Doctor Who_ The Dying Days Part 10

The Doctor frowned. 'I know that. I was there, too. That's why we're phoning him.'

'So don't you think there's a good chance that his line will be tapped?'

The Doctor's shoulders had slumped, like a child who'd just been told he couldn't have an ice cream. 'Yes,' he conceded.

'I'm sorry, but we can't get in touch with him. They've seen both of us. We can't risk implicating him. They could kill him.'

Suddenly the Doctor's sad eyes were wide open. 'The other number, what a stroke of luck!'

He dashed across the room and flopped in front of an unused terminal, straightening out the parchment. He began tapping out the number.

'Yes, Prime Minister. No, everything is running very smoothly in your absence. Everything is going to plan. How are our American cousins? Excellent. Talk to you tomorrow. Goodbye.'

Staines pa.s.sed the handset to his PPS, who replaced it. 'That was the Prime Minister.'

'Yes, Home Secretary,' the civil servant replied understandingly.

'Just checking up to make sure you were running his country properly?' the gruff-voiced man in the trench coat asked. He and his colleague had arrived halfway through the conversation. He was holding the samples case.

Staines grimaced. 'Something like that, yes. As you heard, I told him that everything was going to plan.'

All four men in the room laughed.

'Won't NASA be monitoring the transmissions from Mars?' the PPS asked. 'They'll know about the Lander.'

The gruff-voiced man chuckled. 'Over the years, we've got the hang of jamming the lads at Cape Canaveral.

They'll be getting signals that they think are from Mars.'

'Frightfully advanced technology, Simon,' Staines a.s.sured him.

'Actually, Home Secretary, the technology's been around since the seventies. We developed it at the time of the Viking missions and it's stood us in good stead since then. Remember the Mars Observer a couple of years ago?'

Staines didn't. 'The upshot is that the Americans don't know about what happened to either the Lander or the Orbiter.'

'The Orbiter?' the gruff-voiced man said.

'Yes, there was a terrible accident with the airlocks. The whole crew was killed.'

41.The other man shifted uncomfortably. 'But the plan was to - '

'It was an accident,' the Home Secretary snapped. 'I regret losing any more astronauts than we had to, and I appreciate that it makes things more complicated. I also regret having Alexander Christian running around the country terrorising people. The plan will still go ahead.'

'But without the Martian artefacts - '

'But we have come too far to stop now. The alien technology would have been nice, it would have cut some corners, but we can still achieve our objectives without them.'

The Home Secretary took the sample case from the big man and checked it.

'Good work.' He took a couple of the test tubes and put them in his breast pocket.

'Is there any sign of Christian?' the other man asked.

'Not yet, no,' the Home Secretary replied, more than a hint of irritation in his voice. 'He could be a problem. And after all that trouble we've gone to prevent any leaks from the s.p.a.ce Centre.'

'He's too late to do anything now,' the gruff-voiced man grunted. 'Who can stop us now?'

Bambera slit open the seal on file CCC and began to read. The sensitivity of the doc.u.ment meant that she was sitting in the 'reading room' of the UNIT HQ records department and that she had been searched to make sure she wasn't carrying a pen or a camera. She was the only person in the building, perhaps in the country, with the security clearance to read it, so she couldn't get some eager young corporal to do this d.a.m.n research job for her.

The windowless room was little bigger than a cupboard, and was bare apart from a desk and wooden chair that sc.r.a.ped the floor whenever it moved.

The file was quite a fat one compared with the few others that Bambera had read from the seventies. UNIT had been in joint charge of security at the old s.p.a.ce Centre with the s.p.a.ce Security Department at the time of some flap. It took her an hour to establish that one of the early Mars Probes had made contact with an intelligent species on the surface of Mars. Initially, there was something of a misunderstanding, and the BEMs had kidnapped three human astronauts, but after that there had been peaceful contact with them. The business had Lethbridge-Stewart and the Doctor's fingers al over it.

"The aliens returned to their own star system."

They weren't from Mars, then? Bambera found the 'Know Your Enemy' summary.

Subject: Name Unknown.

Planet of Origin: Unknown Social Structure: Unknown History: Unknown There wasn't a photograph or even an artist's impression.

Bambera eventual y found the threat a.s.sessment.

"The Amba.s.sadors are thousands of years more advanced than us. It was clear at our last meeting that they are quite capable of destroying al life on this planet, but they chose not to on that occasion. A small team of academics and scientists have made some cultural exchanges with the Amba.s.sadors. One of the few things the team has determined is that the Amba.s.sadors feel that our race is not ready to share the secrets of their advanced science. Further contact is limited by the fact that the Amba.s.sadors are a plutonium-based lifeform. Any direct physical contact with them is lethal to human life. The team's opinion is that we can offer no effective defence against the Amba.s.sadors if they turn hostile. Their ships are several miles long and capable of projecting immeasurably powerful beams of energy."

Something was appended to the doc.u.ment.

