CHAPTER ONE

IMPORTANT AND EXCITING GALACTIC HISTORY. DO NOT SKIP.

Before Time began, a lot of things happened that hardly bear talking about.

This story starts a little later than that. It is based in this Galaxy, the one we all know and love, with its millions of suns, its strange and wonderful planets, its eerie moons, its asteroids, its comets, its gas clouds and dust clouds and its immensity of coldness and darkness.

It affects, however, the Universe.

Just occasionally it should be remembered that this Galaxy is just one of infinite millions, but then it should be forgotten again, because it’s hard for the mind to stagger around with that kind of knowledge in it.

Since this Galaxy began, vast civilisations have risen and fallen, risen and fallen, risen and fallen so often that it’s quite tempting to think that life in the Galaxy must be:

a) something akin to seasick – space sick, time sick, history sick or some such thing

and

b) stupid.

When you get down to street level, however, you realise that the phrase ‘life in the Galaxy’ is pretty meaningless, since it describes billions of separate short-lived beings all of whom have for some vicious reason been programmed to be incapable of learning from each other’s mistakes.

Here is a very simple example, at street level.

The street is a cold but busy one in a city called New York on a planet that hardly anybody has heard of.

A man is walking along it, looking up at the stars, wondering, perhaps, just how many of them there are. It is a purely local problem. What happens to him has happened before to others and will happen again. He walks past a site where an extremely tall building is being put up in the place of another extremely tall building which has been pulled down. (An explanation of why this happens would only confuse matters at this point.)

As he passes, a small tool falls from high up in the scaffolding with which the building is surrounded and buries itself snugly into the man’s skull. This has the effect of bringing his life, with all its memories, its loves, its hard-won battles, its instructive defeats, its rewards, its disappointments – in short, his entire experience – to an abrupt end. The last thing the man sees before his personal light is shut off is a sign on the scaffolding that says: ‘We Apologise for the Inconvenience.’

From across the street, a woman – the man’s mate – sees this happen. Failing to learn from the incident that the Universe in general and New York in particular is a randomly dangerous place, she runs pointlessly to his aid and has her own life, with all its experiences, brought to an end by a yellow taxicab, whose driver would never apologise for anything. The cab driver was only there at that point because he was completely lost in one of the most rationally laid-out cities on the Earth, but that, again, is another purely local problem.

This story is about a much, much larger problem, but strangely enough it does come to involve this otherwise harmless planet in rather curious ways, and explain the reason why no one likes it.

It also involves a large number of mistakes. The first, and worst, mistake, was made during the height of the very first major civilisation to rise and fall in this Galaxy. The mistake lay in thinking that you can solve anything with potatoes.

There was a race of people called the Alovians, who were insanely aggressive. They fought their enemies (i.e. everybody else) and they fought each other. The best way of dealing with an Alovian was to leave him in a room on his own because sooner or later he would beat himself up.

As their level of what they liked to call civilisation increased, so, for the sake of sheer survival, they had to find ways of curbing and sublimating their mad aggression. Each war they had did greater and greater damage, and, before too long, they were on the brink of self-destruction. History says it’s a great pity they didn’t just go straight ahead with it.

Eventually they saw that this was something they were going to have to do something about, and they passed a law decreeing that anyone who had to carry a weapon as part of his normal work (policemen, security guards, primary school teachers, etc.) had to spend at least forty minutes a day punching a sack of potatoes in order to work off their surplus aggression. (Interestingly, they would not be the only race to try out this solution to warmongering. Indeed, people thought that this was what potatoes were for, until the surprising invention of the deep-fat fryer.) For a while the potato solution for world peace worked fine until an Alovian decided that it would be much more efficient and less time consuming if they just shot the potatoes instead. This led to a renewed enthusiasm for shooting all sorts of things and they all got very excited at the prospect of their first major war for years.

Skipping a century or two here, we next come across the Alovians as a major interstellar power sweeping through the Galaxy and ravaging everything they could lay their hands on and shooting anything they couldn’t. Since this behaviour was going down so badly with the rest of the Galaxy, they decided that, in order to protect themselves they needed a very special weapon – an Ultimate Weapon.

How Ultimate is Ultimate?

They built a computer to find out what could be done, and it came up with a perfectly staggering answer.

The computer was called Hactar. It began as a large black moon which orbited the planet of Alovia, and it did all its thinking in space. It was of a special organic design, like a natural brain, in that every cellular particle of it carried the pattern of the whole within it. This allowed it to think more imaginatively.

