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The Dying Days - Chapter Fourteen

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Look! - Up In The Sky!

The Brigadier's limousine arrived in Trafalgar Square shortly before one o'clock. Behind the UNIT convoy was a column of people a mile long.

The Square had already been filling up. The crowd were safely behind the barriers that had been set up the week before and had never been taken down. As Lethbridge-Stewart drove past, they cheered and waved. It was all very reminiscent of a royal visit. Some people were even waving little plastic Union Flags, others were clutching helium balloons. Most of them were clustered around the Column, sitting alongside the lions like so many millions of tourists and revellers down the years.

A small UNIT squad had arrived twenty minutes before, and had set up a mobile HQ, recovered from the underground garage of the UNIT office. The Brigadier found himself smiling, and then it dawned on him why: the large grey van was parked alongside the TARDIS. Professor Summerfield had told him that it would be there. That wasn't the same as seeing it. After all this was over, he would have the TARDIS taken somewhere safe. He would have Adisham searched for the Doctor's body. An immortal race had no need of funeral customs, but Lethbridge-Stewart would see that his friend was given a proper burial.

'That's odd.' Bambera had seen the police box, too, and she knew what it was, but it didn't hold the same memories for her. She was busy scanning the crowd, assessing the level of danger, looking for the enemy. All the things he ought to have been doing. 'The crowd are already facing this way, sir,' she informed him.

Lethbridge-Stewart told the driver to park the car alongside the mobile HQ. 'Really?'

He did quick recce. Bambera was right. There must have been a couple of thousand people there, and the vast majority were looking not at the vast Martian spaceship to the East, or towards Westminster to the South. They were staring at the entrance to the Space Museum.

A young Corporal was opening up his door and saluting him. Lethbridge-Stewart went through the formalities, then, 'What's going on?'

'There's a Martian in there, sir. Went in about twenty minutes ago with the Home Secretary, just before we arrived.' Lethbridge-Stewart did what everyone else was doing, he stared at the door. So far, only a handful of Martians had left the ship, the two that had been killed at the Doctor's house, the scientist and Xznaal himself.

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'It's the leader, isn't it?' he asked. The Corporal nodded.

'How do you know?' Bambera asked the Corporal.

'There were a few people already here, ma'am. Not just that, the Home Office chauffeur and aide came over to our side the moment we arrived. They are both still a bit shocked by it all.'

Lethbridge-Stewart nodded towards the mobile HQ. 'Those two are both in Trap One, I take it?'

'Sir,' the Corporal confirmed.

'Is the Square secure?' All around them, the rest of the UNIT vehicles had arrived, much to the delight of the crowd. The soldiers, all of them so young, were jumping down, taking out all the carefully stowed equipment. Their tanks were lining up outside Charing Cross Road station.

'Yes, ma'am. The Provisionals have all pulled back to defend Downing Street and the Tower, we've done a quick sweep of the buildings. There's a column of Government tanks along the Embankment and Thames Street. We have them under close observation from Trap Two, at Tower Hill. We can see over the walls onto Tower Green from there.'

'Snipers?'

'None of theirs any more. We have men at both positions, sir, with strict orders not to fire unless ordered to.'

Lethbridge-Stewart allowed himself to relax a little. 'Good man,' he concluded.

Bambera pointed over the tops of the buildings to the Martian ship. 'The plan was that the enemy ship would move when the refinery went up,' she reminded him. That had been a little under five minutes ago.

'We also thought that it would prevent our build-up if it was still here, but they've just ignored us,' he responded. 'The Professor was right: the Martians will only intervene if they are personally threatened. If we fire on a Martian, that spacecraft will fire on us. They'll wipe us out.'

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'Perhaps they are just biding their time. They could start wiping us out at any moment.'

The Brigadier conceded the point, 'You're right. Now, I don't know my Martian military history, but I know that on this planet many a battle has been lost because the superior force got complacent. They don't realise just how hard we can hit them. We also know that they won't be using the gas.'

Bambera nodded. 'We've had word from Strike Command: the Harriers are ready, and can be here in four minutes. There are anti-aircraft batteries at Spitalfields and St James Park.'

'Trap Two has a couple of artillery pieces,' the Corporal added.

Lethbridge-Stewart was fitting a radio earpiece. 'We stay in position. We do nothing to provoke the Martians. We sit this one out if we have to.'

