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'And I've spent all day telling them that it isn't a bomb. I don't know... I'd swear that there was something inside it moving about inside it.

The Doctor smiled at him. 'Oh, you're quite right. It's not a bomb. I should say it's some kind of transport.'

Ace came over from the window and peered over his shoulder at the picture. 'A ship you mean? Looks a bit weedy.'

'Simple but efficient. A shuttle. A homing pod of some kind. Perhaps an escape vessel.'

McBride found his curiosity being poked with a stick.

'German, you think?'

The Doctor lowered the paper and peered over the top at McBride with those brilliantgrey eyes of his. 'Alien.'

'What...?'

'From another planet.'

McBride looked pained and pulled himself out of the chair. 'Are you crazy? Get out of here.' He crossed to one of the filing cabinets, opened it, and began to leaf through a selection of clean shirts.

The Doctor placed the paper on the desk and leaned back in the chair, staring out of the window. 'And, of course, it's an empty vessel. You see the problem?'

Ace looked puzzled. 'They make the most noise?'

The Doctor waggled his hands at her in irritation. 'No, no, no.' He paused, and McBride turned from the filing cabinet to see the grim smile on his face. 'Whatever was inside it is now running around London.

Peddler was still in his office when Rosemary was leaving. She poked her head around the door, shocked at the state of her normally immaculate employer. 'Are you all right, Dr Peddler?'

He looked up through tearfilled eyes. 'Hm? Oh, yes, thank you, Rosemary. Lock up, would you? I'm going to be some time.'

He smiled weakly at her as she pulled the office door closed. She hurried through the reception area, locked the front door of the building and scurried away into the East End, not knowing what was going on, and not wanting to know.

For more than an hour Peddler sat at his desk, turning Wall's card over and over in his hand. There was no name on it, just a number. A London number. He reached for the telephone on his desk and dialled.

The phone at the other end was answered quickly: 'Wall.

'Wall ,'

'Have you changed your mind?'

'I...' Peddler took a deep breath and sat in his plush leather swivel chair. He looked across the ordered landscape of his mahogany desk his empireinminiature. Nothing was left now.

'No.' He was suddenly resolved. 'Damn you, Wall. Never.

It's obscene! Do what you want with me. You won't find me such an easy target.'

'No?'

There was a click and the line went dead. Peddler replaced the receiver.

A faint noise made him start, and he crossed over to the open window. The yard below him was silent and empty. He pulled the window shut, making sure that the lock was tight.

He crossed to the office door and locked that too. Happy that he was secure inside his office, he settled into one of the chairs and poured himself another drink.

Suddenly something smashed through the window, showering the desk with glass. There was a hole the size of a brick was in the pane. Peddler's terror evaporated into anger.

Was petty vandalism all that Wall and his heavies could threaten him with?

Slamming his drink down on to the desk, he crossed to the window. There was something on the floor in the shadows. He reached for it, puzzled. His puzzlement turned back to pure terror as he realised what it was.

A desperate scream welled up in his throat as the thing came at him a scream that was lost in the sounds of the airraid sirens starting up, as the German bombers crossed the coast once again for their nightly attack on London.

***

The Doctor's ears pricked up as the first notes of the sirens reached him. Ace's face lit up, and she bounded across the office to the hat stand. McBride watched as she rummaged in the capacious pockets of her jacket, pulled out a small black box and bounded back to the window. As she slid the front of the box open, McBride saw the glint of a lens, and realised that the device was a small camera. He experienced