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The Dying Days - Chapter Seven
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Work, Rest and Play
By eight o'clock in the evening, British Summer Time, on Tuesday, May 6th 1997, 
everyone in the world knew that there was an alien spacecraft hovering over 
London. 
Back in the late sixties the United Nations had agreed what would happen if 
mankind encountered alien lifeforms. The experts agreed that the "First 
Contact", as they called it, would be a faint radio signal from deep space. It 
followed that the First Contact would almost certainly be with a radio telescope 
facility somewhere in the world, or perhaps a military listening station. The 
alien radio signal might be many hundreds of years old: radio waves travelled at 
the speed of light, and so even those from the nearest star would be over four 
years old. That meant that the human race would have time to carefully compose 
its response - this wouldn't be a conversation with aliens, more like an 
exchange of letters. 
So it was agreed: the staff of the radio telescope that picked up the message 
would pass it on to the Secretary-General of the United Nations. A team of 
experts would translate the message (any aliens trying to contact us would have 
considered the language barrier, and would keep the message straightforward - 
using basic mathematical or geometric concepts, perhaps, or a series of simple 
pictures). This translation would then be made completely public. The world 
would decide what response to send, and the world would send only one reply, 
leaving aside all cultural, political and economic differences. 

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Few of the people drawing up the First Contact Protocol thought that it would 
work like that in practice, and when the time came it didn't. For many centuries 
there was some debate about exactly when "First Contact" between mankind and 
aliens took place. The Martian Invasion of 1997, of course, was always cited as 
the definitive moment, but it had become clear years before then that the major 
governments had positive proof of the existence of extraterrestrial life. Aliens 
had visited mankind for thousands of years, leaving their trails across the 
archaeological strata and their subtle influence on human development. Visitors 
from other worlds were worshipped as gods or hunted down as monsters through the 
centuries.
In the late twentieth century, as the human race began to venture out into 
space, they had reached a level of scientific understanding that allowed them to 
interpret the old legends and superstitions. They also now possessed a level of 
technology that allowed aircraft and radar to sweep the skies for unidentified 
flying objects. Alien spacecraft and other artefacts began to arrive on Earth 
with alarming regularity. 
The year that the United Nations drew up the First Contact Protocols, the 
governments of half a dozen of its member states were already concealing the 
existence of aliens from their citizens and from each other. The UN realised 
that such insularity was dangerous, and that if one country were to acquire 
alien weapons or other technology, then this would destabilise the carefully 
balanced world order. During Waldheim's term as secretary-general, restricting 
access to alien science became just as much a priority as preventing the 
proliferation of nuclear technology. A policy decision was made at the very 
highest levels of government that the public should not be informed about any 
alien 'incursion', regardless of its significance. 
This level of secrecy means that historians were never able to reach a consensus 
over when what they call 'The Real First Contact' was made. Some still preferred 
to count the Arcturan Treaty of 2085. That had been an official, peaceful 
contact. The first time that human and alien sat down and talked, rather than 
attempted to commit genocide. 

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The Martian Invasion was yet another demonstration of the shortcomings of the 
First Contact Protocols, not least because the designated Contact Group, the 
local UNIT contingent had just been suspended. With the Prime Minister in the 
United States, there was some confusion among the British authorities about who 
exactly was meant to initiate contact with the aliens.
The result was chaos for the first hour. A million people descended on Trafalgar 
Square, desperate to see the alien vessel. A million more attempted to flee the 
city, convinced that the world was about to come to an end. The authorities were 
caught in the middle as two million of their citizens stampeded. 
The scheduled editions of Wildlife at One and The Cook Report had been 
postponed. BBC1 and ITV were both showing the same image from different angles: 
the prow of the UFO hanging over Nelson's Column, pointing down the Mall 
straight at Buckingham Palace. The main body of the vessel was hanging directly 
over the Strand. Learned commentators and experts tried to find the words to 
match the image. They failed. 



'What are our options, General?' 
'We can do little to contain the information, Mr President. Every station has 
been broadcasting pictures of the object for the last half hour. The FCC are 
pulling as much as it as we can, but the word is out.' 
'I'm not worried about the damn coverage, General, I'm worried by the alien 
spaceship. A nuclear strike is out the question, I know, but - ' 
'With respect, sir, I don't think we should be ruling out the nuclear option at 
this stage.' 
'It's a hundred metres above London, General.' 
'Sir, a pre-emptive nuclear strike might prove to be the only effective method 
of destroying the Hostile. I am not recommending that at this stage, but we 
can't rule it out.' 
'Understood. What do you recommend?' 

