolt on the machine gun he had been handed. 'Technically, Winifred, I'm
retired.'
Page 7
'No,' Vrgnur called, lifting his arm to block Xznaal's.
The Martian Lord was stronger than his scientist. Xznaal brushed him aside. Vrgnur responded by raising
his claw and firing at his Lord.
The Doctor shoved into Vrgnur, barely budging the Martian, but throwing off his aim. The energy bolt
struck the floor, blowing open a large hole. Bare electrical wire was exposed, and began sparking.
'This isn't the way,' he shouted, turning to Xznaal, ready to talk to him. The Martian Lord's claw was
raised, aiming his sonic disruptor squarely at them. The Doctor threw himself down to the deck as
Xznaal fired. A glob of sonic energy streaked over him, slammed into the wall, shattering a chrome pipe.
A stream of liquid gushed out, catching Vrgnur on the shoulder. Instinctively, the scientist turned, and
the fluid was all over his face and torso. With horror, the Doctor realised that the cylinder was full of
liquid nitrogen.
Vrgnur's carapace was creaking. A crack had appeared. His legs and arms were untouched by the liquid,
but they gave way. With each movement, a new gash was being rent in the Ice Warrior's armour. The
Martian howled a scream, a terrible, almost electronic, sound. His final act was to raise his own claw, to
aim it at his Lord.
'No, Vrgnur!' the Doctor called, but it was too late.
The sonic energy ran up the frozen chitin of the Martian's arm, and the spiky armour burst open one
segment after the other. The Doctor watched with horrified fascination. The molecular structure of the
armour had become brittle, almost crystalline as a result of the freezing process. Vrgnur lurched, his
Martian constitution keeping him alive even as the liquid nitrogen and sonic reaction reached his vital
organs. He was gasping for breath, but each mouthful of air burst open the solidifying mazelike
structures of his lungs.
The Doctor narrowed his eyes, trying to think of just one way that he could help the scientist. But there
was nothing he could do. Vrgnur crashed over like a fallen tree. For a moment his remaining arm
twitched, the claw clasping and unclasping. Around him, the liquid nitrogen was evaporating into patches
of white mist.
Xznaal and the Doctor stood over the corpse, watching each other warily.
Page 8
Extract from the memoirs of Professor Bernice Summerfield
The Brigadier hurried across Tower Green towards me. He had a machine gun slung over his soldier, and
a squad of UNIT men behind him.
'Xznaal's going to release the gas once the warship is ten kilometres up. The Doctor's on-board.' I
explained.
'Yes I know.'
'T minus one minute,' Bambera said. 'If you're going to abort the air-strike, you'll have to do it now.'
The Brigadier peered up at the ship. 'It's stopped firing.'
I brightened. 'The Doctor must be in control up there. Call off the attack.'
Lethbridge-Stewart nodded slowly. 'I think you're right.' He unclipped his radio. 'Greyhound to Eagle.
Hold your fire. Await further orders.'
End of extract
The Doctor was looking up at the vast metal tank again, clearly in awe. The vast tank above him
clattered.
'Lord Xznaal,' the intercom barked, 'we have reached the optimum altitude for dispersion.'
Xznaal maintained his position at the release controls, but he didn't pull the lever, not yet. Instead he
stabbed at the control that opened the inspection hatches. The metal panels rolled back, revealing the Red
Death. It boiled and bubbled like a giant kettle or a witch's cauldron. Eyes and fangs were forming in
there, barbed limbs and spines the size of telegraph poles. It hissed and popped and wheezed. It growled
and snarled and grunted. Limbs and appendages sprouted and withered as it tried and failed to find a
break in the vessel that kept it contained.
The Doctor was standing alongside him.
'It is a thing of beauty,' Xznaal shouted over the din. 'Does it scare you?'
Page 9
The Doctor turned to the Martian, and without saying a word he stretched out his paw and held it up
against the glass. For the first time, the Red Death withdrew, frightened of what it had discovered.
'I've gazed into the abyss already, Xznaal, and the abyss gazed into me. It fled from what it saw.
Monsters who fight with me should take care.'