In answer to the question about an Ultimate Weapon, it said that the Universe could be brought to a premature end, and was this ultimate enough?

At this news, there was dancing in the streets of Alovia, street parties, fetes, carnivals of a particularly nasty kind and a wild sense of having arrived somewhere.

They sent out a message across the whole Galaxy to the effect that they, the Alovians, were now in a position to destroy the entire Universe, and that if anybody had anything they wanted to quarrel about they’d be happy to hear from them.

To add bite to this message, they described how the Ultimate Weapon that Hactar had designed for them worked. It was a very, very small bomb. In fact it was simply a junction box in hyperspace which would, when activated, connect the heart of every major sun with the heart of every other major sun simultaneously. This would convert the entire Universe into one gigantic hyperspatial supernova and, unless the whole thing started up all over again in another and better dimension, that would be that.

That was how it worked, except that, when it came to it, it didn’t.

The Alovian fingers which hovered over the button that would set the bomb off were very itchy, and eventually of course somebody somewhere in the Galaxy said or did something which got them really riled, and left them, they were afraid, with absolutely no alternative but to detonate the Supernova Bomb. To themselves they said, ‘What’s the point of having a thing if you don’t use it?’

The button was pressed, the bomb fizzed and popped and then just fell apart in such a way as to suggest that it had been rather badly made.

For a moment, the loudest noise heard anywhere in the Universe was that of a computer clearing its throat.

Hactar spoke.

Hactar said that what with one thing and another it had been thinking about this Ultimate Weapon business and had worked out that there was no conceivable consequence of not setting the bomb off that was worse than the known consequence of setting it off, and it had therefore taken the liberty of introducing a small flaw into the design of the bomb, and he hoped that everyone involved would, on sober reflection, feel that —

That was as far as Hactar got before the Alovian missiles got him straight between his major synapses and the huge black moon computer was reduced to radioactive smithereens.

It was not a great deal later than this that the Alovians managed to blow themselves up as well, to the great relief of the rest of the Galaxy.

The way in which they blew themselves up is very interesting and instructive, and is a mistake that no one has yet learnt from.

As a purely sensible and practical measure, they had entirely surrounded their planet with thermonuclear weapons. This was for safety, and to stop anyone on the planet from annoying anybody else on the planet, because of what that could lead to. It was called ‘the nuclear umbrella’. It made it difficult to see the sun because the sky coverage was so thick, but that didn’t matter because they had plenty of energy-generating stations on the planet providing heat and light. This, it must be emphasised, was all a perfectly rational and controlled situation, and any reasonable Alovian could have explained to you over breakfast why it was necessary, without looking up from his newspaper.

It goes without saying of course, that the entire system was riddled with every conceivable safeguard, the greatest safeguard of all being the sure knowledge that the entire arsenal of the other side would be launched automatically if you so much as popped a toy balloon. (That’s not quite true. There were computers which knew what a toy balloon popping sounded like and would discount that. There were other computers that knew what a flock of geese looked like and wouldn’t be alarmed by that.)

Unfortunately there was also a telephone company computer that didn’t know what to do with someone’s change of address card and panicked.

So much for the accepted history. As we will eventually find out, much of what you have just read is wrong. If you think that you have just wasted your time, then it is to be hoped that, like the rest of existence, you fail to learn from your mistakes.

We can now move forward many, many, many millions of years.

CHAPTER TWO

SANDWICHES AND OUTRAGE

Romana was appalled. And that was before the Killer Robots turned up.

‘You’ve brought me to a cricket match?’

‘Hush,’ the Doctor looked around furtively, pulling his hat closer around his face. He handed her some weak tea in a Styrofoam cup.

Romana was a Time Lady from the planet Gallifrey, nestling in the upmarket constellation of Kasterborous. In her travels with the Doctor she had reassembled the Key to Time, thwarted Davros, and outclassed the Nimon. It was fair to say that she thought she’d seen it all. But life with the Doctor was full of surprises. Not all of them pleasant.

‘A cricket match?’ she repeated, making absolutely sure she wasn’t misheard.

The Doctor and Romana were wanderers in the fourth dimension and potterers in the fifth. Romana had been raised in the Time Lord Academy to expect a life of august calm and academic rigour. Instead she now spent her days dashing around in a blue box saving random bits of the universe. One of her best friends was a robot dog. Well, it wasn’t the life she’d expected but she thoroughly enjoyed it.

Apart from today.

‘A. Cricket. Match.’

‘I know.’ The Doctor pulled his hat down even further and sank even deeper into his deckchair.