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'Firstly, sir, we need to mobilise the National Guard. We need troops in all the 
cities, and additional forces in the air, ready to deploy them wherever there is 
trouble.'
'You think that the aliens are going to attack us?' 
'That I don't know, sir. So far, there's no evidence either way and the 
situation seems contained in London. What I know is that at any moment riots are 
going to break out from here to Los Angeles.' 
'I think you're underestimating the American people. There was a study done 
under the Carter administration which concluded that when confronted with 
indisputable evidence of alien life, most people's reaction would be one of awe 
and quiet contemplation.' 
'That report was wrong. Mr President, our system of government operates on a 
very simple principle: the people trust the authorities to keep them safe. They 
can wake up every morning, believe what they read in their newspapers, take the 
kids to school, drive to work, earn some money that they can spend how they 
want, go to the park without being bombed, eat their lunch without being 
poisoned. They pay us taxes, we keep them safe. Now, what we have there on CNN, 
in glorious colour and NICAM stereo sound, is proof that we can't protect them. 
We don't know what it is, what it can or will do, who's in there, where they 
even came from. Mr President, our people aren't safe anymore. When they realise 
that, a lot of them will get angry, a lot of them will get frustrated. Some of 
them will take to the streets.' 
The President rubbed his chin. 'Mobilise the guard.' 



They'd been forced to abandon Bessie halfway up Whitehall, the streets were full 
of people and it would be quicker to get to Trafalgar Square on foot. 
'This is madness!' the Doctor shouted back to Benny over the noise of the crowd. 
'All these people, heading towards the Martian ship like moths to the flame.' 
Benny apologised to the Rastafarian girl whose foot she'd just stood on. 
'Doctor, I hate to point this out, but we're trying to get there, too.' 

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The Doctor turned around, continuing to walk backwards without even slowing. 
Unlike Benny, he wasn't having any problem slipping through the throng. 'We are 
doing so out of scientific interest, and because we might prove invaluable as 
impartial negotiators in this little dispute.'
Benny squeezed past two of the fattest men she had ever seen and came up 
alongside him. 'How do you propose to start the negotiations, Doctor?' she asked 
sweetly. 'By shouting up at them?' 
'I don't think my voice would be loud enough,' the Doctor said in all 
seriousness. 
They could see the ship properly for the first time. 
It took Benny a couple of seconds to realise that the reason the hull was 
strobing with bright blue light was that it was being photographed by thousands 
of people, all using flashbulbs. She hoped that the Martians, from a planet in 
perpetual twilight, didn't take the bright light as some sort of attack. The 
flickering glare of the flashbulbs made the Martian ship appear even more 
nightmarish than it already was. The ship was too large to take in at one 
attempt: it just left impressions of a surface like that of a seashell or a 
snail, fins like a deep-sea fish. 
Despite that, Benny recognised the basic design of the spacecraft - Martian 
rockets had remained unchanged for a hundred thousand years. The Martians had 
followed the pattern of technological development familiar on ten thousand 
worlds throughout the galaxy, and they had evolved many millennia before the 
human race. The Martian Industrial Revolution had taken place at the same time 
as the Pliocene on Earth. On her expedition, Benny had discovered the remains of 
documents a million years old that were evidence of Martian space travel. 
The Martians, the Ice Warriors as the Doctor insisted on calling them, would 
have conquered the solar system, even the galaxy, but for the lack of resources 
on their home world. Energy sources were scarce, few of the necessary metals 
were present in sufficient quantities. Martian astronomers knew that both the 
Earth and the asteroid belt were abundant with mineral wealth, but other planets 
remained tantalisingly just out of reach. 