Xznaal lurched at him, allowing the Doctor plenty of time to pull back. Xznaal swiped again, an inch
from the Doctor's face this time. The Martian wheezed with pleasure, his jaws opening wide.
'You have lost, Time Lord. This precious Earth will die, all the human animals will die.'
'No,' The Doctor replied simply.
In a lesser lifeform it would be stupidity, but here it was the legendary Time Lord arrogance. Before the
Doctor died, he would have to be taught humility. Xznaal opened his claws and began to advance. The
Doctor stood his ground as the Martian loomed over him, his tiny form framed by the writhing mass of
the Red Death above him. Xznaal found it apt that a creature as brave as the Doctor would meet his fate
at the claws of one as noble as himself.
He reached out, placing a pincer delicately around either side of the Doctor's neck. The Doctor lifted his
head slightly to accommodate the vast claw. And then Xznaal yanked the Time Lord ten feet into the air,
slamming his head against the plate glass of the inspection hatch. The cloud shied away at first, but was
soon beginning to gain in confidence. Tentatively, a tendril of red vapour inched towards the glass.
'Will you stop me?' Xznaal roared disdainfully.
The Doctor's squashy human face was pressed tight to the glass. He struggled to draw breath. 'No. I'm
just a distraction. Something to keep you occupied.'
The intercom began barking. 'My Lord, a flock of human aerocraft are approaching. They are heavily
armed and on a direct intercept course.'
A hologlobe materialised in front of Xznaal. He released his grip on the Doctor to study the display.
There were three attack groups, all approaching from the west.
'Without its sonic cannons, this warship is a sitting duck, Xznaal,' the Doctor said, rubbing his throat.
Page 10
The radio crackled. 'This is Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, commanding officer of the
British forces to the Martian vessel. I have just received the unconditional surrender of the Provisional
Government. Your occupation of our territory is over. I give you three minutes to withdraw your forces
from British airspace or to signal your surrender. Lethbridge-Stewart out.'
Xznaal peered deep into the hologlobe. 'These Earth soldiers are weak,' he said, giving a great gurgling
laugh. 'They have the chance to destroy me, yet they give me time enough to wipe them out. The Red
Death will cleanse the Earth of human filth. It will feast on them, their women and their primate
offspring. This vast green world will be scoured clean, its oceans and skies will be emptied. Humanity
will die.'
He turned to face the Doctor, and found himself staring into the lens of a holocamera.
'You should never underestimate the power of public opinion,' the Doctor smiled, lowering the camera.
'Congratulations, King Xznaal, I think you've just made your abdication speech.'
The giant hologram faded from the skies. All around, there was silence. The crowd were holding their
breath.
'Commit,' said Lethbridge-Stewart.
There was a deep rumbling explosion, far away. Then another, much nearer. Within seconds it had
become a sustained assault, salvo after salvo hitting home. The warship might not have forcefields, but
the armour-plating was several metres thick in places. Unless the RAF were very lucky, the first wave of
the attack would weaken the superstructure of the warship rather than hit anything more vulnerable, like
a power cable or the magnetic engines.
Here in the hold they were sheltered from the worst of the bombardment, but the lighting was flickering
and the whole ship was lurching from one side to another. The intercom was crackling. However much
of a pounding the warship took, Xznaal's men wouldn't move it without an express order from their Lord.
Xznaal had disappeared into the shadows. The Doctor peered into the gloom. He was sure that the
Martian Lord wouldn't leave the Dispersion Chamber. Above him, the Red Death was straining inside its
tank. The Doctor bounded over to the release controls, slipping the sonic screwdriver from his pocket.
Page 11
'It's finished, Xznaal,' he shouted over the noise of another explosion. An adjustment to the sonic
screwdriver made it into a welding tool. A couple of quick bursts from that, and the lever was jammed so
tightly that not even Martian strength would be able to move it.
The ship had stopped rocking. The first wave of the attack must be over, and there would be a brief
respite for the warship as the Harriers arced around at not-quite-supersonic speeds ready to attack again.
Suddenly Xznaal was in front of him, emerging from a column of choking black smoke and filling his
field of vision. 'If I die, you will die,' he bellowed.