The day had started so well. He’d promised her the universe was ending. (‘Oh goody!’ Romana always liked those days.) Instead, he’d brought her to Lord’s Cricket Ground. The seats around them were crowded with greasy-looking bankers treating each other to corporate hospitality. Further below was a sea of middle-aged men trying to get sunburn. Adrift in the middle of it was the occasional Colonel, angrily completing the Times crossword with the help of a thermos flask containing tea, soup or gin. Romana conceded that all of human life was here – if your definition of human life was really very narrow.

To give the Doctor credit, he’d got them very good seats. They had a splendid view of the pitch – a strip of grass as cossetted as a rich old lady on life support. Dancing around it were two teams of men in spotless white overalls, looking like fastidious knights who’d ordered their armour with a high thread count. Occasionally one player would throw a small red ball at another. Sometimes they’d hit it merrily into the air with a plank of wood. Sometimes they wouldn’t. Often nothing at all would happen to polite applause. Cricket was the most English invention imaginable. As if a prep school teacher had tried to demonstrate eternity. And yet …

And yet it wasn’t.

‘It’s like they don’t have a clue of its true significance,’ Romana gasped.

‘I’m not sure they do.’ The Doctor was shaking his head sadly.

She really should have known something was up. The Doctor’s time machine had been drifting amiably between planets. On the outside it looked like a small blue box that had got a little lost. On the inside it was a collection of infinite white rooms, decorated with the verve of a hospital run by an antiques dealer. One of the many problems with the TARDIS was that the Doctor really didn’t know how to work it. The Doctor had, over time, simply taken to labelling the controls with bits of sticking plaster which he’d scribbled his best guesses on. She’d been staring at one which said ‘handbrake’ when he’d strode into the room. The Doctor was an obscure punctuation mark of a man. Infuriating, charming, puzzling and brilliant, one of the things Romana adored about him was that his eyes never stopped smiling.

‘Romana, the universe is ending!’ he’d said. ‘And we need to dress for it.’

Normally Romana liked dressing up. The Doctor’s time machine may have been, like him, obsolete and cantankerous, but one of the perks was the infinite wardrobe.

Sensing her eyeing up the wardrobe door, the Doctor headed her off, fishing in a pocket. ‘Ties must be worn,’ he announced solemnly, handing her one. ‘I’ve been reading up.’

K-9’s ears twitched, but the Doctor ignored them.

Romana watched the Doctor trying to tie his own tie for a while, and then, when it stopped being amusing, she did it neatly for him. She noticed the label read ‘Women’s Institute Champion Bread Makers’, and she glanced hastily at hers. It merely contained a row of cartoon penguins. Well, it wasn’t what she’d have chosen.

‘Why do we need ties?’ she’d asked suspiciously. ‘Where are we going?’

‘Well …’ the Doctor had said, looking guilty. This was never good. His time machine roared to an abrupt halt. He’d opened the doors. ‘Let’s go and find out.’

And then he’d taken her to that cricket match.

The TARDIS had bellowed into the Members’ Enclosure like a tipsy aunt. The apparition was greeted with alarm and outrage, which was rapidly transferred to the Doctor’s appearance.

There were times when the Doctor was every inch the champion of eternity. Romana had seen giant green blobs look hastily at the floor with all 100 of their eyes. The Ninth Sontaran Battle Brigade had remembered an urgent call they just had to make. The Kraals had muttered something about really having to knuckle down and write their Christmas thank-you letters.

There were times when the Doctor was precisely that wonderful. And then there were others when he just looked insane. This was one of them. The assembled men were glowering at the Doctor’s random assembly of jacket, trousers, waistcoat and long scarf, and completely ignoring his proudly worn tie. Even though he waved it at them like a religious totem.

The time travellers were confronted by an army of disapproving sports jackets. Someone said very loudly, ‘Well really!’ Someone else cried, ‘Disgraceful!’

Romana found it all baffling. Where were they? Normally people just locked them up, or took them to be interrogated by something green and smelling of Swarfega. The shouting was new.

The Doctor faced the deadly tide of tweed and felt the full blistering force of middle-aged disapproval. It was quite something. Nevertheless, he fished about in his pocket and flashed a crumpled card.

‘I’m the Doctor,’ he announced grandly with only the slightest of hesitations. ‘This is Romana. We’re from the MCC.’

Romana, along with most of the front row of sports jackets, squinted dubiously at the card. It was signed by W.G. Grace and dated 1877.

