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The Dying Days - Chapter Twelve

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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.'

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'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.

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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\x92d been taken from me, and this time he wouldn\x92t 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\x92t 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\x92 rule, at the insistence of the Martians. Bambera\x92s 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.

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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\x92d 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\x92, were rather comical. The girlies had their own little area of the camp, and the men weren\x92t allowed in there. Fascinating from an anthropological view. Bambera and I slept in the officer\x92s 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\x92t 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.

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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\x92d 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\x92d 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.

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'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.'

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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.'

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'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.'

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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\x92d 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\x92t sure where to start. He\x92d 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.

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'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 ever-present 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.

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'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?'

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I chuckled. This was traditionally the first question a human asked in any lecture about Martian history. I\x92d 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\x92t 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.'

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'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,\x92 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.

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'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,\x92 Bambera said sharply. 'I\x92ve read the files: back in the seventies, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart repulsed a couple of small-scale incursions. I\x92ve read his reports, and he relied on two things: luck and the Doctor. Since we\x92ve not had any luck, and your friend turned out to be half-lemming on his mother\x92s 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,\x92 I called back as I headed for the door.

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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\x92t my timezone, it wasn\x92t 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\x92t 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.

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'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\x92d established that it contained a videotape.

'It\x92s probably from a charity for menks traumatised by having their entire video collection wiped by a giant Martian UFO.\x92

Oswald was weighing the packet in his hands. 'The ship clearly generates an intense magnetic field.\x92

'Clearly.\x92

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.\x92

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\x92t 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. No-one'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?\x92 Bambera asked.

The Brigadier broke into a broad smile. 'I\x92m glad you asked me that question ... '

NEXT WEEK: Earth attacks.