Theo Ogilvy had done his best, and he told Xznaal as much. Without the Orbiter, the nearest telescope to Mars was the Hubble, circling the Earth. For the next three hours, its orbit kept it on the wrong side of the planet to face the alien's home world.

All his professional life, Ogilvy had taken careful measurements, analysed blips in line graphs and spectroscope readings. He'd studied sketch charts with all the majesty and grandeur of a dot-the-dots puzzle, gasped in awe at blurred photographs of white pinpricks against a black background. Astronomy was an odd science, one that saw men in tweed suits growing old staring up into the infinite, timeless night sky in the hope of fathoming how the universe was put together. Every night, he and tens of thousands of people like him would observe tiny coloured specks of light, sometimes forgetting that every single one of those specks was large enough to swallow Earth and Mars without even noticing. There were sunspots wider than the diameter of the Earth on each and every pinprick in the sky.

He was a thirty-eight year old bachelor, and the first time he'd even flown in a plane was a trip to NASA three years ago, when he'd been appointed Mission Controller of Mars 97. He'd lived in Watford all his adult life. Now, an alien was forcing him, at gunpoint, to show it photographs of Mars. An eight-foot green reptile. But how could a cold-blooded creature survive in the sub-zero temperatures of Mars? How could anything even remotely resembling a human breathe nitrogen? Why would a creature from a low-gravity world evolve into such a powerful, muscular form? Ogilvy pushed all those questions to the back of his mind and concentrated on the task in hand. But despite being in the global nerve centre for Martian studies, the clearest image of the planet that he could manage to find was from tracking station 63 in Madrid. It showed a new feature in the atmosphere, a vast brown/red cloud.

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'M-massive displacement of material,' Ogilvy stammered, not daring to look at Xznaal. 'Millions of tonnes of rock and sand. Like the aftermath of a volcanic eruption. After Krakatoa, thousands of square miles were covered in ash, and the whole world had spectacular sunsets for years afterwards.'

He glanced over at Xznaal, who was almost hunched. The Martian's head was low, the crown it had been wearing had fallen off, and the only sign that it was still alive was the regular, asthmatic breathing.

'Ssunssetss?' it coughed.

Xznaal was pulling itself straight. It resembled a JCB or a similar piece of machinery - so much power, in such a hard body. Xznaal's claws snapped open and shut, a gesture of powerlessness that Ogilvy found disturbingly human.

'I... ' Ogilvy couldn't think of a single thing to say and turned to David Staines for support, but the Home Secretary had vanished. Lord Greyhaven's broken body was still there. Ogilvy tried to form a smile, even a weak one, but couldn't. He tried to say some consoling words, but none came out.

Xznaal was staring into the monitor again. Then it turned, and lumbered from the room. Ogilvy swallowed, waiting until the Martian was out of sight, then he began running for the fire exit.

There was a scream from the crowd.

'Now what?' Bambera scowled.

The two Brigadiers turned back to the Space Museum. At the bottom of the steps was a Martian. Even at Allen Road, the Brigadier had only seen the enemy as he was running from it, or shrouded in darkness. All he knew was that they were heavily armoured, like an armadillo or a rhino, and that they were big. In broad daylight, standing there, the Martian lost none of its majesty, indeed it looked even more powerful. Everyone in the crowd was wild-eyed, they were clambering over each other to get a look.

The Brigadier unclipped his radio. 'This is Greyhound to all Traps. Hold your fire. Repeat: Hold fire.'

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'Is that the leader?' Bambera asked.

'Yes,' Helmond said quietly. 'Xznaal.' She was terrified that it would see her, even across the crowded square. The Brigadier looked from the single Martian to the thousands of civilians. They were watching the alien with awe, all of them aware that this was the most important thing that they would ever see. They were mere footnotes in history, witnesses, not instigators and whatever else they did, wherever else they went, this was the defining moment of their lives. None of them were important. For well over a full minute, the great mass of people were almost deathly quiet.

The Martian didn't move, it stood there like a great, old tree or a statue hewn from a block of jade.

Below it, the crowd was shifting around, rustling like leaves. Some news was spreading among them.

'The warship's moving,' someone - a civilian or a soldier, Alistair didn't know - announced.

Alistair spun around. The metal sky to the East was turning slowly and drifting forwards. All around them, UNIT radios squawked as the spotters around London began relaying the news. The Brigadier checked his watch.