The card worked, eventually. It allowed them grudging access to the cornucopia of the hospitality suite. This amounted to a leaking tea urn and a pile of fish-paste sandwiches.

‘Where are we?’ Romana hissed, throwing a sandwich behind a plant. ‘This is England, isn’t it? But I’ve never seen it quite so hostile.’

‘Race memory.’ The Doctor sipped a cup of tea and winced. ‘They all feel angry and ashamed and very intolerant of outsiders. But they’ve not a clue why.’ He led them out onto the terrace.

Which was when she finally realised where they were.

‘You promised me the end of the universe, and you’ve brought me to a cricket match.’

‘Any true Englishman would tell you they were the same thing.’ The Doctor’s attempt to laugh it off was mirthless.

So that was it, she thought, the Doctor’s dark secret. He was trying to excuse the obscenity before them. Well, of course he would. He was such an eccentric anglophile – he adored tea towels and jam, he’d made her go fishing, he liked stately homes so much he’d blown up at least a dozen. Why wouldn’t he bring her to a cricket match?

‘How could you?’ Romana demanded. She tolerated his love of this planet, sometimes she even enjoyed it. But there were limits. Cricket. That was where a neat line had to be drawn.

A small red ball arced through the air and the players scurried back and forth. Polite applause rippled through the crowd. Romana shuddered and looked away.

‘The odd thing,’ the Doctor ruminated, ‘is that it all seems harmless enough.’

‘Harmless?’ Romana scoffed as two of the players shook hands.

‘I’ve always meant to find out why something like this could happen,’ he said gravely. When he wanted to sound grave, he could sound extraordinarily grave. Like a rumbling of distant thunder in a cathedral.

Romana looked up at the cloudless sky, at the bright sun soaking into the green, green grass, and she shivered.

‘They seem so innocent, don’t they?’ The Doctor shrugged miserably. ‘Look at them – look at them all. So …’ His lips twisted. ‘Happy.’

A man hit a ball with a bat. The ball went quite a way. Everyone applauded. It looked the most innocent thing ever.

‘It’s obscene, that’s what it is.’ Romana fidgeted in her chair. If anyone saw her, her chances of being President of Gallifrey (not, of course, that she had any ambitions in that arena) were well out of the time window. ‘If it’s a cosmic joke, then it’s in very bad taste indeed.’

The Doctor consulted a pamphlet he’d been eating sandwiches off. ‘Seems it’s the last day of the Ashes.’

Several people nearby glanced at him as if he’d fallen off the moon. Which was, Romana thought, fair enough.

‘In cricketing terms,’ the Doctor whispered, ‘that’s very big news. You know – every ten years or so—’

‘Every four years,’ a man in front of them turned around to snarl.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ the Doctor said, delighting as the spectator turned a colour to match his coat. ‘Anyway, England and Australia fight a series of cricket matches and eventually one of them takes home a trophy.’

‘The trophy,’ the spectator snapped.

‘Thank you, that’s quite enough,’ the Doctor smiled at him sweetly. ‘Maybe the space-time telegraph got its wires crossed. Maybe it is just a game.’ He looked doubtful. ‘Maybe it’s not the end of the universe.’

Romana let out an anguished groan. At least a dozen races had given ‘cricket’ as their reason for attacking the planet. It went a long way to explain why most invasions began in the home counties.

The match went on. In contrast to the Time Lords’ despairing mood, the crowd was growing jubilant. Given the amount of applause and the number of people shouting, ‘Come on England!’ things were getting pretty exciting. Or, as exciting as a cricket match could be. How could something so horrifying be so obscenely dull, Romana thought.

She glanced at the scoreboard and, with a lot of frowning and eavesdropping, managed to decipher what was going on.

‘I think it’s the last round,’ she said, watching the spectator in front wince. ‘And England need three to win. Satisfied? Please say we can go home afterwards.’

‘Home?’ the Doctor barked bitterly.

Down on the field, the little white figures were moving with a bit more tension. Someone threw a ball. Someone hit it with a bat.

For a moment, eternity waited. The ball drifted higher. Then, with nothing better to do, it drifted higher still.

Then the entire stadium breathed out.

‘It’s a six!’ screamed the audience to each other with the delight of people pointing out the obvious.

The crowd went as wild as a cricket crowd could. There was polite applause, backs were slapped, and people said, ‘Hurrah!’ It all seemed terribly jolly.

‘Well, they’ve won, maybe,’ Romana ventured.

‘No one ever wins cricket,’ the Doctor sighed miserably.

Romana looked up at the sky. Clouds were forming. ‘And just in time too,’ she announced, shivering. ‘Looks like rain.’

