Doctor Who_ The Dying Days Part 14

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 s.p.a.cecraft 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 s.p.a.ce. 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 travel ed 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 pa.s.s 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.

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 G.o.ds or hunted down as monsters through the centuries.

In the late twentieth century, as the human race began to venture out into s.p.a.ce, they had reached a level of scientific understanding that allowed them to interpret the old legends and superst.i.tions. They also now possessed a level of technology that allowed aircraft and radar to sweep the skies for unidentified flying objects. Alien s.p.a.cecraft 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 cal 'The Real First Contact' was made. Some stil 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.

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 Wildlife at One and and The Cook Report 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. 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 pul ing as much as it as we can, but the word is out.'

'I'm not worried about the d.a.m.n coverage coverage, General, I'm worried by the alien s.p.a.ceship. 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.'

54.'Understood. What do you recommend?'

'Firstly, sir, we need to mobilise the National Guard. We need troops in al 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 wil 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 wil get frustrated. Some of them wil 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.'

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 al seriousness.

They could see the ship properly for the first time.

It took Benny a couple of seconds to realise that the reason the hul 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 seash.e.l.l or a snail, fins like a deep-sea fish.

Despite that, Benny recognised the basic design of the s.p.a.cecraft - 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 doc.u.ments a mil ion years old that were evidence of Martian s.p.a.ce 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 quant.i.ties. 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.

One of her contemporaries had suggested that another reason why the Martians never developed their s.p.a.ce 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 capture such possessions and territory, not to destroy them. The Martians favoured sonic guns and germ warfare, not 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 wil want to a.s.sess 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 s.p.a.ce Museum. Something of a coincidence, otherwise, isn't it?'

55.The ma.s.s 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.

Benny was tal 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.

'Excel ent,' he enthused. 'They're thinking. They are trying not to antagonise the aliens. The helicopters are keeping their distance, too.'

Benny c.o.c.ked 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 This is good?' 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. Al this was achieved without drawing any attention from either members of the crowd or the nearest policemen.

Before she had time to worry about that, they were heading across the Square. Like the crowd, the policemen and soldiers were al 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 pa.s.senger.

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 s.p.a.ce 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 ma.s.sing 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'l 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 bel y of the s.p.a.cecraft. 'Is that real y the most pressing question on your mind, Staines?'

'I asked you what that was before, and you didn't tell me.'

Greyhaven glanced up, nonchalantly. 'That is a Martian s.p.a.cecraft.'

'However do you know?'

Lord Greyhaven looked at him witheringly.

56.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 You opened the airlocks?' 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 s.p.a.ce, trying to breathe frozen nothing, millions of miles from the nearest human beings. 'But I read that people explode in s.p.a.ce. 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 al .'

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 stil ness. After a couple of moments, nothing else had happened and the relief from the crowd was audible. A couple of groups began laughing.

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.