'The refinery?' Bambera asked.

'Why wait until now?' he replied. 'It's been nearly ten minutes.'

'Then that means... '

The warship was heading towards them, there was no doubt about it. The two Brigadiers were looking at each other, hoping the other would think of something to do.

The warship eclipsed the afternoon sun over Trafalgar Square.

Below them, the crowd fell quiet.

As darkness dropped, the silence swept through the crowd like a Mexican wave. Alistair watched, and felt the mood change. From his vantage point, he could see it all, the high spirits had become darker. A group of young men were fighting each other in front of Dillons. The crowd were pulling back from the Space Museum, some were trying to get away, and they jostled with those who were transfixed, watching the sky. One spark and this crowd would erupt into terrible violence.

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Xznaal stood there, watching them too.

The warship had stopped, its prow hanging over the Space Museum, the vast mass of the ship hanging over London and disappearing over the horizon.

The Martian lifted its slablike foot, the first movement that it had made.

The warship was blotting out the sun, making everything else around it irrelevant.

Xznaal swung forward, those broad shoulders slouching, its eyes turned blankly to the ground.

Far from the Martian the first bottle arced into the air. It dashed against the pavement, scattering the crowd where it fell. Voices were being raised again.

The Terran gravity was taking its toll. Xznaal was like a medieval knight in a suit of armour. Clad in a chain mail vest and plate armour weighing as much as he did, even a knight in prime condition had been unable to fight for long. Many falling on their face into the mud of a battlefield would find that they didn't have the strength to pull themselves back up. The weight of their armour would drag them down and they would drown.

Xznaal took another step.

On the other side of the Square, there was a great crashing sound, shouts of surprise. The crowd had uprooted a lamppost. A fight had started, a small incident at the base of Nelson's Column. It was impossible to see who was fighting. As members of the crowd realised that there wasn't anything to stop them: no police, no army, no laws, the violence spread like fire. Within seconds the crowd was a seething mass of flailing arms, rising and falling.

With a great, rolling clank, a panel on the underside of the warship was grinding open.

The crowd were pushing against the crash barriers, right in front of Trap One. The metal fence was buckling, scraping against the tarmac.

The crash barriers toppled, the front row of the crowd falling with them. Like a dam had burst, a seething mass of humanity surged through the gaps in the barrier. Men were clawing their way over children, women were punching and kicking their way to the front. The noise. Ten thousand shouts and screams and cries, all merging into a monster voice.

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'They're going to kill us!'

'Run!'

'Got to get out of here.'

Lethbridge-Stewart turned to his men. 'Let them through. Try to help the injured,' he bellowed.

But it was the best that his men could do to stand their ground. They were trained in crowd control techniques, the subtle and not so subtle ways that a man in a uniform could manipulate a mass of people. None of the crowd were thinking, they only wanted to get away. So the UNIT men did the thinking for them, channelling them off into three or four columns, slowing them down, spreading them out. Other troops were clearing the bottlenecks, pulling the injured clear or making room for them.

The Brigadier was trying to keep track of the whole scene, from the activity of the warship to the dynamics of the crowd. It was an impossible task.

'Something moving up there.'

As he looked up, a young woman collided with Lethbridge-Stewart, almost bringing them both down. She was already on her way. He peered up, trying to catch his breath.

'It's the platform,' he called out. 'That lift thing. It'll be heading for Xznaal.'

The disc was dropping slowly but inexorably.

Bambera appeared at his side, the shoulder of her uniform jacket ripped. 'This could be our last chance to take him out.'

The Brigadier shook his head. 'The Martians would retaliate,' he called.

The platform had dropped below head-height. Xznaal was still visible, towering over the crowd. The Martian mounted the platform, a laborious movement.

The radio squawked. 'Trap Two to Greyhound. There's a mob of people heading for the Tower, sir. They're throwing bottles and stones at the Government troops. They'll... sir, there's gunfire. Both sides.'

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The two Brigadiers looked over at each other. The sound of the shots was drifting across London.

Behind them, the magnetic platform was rising again.

'Prepare to move out,' Bambera shouted to her men. They began pulling back to the Land Rovers. A pretty young lieutenant opened a car door for Lethbridge-Stewart.

'Sir,' one of the radio operators called back before he could get in. 'The spotters at Brentford report an aircraft. Unknown design, travelling at supersonic speeds. It looks Martian.'

