Chapter Three

Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart moved a little closer, became a little warier. 'Good morning, Lex,' he replied finally, when they were ten feet apart.

'You didn't call the police?'

The Brigadier straightened. 'When you telephoned I gave you my word that I wouldn't. Not until I came to hear what you have to say. You used to be one of my men. I owe a fellow Guardsman that much.' His hands were deep in his coat pockets.

'Are you carrying a gun?'

'Wouldn't you be?'

Christian laughed, holding his hands away from his body. 'I'm not,' he answered.

Lethbridge-Stewart couldn't see the humour of the situation. 'Why did you call me?'

Alexander Christian bit his lip. 'Because you are the only person in the world that I can trust. Something's going to happen, Alistair. On Mars and here in Britain. Something you have to help me stop.'

At the main entrance of the National Space Museum, the doors were being opened. The VIPs invited to attend at Mission Control itself were going through an adjacent door, where their invitations were being carefully checked. They'd pass through a couple of other security points before going below ground level to their social gathering.

Without invitations, the Doctor and Benny weren't going to be able to get in. At least not through the front door. So, they joined a coach party and were herded through the public entrance, past the lobby and into the first of the public galleries. The hall was filled with display cases full of bulky space suits. The tour guide hadn't noticed them join the edge of the group, she was too busy fielding questions about how astronauts went to the toilet and whether the boy astronauts ever had sex with the girl astronauts. Benny found it reassuring that amidst state-of-the-art technology and on the brink of interplanetary conquest, the human race still had its priorities right.