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The Dying Days - Chapter Five

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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.'

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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 ... ?'

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'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.'

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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.

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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.

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'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\x92ll excuse us one moment,' the Doctor said, smiling. He took his companion to one side. 'Couldn\x92t you ... persuade him?'

'How?' Bernice scowled.

'Well, you\x92re 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.'

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'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.

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'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 all-night 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.

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'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. \x91Fighting 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.'

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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\x92s 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.'

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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.

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'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 - '

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'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.

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"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

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."

"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."

Brigadier Bambera realised that she had wasted the last three hours of her life.

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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.'

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'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.

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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. \x91I\x92m afraid England needs me.\x92