Chapter Twelve

The echoing, rumbling noise of an aeroplane overhead broke the still of the morning. The first repat airliner of the day, taking another five hundred people back to their home country. The flights had started yesterday, all from Heathrow. It was like the Berlin Airlift in reverse, wave after wave of planes flying due south until they were over French airspace, and then off in all directions. The radio news said that there were half a million people camped at the airport - they'd need a thousand jumbo jets in total. That probably wasn't far off Heathrow's normal capacity. The other airports weren't being used to simplify the task, apparently. According to all the reports we had received not even ProvGov planes were in the air, they'd only flown once, a quick sortie over Edinburgh.

A week ago, I’d been waiting for the Brigadier on the road out of Adisham. We'd been sitting in Bessie, parked in a lay-by that overlooked the village and we cheered as the red poison gas dispersed. The Doctor had managed to do that within ten minutes of his arrival. All the police cars and army vans that had been sent to Adisham to track us down had ended up as disaster relief. The Martian ship vanished over the horizon, heading back to London at a speed the Brigadier found incredible. On the radio - resistance frequencies, not the BBC - we learnt that about a hundred people had died, not the couple of thousand it might have been. The village had been completely sealed off. A week later, as I washed myself in a cold stream, the village was still surrounded by a police cordon.

So, the Doctor had saved everyone in the nick of time, and any minute now he'd appear and cheerfully underplay his achievements. The Brigadier and I bored ourselves silly recounting the number of times that had happened. When the Doctor didn't emerge straight away, that was fine, too. The Brigadier assured me that it often looked like he'd died, but he hadn't really, it had all been a misunderstanding. Tell me about it, I’d replied. The Doctor had cheated death so often that death didn't play anymore. He was alive, and he'd catch up with us sooner or later.

We didn't believe it, even then.

As I sat in that forest, the Martians and the Provisional Government were in London, preparing the second stage of their plan.

Xznaal moved slowly through the large chambers of the East Wing of the National Gallery. After a week he was almost fully acclimatised to England. He could almost feel his veins coursing with the blood coolants developed by Vrgnur. The first sunlight of the morning was creeping through the skylights.

Xztaynz was waiting for him in the green-walled Sackler Room, and was baring his stumpy human teeth. 'Morning good, Kingman Snal,' he began.