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One of her contemporaries had suggested that another reason why the Martians 
never developed their space travel was that their military culture was never 
geared to rocketry. The Martians lived in nests and cities deep underground, and 
such dwellings were scarce and impossible to attack from the air. Wars were 
fought to capture such possessions and territory, not to destroy them. The 
Martians favoured sonic guns and germ warfare, not 'dishonourable' bombs that 
destroyed civilian populations and turned whole cities into radioactive craters.
'Why aren't the Martians doing anything?' Benny asked. 
'The same reason that there was a delay when the human astronauts landed on 
Mars,' the Doctor shouted back at her, 'the ship's crew are acclimatising to the 
gravity and the temperature. They are probably a little confused by their 
reception - they will want to assess this crowd, try and work out whether it's 
an army or not.' 
'What made them pick London?' Benny asked. 
The Doctor slipped through a group of German tourists. 'They must have tracked 
the source of the radio transmissions to the Orbiter: the Martian ship took a 
direct course for the National Space Museum. Something of a coincidence, 
otherwise, isn't it?' 
The mass of people was almost stationary now. Most of the men and women had 
began to realise that they weren't going to get much closer. Or they had chosen 
not to - the object filled the sky, and every detail on its hull was visible 
from this distance. Sections of the flank were covered in wicked-looking spines. 
People were hesitating, holding still. 
So, as the crowd became denser and denser, it became easier to move through it. 
Benny realised that she and the Doctor were the only people really trying. 
Everyone else stood staring at the sky. Benny found herself following the Doctor 
right into the Square itself. 

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Benny was tall enough to see over most heads, and by the time they had reached 
the crowd-control barriers she had built up a picture of what was happening. The 
police were clearing groups of people from around the Column itself. They'd also 
cleared the Strand, and a steady line of emergency vehicles was streaming up the 
long road. Benny wondered idly what the Martians made of the convoy of large 
vehicles swarming beneath them with flashing lights and wailing sirens. The 
TARDIS was still sitting in the middle of the Square where they'd left it. Its 
technology was way beyond that of the Martians, so there was little chance they 
could detect its true nature.
The Doctor was pointing past it. 'Over there, Bernice. The army.' 
A couple of army vehicles were also there: large trucks, personnel carriers, 
nothing like a tank or even an armoured car. 
'Excellent,' he enthused. 'They're thinking. They are trying not to antagonise 
the aliens. The helicopters are keeping their distance, too.' 
Benny cocked her head. Over the burbling of the crowd, the wailing of the sirens 
and the ever-present noise of the traffic in the distance, she could hear 
helicopter rotor blades. 
'Good, good.' The Doctor whirled around, scanning the rooftops. 
Bernice looked up. The Martian ship blocked out a quarter of the sky, its stern 
almost, but not quite, disappearing over the horizon. 'This is good?' 
'Well, the Martians have been here half an hour and they haven't wiped us out 
yet - that's got to be a promising sign.' 
'The big ship-mounted Martian sonic cannons take thirty-five minutes to power 
up.' 
The Doctor looked up at the ship and then back down to her. 'Really?' 
She nodded, biting her lip. They were right up against the crash barriers now. 
The chains securing them together were rattling. 
The Doctor bent down to examine the phenomenon. 'Magnetic repulsion. Fascinating 
- a side effect of the magnetic flux that keep that ship afloat, no doubt.' He 
held the nearest padlock still and unfastened it with the sonic screwdriver and 
ushered Benny through the new gap. All this was achieved without drawing any 
attention from either members of the crowd or the nearest policemen. 

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Before she had time to worry about that, they were heading across the Square. 
Like the crowd, the policemen and soldiers were all looking up at the ship. 
Here, they were directly underneath it, watching the winking lights at various 
points along the hull.
One group of policemen was standing right in front of the TARDIS door. Even if 
the Doctor had wanted to get inside he couldn't. It wasn't on the agenda, 
anyway, in fact the Doctor seemed unaware of the presence of his time machine. 
'That's Eve, isn't it?' he asked. Benny followed his line of vision. 



Lord Greyhaven's Aston Martin drew up just outside the Scotland Yard mobile 
command centre. A police officer opened the door for him, a young Army 
lieutenant for his passenger. 
Staines was there already, waiting for him. 
'What is it, Teddy?' he asked, glancing upwards. 
Greyhaven raised a finger to his lips. 'Have you met Miss Evelin Waugh?' 
She was young and blonde, and wearing a clinging silk dress. He remembered her 
from before at the Space Museum. Most of the men there would remember her. 
'You're a lot prettier than your namesake,' the Home Secretary giggled. 
'Gee, thanks,' she replied. She had an American accent. 
'Miss Waugh is a journalist,' Greyhaven said, the merest hint of a warning in 
his tone of voice. 
'Oh, the place is crawling with those,' the Home Secretary joked. 'There's a 
Yankee cameramen over there.' He gestured vaguely towards the outside broadcast 
vans that were massing by the National Portrait Gallery. 
The woman looked up at Lord Greyhaven. 'Brilliant: that's Alan, my cameraman. 
Edward, I've got work to do: I'll see you later,' she told Greyhaven quietly, 
brushing against him as she hurried away. 
'I say, Teddy, have you and she... ?' 
Lord Greyhaven was staring up at the vast belly of the spacecraft. 'Is that 
really the most pressing question on your mind, Staines?' 

