Chapter Eight

The Doctor and Benny stood in silence, catching their breath as the fire raged safely behind the thick metal doors. The metal warped, the paint blistered, the doors rattled on their runners, but they held. The Doctor passed her his handkerchief, and she wiped the blood from her ears.

'What a stroke of luck,' said the Doctor. 'That fire means that the Ice Warriors won't be making any little visits down here in person.'

Twenty feet above them, another section of the building collapsed. And another.

'It also means that we are trapped down here.'

Powerful lights snapped on, twin beams fixing them from the other side of the low-vaulted car park.

'Oh, I wouldn't say that, Mrs Summerfield,' a familiar voice called.

Benny squinted past the source of the sound. The Brigadier was sitting in the driver's seat of Bessie. The light came from the car's headlamps.

They hurried over. 'They wouldn't let me go with the assault team, so I stayed down here. This level was designed to withstand a nuclear blast - judging by the tactics of that space rocket the gunnery officer doesn't even know we have a basement.'

'He's covered us with tonnes of rubble, but that just means we're even better shielded,' the Doctor informed her with a grin.

'And buried in,' Benny repeated.

It was the Brigadier's turn to smile. 'Mrs Summerfield, when we built this place twenty-five years ago, we didn't forget to build a door. There's a way down to the Northern Line so wide you can drive a tank through it.'

He glanced over at the pair of Chieftains lurking in the corner, then back at the Doctor.

'In the circumstances, I think that Bessie here might be a better choice. We need speed. '