Doctor Who_ The Dying Days - Lance Parkin [43]
'Good work.' He took a couple of the test tubes and put them in his breast pocket.
'Is there any sign of Christian?' the other man asked.
'Not yet, no,' the Home Secretary replied, more than a hint of irritation in his voice. 'He could be a problem. And after all that trouble we've gone to prevent any leaks from the Space Centre.'
'He's too late to do anything now,' the gruff-voiced man grunted. 'Who can stop us now?'
***
Bambera slit open the seal on file CCC and began to read. The sensitivity of the document meant that she was sitting in the 'reading room' of the UNIT HQ records department and that she had been searched to make sure she wasn't carrying a pen or a camera. She was the only person in the building, perhaps in the country, with the security clearance to read it, so she couldn't get some eager young corporal to do this damn research job for her.
The windowless room was little bigger than a cupboard, and was bare apart from a desk and wooden chair that scraped the floor whenever it moved.
The file was quite a fat one compared with the few others that Bambera had read from the seventies. UNIT had been in joint charge of security at the old Space Centre with the Space Security Department at the time of some flap. It took her an hour to establish that one of the early Mars Probes had made contact with an intelligent species on the surface of Mars. Initially, there was something of a misunderstanding, and the BEMs had kidnapped three human astronauts, but after that there had been peaceful contact with them. The business had Lethbridge-Stewart and the Doctor's fingers al over it.
"The aliens returned to their own star system."
They weren't from Mars, then? Bambera found the 'Know Your Enemy' summary.
Subject: Name Unknown.
Planet of Origin: Unknown
Social Structure: Unknown
History: Unknown
There wasn't a photograph or even an artist's impression.
Bambera eventual y found the threat assessment.
"The Ambassadors are thousands of years more advanced than us. It was clear at our last meeting that they are quite capable of destroying al life on this planet, but they chose not to on that occasion. A small team of academics and scientists have made some cultural exchanges with the Ambassadors. One of the few things the team has determined is that the Ambassadors feel that our race is not ready to share the secrets of their advanced science. Further contact is limited by the fact that the Ambassadors are a plutonium-based lifeform. Any direct physical contact with them is lethal to human life. The team's opinion is that we can offer no effective defence against the Ambassadors if they turn hostile. Their ships are several miles long and capable of projecting immeasurably powerful beams of energy."
Something was appended to the document.
"3/6/80. Transmission received from the Ambassadors. 'Our survey is complete. We are leaving this solar system.'
Astronomers report a large object leaving Martian orbit for interstellar space at great speed."
There had been no contact with them since then.
Brigadier Bambera realised that she had wasted the last three hours of her life.
***
Eve had just phoned Mission Control, and apparently they had not demonstrated any of that British politeness. As she told Alan, it was a complete change of policy since this morning, when the Brits had bent over backwards for the news crews - helping to arrange interviews, issuing all the journos with a glossy press pack.
42
Alan had got hold of mugs, T-shirts and even a couple of model kits for his kids. When it had come to interviews and the press conference, they'd answered every question with a handy soundbite.
But when Eve had phoned them to ask for a mission update, the woman at the other end simply read out a curt pre-prepared statement that said nothing except about the landing itself. When Eve had tried to press the point, the woman at the National Space Museum had put the phone down on her.
Alan wasn't too worried: it had saved him a job - their report was