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'I asked you what that was before, and you didn't tell me.'
Greyhaven glanced up, nonchalantly. 'That is a Martian spacecraft.' 
'However do you know?' 
Lord Greyhaven looked at him witheringly. 
Staines rounded on him. 'This wasn't the plan, Teddy. The Martians were just 
meant to send back the plans for the equipment in the Mars 97. They weren't 
meant to kill the astronauts in the Orbiter, they certainly weren't meant to 
come here in person.' 
'Why wait four months? And why settle for blueprints? I agreed that it would be 
easier all round if they brought samples of their technology themselves. They 
can provide moral support for our little venture. Don't you want to meet our 
friends from Mars? Besides,' he chuckled, 'they didn't kill the crew of the 
Orbiter, that was a terrible accident.' 
It took the Home Secretary a few moments to decipher Greyhaven's sarcastic tone. 
'You opened the airlocks?' Staines asked, with a mixture of anger and 
incredulity. 'From here, by remote control?' 
He remembered Greyhaven leaning over an instrument panel at Mission Control, to 
shake a man's hand. Had he brushed against one of the controls then? 
Lord Greyhaven chuckled. 'My dear chap, what sort of a fellow do you take me 
for?' 
Staines straightened. 'But why?' 
'They would have died soon anyway. This was the most humane way.' Staines 
imagined the astronauts in space, trying to breathe frozen nothing, millions of 
miles from the nearest human beings. 'But I read that people explode in space. 
The vacuum.' 
'Nonsense,' Greyhaven said dismissively. 'Staines, it needed to be done. We need 
the Orbiter there. Think of it as our insurance policy. Better still, don't 
think about it at all.' 
Greyhaven checked his watch and looked up. 



There was a bellowing noise from the Martian craft, which squealed around 
Trafalgar Square, bouncing of the buildings, making everyone jump. There was 
absolute silence, absolute stillness. After a couple of moments, nothing else 
had happened and the relief from the crowd was audible. A couple of groups began 
laughing. 

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Then the message started. It echoed down from the ship, from a public address 
system, and on a number of radio frequencies:
'WARRIORS UNDER THE BANNER OF THE UNITED KINGDOM HAVE VIOLATED THE TOMB OF OUR 
GREAT MARSHALL KYRUUL OF THE ARGYRE CLAN, UNDER THE SACRED SANDS OF THE MARE 
SIRENUM. THESE CRIMINALS ATTEMPTED TO STEAL THE TREASURES WITHIN. THEIR SHAMEFUL 
ACT IS ONE FOR WHICH THE WHOLE CLAN MUST BE PUNISHED. IN ACCORDANCE WITH OUR 
LAW, ALL TERRITORIES, MINERAL RIGHTS AND THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE CLANS OF THE 
UNITED KINGDOM ARE NOW FORFEIT. THE UNITED KINGDOM IS NOW UNDER THE RULE OF THE 
HEAD OF THE ARGYRE CLAN, THE LORD XZNAAL, AND ALL ITS CITIZENS ARE SUBJECT TO 
MARTIAN FEUDAL LAW. YOU HAVE ONE HOUR TO AGREE TO THESE TERMS. AT THAT TIME, 
YOUR LEADER SHALL COME HERE IN PERSON AND SUBMIT TO OUR REGENCY.' 
There was silence. 
The Doctor squinted up, something on his mind. The crowd was getting louder. 
'The voice... ' he said. 
It hadn't been the usual Martian grunt, it had been beautifully modulated, a 
little quiet, perhaps, the hint of a lisp, but it sounded almost human. 'That's 
because the speaker was in his native atmosphere,' Benny explained. 'He wasn't 
gasping for carbon dioxide.' 
The Doctor turned back to her, his mouth open. 'I know that,' he said, almost 
scathingly, 'what I want to know is where he learnt English. Specifically the 
human names for Martian geographical features on Mars.' 
'Good point.' Benny looked over at him. This Doctor could rush in where angels 
fear to tread, he could drop everything at a moment's notice without a plan or a 
scheme or a hint of a master plan, but that didn't make him a fool. 'Could they 
have monitored human radio transmissions?' 

