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The Dying Days - Chapter Eight

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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.'

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'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.'

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'Now might be a good time to tell me.\x92

'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. '

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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.

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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 shoulder-length 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.

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'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.

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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.

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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.

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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. '

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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.

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'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.'

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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.\x92

Xznaal hissed.

\x91Let me broker a fair peace between Earth and Mars,\x92 the Doctor pleaded, \x91the 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.

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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\x92s head. 'Then we will have to enssure that you don\x92t 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\x92s 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.

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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.

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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\x92t she recognise me then, if we\x92d 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. '

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'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?'

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'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.

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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.

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'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.

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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. '

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'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\x92s 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.'