Chapter Three

'The crew of Mars Probe 13. Alexander Christian, Albert Fitzwilliam and Madeline Goodfellow. Christian shared quarters with Fitzwilliam, he was the sometime lover of Goodfellow. They had been friends for nearly five years. This is what he did to them.'

The inside of a space capsule, in full colour. Blood smeared over the chrome and plastic, two bodies in the centre of the picture, their chests split open exposing glistening organs, their eyes missing. Behind them a bank of monitors had been smashed, the computer panels had been smashed apart.

'As he left Mars, thirty-two weeks into the Mars 13 mission he was commanding, Alexander Christian, hero of the British space programme, took a fire axe and did that to his best friends. For eight months, he sat among the blood and filth and smashed equipment. Every day, at nine o'clock GMT precisely, he would send messages to mission control. These were little more than rants, littered with swear words and Biblical allusions.

'The messages were never released, of course, but one of the American networks managed to intercept one. This is what they broadcast of it.' She pressed the tape recorder button.

'Had to die. Had to -bleep- die. World -bleep-. -bleep-.' She pressed the 'stop' button.

'Well, you get the gist. At no point did he offer explanations, at no point did he talk to the psychologists or negotiators on the ground. After eight months, his capsule automatically splashed down in the North Atlantic. The HMS Sheffield was waiting for him, and he was arrested by armed sailors. At a court martial held in camera, Alexander Christian was committed to a top security mental institution, with the unanimous recommendation being that he should never be released. The thirteen Mars missions cost the British taxpayer nearly five billion pounds. That was a lot of money back in those days - over a year's worth of North Sea Oil revenue. Alexander Christian had been a national hero, now he was an insane killer, and the whole affair was very embarrassing for a lot of people. So, it was hushed up, the evidence was destroyed, the tabloids were told to go easy on Christian, and everyone but everyone involved was sworn to silence. The victims had no living relatives: Fitzwilliam's aunt died while he was en route to Mars. There were no pictures of Christian allowed when he returned to Earth. Starved of any new information or photographs, the story died. Mars 13 was the last mission to Mars for twenty years. Until today, in fact.'