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The Doctor was staring up at the ship again. 'That's probably it.' The question 
no longer interested him.
'Are you looking for a way in?' she asked. The Martian ship was two hundred feet 
above them, its hull was five-metre thick alloy, there was a gun port every ten 
metres behind which a sonic cannon was powering up. But the Doctor could get in 
anywhere if he wanted to. 
'No,' the Doctor stated. 
Benny's face fell. 'No?' 
He turned to her and grinned, showing all those teeth. 'Why look for something 
you've already found?' 



The emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council sat back and 
listened to a replay of the Martian declaration. One of the members was a great 
deal more agitated than the others. 
'Surely we must seek clarification?' 
The French delegate leant forward and began speaking. The translations took a 
moment to catch up. 'The message is clear, Ambassador Campbell. The Martians' 
only dispute is with "the clans of the United Kingdom".' 
There was a babble of discussion around the huge crescent-shaped table. 
'Does this mean that the Martians are not threatening the human race, only Great 
Britain?' one asked. 
'It would certainly seem so,' another agreed. 
The British ambassador straightened. 'Am I to understand that you are 
considering this a domestic United Kingdom matter?,' he asked incredulously. 
'Are you seriously suggesting that these creatures will stop at targeting my 
country, and that yours will all be safe?' 
'That would certainly seem to be a conclusion that we can draw from the Martian 
declaration.' 
'We have no intention of the whole world being dragged into an interplanetary 
war.' 
'Do you think that the Martians can distinguish between the British and the rest 
of humanity?' 
'You mean they might attack us through ignorance?' 
'Or they might think that we are all part of the United Kingdom.' 
There was further murmuring around the table. 

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After twenty minutes of debate, the United Nations agreed to broadcast a request 
for clarification. They used the radio frequency that the Martians had. The 
Martian response was almost immediate:
'OUR ONLY DISPUTE IS WITH THE CLANS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM. WE HOPE TO LIVE IN 
PEACE WITH ALL THE OTHER RACES OF THE EARTH. HOWEVER, SHOULD OTHER HUMAN CLANS 
ATTEMPT TO ATTACK MARTIAN TERRITORY OR INTERFERE WITH THE INTERNAL AFFAIRS OF 
THE MARTIAN DEPENDENCIES, THEN THIS WILL BE TREATED AS AN ACT OF WAR AND WE WILL 
RESPOND IN THE APPROPRIATE MANNER.' 



The television commentators and their pundits weren't sure what to make of the 
announcement. The relief of those outside the British Isles was tangible, and 
the message of peace was taken as a very encouraging sign. The crowd in 
Trafalgar Square were more ambivalent. Over the objections of the British 
contingent, the European Parliament issued a statement welcoming the Martians, 
and stressing that the EU had no hostile intentions towards 'our Martian 
neighbours'. 
The President of the United States found himself outnumbered by people advising 
him to appease the Martians. Many countries issued statements that renounced 
violence as a general principle, and hoped that the Martians would not resort to 
it. Most didn't make any statement at all, hoping not to draw attention to 
themselves. Across the world, harassed politicians appeared on television 
screens, declaring that their own countries were not under immediate threat, but 
that all was being done to defend their borders if the Martians did attack. 

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Throughout the world, military leave was cancelled, bases were put on full alert 
and units were mobilised. Tensions mounted, and the areas prone to rioting did 
indeed riot. Television commentators from Utah to the Ukraine assured their 
viewers that there appeared to be one Martian ship and it was staying firmly in 
London. Within the hour, the tone had changed to one of wounded pride: why 
hadn't the Martians chosen to come to Paris, New York or Moscow?



