Chapter Seven

Throughout the world, military leave was cancelled, bases were put on full alert and units were mobilised. Tensions mounted, and the areas prone to rioting did indeed riot. Television commentators from Utah to the Ukraine assured their viewers that there appeared to be one Martian ship and it was staying firmly in London. Within the hour, the tone had changed to one of wounded pride: why hadn't the Martians chosen to come to Paris, New York or Moscow?

Brigadier Bambera had spent the last three-quarters of an hour on the telephone, calling up as many senior military men as she could. Most seemed to know that UNIT's activities were officially suspended, but in the light of recent events, they were talking to her anyway.

The Martian ship hovered on the video screens, each showing a different TV channel, each showing a slightly different angle of the vast spacecraft. All but one channel showed the ship itself: ITN had resorted to 'artist's impressions' of the aliens.

While the eyes of the media were on the enemy, the Army were dusting off their invasion plans. There was a lot of dust on them. it was over fifty years since there had been any realistic possibility that a foreign power would invade Britain rather than obliterate it with nukes. During all that time, the British Army had kept itself busy with minor skirmishes, training exercises, Northern Ireland and peacekeeping for the UN. The theorists and strategists had spent a lot of their time running war games, planning what they would do in the unlikely event of an invasion of British soil. The computer simulations had proved that the war time plans had been broadly along the right lines.