Chapter Two

'Found only one place in the solar system - '

' - Mars,' the Doctor and Benny declared in unison.

'Well done,' the Doctor said, a little awestruck. 'I worked it out by spectrographic analysis with access to one of the finest mineralogical databases in the universe. How did you know?'

'As you'd know if you'd read my first book,' Benny announced authoritatively, 'I made my reputation as part of an expedition excavating the tombs of the Mare Sirenum,'

'Those tombs are carved from spotless blue crystal,' the Doctor objected in a wounded tone of voice.

'There was soil like that in the egg chambers.' - Benny realised she was blushing - 'I was twenty-four and there was a lad called Tim in the same group. We spent a fair amount of the time rolling around together up there. That soil gets everywhere, trust me.'

'The odd thing is that it has been chemically treated. The main question is, how did it get here?' The Doctor peered down at the sample, as though he was expecting it to confess the answer.

'That's no big mystery,' Benny said, 'Humanity has got to Mars by now.' Her knowledge of history was a little sparse in places, but the late twentieth century (or more precisely 1963 - 1989: The Kennedy Assassination to the Fall of the Berlin Wall) was one of her specialities. Within a couple of years of the Americans landing on the Moon, the British had put a man on Mars. It was all part of the superpower space race, with Britain still trying to play with the big boys. Like all races, it was over quickly and didn't really amount to much. The United Kingdom felt good about itself for a couple of years and put itself even further into debt. There were no significant technological or scientific consequences, and all anyone had to show for it in the end was about five hundred kilos of red rock and rusty soil. Most people in the nineties probably wouldn't remember the names of any of the Mars Astronauts. There were a couple of disasters towards the end, Benny recalled. Something to do with astronauts going mad. Hardly surprising when they spent a total of sixteen months in a tin box the size of a Transit van.