Doctor Who_ The Dying Days - Lance Parkin [32]
'All right, Lex. Tell me.'
'They buried me, Alistair. They buried me for over twenty years. I'm not mad. I didn't kill my crew.'
'I saw the photographs.'
31
'Fakes. You didn't see the bodies, did you?'
'No, whyever should I have done? What about the radio messages?'
'What messages, old chap?'
'You ranting and raving. A radio ham picked one of them up and sold them to the American television stations.'
There was a pause, the silence broken by the sound of a helicopter in the distance. Both men looked up at it.
'The radio antenna was destroyed in the attack. I couldn't broadcast. They were fakes, too. That's a police helicopter, Alistair, they're coming for me. We have to go.'
'We'll go when I say so. What do you mean "attack"?'
Christian turned to him, looked him square in the eye and without hesitating said, 'My crew were murdered on Mars. Not by me.'
'Cosmonauts? Are you telling me now that the Russians got to Mars?'
'Worse.'
'The Americans?'
'Worse.'
'Give me a straight answer, please Lex.'
'My crew were killed by Martians.' Alexander Christian paused. 'I was the only survivor. I ran back to the capsule and launched it, leaving behind the bodies of my crew. I radioed Earth, warned them about what I'd seen. And when I got back I was arrested and thrown into a mental institution.' He took a deep breath. 'Do you know how difficult it is to get out of a mental ward when you have to convince two doctors that you are sane, but you're too stubborn to let them hear what they want? I did see a Martian city. I've never doubted it for twenty years, not once.
Of course they think that I'm mad. You have to help me convince the government that there are aliens out there.
But you think I'm mad, too, don't you?' He looked up at Alistair again, frowning. 'You don't think I'm mad. Why not?'
'The British government has known about the existence of extraterrestrial life for over a century. Twenty years ago I was the commanding officer of a United Nations task force that tried to contain alien incursions. Describe these Martians,' the Brigadier ordered quietly.
***
The scientists at Mission Control watched helplessly as the picture and sound continued to break up. In between the bursts of static and the shouts of the astronauts there were just impressions that couldn't be assembled into a coherent narrative:
Hissing.
The sound of a visor cracking.
Red eyes, looming over them, burning like hot coals.
One of the torch beams snapping off.
A grunting, barking sound al around.
A claw like a giant crab's.
The camera lurching around.
Great slabs of green detaching themselves from the walls.
A woman's screams, cut short.
A pulsing sound, like air folding in on itself.
The picture and sound went dead.
***
David Staines tried to take a step back. He took a deep breath and turned to see what Lord Greyhaven was doing.
No-one else in the room was looking at Greyhaven, and why would they when they had so much to do? The former Minister of Science was standing at the back of the Mission Control room, and surely his expression would be the one of horror worn by everyone else in the room. But no. He stood impassively, watching the screen as though it were some science fiction blockbuster. Al his plans were in ruins, but he stood there like a rock.
The scientists were shouting their jargon:
'I've lost lifesigns on all four of them, sir.'
'The camera on the Lander just went off-line.'
'I've lost telemetry on the Lander.'
'Lander transponder dead.'
'They're dead, or else the signal is completely blocked.'
'There isn't anything else.'
'Re-establish contact with the Command Module,' Greyhaven suggested softly to the scientist who was manning the post immediately in front of them. Before his government positions, Teddy had been a captain of industry. Now all that authority was asserting itself.
The loudspeaker began crackling. Simultaneously, data that had been collected and