Part 35 (1/2)

I looked up, but the Martian s.h.i.+p had been atomised, the Harriers had returned to their base. The only thing up there was a cloud of black smoke, criss-crossed with white jet trails, and even that was begin to disperse.

Nothing had escaped. No Ice Warriors, no sonic cannons, no Red Death. Nothing.

End of extract ***

The Doctor a.s.sessed the situation. There was good news and bad news. Taking the negative first: the ground was nearly ten thousand metres away, straight down. On the plus side, it was getting closer. Through the wispy clouds London was a dark grey expanse, broken up by great square patches of green and the grey squiggle of the Thames. It was so quiet. The air rus.h.i.+ng past him was so thin that it hadn't the strength to carry sound - Only one way out. He turned to Grace.

'Not afraid of heights are you?'

'Yeah!'

'So am I!'

In an instant he brought his body under control: slowing his hearts rate, regulating the adrenaline flow. The cold, the shock, the thin air, the friction might have been enough to kill a human, but were mere technicalities to a Time Lord. He increased the rate of his mental activity, and attempted to dedicate it al to one question. But his life was flas.h.i.+ng in front of him, random memories and emotions. That hadn't happened in Adisham. Was that a bad sign?

It was a short life, especial y compared with some of his other - 'How do we get down?'

He turned to Benny, a sad smile on his face. 'Ask me again in a week's time.'

He would fall at roughly thirty metres a second, allowing for wind resistance and updraft. He would soon reach terminal velocity. He had about five and a half minutes to solve the problem using only the materials at hand.

His usual a.s.sortment of junk: a cricket ball, an elephant feather, a bag of kola nuts, a big ball of string, a piece of the True Cross, even a dog whistle.

Of course! The Flying Elephants of Saltaris III. Their wings were soaked in isocryte, the amazing antigravity material that - He handed everything but the string to Benny.

The Doctor scowled.

That struck a chord in his memory.

'Curtain rings,' Bernice scowled.

'They might be important. Or they could come in useful.'

He flipped himself over onto his back, bending his knees slightly. The universe rotated until the Martian s.h.i.+p was directly above him. The fuselage was fragmenting, lit from within. The beams and vaults that gave the hul its strength were visible, like an X-ray. The skin of the hull was warping and melting under the intense heat. The fins atomised, streams of fuel streaking out across the afternoon sky. The Doctor hardly noticed.

They had stopped off at Mrs Darling's shop to buy some milk and bin bags.

120.

Every Martian in the s.h.i.+p was dead, the Doctor realised. All their weapons and personal possessions had gone.

The Martian Invasion was over, the Earth and every human, every living thing on it had been saved. He might die, but five bil ion humans, twenty five bil ion trees, ten trillion insects and twelve hundred pandas were going to live. It was a simple transaction: one life for many.

There wasn't time for this. He had to concentrate on - Helium.

And the Doctor realised that with five minutes and eight seconds to go, the chords in his memory had suddenly become a symphony.

The Doctor let go of the cylinder of helium, which continued to fall at the same velocity as him. He took the string for his pocket and tied one end to his left wrist. He retrieved the packet of curtain rings, biting it open with his teeth, careful not to spill any. He did a little mental arithmetic and threaded forty eight of them along the string, discarding the rest.

That took twenty two seconds. He'd fallen a little under a mile by now, less than a sixth of the total distance.

Now for the difficult part.

The Doctor tugged the roll of bin bags out of his pockets, unwound the first one, careful not to open it up. He drew the open side of the bag through the first curtain ring, creating a narrow aperture. The process had taken him a little under two seconds. He repeated it forty seven times, until all the bags were whipping up and down on the line like a row of bunting.

He'd been falling for two minutes. He was still well over five and a half kilometres above London. When he had started working, the clouds he had been falling through were the rounded cirroc.u.mulus clouds - the ones that looked like fish skin from the ground. Now they were the larger altoc.u.mulus variety. The air was getting warmer and thicker as he hit the first hint of convection currents rising from the city.

The Doctor let go of the string and reached over for the helium canister. Calmly, he plucked it from the air and slotted the nozzle into the first big bag. A quick burst of the gas inflated it. Imperceptibly, the Doctor slowed down.

Extract from the memoirs of Professor Bernice Summerfield 'Professor Summerfield,' a lad said gently. It wasn't one of the soldiers, it was the chap who ran the Internet Cafe.

'I won't be long. He ... he might have had a parachute or something.'

I kept my binoculars fixed upwards, but I could imagine his expression.

'The medics have arrived if you need one. The Brigadier's trying to rustle up some tea and coffee. My name's Doug, by the way. I'm sorry to hear about your friend.'

I looked away for the first time. Around me, Tower Green was full of ambulances and heavy army trucks. Outside, the crowd were being tended to by an army of paramedics and policemen. A great cl.u.s.ter of Provisional Government men were sitting in a circle, their weapons taken away from them. A couple of the UNIT men were taking their names and checking if they needed food or medicine. Al around, people were cheering and celebrating - I could hear a riverboat honking cheerfully, and the bells of all the cathedrals and churches were ringing. The whole country would be like this - street parties, crowded pubs and city squares. Everyone cheering, everyone rejoicing.

And I felt dead inside, because the one man who deserved to be here wasn't.

I turned my binoculars back to the sky.

Two hundred metres up was a ma.s.s of black. Not a parachute or a hot air bal oon, but something between the two. It was drifting down. Underneath it al was a man wearing a flowing bottle-green velvet coat, baggy tan trousers and a grin. With his free hand he waved down at me.

The balloons had slowed the Doctor down, but he was still travelling too fast. I tried to shout a warning to him, but he was still too high to hear. The shouts alerted Lethbridge-Stewart and the others, though. Tower Green began to buzz with excitement. Everyone was pointing up, gasping, some were even laughing.

Alan had swung his camera up, and was tracking the Doctor down as he fell.

'Do you real y think those bin bags can support his weight?' Doug was asking. 'I reckon a few techos on the Net might argue with that. I like his style, though.'

I turned back to the sky. Barely clearing the walls now, the Doctor was clambering up, over the bal oons. It was tricky going, but he reached the top of the pile just as the apparatus reached the ground. Now they acted like a cus.h.i.+on or a safety mat.

The Doctor and his improvised parachute crashed into the ground mere feet from me, bouncing slightly. As he tumbled along, his limbs surfaced and disappeared back into the ma.s.s of black plastic. As he rol ed to a halt, he had reached the top of the bags.

I ran over, closely followed by Doug, the Brigadier, Lex Christian and Eve. The Doctor was lying on the pile of balloons, perfectly still. His eyes were closed, his head was bent back.

He wasn't moving.

'Doctor!' Doug shouted.

'Doctor,' Eve called over to the paramedics.

'Doctor,' the Brigadier called, clearly concerned.

I bent over him. 'Doctor?'

His pale blue eyes fluttered open and he pulled himself upright.