'If you die, the Earth will live,' the Doctor said, standing his ground. 'I've died many times before,
Xznaal, and death doesn't scare me.'
It was getting hotter. There was fire behind the glass door that led into the rest of the ship. Hot gases
would be swirling around the ship, melting plastics and the softer metals like cast iron. The light from the
flames was pouring into the Dispersion Chamber, and soon the flames themselves would be in here.
Above him, the Red Death continued to rage.
Xznaal brought a claw up, sweeping the Doctor from his path and charging towards the release controls.
The Martian tugged at the lever, but it didn't move. He tried again, and it came away in his claw.
The Doctor took a step back. 'You are beaten.'
Xznaal turned, still defiant. 'I can still make my mark on history, Doctor,' he roared. 'As the man who
killed you.'
The Martian was holding a burning torch, a piece of wreckage from a damaged section of floor. The
firelight danced over the landscape of the Martian's face, throwing its rifts and valleys into sharp contrast.
A sweep from the torch and the Doctor stumbled, struggling to retain his balance. He was pinned against
the wall now.
Xznaal tossed the torch aside, reached over him and yanked off one of the stainless steel gas cylinders
bolted to the bulkhead. Xznaal swung it down without effort, angling it at the Doctor.
Page 12
'You saw what the liquid nitrogen did to Vrgnur,' Xznaal rasped. 'Imagine the effect it would have on soft
Gallifreyan flesh.'
The Doctor had no time to do anything but wince as Xznaal tugged at the valve. A jet of colourless gas
spurted out, streaming over his cheek. The Doctor opened his eye and turned back to Xznaal.
'Nothing's going right for you today, is it?'
Xznaal hurled the canister at him with an exasperated grunt. The Doctor had already dived out of the
way. He bent down to examine the cylinder as it rolled over to him, shutting off the valve to prevent any
more gas from escaping. Xznaal loomed over him, hissing.
The Doctor held up the cylinder so that Xznaal could see it. 'Helium,' he called up at the monolith. 'An
inert gas. Harmless, especially to a Time Lord with a respiratory bypass system. And now I have the
satisfaction of knowing that when you utter your last words, they'll be squeaky ones.'
'Your last words will be lost to the winds, Time Lord,' Xznaal cheeped. He pointed one claw at the floor,
resting the other on a vast red lever.
The Doctor looked down and realised that his feet were planted on the edge of the iris hatch.
Xznaal grabbed the lever and pulled.
The hatch dilated open and the wind whipped up from the gaping hole behind the Doctor lifting the tails
of his frock coat. The Doctor steadied his feet, balancing right on the lip of the opening. He glanced back
over his shoulder. Debris was pouring through the hole and out over London.
'That's a terrific view,' the Doctor observed, turning back.
Xznaal grabbed the Doctor's throat, yanking him off his feet and swinging him over the hole. The
Doctor's legs pedalled in thin air, and he tried to keep control of his breathing.
The Doctor was still gripping the gas cylinder. He brought it down on the Ice Warrior's shoulder, and
again. He only succeeded in denting the cylinder, which slipped from his grip.
Page 13
There was an explosion far behind them, a great reverberation that ran the full length of the ship. The
warship lurched. Another explosion. Another. These weren't missile strikes: the magnetic engines were in
chain reaction now.
'Goodbye,' the Doctor said softly.
Xznaal said nothing, he simply released his grip.
The Doctor's hands tried to shoot forwards, to grab onto the edge of the hatchway, but the gas cylinder
was in the way. With all his weight tugging at it, the canister began rolling inexorably towards the edge.
Wide-eyed, the Doctor tried to scrabble over it, a movement which ended abruptly as he found himself
outside.
The underside of the Martian ship stretched above him, dark, spiky metal as far as even his eyes could
see. The only break was the circular hatch he had just fallen through, which was diminishing with every
second. The wind was whipping around him, drowning out the sound of the ship tearing itself apart.
Xznaal was leaning over, his claws clenched in triumph. He was rumbling with laughter. The fire came
only moments later, lapping around the Martian, surging over his vast frame and obliterating him. He
died satisfied that he had killed a Time Lord, that his people had been avenged.
