Chapter Twelve

'One snag here, Brigadier,' Bambera reminded him. 'The Martian ship is hanging over London. It would make short work of anyone that tried to attack the capital. That's why we've not moved before now.'

'We're not just at war with one ship, Brigadier, we're at war against an entire planet,' Captain Ford reminded everyone.

'Not the whole of Mars,' I corrected. 'Just one clan: the Argyre.' They noticed me for the first time.

Lethbridge-Stewart hadn't finished with Bambera. 'The lads in Portsmouth damaged the Martian ship. It can be done, with surface-to-air missiles and heavy artillery. They are not invincible.'

Bambera straightened and faced me. 'You know your Martians, Professor. Did we really manage to sting them?'

I thought about the question for a moment, realising that the lives of all the men in the camp depended on my answer. 'Yes,' I said finally, 'They don't have forcefields or anything like that.'

'So an air strike could knock the Martian ship out of the sky?' Ford asked.

'In theory, if they could get close enough. The Martian gunners will know the planes are in the air before your own radar operators and they'll be able to keep better track of them once they are flying. If you could get around that somehow, the big problem would be the magnetic engines: they don't emit heat, so heatseekers wouldn't work, they do generate magnetic flux, which would play merry hell with your guidance systems.'

'What about a nuclear strike?' the Brigadier asked.

I grimaced. 'Thinking of calling your old friends on the Revenge? Hobson, wasn't it?'

He narrowed his eyes. 'How the devil did you know about that?'

I smiled. 'It's a long story. Yes, a nuclear strike would work, and I doubt the Martians would have any more of a defence against an ICBM than you have. It would also kill about a million Londoners straight away and another two or three million over the next ten years.'