Doctor Who_ The Dying Days - Lance Parkin [54]
The VDU rippled, then the computer tried to reset itself. Every other machine in the Café was bleeping as they rebooted. Doug looked around at the denizens of his Internet Café, all of whom were glaring at him as though the freak electrical surge was his fault.
‘The end of Civilisation,’ he chuckled.
***
Eve Waugh often woke in an unfamiliar bed.
This was the first time she had found herself in a married man's room wearing nothing but a ten-thousand-dollar necklace. It was the first time she'd slept with a member of the House of Lords. It was the first time for a long time that she'd shared a bed with anyone. What would her mother think?
Although the curtains were drawn, she could see that it was stil only the early evening outside.
Edward had risen and dressed while she dozed. She was dimly aware of him getting out of the bed, kissing her shoulder as he left. Ten minutes ago? She could hear him outside in the living room, boiling a kettle.
Eve sat up, brushing her chest where the segments of the necklace had dug little marks into her skin. She checked her watch as she scooped it up from the bedside table. It was seven in the evening. She'd been asleep for a couple of hours. The night was still young.
Edward's bathrobe was hanging up by the bed. Eve stepped over to it. The carpet felt as worn as it looked. She toyed with the idea of putting the robe on. It smelt of his aftershave. She decided not to wear it. If it was seven, his staff had gone home, and besides they'd proved very discreet. So she walked through to where he was, wearing nothing but her new necklace and her watch.
Edward was standing at the window, looking out over the Thames. He was immaculate in his wool suit, he'd even brushed his hair and fitted the handkerchief to his jacket pocket. As she walked in, he turned to face her. She hardly saw his reaction to her.
There was a UFO coming up the Thames. She ran over to the window, pressing her palms to the glass. Five storeys up, she got a better view of the alien machine than most. It looked like... it didn't look like anything from Earth.
Eve stared up into the twilight sky and tried to fit the object into her own frame of reference. There was a resemblance to a Civil War ironclad, its prow reminded her of the head of a swordfish. It was built from a dark metal, like cast iron, but it glittered. The portholes looked like a fly's compound eyes, and it was possible to see through the smoky glass that the interior was lit in languid red, like emergency lighting. Something was shifting around in there: dark, diffracted shapes that were impossible to interpret. It was vast.
It was fol owing the course of the river, heading upstream. It barely cleared Tower Bridge and passed over HMS
Belfast on the river. It was possible to guess its size now it was coming alongside the Greyhaven Building. It eclipsed Guys Hospital and London Bridge station, so it was larger than the two combined. That made it a kilometre long, perhaps two hundred metres broad. A dozen times bigger than a Jumbo Jet.
Edward placed a hand on her bare shoulder. 'It's heading across the city. Get dressed. We have to get to Mission Control,' he said softly.
52
Police cars were racing through London.
It was so large that it was visible right across the city. The pavements, the parks and the rooftops were full of people staring up at it, trying to work out what it was. Loudmouths were proclaiming it to be a publicity stunt for a movie, a hot air balloon, a Jeremy Beadle wind-up. No-one was listening to them.
EastEnders vanished from ten million television screens, replaced by a live feed from the roof of the BBC. The picture jumped around a bit at first: there was no commentary. There were dozens of people up there, all looking upwards at an object in the sky. Some were pointing, others were