Brigadier Bambera had spent the last three-quarters of an hour on the telephone, 
calling up as many senior military men as she could. Most seemed to know that 
UNIT's activities were officially suspended, but in the light of recent events, 
they were talking to her anyway. 
The Martian ship hovered on the video screens, each showing a different TV 
channel, each showing a slightly different angle of the vast spacecraft. All but 
one channel showed the ship itself: ITN had resorted to 'artist's impressions' 
of the aliens. 
While the eyes of the media were on the enemy, the Army were dusting off their 
invasion plans. There was a lot of dust on them. it was over fifty years since 
there had been any realistic possibility that a foreign power would invade 
Britain rather than obliterate it with nukes. During all that time, the British 
Army had kept itself busy with minor skirmishes, training exercises, Northern 
Ireland and peacekeeping for the UN. The theorists and strategists had spent a 
lot of their time running war games, planning what they would do in the unlikely 
event of an invasion of British soil. The computer simulations had proved that 
the war time plans had been broadly along the right lines. 

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It was a simple idea, borrowed from the terrorists, guerrillas and mercenaries 
that the Army had spent its time fighting. Elite soldiers would, as the sexist 
phrase had it, 'kiss their wives and disappear', heading underground to 
carefully prepared safe houses and secret hideouts. Caches of weapons and other 
equipment were buried around the country. These soldiers would continue the 
fight behind enemy lines, helped by carefully-vetted locals with good knowledge 
of the terrain of their area. Each group would operate like a terrorist cell, to 
prevent infiltration. These 'Auxiliary Units' would sabotage bridges and railway 
lines, monitor enemy troop movements, blow up strategic targets.
All around the country, men were kissing their wives goodbye and disappearing. 
Captain Ford was on his way to UNIT HQ in Windmill One-Nine. Because of their 
unique position, the staff at UNIT HQ would liaise with other countries, provide 
an 'underground railway' for men and materials. Ford would remove the 
communications equipment from HQ and take it to the rendezvous point outside 
Windsor. 
Bambera's husband Ancelyn had been in Durham, on a pilgrimage to the tomb of St 
Cuthbert. Now he was heading to Balmoral with an SAS team to evacuate the Queen 
and Prince Phillip. The submarine Prometheus was waiting to take them to safety. 
The Prince of Wales and his sons had been on the royal jet when the Martian ship 
entered the atmosphere. Instead of London, the jet had ended up in Madrid. Other 
members of the royal family were also being accounted for. Ancelyn would be 
going with the Queen to Canada, protecting the rightful sovereign and the 
descendants of the rightful sovereign as his sacred oath demanded. 
Bambera would never get the chance to kiss her husband goodbye. She put the 
phone down. 
'We are with you,' Lethbridge-Stewart said. Alexander Christian nodded his 
consent. 
'With respect, gentlemen, no. Go home to your family, Alistair. We'll manage.' 
Bambera couldn't look them in the eye as she said it. 
'No.' Lethbridge-Stewart said firmly. 'This is our fight, too.' 
She smiled. 'Good.' 

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The Foreign Office was being deluged by messages from around the world, all of 
which welcomed the Martian's peaceful intentions towards the rest of the world. 
The Cubans were the first to welcome the new administration and hope for future 
co-operation. Emergency sessions in parliaments, congresses and palaces around 
the world concluded that a 'wait and see' policy would be most prudent.



Greyhaven consulted his watch. 
'A quarter past eight. It is time.' 
'Time?' 
'With the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary in Washington and the Chancellor 
of the Exchequer in bed with a nasty bout of food poisoning, you're in charge, 
Staines.' 
'M-me?' 
Greyhaven nodded. 'And the Martians did say that they wanted the leader to go up 
in person.' 
'Er... Teddy.' 
'I'll accompany you if you wish, Home Secretary.' 
'You're going up there?' It was Veronica Halliwell, the head of MI5. 
'There's little choice, is there, Director General?' 
'Will you be armed?' she had done her homework. Greyhaven had done his National 
Service, and still practised his marksmanship from time to time. 
'No, thank you, commander. That's a big ship, and one handgun won't make too 
much difference in the lions' den, will it?' 
She nodded. 'As you wish.' 
'Have you raided the UNIT Offices yet?' the Home Secretary demanded. 
'Sir, we need everyone at our disposal here. Besides, it's complicated. UNIT 
facilities have special status, we can't just wade in.' 
'Director General, they have Alexander Christian in there. They are harbouring a 
multiple-murderer. Criminal acts don't get much more clear-cut than that. Now, I 
want you to raid their office, and I want you to do it now.' 
'Sir!' a young soldier was running over with a radiophone. 'It's Washington, 
Home Secretary.' 