‘That’s far worse than rain,’ the Doctor intoned. He really wasn’t sounding very English at all today.

Romana tapped him lightly on the shoulder. In the middle of dashing after a Rutan invasion, an old lady at a bus stop had shouted something at her, and she’d been itching for a chance to try it out herself. ‘Cheer up,’ she said. ‘It might never happen.’

The Doctor turned away. ‘Do you know, I always hate people who say that.’

And, with that, he vanished.

CHAPTER THREE

AN INTERNATIONAL INCIDENT

Romana blinked. The Doctor vanishing was never a good sign.

Sometimes the Doctor vanished loudly, with a comforting little yell as he fell into something.

Sometimes the Doctor vanished with a little fizz, as some transmat beam or other abducted him.

But sometimes the Doctor just vanished silently. This was the worst of all, because it meant that he’d slipped away.

‘Of all the places,’ Romana said to herself wearily, ‘he has to go missing at a cricket match.’

She checked over her shoulder, in case the Doctor had popped off in the TARDIS to try to mend history (a situation which invariably called for some hasty re-mending later). Then she looked out across the terraces, trying to spot the Doctor among the spectators. Not a sign of him.

Then she looked down at the pitch.

‘Oh, really, no,’ she said.

The match had ended with a six, and the crowd had gone most politely wild. The Doctor had reacted to this like a mammoth staring down a glacier, causing some to wonder if he was an Australian supporter, though it seemed a little unlikely.

There then followed a little presentation ceremony. This was a new thing, not previously done, and probably designed to make the whole business better television. The Ashes were to be presented to the captain of the English team there on the field. The TV companies didn’t know it at this point, but they were in for some very good television indeed.

First, there came the Doctor. He stormed onto the pitch, like Moses coming down the mountain in a high temper because God had said he hadn’t got any Commandments to hand out right now, but how about lunch next week?

The Doctor marched up to the English captain. ‘Excuse me. Are you in charge of the cricket?’

The cluster of players on the pitch stared at the Doctor.

A small podium had been dragged out for the purposes of the presentation. The chairman had come out, freshly polished medals on his loveliest blazer. The umpire, in his best butcher’s coat, stood to one side. The two teams were getting ready to shake hands and find a pub.

But the Doctor had bounded onto the podium and was addressing them. ‘People of Earth, good afternoon,’ he began.

‘Shame!’ shouted someone.

The chairman was looking around for security, and then remembered that this was a cricket match. They didn’t need security.

‘Honestly, this will take barely a second. I’m doing this for the good of the Galaxy, possibly the whole universe, and maybe the very fabric of space-time itself,’ the Doctor persisted.

‘You’re a disgrace,’ someone shouted.

‘How can I be?’ The Doctor smiled. ‘I’m wearing a tie! So, would one of you care to tell me what’s going on here exactly?’

Confronted by the full force of his personality, the captain of the Australian team blanched. ‘Well, mate …’ he began, and then stopped. This really wasn’t done.

‘Go on,’ the Doctor prompted him.

The Australian captain held up the small silver trophy he held. ‘The other side won. So I’m presenting them with the trophy.’

‘Fascinating.’ The Doctor grimaced. ‘And what is that trophy?’

There was a stunned pause on the pitch.

‘Well,’ the Australian captain began again. ‘These are the Ashes.’

‘Quite right,’ someone in the crowd mumbled.

‘Yes, but,’ the Doctor continued, ‘what are they, exactly?’

‘Well … ashes,’ the captain said.

‘Of what?’ the Doctor’s amiable nature had lowered, just a little.

‘Well—’ the captain began.

‘Do you start every sentence like that?’ the Doctor asked.

‘Well—’

‘Never mind.’ The Doctor looked at the teams gathered around him. ‘Can any of you tell me what those ashes are made of?’

‘A burnt stump.’

‘A budgie.’

‘The soul of cricket.’

The Doctor looked at them, and nodded again. ‘Not good,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose any of you have ever had a peek inside? Have you?’

The group glared at him.

‘Oh come on, not late at night, when no one’s looking?’

The glaring got a little darker.

‘The lid’s welded shut,’ someone muttered.

‘Then you mean to say,’ the Doctor pressed on, ‘that you spend your lives passing this trophy back and forth, and none of you have any idea what’s inside it?’

The group suddenly looked at the grass. ‘It’s just not done,’ hissed the umpire firmly.

