“I can’t believe it,” Charley murmured as the doors of the TARDIS closed once again behind them. Albion Hospital was still on the other side: they weren’t going anywhere for the moment. “That poor animal. And to think it’s nothing more than someone or something’s cruel idea of a joke.”

“It’s definitely cruel,” the Doctor agreed with a frown. He pulled up a piece of grating next to the console and stuck his head in it. Within a pair of heartbeats he was fiddling with the wires that ran from it to the other parts of the TARDIS. “Not so sure it was a joke.”

“But you said it was, inside,” Charley pointed out.

“I said it was a fake,” he clarified. “The whole crash landing was. I thought so. It’s just too perfect. I mean, hitting Big Ben? Come on.” A frown, then he added. “But that doesn’t mean it mightn’t have had a very serious purpose.”

She decided not to point out he’d seemed rather enthusiastically convinced it was the genuine article only a few hours ago. But then again, perhaps that had merely been for her benefit. Perhaps he’d meant to leave her with the Brigadier and go of to investigate on his own. She’d not put it past this Doctor, although she’d thought – she’d hoped – they’d gotten beyond that.

Charley sighed. “That’s just it: what purpose could it possibly have? You said yourself, the technology that augmented that poor pig’s brain is definitely alien. But that doesn’t make any sense. Why would aliens be faking aliens?”

“That’s what I intend to find out.” He fiddled for a few minutes more, then the console suddenly shot off a shower of sparks. “Got it! Ha ha!”

The Doctor scrambled to his feet and moved around to where a small screen had been attached to the console, presumably to replace the ceiling-wide one they’d had in the last model. “Patched in the radar, looped it back twelve hours so we can follow the flight of the spaceship, here we go…hold on…” The screen flickered, so he gave it a whack. “Come on!”

Charley leaned in over his shoulder as a digital diagram of the Earth appeared on the screen, with a curved line extending from one side of it to the other.

“That’s the spaceship on its way to Earth…see?” the Doctor pointed to the trajectory on the screen. “Except…hold on…see, the spaceship did a sling shot round the Earth before it landed.”

Charley stared at the unbelievable truth in front of them. “That means it came from Earth in the first place, doesn’t it?”

The Doctor nodded proudly. “It went up and came back down. Whoever those aliens are, they haven’t just arrived. They’ve been here for a while. The question is: what have they been doing?”

“Aside from genetically engineering pigs to crash land in the middle of London.”

“Aside from that, yeah.”

They were interrupted by a knock on the TARDIS door. The Doctor just looked up, annoyed, then went back to what he was doing. That left Charley to go and answer it. There was a young soldier in UNIT black on the other side of the door, one of several who’d been assigned to guard the “alien.”

“Excuse me, Miss, Doctor, but there’s…” His voice trailed off suddenly, eyes going so wide they looked about to pop out of his skull, as he took in the interior of the TARDIS. “Oh my God…”

“Yes, yes, it’s bigger on the inside,” the Doctor snapped, coming to stand beside Charley. “Get used to it. You were saying?”

The soldier swallowed hard. “There’s a car outside for you, Sir. And a helicopter. They say they have instructions to escort you and Miss Pollard to Ten Downing Street.”

“Right,” the Doctor answered with false cheerfulness. “Is this the part where I say, ‘take me to your leader?'”

+++

Charley didn’t know what it was like on a normal day, but on this day the inside of Number Ten Downing Street was in chaos. It was packed with people: ministers, soldiers, and the aforementioned alien experts, all waiting around to be told what to do. None of them looked twice at the Doctor, although one or two of the UNIT people seemed to recognize Charley, greeting her with a smile and a polite “Miss Pollard” as she and the Doctor stepped into the room.

Into the midst of it all waded a young Indian gentleman giving instructions at the top of his voice. “Ladies and Gentlemen, could we convene? Quick as we can, please. It’s this way on the right and can I remind you, ID cards are to be worn at all times.” He spotted the Doctor and Charley then and approached them. “Doctor, Miss Pollard, we’re so glad you could join us. Here are your ID cards.”

He handed them both laminated photo IDs hung on long narrow chains. Charley couldn’t help but notice that the Doctor’s had a picture of the wrong face on it: an aristocratic older man with silvering hair and a ruffled collar. She smiled. They must’ve been told about that peculiar facet of the Doctor’s life, or else surely he’d have been turned back at the door.