They could hear it, cutting a swathe through the air. Lethbridge-Stewart swung his binoculars around. A large V-wing craft was approaching from the West. 'The Martian shuttlecraft.'

'The mountain has come to Mohammed, Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart.'

The Brigadier turned. There was a young man, wearing a duffle coat and long scarf, and behind him was an overweight chap about the same age. The old soldier narrowed his eyes. 'Who the devil are you?'

'My name's Oswald. I've been working in London during the Occupation. Sending information out over the Net. I know what's going on.'

'Thank God someone does,' Bambera muttered.

Oswald ignored her. 'The Martians have transported the gas from Reading in the shuttle.'

The Brigadier paled. 'We've been assuming that the only way to get the gas to London was using the warship. We didn't count on them transporting it in the shuttle. It's heading for the Tower.'

Bambera was wide-eyed. 'So Ford's team failed? Now the Martians have the gas?'

'Yes.'

Lethbridge-Stewart was reaching into his jacket pocket. He handed Oswald a small card.

'Mr Oswald, could you do me a favour? This is my wife's business card. It has her email address. Could you send her a message? Tell her that I love her. Thank you.'

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Oswald took the card and nodded. Lethbridge-Stewart shook his hand and hurried into his staff car.

Extract from the memoirs of Professor Bernice Summerfield

The doorway at the front of the shuttlecraft gave a pneumatic sigh and parted. The shuttle had landed on Tower Green, right in the centre of the Tower of the London. It was a flat lawn, surrounded by two towered curtain walls. Beyond the millennium-old defences, I could hear chaos: shouting, even sporadic gunfire.

I began to step down the ramp. My wrists had been tied together with steel wire. It would have been an uncomfortable binding for an Ice Warrior but to me, without the benefit of chitinous wristguards, it was agonising. Vrgnur, my captor, wasn't following me down.

As I made my way down into the afternoon sun, I could see Xznaal waiting, standing alone in the middle of the green. He had just stepped from that magnetic disc of his. Provisional Government troops, wearing their ordinary Army uniforms were manning the battlements. There were snipers on the ramparts, ducked behind the merlons. Beyond the walls I could hear sporadic gunfire. Down on Tower Green I was sheltered from the bullets. Medics scurried along into place, ready for casualties. It wasn't a battlefield yet, but it would be. It was reverse-archaeology: instead of scraping away the layers of history, these people would soon be adding to them and centuries from now, someone would be cataloguing the bulletholes in the walls, unearthing cartridges and dropped jewellery. Becoming excited when they found an intact skull. But the archaeologist wouldn't be human, or Martian, and they wouldn't be studying a living race.

The warship hung above it all. It was the first time I had seen it in daylight. This was a Warbringer, used in former times as flying fortresses during the longest and most bloody crusades and military campaigns. Although its gunports were open, there was no sign that the sonic cannons had been used or that they were about to be.

'Good afternoon, Professssor,' Xznaal gasped.

'Good afternoon. I am sorry to hear of your loss.' I uttered a short Martian prayer of lamentation. The original had been carved in the wall of a deep shelter during the Thousand-Day War, probably with the tip of a Martian claw.

Xznaal exhaled slowly, a sound like a sigh. 'I ssensse that you mean what you ssay.' He sounded weary, but not broken. He spoke in English.

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'Is there any more news from Mars?' I asked him.

'None.'

I couldn't feel sorry for him. I pictured the galleries and tunnels shattering, fragments of rock the size of houses raining on the subterranean cities of the Argyre. I could hear a whole planet screaming as the ground began to tremble. Crystal statues splintering, women and eggs being crushed, a population running and screaming and dying, million-year old temples flattened. But I couldn't feel sorry for Xznaal himself. I tried to rub my wrists where they were particularly sore.

As I reached the lawn, the shuttle's door hissed shut, sealing Vrgnur inside.

'Take tea with me,' Xznaal ordered. I nodded, taking my position at the side of the Martian Lord as he lumbered away from the shuttle. I've always been tall for a human, particularly a woman, but my eyes only came level with Xznaal's chest. I looked down at the Martian's legs. Great box-like sections of dark shell parted and drew together as his feet lifted and fell. My own body seemed frail and withered by comparison. I felt like a child walking beside a grown-up.