Extract from the memoirs of Professor Bernice Summerfield
The Provisional Government forces had been rounded up. Eve Waugh and Alan were filing a report in
front of the White Tower. The Brigadier and I were up in the Lanthorn Tower, peering through
binoculars at the Martian warship. Even at an altitude of ten kilometres it filled my viewfinder.
It shook again.
'What's going on up there?' I asked. The vapour trails of the RAF planes were visible, but not the planes
themselves, they were too small.
'The air strikes are really hitting home,' the Brigadier said enthusiastically. 'That warship really is a
marvel, though. It must be solid metal in places. How do you think the Doctor will escape?'
Page 14
I considered my answer for a couple of seconds. 'The magnetic platform won't be reliable - it depends on
power from the warship. By now, he's probably destroyed the gas and he'll be making his way to the
shuttle bay.'
'And that's in that compartment towards the front, isn't it? So, we watch out for movement along - '
The warship exploded.
'My God,' the Brigadier said softly. 'Not again.'
All around us, people were cheering. The shouts and whoops almost drowned out the rumbling, rolling
sound of the explosion as it reached ground level.
'He ... he might have survived,' I said.
'He might have,' the Brigadier said gently. 'Professor Summerfield ... Benny. The important thing is that
he beat the Martians. Thanks to him the entire human race has been saved.'
The Brigadier was trying to convince himself as much as persuade me. He was the one who had ordered
the air strike, and he'd been the Doctor's friend a great deal longer than I had.
'Yes,' I said, just wanting to cling to something that was certain. 'At least it was quick.'
The Brigadier shifted on his feet. I only found out a few years ago why - he must have known that when
a pilot or astronaut dies in a fire or an explosion it's not a quick clean death. A fighter pilot can expect to
live a full five to ten seconds as his aircraft explodes around him. It's as bad, apparently, for those who
have to listen to the black box voice recorders afterwards.
Page 15
I looked up, but the Martian ship had been atomised, the Harriers had returned to their base. The only
thing up there was a cloud of black smoke, criss-crossed with white jet trails, and even that was begin to
disperse.
Nothing had escaped. No Ice Warriors, no sonic cannons, no Red Death. Nothing.
End of extract
The Doctor assessed the situation. There was good news and bad news. Taking the negative first: the
ground was nearly ten thousand metres away, straight down. On the plus side, it was getting closer.
Through the wispy clouds London was a dark grey expanse, broken up by great square patches of green
and the grey squiggle of the Thames. It was so quiet. The air rushing past him was so thin that it hadn't
the strength to carry sound -
Only one way out. He turned to Grace.
'Not afraid of heights are you?'
'Yeah!'
'So am I!'
In an instant he brought his body under control: slowing his hearts rate, regulating the adrenaline flow.
The cold, the shock, the thin air, the friction might have been enough to kill a human, but were mere
technicalities to a Time Lord. He increased the rate of his mental activity, and attempted to dedicate it all
to one question. But his life was flashing in front of him, random memories and emotions. That hadn't
happened in Adisham. Was that a bad sign? It was a short life, especially compared with some of his
other -
'How do we get down?'
He turned to Benny, a sad smile on his face. 'Ask me again in a week's time.'
He would fall at roughly thirty metres a second, allowing for wind resistance and updraft. He would soon
reach terminal velocity. He had about five and a half minutes to solve the problem using only the
materials at hand.
His usual assortment of junk: a cricket ball, an elephant feather, a bag of kola nuts, a big ball of string, a
piece of the True Cross, even a dog whistle.
Page 16
Of course! The Flying Elephants of Saltaris III. Their wings were soaked in isocryte, the amazing antigravity
material that -
He handed everything but the string to Benny.
The Doctor scowled.
That struck a chord in his memory.
'Curtain rings,' Bernice scowled.
'They might be important. Or they could come in useful.'
He flipped himself over onto his back, bending his knees slightly. The universe rotated until the Martian
ship was directly above him. The fuselage was fragmenting, lit from within. The beams and vaults that
gave the hull its strength were visible, like an X-ray. The skin of the hull was warping and melting under
the intense heat. The fins atomised, streams of fuel streaking out across the afternoon sky. The Doctor
hardly noticed.