‘Well then,’ said the Doctor, pleasantly, ‘I’ve a suggestion. As you don’t know what’s inside that trophy, and I would very much like to know, I was wondering if I could possibly borrow them from you? Just for a bit.’ He flashed his most winning smile.

‘For an X-ray?’ someone stuttered weakly.

‘If you like.’ The Doctor shrugged. ‘The thing is, your Ashes are terribly important.’

He had finally said something the group liked. ‘Quite right! They represent all that is good about Cricket.’

The Doctor winced. ‘More than that,’ he said, slowly. ‘They are rather important for the future of the universe.’

This was, even for an audience of cricketers, a bit steep. Confusion reigned, along with bewilderment, indignation, and all the other emotions the English are so very good at. The Australian team just rolled their eyes.

‘Anyway,’ said the Doctor, leaping down off the podium, ‘I really will be as quick as I can. May I?’

And, much to everyone’s surprise, the Australian captain gave him the Ashes. The Doctor held them in his hands as though he was cradling a lump of uranium.

‘How dare you, sir?’ thundered the umpire. He had been looking forward to today, and now things had gone badly astray.

‘Oh, believe me –’ the Doctor leaned forward candidly – ‘I’d rather be leaving this one well alone, but –’ his voice dropped an octave – ‘when I was a child, I was told about Them. They are the things of nightmares. If I was bad, I was told that They would come and get me.’

‘Sorry …’ The umpire was as baffled as he was cross. ‘Are we talking about the Australians?’

‘No.’ The Doctor pointed up at the sky. ‘I think something really dreadful is about to happen.’

This remark played badly with the group. As far as they were concerned, a man had strolled into the middle of their ceremony, had inveigled the Ashes out of them, and was now issuing threats. Wasn’t that dreadful enough? Also, his tie was unspeakable.

Soon, the Doctor was discussing the matter quite pleasantly with one or two red-faced, blustering gentlemen. They had seized the Ashes, and were trying to pull the trophy out of the Doctor’s hands.

‘Believe me,’ he said, ‘there’s nothing I’d like better than to let go, but I can’t.’

At that point, the Doctor heard the worst sound in the universe.

It was the sound of the entire crowd at Lord’s Cricket Ground slowly, derisively clapping him.

And then the booing began.

‘Oh dear,’ the Doctor said.

All in all, it was something of a relief when the Killer Robots finally showed up.

CHAPTER FOUR

FINALLY, KILLER ROBOTS

The English love a good lunatic, particularly at cricket matches. But, there was a feeling that the crowd wanted something more, that the Doctor might at least take his clothes off and leap over the wicket so they could all be shocked by it.

The few people who talked about what happened next all chose to remember different things.

Some spoke about the way that a neat little cricket pavilion edged its way out of thin air and hovered a little above the pitch, as though concerned about not damaging the grass.

Some spoke about the way that the eleven figures, all attired in perfect cricket whites, strode out of the pavilion and towards the podium. The eleven were, to all intents and purposes, role models, from their tidily laced plimsolls to their neat helmets protecting their faces. Even their bats were polished so much they shone.

Most, when pressed, chose to talk about the killing.

It did not start at once. The figures waited until they were noticed, until people spotted what was wrong with them. True, they walked perfectly, their cricketing gear was immaculate – but there was one thing missing. There was nothing inside their uniforms. They were empty suits of gleaming white armour, marching in unison.

One of the commentators could be heard blaring from a radio saying jovially, ‘Well, the supernatural brigade really seem to be out in force here this afternoon.’

A ripple of alarm spread through the crowd. Some people swore it was a marketing stunt (mainly the kind of people who have never witnessed a marketing stunt, which normally involves handing out cereal bars to commuters or floating a really large lump of polystyrene down a river). Many declared confidently it was being paid for by an Australian margarine manufacturer.

To start with, only a few people screamed. After the event, they claimed they’d been trying to warn other people – but they’d simply realised that there was something about these striding white empty knights that was insultingly wrong.

One thing all the witnesses could agree on was that even Australian margarine manufacturers wouldn’t stoop this low.

The eleven figures arrived at the podium and arranged themselves in a neat, white line. Waiting.

Normally, at this point, the Doctor would have naturally taken charge. If there was one thing he liked doing, it was ordering about automata. Instead he stood still, his mouth agape.

So, it fell to the captain of the England cricket team to step forward and address the figures. He’d been to a reasonable public school, so had a natural ability to talk to anyone, whether they wanted to be talked to or not. ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Can we help you?’

