Donna took this in, remembering her promise in the

van to Lukas about Joe. She hoped the Doctor wouldn’t let them down.

As he passed her, he winked and smiled.

What was she thinking? This was the Doctor.

Of course everything would be OK.

How could it not be?

The journey back to London was uneventful, to say the least. Wilf sat in the front seat next to Donna, wincing occasionally as she almost clipped wing mirrors on parked cars. The Doctor and the two boys sat in the back once they’d shifted blankets, a water bottle and a toolbox.

The Doctor had found a paperback book under a seat called A Dark and Stormy Night, all about rich kings, pirates, frightened maids, strong cattle herders and a young girl found in the snow. The Doctor sympathised with the story’s hero, a young hospital intern who tried to piece the disparate elements together.

After a while, he’d given up and thrown it to the boys.

Lukas had eagerly started reading it, at the same time keeping a protective eye on Joe as the Doctor asked him about his long-lost dad.

He got no useful answers. Joe couldn’t really remember going to the electrical shop on Friday afternoon – if it hadn’t been for the free M-TEK prototype, he’d never even have known he’d been there.

‘He has days like that,’ Lukas muttered.

‘What’s an M-TEK when it’s at home, then?’

Lukas turned back to the book while Joe showed the Doctor the small portable device. ‘It’s like an MP3 player that plays movies as well,’ said Joe. ‘It connects to the net,

it’s a phone and it’s got a 160-gig memory, so you can keep stuff on it. It runs Windows and OSX 6 really fast.’

The Doctor nodded, impressed. ‘Great things come in small packages,’ he said, and promptly got out his sonic screwdriver and zapped the M-TEK with it.

Recognising that noise, Donna yelled back, ‘Hope you’re buying him a replacement.’

But the Doctor was frowning. The sonic had done absolutely nothing. Not even scrambled the stored music.

‘That’s…’

‘Weird?’ Donna offered.

‘More than weird,’ he agreed. He scrambled to the back of the van, found the toolbox, took out a hefty hammer and brought it down on the M-TEK. The crash of the hammer, the yell of outrage from Joe and Lukas’s very loud curse nearly caused Donna to mount the kerb as they turned into the Blackwall Tunnel.

‘Well?’ asked Wilf.

The Doctor held the M-TEK up. ‘Not a scratch, not a dent, nothing. That’s good tech. Alien tech, but good tech.

It’s also impossible.’ He smiled at the somewhat shaken boys. ‘Oh, I do like a bit of impossible.’

‘Anyone noticed anything odd?’ Donna asked.

‘We’re still alive after you driving for an hour?’ Wilf suggested.

‘No traffic,’ Lukas suggested.

The Doctor looked up. ‘That true?’

Donna nodded. ‘Loads of parked cars. I’ve seen three other cars actually moving since we left Copper Knickers.

One of them kept flashing me, I thought he was cross

about something.’

‘Probably was,’ said Wilf. ‘You cut him up.’

‘But I think he was trying to flag us down,’ Donna ignored her granddad. ‘Cos this is just mad. Where is everyone?’

‘It’s Sunday?’ the Doctor suggested.

‘It’s South East London,’ countered Donna, ‘and we’re not in the tenth century. There should be hundreds of cars.’

‘I quite like it,’ Wilf said. ‘Everything peaceful. Take the next junction, sweetheart, Netty lives just off the main road.’

They pulled up outside Netty’s house in silence.

Wilf got out and rang the doorbell, but there was nothing. He called for her through the letterbox and, after a second or two, the door opened and he was yanked in, out of sight.

Donna, in the front of the van, glanced at the Doctor.

‘Didja see that?’

‘It was Netty,’ the Doctor said.

‘How’d you know?’

‘Aliens would never wear hats like that.’

The door reopened and Wilf emerged, followed by Netty in a green felt hat with a peacock feather in it, all very 1950s.

‘You seen the news, Doctor?’ asked Netty, hauling herself in and sitting herself next to Wilf.

He said he hadn’t.

‘Then the best thing we can do is drive through Central London.’

Intrigued, Donna restarted the van and off they went.

Through Greenwich, past the rebuilt Cutty Sark and all the markets and shops. Through New Cross, down the Old Kent Road, around the Elephant and Castle and over Blackfriars Bridge.

‘Not a single soul,’ Wilf said. ‘No one.’

‘The BBC were telling everyone to stay indoors.

Fairchild has declared a state of emergency.’

‘Fairchild?’ asked the Doctor.

‘Prime Minister,’ Lukas said with a sigh. ‘Don’t you know anything?’

‘I know lots of prime ministers,’ the Doctor said. ‘But in this century they come and go annually, I think. This one clearly makes no impression on history.’

Donna brought the van to a sudden halt and, very quietly, said, ‘Oh.’

Those in the rear of the van leaned forward. ‘Oh indeed,’ the Doctor said.

Because they could go no further. They were on the Embankment, just down from Charing Cross station.

As were possibly a million other people. Standing.

Still. Arms reaching up to the skies.

And all chanting quietly. ‘Helix. Helix. Helix.’

‘That’s not good,’ Donna said.

The Doctor passed her Joe’s M-TEK. ‘Call your mum, please.’

‘Why?’

‘Let her know we’re safe and we’ll see her tomorrow.’

‘Priorities?’ asked Donna.

‘Keeping on the good side of your mum is a priority,

Donna. For both of us. She’ll be worried.’ He turned to the Carnes boys. ‘Then we’ll phone your mother, she must be worried sick.’

‘Won’t be,’ said Joe quietly. ‘She’ll be one of this lot.’

Wilf was about to ask why, but the Doctor shook his head. ‘Now, Joe, just cos she’s your mum, she’s not in any danger. None of these people are, by the look of it.’

‘She gave birth to him. Maybe she’s got this Helix gene thing?’ said Lukas. ‘Thank God I’m the older one.’

Joe stared out of the van. ‘What do we do to rescue her, Doctor?’

The Doctor smiled. ‘That’s the spirit, boys, remember we can save her. We can save all these people.’

Donna passed the M-TEK back. ‘She says Chiswick’s empty. I told her to stay indoors, drink tea and keep the TV on. I said to do whatever the BBC says unless it involves leaving the house or stopping drinking tea. She didn’t see the funny side.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ said Wilf. ‘Well, Doctor, what do we do?’

The Doctor was looking at the M-TEK. ‘They gave this to you, Joe, yeah? Have they given loads of free ones out?’

Joe nodded. ‘On the forum, they said they were giving out a million free ones before tomorrow’s launch.’

‘I bet the target audience was of very specific genealogy, too. So, this thing goes nationwide tomorrow?’

‘Worldwide,’ Netty put in. ‘I’m going to get one. I like things like that. Was going to wait a month or so, see if the home shopping channel did ’em cheap.’

‘Oh I like that,’ Donna said. ‘Well, used to. When I had time. That Anis Ahmed did things for me…’

Netty laughed. ‘So sexy…’

Wilf coughed. ‘Anyway, getting back to the matter in hand. Doctor, we can’t just park here.’

The Doctor was still playing with the M-TEK.

‘Nothing is that well protected… If I can just rewrite some of the software…’ The sonic flashed a couple of different shades of blue, the M-TEK gave a ping, and the Doctor cheered. Then stopped. ‘I appear to have accessed a horoscope website. Ah, our old friend Madam Delphi.’

‘She works for the people who made the M-TEK,’

Lukas said. ‘She writes her horoscope things for some of their papers.’

The Doctor stared at the youth. ‘You what?’

‘MorganTech, they make everything these days. Run TV stations, newspapers, the works.’ Lukas shrugged.