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Benny shrugged. 'It was ten years ago, and I was underground a lot of the time.'

'What about the War?'

Ninety years from now, Earth and Mars would fight the Thousand Day War. Bernice had been born in the twenty-sixth century, and by then the War was ancient history. It was still infamous for its particular brand of brutality: millions of human troops over-ran Mars, driving the natives to the brink of extinction with weapons that had long been banned on Earth. ‘Fighting was mostly concentrated around Olympus Mons - where Jackson City is now.

There weren't any active nests under the Mare Sirenum, and it was on the wrong side of the Vallis Marineris, so it escaped nuclear attack. That's one of the reasons our expedition went there.'

The Doctor pointed at the monitor. 'So the terrain is much the same in the twentieth and twenty-sixth centuries.

The Lander is there. They've just gone underground. So where did they end up? Are they close to where your expedition went?'

Benny nodded. 'They are right in the heart of the Fields of the Dead. Virtually every cavern there has a tomb in it.'

'I thought the Martian Lords were cremated on funeral pyres.'

'Funeral customs change. At one point Marshals were entombed in insulated pyramids. It was a status symbol: water is rare on Mars. The Marshals were frozen inside coffin-sized blocks of ice, then sealed into the crystal spires.'

'So water is a sign of material wealth on Mars. Like the Pharaohs surrounding their mummies with gold?'

'Exactly the same, and the ritual has the same origin.'

'Yes.' The Doctor's eyes were shut as he tried to assemble al the information. Final y, they snapped open and the Doctor swiftly slipped the second disk into the drive.

'Timothy knew there was going to be trouble, but there aren't any clues on that first disk. So he left us two disks.'

The Mission Badge flashed up, along with the caption: SEALED ORDERS. MISSION DIRECTIVES. APPROVED

12/12/96.

'The same information?' Benny asked.

'This was completed three weeks before,' the Doctor muttered. His eyes narrowed. 'More than that: look, originally the Lander was going to go to the Sinus Sabaeus.'

Benny leant over, struggling to remember her Martian geography. 'That's thousands of kilometres away from the Mare Sirenum. I don't know much about it, they aren't of any archaeological interest, in my time it’s one big retirement vil age. The nearest I ever went was the casinoplex at Deucalionis.'

The Doctor rubbed his chin. 'So the landing site was changed, just before the launch, and the astronauts were ordered away from an unpopulated area right into the heart of one jam-packed with subterranean Martian buildings.'

'Wait a minute,' Benny objected, 'We didn't know about the Fields of Death until we got there in 2565, so there's no way anyone in 1997 could know about them.'

The Doctor looked at her. 'You'd think that, wouldn't you? It's something of a coincidence, though.'

'Are you saying that the astronauts knew they would find the tombs?'

The Doctor frowned. 'No. Commander Michaels was genuinely surprised. But someone at Space Centre knew what was going on. Someone who uncovered evidence of Martian civilisation on the Mare Sirenum twenty years ago. They have kept that information secret for a generation. Whoever it is is prepared to kill to keep it a secret.

They killed the man who gave us these disks, and al he seems to know is that the landing site was changed. We have to tell the authorities.'

Benny took a deep breath. 'No-one's going to listen to us while we're murder suspects. I get the feeling that if we end up in a police cel we won't get to cal our lawyers for a very long time.'

40

The Doctor leapt from his seat, flinging his chair back. 'We can cal UNIT!' he shouted.

Benny was on her feet, her finger over her mouth. 'UNIT the top secret organisation?' she whispered.

The Doctor looked crestfal en. 'Yes. They'll have the facilities to analyse the soil samples, too. I think we're getting going to the bottom of this.'

There was a pay phone tucked away in the corner of the cafe.