The figures said nothing. But the captain of the England cricket team was not abashed. ‘Have you come far?’ he pressed on. In his experience that never failed, and he was already donning the facial expression of a man who’d like to hear about your B-road.

The figures said nothing about B-roads, service station coleslaw, or even that tricky tailback at Biggleswade junction. There was something about their silent emptiness that crept into the soul, leant forward and whispered, ‘Ssssssh.’

Even the captain of the England cricket team fell silent.

Everyone in the stadium was now watching the new arrivals.

The new arrivals were not watching anyone. They did not have eyes. Just blank white helmets with a nasty darkness within. One that glowed a really sinister red.

One of the figures raised a white arm and pointed with a padded glove at the urn.

The Doctor spoke, a tiny stifled croak: ‘Let me give it to them. Now.’

The captain of the Australian team laughed. ‘Well, now …’ he began with that jovial reasonableness that made the rest of the world want to beat them at games. ‘That’s all very well, but they’ve not won the Ashes, have they?’ Here he laughed again.

His ghastly attempt at camaraderie fell on completely deaf ears.

The Doctor spoke in that weird hiss again: ‘Look at their bats.’

You can, if you wish, find out a lot about the manufacture of cricket bats, either from consulting an encyclopaedia, a woodworking teacher, or the most boring man you can find in a bar. A simplified summary is that a decent cricket bat is carved from willow, and kept supple with linseed oil.

They are not, as a rule, made out of steel and their sides do not taper to sharp knife edges.

‘Well, crikey,’ said the Australian captain. He sniffed. The bats still smelt of linseed. That was something. ‘Enough’s enough, though, isn’t it, fellas?’ he couldn’t help saying, and started laughing as though he’d lost his head.

Which, a moment later, he had.

Everyone later agreed that the decapitation did it. The strange white robots had little time for bonhomie or the nicer things in life. They had clearly not come to Lords to marvel at the pitch, to eat sandwiches or to talk about problems with motor homes and foreigners. They had come, for some unfathomable reason, to steal a cricketing trophy and they were, as robots so often are, lethally determined to get it.

Inside those empty helmets, something lit up. Dark red lines that formed an angry frown.

The place was suddenly overwhelmed with a storm of fire, smoke and noise. What amazed observers as they staggered about, choking, almost deafened and blinded, was that in the middle of it all, in the middle of the smoke and fire and noise, the eleven newcomers actually appeared to be playing cricket. This seemed to display a quite staggering degree of fortitude in adversity until it slowly dawned on the onlookers that whatever it was they were doing was actually the direct cause of the devastation around them. Every ball they hit exploded somewhere and killed people.

They sliced their way through the players, who were, to be fair, all in a hurry to get out of their way. The robots raised their bats and, from the ends of them, fired lethal bolts of light into the now screaming crowd.

One of the most beautiful sounds in the pantheon of audible England is the pock! as cricket ball meets bat. It fills the mind with summer and shady willow trees and cups of tea with a saucer and a gentle game that can be played at a casual trot. But, for everyone at Lord’s that day, the sound forever crowded their minds with images of fire and horror, as row after row of seats collapsed, grass burned, brick shattered, and the fleeing crowd were cut down by strike after strike of bat on ball.

There was only one person standing still. Only one person seemingly unaffected. That one person was the Doctor, and he was holding the Ashes.

The Killer Robots having burned, slashed, blasted and diced their way across the pitch, came to a halt before the Doctor. Their leader pointed to the trophy. The other figures raised their bats.

The Doctor did not even flinch. There was something frozen, despairing about his posture.

The bats were ready to swipe down.

Which was when the air in front of the Doctor shimmered, and the cricket ground filled with a defiant bellow.

The Doctor’s time machine landed in front of him, on its side. Eleven cricket bats sliced pointlessly into it and stuck. The door opened and Romana popped her head out.

‘Romana,’ the Doctor whispered. ‘Why is the TARDIS on its side?’

Romana didn’t have time for this. ‘A barricade. Get in. I’ll send K-9 out.’

‘Not this time,’ the Doctor said.

Romana raised an eyebrow. The Doctor didn’t normally seem to care that much when K-9 got fused, trampled or battered. Neither did the dog – he enjoyed a scrap. ‘But,’ she began. ‘Surely—’

One of the white figures had clambered on top of the police box.

Romana stared at it. ‘Oh,’ she said, aghast.

The robot looked down at her, and nodded slightly. The red glow inside the helmet formed into a smile. It plucked the trophy from the Doctor’s numb fingers. Then it leapt back to the ground, tucked its bat under its arm and marched back towards the cricket pavilion.