We walked up the Green towards a low stone plinth. It was almost certainly all that remained of a long-demolished building, or a monument to an otherwise forgotten hero. A very large, flat tray sat atop it, jostling with a silver tea service. Iced tea, naturally.

'Shall I be mother?' I asked, climbing up. I moved the teapot aside and discovered a patch of green paint. 'Er... this wouldn't be the original Haywain, would it?'

'I grew bored of it. Thiss way it sservess a practical purposse.'

'Martians are not a race to waste anything.'

'No.' I poured two cups of tea and spilt about three more, not bad going considering my wrists were tied together.

Xznaal hadn't killed me. Normally, this would be good news, but I had learnt over the years that when megalomaniacs don't kill you straight away it's because they plan to kill you horribly a little way down the line, once they'd assembled suitable killing equipment. I was unsure whether I was expected to conduct a conversation with my captor. I began by asking Xznaal why I hadn't been killed yet.

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'You vanquisshed a Martian warrior in ssingle combat,' the Martian whispered. There was a tone of respect in his voice. Megalomaniacs were also the only people in the whole, wide universe that used words like "vanquished" in everyday conversation.

'Er, yes. It's not something I'm terribly proud of.' But if it meant that Xznaal respected me...

'You desserve an honourable death. An execution.'

I nodded my head. 'Do I get to choose the method?'

Xznaal cackled. 'An exquissite idea.' He sucked some more air. 'How do you wissh to die, human?'

I made a show of looking around. My eye caught a wooden block and an axe. There was a little plaque:

"The axe which is of the Tudor Period, was for long displayed at the Tower as the instrument of Anne Boleyn's death, although in fact by her own choice she was beheaded with a sword. The block was made for the last beheading on Tower Hill in 1747."

The trouble was, I didn't fancy the idea of beheading, however it was done. Nor gassing, stabbing, hanging, shooting, electrocution, lethal injection or strangulation. Dying was an irredeemably unpleasant idea.

'I choose "old age",' I announced finally.

Xznaal seemed disappointed by the answer, as I had expected. Before one could join the Amalgamated Union of Villains, Baddies and Miscellaneous Evil Persons one had to abandon any sense of humour.

The Martian Lord drew breath. 'From ssome of the implementss on dissplay in thiss fort, I knew that your race truly iss ingeniouss when it comess to the artss of death.'

I thanked him, already knowing that Xznaal wouldn't be able to pick up on my tone of voice.

'The concept of "torture", for example iss - '

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I yawned. It had reached that stage in the proceedings.

Xznaal cocked his head.

'The Victorians exaggerated all that,' I informed him. 'There aren't quite as many dungeons and torture chambers here as they would have you believe.'

'I know that,' Xznaal replied, 'but thiss iss sstill the place where many human nobless were executed. The Princess in the Tower, Lady Jane Grey... '

I was impressed by the level of the Martian's research, and told him as much. He accepted the compliment.

Behind us, silently, the Martian shuttle began rising into the air. It passed overhead, arcing up towards the warship. A hatch was opening up to welcome it. Neither Martian ship seemed concerned by the prospect of a surface-to-air attack, and none came.

Xznaal watched the two vessels converging in silence. The shuttlecraft rotated on one of its axes, rising the last few metres into the body of the warship. Above it, hydraulic clamps rattled out of their housings and locked into place. I realised that I needed to keep talking to Xznaal.

'How goes the battle?' I asked after a slightly awkward moment.

Xznaal licked his lips, the Martian equivalent of a smile. 'The human ressisstance forcess are brave, their tacticss show intelligence.'

'But they don't have the firepower to get in here and they don't stand a chance against the warship?'

'No.'

' "It's bows and arrows against the lightning, anyhow," ' I said in an attempt at a Cockney accent.

Xznaal looked down at me.

'A quotation from an Earth book,' I told him, although I didn't tell him which one. He didn't seem to care. 'Why aren't you using the sonic cannons?' I asked.

'They are unnecessssary.'

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'Because you are going to use the gas?'

'Yess. Watch.'

As I cricked my neck upwards, the warship was beginning to rise.

'It will ssoon reach ten kilometress, the altitude for optimum dissperssion. Commander!'

A human army officer ran to Xznaal's side, saluting as he came. He looked at me as though I was something he'd stepped in.

'Issssue your men with gass masskss,' the Martian ordered.

