Chapter Six

'How do you explain the fact that that man is breathing nitrogen and he isn't dead?'

'The Martian atmosphere is breathable. Thin but breathable. Why do you think the British government would invest billions of pounds trying to set up a colony on a planet without a breathable atmosphere?'

'It says that here that they will terraform it.'

'Alan, listen to what you are saying. Even heard of the ozone hole? Mars' atmosphere is one big ozone hole. If British scientists could fix an ozone hole and turn the main greenhouse gas into lovely fresh oxygen, they'd fix the atmosphere we've got down here first.'

Alan ignored him. 'The Mars 97's a fake, like that Di video last year. The whole Mars Project is just another crummy British sci-fi drama. This is the story of the decade.'

A billion people had seen those pictures; he couldn't be the only one to spot that the astronaut hadn't done his suit up properly. He couldn't be the only cameraman who'd spent the last few hours staring at the picture.

He couldn't wait for Eve.

They were in the briefing room deep in the heart of the UNIT Offices in London. Bambera had ushered them all down here, where her senior officers - two captains, two sergeants - were waiting.

Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart looked around the room. It was a far cry from his day when budgets were tight and he, Benton and Yates could solve the world's problems with a mug of cocoa each and a telephone between them. This was just the Whitehall Office - heaven knew what UNIT HQ looked like now.

A long, black conference table ran the length of the room. The far wall was a bank of video screens of various sizes. Scrolling readouts, video pictures and computer graphics were constantly flashing up and renewing themselves. The Doctor and Mrs Summerfield had supplied some of the information: computer disks with Mars data, given to them by some chap at the Space Centre. Two sets of near-identical data were flashing all over the place. It was all terribly confusing.