Chapter Twelve

'The government have banned them?'

'S'pose.'

'You don't seem terribly interested,' he informed her.

'Don't take much interest in it. Politics,' she explained. 'You know "beef's safe to eat", '"no it isn't". It's all made up. Everyone eats beef again now, don't they?'

'I never stopped,' Lethbridge-Stewart informed her.

'Even though it might turn your brain into a sponge? A load of people stopped eating it for a couple of weeks, but only when it was in the news. It'll be the same with the Martians. Already is. I'm used to them now, and they ain't that bad.'

Lethbridge-Stewart continued on to the 'local interest' section. There was a shelf there full of Ordnance Survey maps. He picked up a couple for north of here. If they wanted to prevent being captured, they needed the best knowledge of the terrain available. With the right intelligence, they could evade the Martians and the Provisional Government forces for months. The resistance would be able to collect intelligence data and keep one step ahead of the enemy.

Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart frowned. And then what would they do? Wait for the Americans or the United Nations to bail them out? It wasn't going to happen. With every passing day, the international situation was more stable - the governments of the world were finding it easy to accommodate the Martian presence. The resistance needed to strike, to hit right at the centre of the Provisional Government. But with London under martial law, how could they? And how could they do that without provoking Martian retaliation? Britain wasn't just at war with itself, it was at war with another planet. No wonder no other countries were going to get involved.

The Doctor had been right: the Martians wouldn't stop at Britain. They had to be beaten back. But he was just one old man, standing in a newsagents worrying that someone would recognise him. He didn't even have enough money to buy all the maps he wanted to. What could he do on his own?