“Excuse me,” an unfamiliar voice interrupted. “Are you the Doctor?”

Charley turned to see a woman with short grey-brown hair standing behind them. Their young host noticed her as well, and turned with an exasperated glare. “Not now, we’re busy,” he said. “Can’t you go home?”

“Hang on,” Charley objected. “It might be important. What’s your name?”

The woman flashed an ID badge of her own at them. “Harriet Jones, MP for Flydale North. I just need a word in private.”

“It’s not important, it’s some bill about cottage hospitals she wants introduced.”

“No, it’s not about that, not this time,” Harriet corrected quickly.

“We haven’t time and you haven’t clearance,” the young man snapped at her impatiently. He grabbed the Doctor and Charley both by the arm and began to steer them down the hallway. “Now leave it!”

Charley shook off his arm. “Maybe you haven’t time for her, but that doesn’t mean we all have to be rude. Doctor, you go on, hear what the experts have to say. I can stay here with Ms. Jones.”

“You sure?” he asked.

The young man shook his head. “I’m sorry, Miss Pollard, but I have strict instructions to see that everyone on this list attends the meeting. Ms. Jones can wait.”

Harriet Jones stepped back, a rueful but still polite smile on her face. “I suppose you’re right, saving the planet really ought to take priority.” She turned to Charley and squeezed her hand with surprising desperation. “Do come find me when you’ve finished, though?”

“Of course,” Charley promised before allowing herself to be shepherded into the conference room.

It was just about full already, so the Doctor and Charley found seats at the very back. At the front of the room stood two people she recognized from the news broadcasts: General Asquith and…oh, what was his name? Some MP who the reporter’d thought a rather odd choice to be sent for in an emergency.

The General started. “Ladies and Gentlemen, I’d like to have your attention please. As you can see from the summaries in front of you, the ship had one porcine occupant -”

The Doctor, naturally, interrupted. “Now the really interesting bit happened three days ago, see, filed away under every other business. The North Sea – the satellite detected a signal, a little blip of radiation at one hundred fathoms like there was something down there…you were just about to investigate and the next thing you know, this happens: spaceships, pigs, massive diversion. From what?”

Charley was only half paying attention. She’d suddenly noticed that the ID badge she’d been given had begun to slide down the front of her dress. Apparently the chain had broken, or come loose somehow. Of all the times!

“If aliens fake an alien crash and an alien pilot, what do they get?”

Charley grabbed the badge in one hand and pulled it all the way free, turning it over to inspect the chain and see where it had broken. There was an unexpected moment of silence, the Doctor probably turning something over in his mind. Then he said, “Us. They get us. It’s not a diversion, it’s a trap.”

Still fiddling with the chain, on the word “trap,” Charley’s head nevertheless flew up.

“This is all about us,” the Doctor repeated, sounding amazed. “Alien experts – the only people with knowledge how to fight them gathered together in one room.”

All of a sudden, there was a noise. An all too earthly and rather disgusting noise. “Oh, ugh!” Charley muttered, covering her nose with one hand which left the ID badge dangling from the other.

The Doctor appeared to take it as a personal insult. “Excuse me, do you mind not farting while I’m saving the world?”

“Would you rather silent but deadly?” the MP – Green, that was his name – answered smugly. Then he and the general both began to laugh.

Laugh? Why on Earth would they laugh? Did they think this was some sort of joke?

A joke…oh, no. Oh, no. It couldn’t be!

Then the general took of his hat and there could be no further doubt. He reached up and began to open his forehead as though it were a dress with a zipper. Light poured out from inside, and as he slowly shrugged out of the human skin as though it were a suit, the entire room just stared in horror. What emerged was a monster. Too enormous to have fit within the body of even the rather large general, it was a sickly shade of green with gigantic but somehow still beady black eyes and something like a collar around its long neck.

“What are you?” Charley breathed, horrified. She probably ought to have run, shouted for help, done anything besides just sitting there, but she was too floored to move.

“We are the Slitheen,” the former-general answered in a distinctly alien voice.

Still smiling, Green – or rather, the green creature inside him – reached into a suit coat pocket and pulled out what looked like some sort of remote control device. “Thank you all for wearing your ID cards. They’ll help to identify the bodies.”

He pressed a button, and suddenly Charley knew what it must feel like to be struck by lightning. Pain suffused her body, as if every cell had been set on fire. The last thing she felt before darkness claimed her was the ID card slipping from her fingers.