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'I asked you what that was before, and you didn't tell me.'

Greyhaven glanced up, nonchalantly. 'That is a Martian spacecraft.'

'However do you know?'

Lord Greyhaven looked at him witheringly.

56

Staines rounded on him. 'This wasn't the plan, Teddy. The Martians were just meant to send back the plans for the equipment in the Mars 97. They weren't meant to kill the astronauts in the Orbiter, they certainly weren't meant to come here in person.'

'Why wait four months? And why settle for blueprints? I agreed that it would be easier all round if they brought samples of their technology themselves. They can provide moral support for our little venture. Don't you want to meet our friends from Mars? Besides,' he chuckled, 'they didn't kill the crew of the Orbiter, that was a terrible accident.'

It took the Home Secretary a few moments to decipher Greyhaven's sarcastic tone. ' You opened the airlocks?'

Staines asked, with a mixture of anger and incredulity. 'From here, by remote control?'

He remembered Greyhaven leaning over an instrument panel at Mission Control, to shake a man's hand. Had he brushed against one of the controls then?

Lord Greyhaven chuckled. 'My dear chap, what sort of a fellow do you take me for?'

Staines straightened. 'But why?'

'They would have died soon anyway. This was the most humane way.' Staines imagined the astronauts in space, trying to breathe frozen nothing, millions of miles from the nearest human beings. 'But I read that people explode in space. The vacuum.'

'Nonsense,' Greyhaven said dismissively. 'Staines, it needed to be done. We need the Orbiter there. Think of it as our insurance policy. Better still, don't think about it at al .'

Greyhaven checked his watch and looked up.

***

There was a bellowing noise from the Martian craft, which squealed around Trafalgar Square, bouncing of the buildings, making everyone jump. There was absolute silence, absolute stil ness. After a couple of moments, nothing else had happened and the relief from the crowd was audible. A couple of groups began laughing.

Then the message started. It echoed down from the ship, from a public address system, and on a number of radio frequencies:

'WARRIORS UNDER THE BANNER OF THE UNITED KINGDOM HAVE VIOLATED THE TOMB OF OUR

GREAT MARSHALL KYRUUL OF THE ARGYRE CLAN, UNDER THE SACRED SANDS OF THE MARE

SIRENUM. THESE CRIMINALS ATTEMPTED TO STEAL THE TREASURES WITHIN. THEIR SHAMEFUL ACT

IS ONE FOR WHICH THE WHOLE CLAN MUST BE PUNISHED. IN ACCORDANCE WITH OUR LAW, ALL

TERRITORIES, MINERAL RIGHTS AND THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE CLANS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM

ARE NOW FORFEIT. THE UNITED KINGDOM IS NOW UNDER THE RULE OF THE HEAD OF THE ARGYRE

CLAN, THE LORD XZNAAL, AND ALL ITS CITIZENS ARE SUBJECT TO MARTIAN FEUDAL LAW. YOU HAVE

ONE HOUR TO AGREE TO THESE TERMS. AT THAT TIME, YOUR LEADER SHALL COME HERE IN PERSON

AND SUBMIT TO OUR REGENCY.'

There was silence.

The Doctor squinted up, something on his mind. The crowd was getting louder.

'The voice... ' he said.

It hadn't been the usual Martian grunt, it had been beautiful y modulated, a little quiet, perhaps, the hint of a lisp, but it sounded almost human. 'That's because the speaker was in his native atmosphere,' Benny explained. 'He wasn't gasping for carbon dioxide.'

The Doctor turned back to her, his mouth open. 'I know that,' he said, almost scathingly, 'what I want to know is where he learnt English. Specifically the human names for Martian geographical features on Mars.'

'Good point.' Benny looked over at him. This Doctor could rush in where angels fear to tread, he could drop everything at a moment's notice without a plan or a scheme or a hint of a master plan, but that didn't make him a fool. 'Could they have monitored human radio transmissions?'

The Doctor was staring up at the ship again. 'That's probably it.' The question no longer interested him.

'Are you looking for a way in?' she asked. The Martian ship was two hundred feet above them, its hul was five-metre thick alloy, there was a gun port