They had stopped off at Mrs Darling's shop to buy some milk and bin bags.
Every Martian in the ship was dead, the Doctor realised. All their weapons and personal possessions had
gone. The Martian Invasion was over, the Earth and every human, every living thing on it had been
saved. He might die, but five billion humans, twenty five billion trees, ten trillion insects and twelve
hundred pandas were going to live. It was a simple transaction: one life for many.
There wasn't time for this. He had to concentrate on -
Helium.
And the Doctor realised that with five minutes and eight seconds to go, the chords in his memory had
suddenly become a symphony.
The Doctor let go of the cylinder of helium, which continued to fall at the same velocity as him. He took
the string for his pocket and tied one end to his left wrist. He retrieved the packet of curtain rings, biting
it open with his teeth, careful not to spill any. He did a little mental arithmetic and threaded forty eight of
them along the string, discarding the rest.
Page 17
Page 18
That took twenty two seconds. He'd fallen a little under a mile by now, less than a sixth of the total
distance.
Now for the difficult part.
The Doctor tugged the roll of bin bags out of his pockets, unwound the first one, careful not to open it up.
He drew the open side of the bag through the first curtain ring, creating a narrow aperture. The process
had taken him a little under two seconds. He repeated it forty seven times, until all the bags were
whipping up and down on the line like a row of bunting.
He'd been falling for two minutes. He was still well over five and a half kilometres above London. When
he had started working, the clouds he had been falling through were the rounded cirrocumulus clouds -
the ones that looked like fish skin from the ground. Now they were the larger altocumulus variety. The
air was getting warmer and thicker as he hit the first hint of convection currents rising from the city.
The Doctor let go of the string and reached over for the helium canister. Calmly, he plucked it from the
air and slotted the nozzle into the first big bag. A quick burst of the gas inflated it. Imperceptibly, the
Doctor slowed down.
Extract from the memoirs of Professor Bernice Summerfield
'Professor Summerfield,' a lad said gently. It wasn't one of the soldiers, it was the chap who ran the
Internet Cafe.
'I won't be long. He ... he might have had a parachute or something.'
I kept my binoculars fixed upwards, but I could imagine his expression.
'The medics have arrived if you need one. The Brigadier's trying to rustle up some tea and coffee. My
name's Doug, by the way. I'm sorry to hear about your friend.'
I looked away for the first time. Around me, Tower Green was full of ambulances and heavy army
trucks. Outside, the crowd were being tended to by an army of paramedics and policemen. A great cluster
of Provisional Government men were sitting in a circle, their weapons taken away from them. A couple
of the UNIT men were taking their names and checking if they needed food or medicine. All around,
people were cheering and celebrating - I could hear a riverboat honking cheerfully, and the bells of all
the cathedrals and churches were ringing. The whole country would be like this - street parties, crowded
pubs and city squares. Everyone cheering, everyone rejoicing.
Page 19
And I felt dead inside, because the one man who deserved to be here wasn't.
I turned my binoculars back to the sky.
Two hundred metres up was a mass of black. Not a parachute or a hot air balloon, but something between
the two. It was drifting down. Underneath it all was a man wearing a flowing bottle-green velvet coat,
baggy tan trousers and a grin. With his free hand he waved down at me.
The balloons had slowed the Doctor down, but he was still travelling too fast. I tried to shout a warning
to him, but he was still too high to hear. The shouts alerted Lethbridge-Stewart and the others, though.
Tower Green began to buzz with excitement. Everyone was pointing up, gasping, some were even
laughing.
Alan had swung his camera up, and was tracking the Doctor down as he fell.
'Do you really think those bin bags can support his weight?' Doug was asking. 'I reckon a few techos on
the Net might argue with that. I like his style, though.'
I turned back to the sky. Barely clearing the walls now, the Doctor was clambering up, over the balloons.
It was tricky going, but he reached the top of the pile just as the apparatus reached the ground. Now they
acted like a cushion or a safety mat.
The Doctor and his improvised parachute crashed into the ground mere feet from me, bouncing slightly.
As he tumbled along, his limbs surfaced and disappeared back into the mass of black plastic. As he rolled
to a halt, he had reached the top of the bags.
