Ace could hardly see. Stepping from the floodlit interior of the TARDIS into the darkness outside had been like going blind. She stood at the edge of the island, blinking her eyes against the rain, huddling her jacket against a frozen wind, and staring across the water at New York�s city lights, sadly unreflected by the waves. Even the great green glow from the Statue of Liberty towering above her could not lift the weary wet-weather feel. She kept looking into the distance until at last she could make out the faint line between sea and clouded sky. This was her first visit to New York, but somehow it had all looked so much better on television.
"This is it?" she said. "You think the end of the world�s going to start here?"
The Doctor was near the base of the statue, searching in some gloomy shadows. Outside, with no walls to give it a lively echo, his voice sounded empty as he called back.
"This is where the war�ll start. Someone�s going to blow the statue up. It�s odd, terrorism�s not usually that effective at starting wars, but they seemed certain. Our friendly aliens will quietly join in the fighting on both sides."
There was no-one else about. Even at night, Ace thought there would be a security guard to watch over the statue, but there was no-one. She thought about glancing at the water�s edge to see if she could spot a policeman�s cap being lapped up and down, but that would have been morbid. She turned towards the Doctor instead.
"I think I can understand why the French gave her to the Americans," he said, his accent slightly more pronounced. Ace looked at him with a cold and shivery expression. He grinned anyway. "They wouldn�t want to keep a hideous thing like this in their own country, would they?" Ace smiled politely at the joke and walked slowly towards him.
"Why do they want to wipe us out anyway, if they�re not interested in the planet?" she asked.
"Too many wars. They want to end the fighting."
"By killing everyone?" She was a little distracted. She had not even seen the informant, or the aliens, and all she knew of any danger was what the Doctor had told her. In the cold on an island that was the epitome of dull reality, she was finding it hard to believe the world was at risk.
"They worked out that if the human race went on for another thousand years, there would be more people killed, maimed and bereaved than the population of the planet right now. They think they�re preventing all that suffering. With weather like this, I�m tempted to believe they�re right. Oh my." The Doctor�s voice stopped.
"Oh my?" said Ace, and ran towards the Doctor. He was standing with his hat clasped to his chest, in front of an oil drum at the base of the statue. Inside was something that looked like half-congealed pancake mixture. A short pole stuck out of the goop, with a timer attached and some thin strands of wire trailing back down into the mix.
"I think I�ve found the bomb," the Doctor said and threw his hat to Ace. "Get back in the TARDIS. I have a feeling we�ve not got very long," he said. Ace looked at the display.
"Eleven hours? That�s ages to defuse something like that."
"The counter won�t go all the way to zero." Reaching into the pocket of his dark brown coat, the Doctor pulled out a complex looking multimeter. He leant over the top of the barrel and started poking the metal probes against the exposed electronics of the timer. Frowning and biting his bottom lip, he tried to keep the white muck off the probes while he prodded the electronics. All the while, Ace crept around until she was standing behind his shoulder, staring into the barrel. She was determined not to get left out; this time she was determined to know what he was up to. The Doctor slipped the meter back into his pocket, leaving dribbles of the white explosive down his coat and trousers.
"How long?" Ace asked.
"Half an hour. We can�t move it much, and I don�t think we can empty it, but perhaps we can get some of this stuff out. Tip the barrel up a little," said the Doctor, taking off his coat.
Ace slid between the barrel and the base of the statue, and slowly tipped the barrel up. The Doctor held the pole in place with his left hand, and began using his right arm to scoop the explosive mixture out and onto the ground.
"How bad is this stuff?" Ace asked. The Doctor ignored her and continued his frantic scooping. The front of his clothes were painted with a thick drippy coating of explosive, and as he went on, he was having to lean further and further into the barrel until he was almost disappearing inside. At last he stood up, and began hurriedly scraping the explosive on the ground towards puddles where it dissolved and washed away.
"How bad is this stuff?" Ace asked again.
"The aliens must have given it to them. There was enough there to obliterate the whole island. What�s left could still knock the statue off her feet. It�s not so much terrorism as a show of force. When the Americans find out this stuff was used, they�ll go to war just for the weapon. How long have we had?"
"Eight minutes."
"Come on then," he said, rushing towards the TARDIS door, dripping white all behind him.
Ace followed him into the TARDIS, but the Doctor had already gone through the inner door. She could just hear his footsteps echoing from one of the mazy passages. At length, she heard him coming back again, running along pushing a wheelbarrow filled with three sacks of powder. It looked like it was cement. He overshot the inner door a little, turned around and pushed the wheelbarrow to the door. It wouldn�t fit through. He winced and leapt over the barrow.