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Greyhaven leant over the soldier and unplugged the telephone's battery. 'Oops, 
we seem to be having technical difficulties. It must be interference from the 
Martian ship. Are you coming, Staines?'
'Yes, I suppose so.' 
Greyhaven walked over to his car, and unlocked the boot. He pulled out an Adidas 
sports bag. 
'Are you going to challenge them to a game of squash?' Halliwell asked 
witheringly. 
Greyhaven didn't reply. 
'Get Christian,' Staines ordered her sternly, before he followed Greyhaven 
across. 



'What's going on?' Benny asked. 
A hatch was dilating open on the underside of the craft. The light inside wasn't 
that bright, but it stood in stark contrast to the gloomy metalwork of the rest 
of the ship. The crowd were getting agitated, perhaps thinking that it was a 
weapon of some kind. A black disc appeared in the hatchway, and it began 
descending in a perfectly straight line. 
The Doctor stared up. 'They are sending down a platform. A lift car, I would 
imagine.' He checked his pocket watch. 'Dead on time. The message said that they 
wanted the British leader to surrender in person.' The crowd were pointing and 
muttering. 
Benny was looking down at the ground. 'I don't see the Queen or Mr - Hang on, 
that's the Home Secretary. And that rocket man, er... ' 
'Lord Edward Greyhaven,' the Doctor supplied. 
'Who died and made him boss?' 
The Doctor considered Bernice's question for a moment, before he remembered that 
it was a figure of speech. 
'This is no time for flippancy, Bernice,' he chided her. 
The disc had reached the ground. Lord Greyhaven and the Home Secretary walked 
over and stepped onto it. Before they had stopped moving, the disc was rising 
steadily into the air. There were appreciative gasps from the crowd. 

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The floor closed underneath them, like the iris behind a camera lens, shutting 
off the dizzying aerial view of Central London. Greyhaven and Staines stepped 
down from the magnetic disc.
The chamber they were in was quite pleasant, bland almost. It was large. The 
high ceiling was the first thing that Staines noted. That and the lighting, 
which was a sort of diffuse pink. The room reminded the Home Secretary of the 
Commons Chamber. It was about the same size, and great swathes of a green 
tarpaulin-like material lay neatly folded along the walls. The colour was almost 
the same shade as the benches that lined the Commons. 
'This isn't too bad, is it?' He called over to Greyhaven nervously. Teddy's 
attention was fixed on the only door. Slowly he began walking towards it, that 
sports bag of his in his hand. Staines followed. Around them the air was filled 
with the whirring of mechanisms, the rattling of pipes. The door was almost the 
size of a garage door, and it was made from frosted glass. 
A deathly red light was glowing on the other side, almost like firelight at the 
end of the evening, when only the embers remained. 
Something shifted behind the glass, a great, square shape moving slowly through 
the gloom. A machine of some kind, he thought. It was impossible to see it 
clearly. 
'Do they know we are here, do you think?' Staines felt nervous again. 
The door retracted. 

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Standing framed in the doorway, bathed in red light, was the worst thing that 
Staines had ever seen.
It looked like a barnacle encrusted deep-sea creature, a monster from the 
depths. It hissed, struggling for breath as it dragged itself forwards out from 
a bank of mist. 
It was well over seven feet high and was as broad as Staines was tall, with vast 
shoulders, like an American footballer or a medieval knight. It was a hunchback, 
with a mass of thick plating piled up onto its shoulder blades. It was skin, 
though, not armour. Crocodile skin, with ridges and bumps all over it. The torso 
and stomach were covered in a curved carapace like a tortoise's or turtle's. 
It moved towards them, lumbering on legs as thick as a human torso and bulky, 
flipper-like feet. Wiry green-black hair sprouted from the gaps in the 
armour-plating - tufts of thick fur at the ankles, the elbows and the shoulders. 

Its head was bigger than a motorcycle helmet, was roughly the same shape, and 
looked like it had been carved from a block of stone. Its eyes were red, the 
colour of burning coals, but they were concealed far behind two plates of thick, 
protective glass, like semi-visors. Staines peered up at the face, unsure 
whether what he was looking at was the creature's head or some kind of 
space-helmet. There was a gap in the faceplate below the eyes, and through it, 
softer, gnarled skin was just visible. This parted, revealing two rows of fangs 
packed together between thin lips. A red tongue, forked like a snake, flickered 
over the front teeth. 
Staines screamed.
NEXT WEEK: Meet the Martians. 