The other white figures turned and followed suit, firing indiscriminately into the crowd, spreading more chaos and confusion.

One of the white robots raised a last ball and tossed it into the air. It swiped at it with its bat, smacking it straight into a tea tent which promptly exploded. Then the white figures climbed neatly into their cricket pavilion which melted into the air.

For a few moments, the Doctor stood there. In front of him were the bodies of the finest cricketers in the world. Around them was chaos, screaming, and, from the pitch itself, the smell of burning grass.

Romana climbed out of the TARDIS and offered the Doctor a steadying arm. Together they surveyed the devastation.

‘So, they’ve come back,’ said the Doctor eventually.

Romana nodded, a sick little nod. ‘But it’s preposterous, absurd.’

‘It is neither,’ sighed the Doctor. ‘We’ve witnessed the single most shocking thing I have ever seen in my entire existence.’

‘But were those really the Krikkitmen?’ Romana whispered.

‘I think so,’ the Doctor agreed. ‘I used to be frightened with stories of them when I was a child.’

‘Me too,’ agreed Romana, wondering again why so much of Time Lord education involved terrifying the young.

‘Until now,’ the Doctor’s mouth was still working slackly, ‘I’ve never seen them. Never quite believed in them.’

‘They were supposed to have been destroyed over two million years ago.’ Romana’s tone was petulant, as though already writing a stern letter to whoever was responsible. ‘This can’t just have happened. It can’t.’

The umpire was staggering towards them through the smoke and carnage. He was managing to be both red-faced and also pale with shock, which was quite an achievement. ‘What?’ he began.

‘Hush,’ said Romana.

‘But really, what just happened?’ the umpire persisted.

Romana and the Doctor both shook their heads glumly, then shrugged.

‘But why,’ the umpire wailed, ‘were those things dressed as a cricket team? I mean, really, it’s ridiculous!’

‘Isn’t it just,’ the Doctor agreed.

CHAPTER FIVE

UNFORGIVABLE THEFTS FROM A HAIRDRESSER

No one has ever written a tourist’s guide to Gallifrey because, to be truthful, no one has ever really wanted to visit. Plenty of races have had angry, tentacled thoughts about invading, but that’s not the same as fancying a holiday there.

If you find yourself with a fortnight to spare, there’s not that much to see. True there are silver trees, ochre mountains, and the odd smug daisy, but mostly there’s a lot of orange. Orange and beige – two colours which, whether on a planet or on wallpaper, say that whoever’s in charge should be thinking hard about redecorating.

The only problem about Gallifrey is that no one has ever thought about redecorating. Gallifreyans, more than any other civilisation in the universe, don’t like change. The mobile telephone has never taken off on Gallifrey because the entire population thought it a step too far.

The orange skies reflect that reluctance to change – the whole day looks either like sunrise or sunset, perpetually stuck in the same moment of time. And, really, that’s just the way the people of Gallifrey prefer it.

In a rare, long-ago racy moment, the Gallifreyans became the Lords of All Time. They immediately decided the best thing to do with this vast power was as little as possible. If they did interfere in the affairs of others (and they did so with the soft pedal firmly pressed) it was solely with the intention of keeping the status most quo. Just as nothing changed on Gallifrey, then nothing in the universe ever would, either.

There were one or two flies in this orangey-beige ointment. Most of the people of Gallifrey were happy to grow up, live long lives composed of identical marmalade days, and then eventually potter off into an afterlife of more of the same, thank you. Instead of developing an internet, the Gallifreyans had built a library of souls and opinions, a vast databank of ‘I told you so’. Their acquired wisdom was available to anyone who asked. This wisdom could be summarised as, ‘No sudden moves’.

By and large, everyone was quietly happy with life on Gallifrey, except for a few rebellious souls who had decided to leave home and wander eternity. A few, such as the Master, tried to take over as much of the universe as possible, but most settled in a quiet corner and devoted themselves to harmless hobbies, such as beekeeping or making a really nice cup of tea.

The Doctor was, of course, an exception to the exceptions to the rule. He’d never made a bid for universal conquest and was hopeless with bees. Instead, he strolled through eternity with the attention span of a gregarious goldfish. He somehow managed to fit saving planets in between a roster of formidable interests, ranging from fishing (badly) to reciting poetry (loudly) to namedropping (badly and loudly).

He did, in fact, very much enjoy making tea, but did it with so much collateral damage that you could say the Doctor enjoyed making tea in the same way the Daleks enjoyed landing softly on a planet and saying hello.