'Your Majesty.' The soldier saluted, hurrying away.

'As I understand it,' I said, 'gas masks won't protect those men.'

Xznaal gurgled. 'No. They will perissh. The Red Death will hunt them down. Imagine their terror when they realisse their fate. That while they thought they were protected, they are in fact helplessss.' His tongue was flickering over his fangs.

I found it easy to remain calm. Panicking wouldn't save the Earth, and it wouldn't save me. 'Is that honourable?'

'It iss a ssimple matter of retribution. Gerayhavunn desstroyed my clan, I sshall desstroy hiss.'

'Balls,' I said, stopping in my tracks. 'You were producing that gas a week ago, and it was already on its way to London when the nuke went off. You're a thug, a bully, not a warrior.'

Xznaal pitched around, stooping over me. 'Hisstory shall be the judge of that,' he growled.

'Who's history, Xznaal?' I shouted back. 'Your dead planet's or mine?'

Xznaal glowered at me. 'The time hass come for you to die,' he announced.

I put down my teacup. 'Executing me won't solve anything.'

'Not jusst you, Professor Ssummerfield. Your race. The time hass come for humanity to die.'

End of extract

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'She's talking to it.'

The Brigadier adjusted the focus of his binoculars. Professor Summerfield was dwarfed by the Martian Lord. The two of them were strolling along a footpath, engaged in what looked like a polite conversation. Around the Tower was a mass of people, crashing against the walls like a stormy sea. The Brigadier turned his binoculars on sections of the crowd. Bottles and stones were being thrown at the Tower, but the moat and the high walls prevented any of them from getting inside. So, the brunt of the anger was focused on the tanks of the Provisional Government. Rows of riot police were holding firm as missiles clattered against their plastic shields. Behind the front ranks of police were more heavily-armed units: water cannons, mounted units, even tanks. It wouldn't take much more provocation before they were wheeled out. Some of the Provisional security forces had machine guns. This could become a massacre, and there was little the Royalists could do.

There was a young man propped halfway up a lamp-post, goading other young men in the crowd. There was nowhere for them to take their anger.

'I want some thoughts about how we get into the Tower without the use of air power,' Lethbridge-Stewart said. The walls had stood for centuries, but every so often an army or a mob had managed to get in there: it had happened during the Peasants' Revolt and the Wars of the Roses. These days in normal circumstances, if such a term could ever be used, a couple of SAS or other Special Forces squads would abseil down from helicopters, or parachute in. With the Martian warship there, and the Provisional Government intent to enforce the no-fly rule, the helicopters would never make it to London.

'That ship on the opposite bank... ' Corporal Baxter began.

'The HMS Belfast,' Bambera said, 'what of it?'

'Well do you think those guns are in working condition?'

One of the Captains sniggered.

'You have something to add?' Lethbridge-Stewart asked him.

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'No sir.' The Captain looked straight ahead, discipline restored.

'You know for a fact that the guns won't fire?' the Brigadier continued.

'No, sir.'

'Then do something constructive, Captain, find out.'

The Captain saluted and left the room.

A young lieutenant had her hand clamped over a telephone receiver. 'I'm trying to contact some of the Beefeaters. They're all retired soldiers, and until last week they lived within the walls. Every one of them resigned rather than serve the Martians. My betting is that some of them might know about a secret passage, or a way under the walls via the sewers or the Tube.'

'Good work.' Lethbridge-Stewart turned to the others. 'What about a direct assault?'

One of the soldiers handed around copies of a glossy tourist brochure, requisitioned from the official Tower gift shop. There was a detailed black and white aerial view of the Tower and its walls.

'Three entrances,' Bambera said.

'Four,' Lethbridge-Stewart corrected, pointing at Traitor's Gate. It was set low into the wall, facing directly onto the Thames. 'We might be able to lead an assault from the river,' Bambera mused.

'There would be heavy losses,' the Brigadier responded.

'Professor Summerfield just isn't worth the sacrifice.' No-one said it, but everyone was thinking it.

'What's the spaceship doing?' Lethbridge-Stewart asked without looking away.

'Holding its position,' Bambera replied. 'Wait. It's rising!'

It was getting lighter outside. Sunlight began to stream over Tower Hill.

