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By Root 698 0

her earlier visit. It was a lovely day, but it was frightening how people were moving around without, it seemed, a care in the world. For one mad moment Liz wanted to stop the car, get out and shout, 'The aliens are coming! Stay in your homes!' But that would be rank hypocrisy.' she was as implicated in the wall of official denial as the military and the police. At least she had something practical to do, a role to play in the defeat of the invisible menace. But occasionally she envied the people with mundane jobs, the women pushing children around the shops.

You're getting old, she told herself.

Soon she was driving through the campus, a mass of green on the edge of the city. Young people, seemingly barely out of school, walked by in blazers and chatted on stationary bikes. One lecturer seemed to have taken his students out towards the river that ran through the grounds of the university college, and was holding forth, his arms flapping in excitement. Liz was sure she recognised him from Sunday night's party, before he'd rushed off to throw up.

Liz's recollection was rudely interrupted by a gleaming Mercedes that bore down on her at great speed, its wheels a blur of smoking rubber.

'What the -' she exclaimed, wrenching the wheel to one side.

She hadn't counted on the ditch that edged the driveway being quite so deep. The car tipped on to its side, forward momentum pushing Liz towards the windscreen, and then rolled over.

With a shattering crash Liz finally succumbed to unconsciousness.

Mike Yates drove with the Doctor in Bessie to the south coast and the site of the Redborough '70 festival. This time the Doctor hadn't bothered to try to contact Viscount Rose. It didn't seem to be worth the effort.

'Radiation may indeed hold the key,' said the Doctor as the car reached the seafront. The area was still covered in the litter of the festival and the Doctor shook his head at the mess that surrounded them. 'They claim to love the planet, but they defile it.' he said sadly, stepping out of the car to pick up a discarded lemonade bottle. 'I'm not unsympathetic to their aims. I believe in peace and freedom as much as the next man. But quite what that has to do with making such a mess is beyond me.'

Mike shrugged. 'More important things to worry about?'

he suggested.

The Doctor hauled a large oxygen tank from the back seat of Bessie. must say,' he said, removing his cloak, was surprised that Captain Shuskin agreed to my coming down here quite so readily. Not the sort of thing the Brigadier would have gone for, I'm sure.'

Yates snorted. expect she had her reasons.'

'Well, whatever they were.' said the Doctor, 'I'm grateful to her. Now, as I say, if I can get similar radiation readings to those we found at Stonehenge then I'll be able to predict where the Waro are likely to strike next.'

'How?' asked Mike, reasonably.

'Ways and means, Captain,' replied the Doctor as, completely without embarrassment, he removed most of his clothing and poured himself into a bright orange wet suit.

'You sure you'll be all right down there?'

'Captain Yates,' said the Doctor as he strapped the oxygen tank in to his backlit have you know that I taught Jacques Cousteau everything he knows.' He paused and adjusted his goggles. '1 low's Benton by the way?'

'Recovering. Tough as old boots is the sergeant.'

'Good,' said the Doctor. 'I'll be back up in twenty minutes at most.'

'I'll be here,' said Yates as the Doctor waded into the English Channel.

The Doctor chuckled as he began to swim through the water.

Jacques Cousteau! Jacques Brel, more like. Humans, so gullible to someone with the storyteller's knack. Mind you, there was that time during his first incarnation when he had fished the coral reefs off the Santa Cruz islands...

He dived deeper, his eyes gradually becoming accustomed to the gloom. He followed the seabed for some time, all the while pausing to check the Geiger counter secured to the belt of his wet suit. He began to make out a great dark object in front of him. From a distance it was like an underwater television