Chapter Six

Half a world away, the Prime Minister checked his tie in the mirror.

This was going to be a big speech. There had been a lot of uncertainty for the last couple of years. But with the British and American elections out of the way, things were going to settle down for a while. This speech would set the tone for Anglo-American relations, and he wanted to grab the imagination with it, not just say the same old things about 'special relationships'.

The Prime Minister always got nervous before a speech, whether he was addressing the United Nations or the Women's Institute, and it had become a habit to come to the washroom, splash his face with water and check his appearance. The wash basins in the White House were relatively lavish affairs: large and spotlessly clean.

The washroom door swung noisily open. It was his bodyguard.

'Is everything all right?' the Prime Minister asked, reaching for the hand towel.

The bodyguard shot him twice, once in the chest and once in the back of the head.

Alarms were sounding around the UNIT Offices. Bambera's phone rang. The Doctor watched silently as she picked it up and listened for a couple of seconds before replacing the receiver.

'Corporal, patch through the datafeed from Skywatch One.'

That was the radar station in Essex that kept its dish pointing upwards. Twenty years ago it had been able to detect an artificial object a million miles away. Who knows what its range was now?

A roughly cylindrical object was in plain view, and no more than 200,000 miles away. It was moving fast across the screen.

The Doctor leapt to his feet. 'We're too late!' he gasped.

'It is now on a direct heading for Earth,' the Corporal announced.

The Doctor stared straight at Bambera, pointing at the screen. 'Your people want proof? That is pretty compelling evidence, I would say.'

Lethbridge-Stewart turned to face his old friend. 'Doctor, you said that we had two days.'