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'Look at this, Doug! I've got the Brig's email address, I've got his home phone number. What's this? BN45 7ED. I've got his smegging postcode!' Oswald could barely contain his excitement. He was waving the business card like it was a winning lottery ticket.

'The ship's moving,' Doug noted.

Oswald wasn't listening. 'I could get more for this than that box full of FHMs I bought last April. This is worth more than my autographed copy of The Killing Stone.'

'Yeah, but you'll have to sell it fast. The ship's moving.'

Extract from the memoirs of Professor Bernice Summerfield

I glanced up. Although it had been making its ascent for a good few minutes, the Martian ship was still filling the sky. When I turned back to Xznaal, he was studying a holographic display that hung level with his head. I could see the mob outside, baying for blood. Rocks and bottles were being thrown at a line of Provisional Government troops.

'Gunnery officer,' Xznaal grunted. 'Fire.'

For a moment I couldn't connect the words with what I was seeing. I looked up again. The Martian ship looked like a gravestone.

And then the sky pulsed.

My teeth were rattling, my ears were ringing. A globule of sonic energy slammed down through the air, impacting the ground on Tower Hill. Not the ground. It had hit the heart of the crowd. I could hear them screaming over the sound of a hundred burglar alarms.

Xznaal gave a wheezing laugh.

'Fire!' he barked.

A second blast fell just the other side of the walls, right on the banks of the Thames. There was a geyser of hot mud, a column of steam that shot fifty feet into the air. And, of course, there was screaming.

'Both planets could survive, Xznaal,' I insisted. 'You have the power to end this war.'

He turned to me, and growled words that sent a chill down my spine. 'I don't want to end the war. I want to win.'

'At any cost?'

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He cocked his head to one side. He hadn't understood the question. I tried to put it another way. 'If, when this is over, there are two Martians, but only one human alive, will you have won?'

Xznaal lifted his head. I saw him standing where he was now, bathed in moonlight in the ruins of London, mist on the ground, the sky icy blue. His heavy claws were raised in triumph. The image was so strong, so familiar, that try as I might, I couldn't see it ending any other way. I was crying even before he had given his answer. I was only human, after all.

'That would be victory,' the Martian concluded.

End of extract

'They are firing on the crowd. We need an air strike,' Bambera declared. Before she had finished speaking, there was another banshee wail, another tremor as a sonic blast hit home.

'We need a miracle,' the Brigadier replied, reaching for his radio. 'And this is our last chance to make one happen. Greyhound to Eagle. Launch.'

Extract from the memoirs of Professor Bernice Summerfield

Xznaal grabbed the back of my head and forced it down onto the block. I turned my head as far as I could without breaking my neck. The axe was in his other claw.

'That's a two-handed axe,' I told him. 'Don't I get a last request? Can I call my lawyer? At least let me compose some famous last words. Sorry to babble on a bit, but if this is - as I believe it to be - "it" and I'm going to die, then I'd like to spend my last twenty seconds on this Earth swearing and generally kicking up a fuss about how unfair this all is and how I'm too young to die.'

I resolved to keep my eyes open.

Then there was the whisper.

'It ends now, Xznaal.'

The soft voice had come from all around us: echoing from the walls of the Tower, rumbling like thunder in the distant mountains. The Ice Lord was looking around, trying to locate the source of the voice.

Page 18
  

'Who are you?' Xznaal hissed. 'Sshow yoursself. Identify yoursself.'

'I am the man that gives monsters nightmares.'

I frowned. It was a loudspeaker, a public address system of some kind. The second time the voice had spoken it had been at a normal volume.

'The Daleks call me the Bringer of Darkness.'

I couldn't begin to work out where the voice was coming from. It was getting louder, reaching a crescendo.

'I am the Eighth Man Bound.'

Something was glittering, coalescing in the air over Tower Bridge. A face.

'I am the Champion of Life and Time.'

A long, angular face with a jutting chin and aristocratic nose, framed by a mane of brown hair.

'I'm the guy with two hearts.'

Thousand-year-old eyes and a child-like expression gazed down at us, smiling angelically.

'I make history better.'

There was a pause that contained worlds and histories immeasurable to man. Then four words, each one louder than the last, each one drowning out the noise of the wind and the battle.

'I... '

My eyes were watering.

'Am... '

The Brigadier lowered his binoculars, his eyes wide.

'The Doctor!'

And it was.

End of extract

NEXT WEEK: The Doctor goes down in history...