"Come on, come on!" he called, picking up the corner of a bag with each hand and dragging them backwards through the console room to the doors and the island outside. Ace picked up the last sack in both arms and, leaning back under the weight, ran after him.
"What are these going to do?" she asked as she ran across the slippery ground outside.
"Save the world!" came the dramatic reply from the Doctor, as he packed the bags between the barrel and the statue. "We just need to pile them around the bomb," he shouted, running past her again to fetch more of them. Ace leant her bag against the front of the barrel and ran back into the TARDIS.
A minute or two later, the Doctor was at the inner door again with the next barrow load. He pulled the top two sacks off quickly enough that the barrow tipped up, dumping the last one out before landing noisily on its side. Again, he grabbed two sacks by the ears and started jogging backwards to pull them outside. Ace paused, and pulled the barrow sideways through the doorway. She hefted the last bag back into it and set off after him. When she was just over halfway to the statue, the Doctor, coming back, took the barrow from her, tipped the bag out on the ground and ran on towards the TARDIS. Ace sighed. Picking the bag up in her arms again, she tried to find an easy way to hold it and ended up hugging it as she carried it along. She was staggering by the time she got to the statue, and wondered how a short and apparently unexercised Time Lord seemed to cope comparatively easily with the work out. The Doctor met her again when she was halfway back to the TARDIS; this time he was pushing a barrowful of bags.
"So, two hearts are better than one," he grinned. "Get a camera!" he said and continued on his way. Ace looked at him, confused. She followed him and helped him arrange the bags around the bomb.
"How will that help?" she asked.
"Get a camera. We�ve got to show we tried," The Doctor replied.
Ace went back to the TARDIS, and scrabbled around under her bead for her camera. It always seemed that no matter what she did, the Doctor would not let her in on his plans. When she returned, he was wiping the dust off his hands, and dust and muck from his jumper. The bags were stacked up covering one side of the barrel, facing the statue and round towards the TARDIS. Ace bit her lip, worried. If the bomb could blow the statue from its base then surely a few bags of cement were not going make any difference. She glanced at the Doctor. He had saved so many worlds so many times, and every time she had no idea how he was going to manage it. Every time she had been either amazed or irritated by the tricks he kept up his sleave. She wished he would not keep them from her. She handed him the camera, and watched as he took five quick photographs from only slightly different angles.
"How long?" he asked. She looked at her watch; if the Doctor was right, there was just over a minute left. The Doctor picked his coat up and together they retreated to the safety of the TARDIS.
Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor flicked a few switches, opened the monitor and went through the inner door. Ace was left staring at the monitor, at a screenful of statue, desperately hoping that the lady would not vanish. Twenty seconds to go, and all she could think of was the pitiful looking bags of cement, sand, salt or whatever it was, sitting between the barrel and the statue. Perhaps it was a chemical, something strange and alien that could absorb the blast. Perhaps it was the Time Lord equivalent of a bulletproof vest. She stared at the screen in frustration and despair. A second to go and she held her breath.
For a moment the screen went white with the explosion. Then it flashed and faded into a whirling display of Brownian motion as dust and smoke surrounded the TARDIS. For more than a minute, Ace was left staring in desperation at a screen that would not let her see more than a few inches outside. Then finally, the speckled grey of the smoke was replaced by the flat grey of the clouds. The TARDIS had fallen over, and inside she hadn�t even noticed.
She could hardly breathe. Had the statue fallen or hadn�t it? She tried to open the doors, but the console would not let her. She had thought she would know as soon as the bomb exploded. She looked around for the Doctor, but he was not even in the room. He was not even watching. He had disconnected the TARDIS from the outside. He already knew. Then she looked at the screen again and she knew. She dropped to her knees. If the TARDIS had been blown over from a distance, the statue must have fallen too. She was still kneeling there with her eyes closed when the Doctor came back in.
"Don�t worry, they�ll build another one," he said.
"But the world, the war!"
"Won�t happen." He smiled at her, though she wasn�t looking. "They didn�t blow it up. We did."
He dropped a postcard on the floor in front of her. The postmark was
perfectly forged, and so was the faked claim of responsibility.
Pictured on the front, piled up bags of ordinary chemical explosive
stood at the base of the statue. The pole and timer seemed to be
sticking up from the middle of them, but the barrel could not be seen.