I ran over, closely followed by Doug, the Brigadier, Lex Christian and Eve. The Doctor was lying on the
pile of balloons, perfectly still. His eyes were closed, his head was bent back.
He wasn't moving.
'Doctor!' Doug shouted.
'Doctor,' Eve called over to the paramedics.
'Doctor,' the Brigadier called, clearly concerned.
I bent over him. 'Doctor?'
Page 20
His pale blue eyes fluttered open and he pulled himself upright.
'Hello Bernice,' the Doctor beamed.
As he clambered off the crash-mat he had improvised, the bin bags began drifting away, up into the
bright spring sky. He turned, watching them float over the walls of the Tower and off along the Thames -
upstream, towards Tower Bridge. The Doctor plucked a cat hair from his lapel and grinned.
'I didn't think I'd see you again,' I told him. 'I thought you'd gone forever.'
'You of all people should have had a little more faith, Benny. I'm not ready to die yet,' the Doctor
declared. 'In fact, I've never felt better.'
I opened my mouth but couldn't think of anything else to say. I hugged him, the Brigadier was slapping
him on the back. All around us, the whole of London was cheering.
The Doctor was alive, the entire human race had been saved. All was well with the world.
The Dying Days - Epilogue
Page 1
Kisses to the Future
Wednesday, 8 May 2593
'The student reputation for outrageous behaviour and excessive consumption of alcohol is, of course, a
myth. Most students are extremely studious and hard-working,' Benny announced knowledgeably. 'If we
want to uncover evidence of hedonism, one need look no further than the teaching staff. Professors in
particular spend much of the time in a state of advanced inebriation.'
'Bernice, you sound like a professor already,' the Doctor assured her.
'Thank you.' Benny knocked back another vodka. 'Robarman, another round, please, if you would.'
'Certainly, Professor Summerfield.' Two more glasses joined their friends on their table. The college bar,
quaintly named The Witch and Whirlwind, was decorated with rather wonderful gold fittings that
warranted further in-depth investigation.
Benny sipped her ale. A rich taste that also warranted further in-depth investigation. She looked up at the
Doctor.
'After this, I really think we should get my stuff out of the TARDIS and up to my room.'
The TARDIS had landed in a concrete expanse that Benny's induction pack had rather optimistically
labelled a piazza. It had been raining since they had arrived, longer judging by the torrents of water
gushing down the overflow channels. Benny's new home, the Garland College Hall of Residence, was a
vast barrel shaped building in soaked brick. Its corridors and stairways were empty. A month before the
start of term, the entire planet seemed deserted.
'Do you think it will ever stop raining?' Benny asked.
The Doctor considered the question, peering off over her shoulder. 'The orbital lift has permanently
altered the weather patterns by the look of it,' he concluded, pointing over to the north. A silver line had
been drawn, bisecting the sky. The lift was a design familiar from a thousand Outer Planets, a metal spire
tall enough to poke out of the atmosphere, allowing incredibly energy-efficient launches into low orbit.
Cheap spaceflight, with a heavy cost to the local environment.
Page 2
'Bother,' Benny said, moderating her language in the Doctor's presence. Then she realised he'd
disappeared into the TARDIS, so she repeated the sentiment using the F-word, just because she could.
The Time Lord emerged. 'You'll be needing this more than I will,' he said, handing her an umbrella. The
umbrella. She opened it up. It was a hundred yards and three flights of steps between her new room and
her old one, and it took an hour of moving heavy boxes and cases between the two before the job was
finished. Benny took a last look at the TARDIS and then walked up to her new room. It was what an
estate agent would describe as 'compact', but there was a perfectly serviceable kitchenette sort of thing, a
nice bathroom, a study big enough for half a dozen students (if they breathed in) and all her books.
Finally, there was the bedroom.
She flopped down onto the bed next to the Doctor, who was looking a bit sad. Wolsey brushed against
her legs.
'You need a companion,' the Doctor announced.
'Won't you miss him?'
'I'll miss him.' He hesitated, brushing back a lock of hair. 'Look, Bernice, I don't like goodbyes, but
sometimes... ' He produced a very large bottle of champagne and grinned. 'Napoleon gave this to me, for
services rendered. The very first magnum of Brut Imperial. I've been saving it for a special occasion.'