"3/6/80. Transmission received from the Amba.s.sadors. 'Our survey is complete. We are leaving this solar system.'

Astronomers report a large object leaving Martian orbit for interstellar s.p.a.ce at great speed."

There had been no contact with them since then.

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

Eve had just phoned Mission Control, and apparently they had not demonstrated any of that British politeness. As she told Alan, it was a complete change of policy since this morning, when the Brits had bent over backwards for the news crews - helping to arrange interviews, issuing all the journos with a glossy press pack.

42.Alan had got hold of mugs, T-shirts and even a couple of model kits for his kids. When it had come to interviews and the press conference, they'd answered every question with a handy soundbite.

But when Eve had phoned them to ask for a mission update, the woman at the other end simply read out a curt pre-prepared statement that said nothing except about the landing itself. When Eve had tried to press the point, the woman at the National s.p.a.ce Museum had put the phone down on her.

Alan wasn't too worried: it had saved him a job - their report was now complete, without the need to tape an update. It would be ready for the satellite uplink in five minutes.

Eve was on the phone to Lord Greyhaven, chatting to him as if they were old High School pals. The way she was twirling the cord of the phone around her finger only made her look more like an excited schoolgirl. Final y, she put the phone down and hurried over.

'I have to love you and leave you. Lord Greyhaven wants to talk to me about this feature.' She paused for effect.

'Over dinner.'

'Hey, I'l come along, discuss some shots with him,' he joked.

'You'l be OK, won't you?' she asked, with a serious expression on her face.

'Sure - I'm sure I'll survive on my own here, even if there are only five TV channels. I might check out that Thai place round the corner from the hotel, I hear it's real good.'

'Don't wait up!' she called, scooping up her handbag and almost running out the door. She almost b.u.mped into an unkempt young man who sauntered into the suite. He took Alan by the hand.

'American news network, right?'

'Yeah, hi.' Alan stood up.

'My name's Oswald. Have you noticed yet?'

'Noticed what?'

'Run the VT. Look closely this time.'

Alan shrugged and played back the report again. As the astronauts began jumping around the surface, something caught his eye. He paused the picture and stared at the screen.

'It can't be ...'

'Yes it can.'

Alan switched on the printer and ran off a screen grab.

'Alistair, darling, you have a new email message.'

The Brigadier brightened. 'I'll be right there,' he cal ed up the stairs. 'Be back in a moment,' he told Christian.

Lethbridge-Stewart climbed the stairs, a little more stiffly than once he would have, and found Doris sitting in her study, surrounded by her bookcases. The light in here was excel ent, and that was important when she spent so long staring at that computer screen. The sun shone through her hair, and she looked lovely. The mood was broken somewhat by the strains of the Neighbours theme tune coming from the little portable set that Doris kept up here.

He clapped his hands together. 'Where's my message then, Doris?' His wife might get a dozen messages a day from her office, other companies and fellow dwellers on the Internet, but the Brigadier considered himself fortunate if he got one message a week.

Doris got out of her seat for him. 'In your folder, as always.'

'Right you are.' He reached out for the mouse and used it to move the arrow on the screen until it was over the right place. He pressed the little b.u.t.ton on top of the mouse.

'Double-click,' Doris prompted.

'I know,' the Brigadier said irritably, correcting his mistake. It was a little awkward with his hands.

The message came up. Alistair might have gradually been losing his other faculties, but his eyesight was still pin-sharp.

' "Encrypted File"?' the Brigadier asked, 'Is this from the UN?'

Doris shook her head. 'Not necessarily. Quite a lot of businesses scramble their messages, and virtually everyone has access to the software.'

'Can we decode it?'

43.'The computer's already done that for you, look. Who's "Bernice Summerfield", then?' his wife asked, 'An old flame?'

'No skeletons in the cupboard there, Doris. Miss Summerfield is a friend of the Doctor's from a long time ago. This message comes from him.'

'Really? Not an axe-murderer, then?'

The Brigadier felt his stomach churn.

'Alistair, I've just been watching the news. That's Alexander Christian downstairs, for heaven's sake.'

'Lex was in the Scots Guards with me. When I was promoted to Brigadier, he was made Colonel in my place. He's a bril iant pilot, one of the best tacticians I've ever met. I wanted him in UNIT, but the s.p.a.ce Service made a move for him first.'

'You trust him?'

'Yes.'

'Then I trust him. I'm going to hide our axe, though.' Doris put her hand on his shoulder. 'I trust you, darling, I'm sure you've got your reasons for bringing him here, I just wish that you'd told me.'

Lethbridge-Stewart nodded. 'I'm sorry. This message is more bad news. It looks as if the Doctor's got himself into a bit of a sc.r.a.pe and he needs my help.'

'Where is he?'

'London. Lex and I had better meet him there, straight away.'

'So you won't be home for dinner?'

Alistair kissed her on the cheek. 'I'm afraid England needs me.'

44.

Chapter Six.

Close Encounters