He popped the cork.
'Er, this is a tremendous oversight on my part, but I don't have any wine glasses.'
'Mugs will do.'
Benny unpacked a couple and the Doctor poured. When he had finished, they held them up. Wolsey
watched the proceedings with interest.
'To the adventures of Professor Bernice Summerfield,' the Doctor declared.
'To a,' Benny paused for a moment, and then smiled, 'Doctor who might change, but won't ever die.'
Page 3
'To the future, wherever and whatever it might be,' the Doctor said.
'The future,' Benny echoed.
They clinked their mugs together.
'I had better go,' the Doctor said quietly, when he had finished his champagne.
Benny hesitated, looking into those deep blue eyes of his. 'Yes. Look, before you leave, there's one thing
I have to do. I'd never forgive myself otherwise.'
The Doctor looked puzzled. 'What would that - '
She grabbed the lapels of his frock coat, kissed him square on the mouth and pushed him down hard onto
the bed.
Wolsey jumped out of the way.
Sunday, November 23rd 1997
It was a beautiful morning.
The bright winter sun poured through the stained glass of Westminster Abbey, bathing the Lords, Ladies,
Gentlemen and television cameras assembled to witness a unique occasion: the only Recoronation in the
history of the United Kingdom. Six months on, the Martian Invasion was a distant memory. One author,
a man named Oswald, even claimed that there had never been any Martians, it had all been part of the
coup leaders' conspiracy to divert attention while they seized power. His main observation was that few
people had actually seen a Martian, and no items of alien technology had been recovered. Any 'sightings'
of the Martians or their ship could be put down to mass hysteria or ball lightning. Oswald's book had
become a best-seller, and his theory was particularly popular in the United States of America.
Queen Elizabeth sat on the coronation throne, the Imperial State Crown on her head, restored to its
former glory. The Recoronation would clear the constitutional way for the election of a new Parliament.
Every single surviving member of the Provisional Government was in prison, caught trying to flee the
country they had betrayed. David Staines had been one of the first, found trying to catch a Eurostar while
disguised as a woman. The resultant police mugshot was destined to become one of the most enduring
images of the Invasion.
Page 4
Representatives of every nation on Earth were calling 'God save the Queen'. The European Union, the
United States and the Japanese had made generous reconstruction grants, although Britain would
continue to remember their inaction during the Dying Days for some considerable years. There was a
great deal that needed doing, especially in the northern cities. Things were changing, there was a new
sense of optimism, of hope for the future. Perhaps it would get worse before it would get better, but
everyone knew that it would get better.
Behind the various ambassadors and heads of state stood the senior military men and other heroes of the
Invasion. Outside, the crowds were cheering again, the sound percolating through the thick walls of the
Abbey.
'It's a shame the Doctor couldn't be here.'
'Oh but he is, Doris.'
'Where?'
'See that chap with the scarf and the tin dog?' Lethbridge-Stewart pointed across the aisle.
'Oh yes. Is the blonde girl with him?'
'Judging by her dress-sense, I would say so.'
A couple of people leant over, stern looks on their faces. Alistair smiled back at them. When they
recognised him, they mumbled their apologies and returned their attention to the ceremony. Montserrat
Caballe had taken her place in front of the choir and now began to sing the Recoronation Aria, the
specially-commissioned piece by Lord Lloyd-Webber. Future historians would count this as the first
moment of the New New Elizabethan Age, when British art and literature entered a brief, but prolific
resurgence.
Page 5
Alistair glanced over at Brigadier Bambera. His successors were going to do sterling work, probably
even better than him. But he liked to think that he'd set a high standard for them. Hopefully in years to
come, people would say that he had lived up to his illustrious ancestry, and that by and large he'd done a
good job. He knew that he'd had a good innings, and despite the old saying, he'd neither died nor faded
away. Retirement wasn't so bad, not on those terms.
And that's why, in the middle of a packed Westminster Abbey on one of the most important dates in
British history, despite everything that had happened, General Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart found
himself roaring with laughter.
THE END

