Amy snorted. 'Unlikely. Not if it means I'll be mining fossilised Space-Boar droppings for the rest of my life.'
The Doctor sighed.
Amy hadn't finished yet. 'So what are you going to do?'
'Where do you think we are, Amy?'
'I don't know. Some kind of round hut thing? Oh, don't go changing the subject on me.'
But the Doctor was too interested in his surroundings.
They had been tied up and dumped inside the Torch of the Statue of Liberty.
Sam Horwitz stood back, and looked at them with a disinterested expression. 'You'll be pleased to know that you've been chosen as the first. It is a great honour. The General himself has overturned your evaluations to ensure you have a long and glorious service in the mines.'
'Sam - can you bend down?' Amy whispered. 'I want to tell you something.'
Sam obliged. And Amy headbutted him hard on the side of the head. The controlling Vykoid clung on for his life, digging his hands into Sam's hair. But he hadn't been dislodged, and Sam stepped back.
The Vykoid was laughing at Amy now. 'Did you ever look at big animals and wonder why they were so stupid?'
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Amy stamped her foot in frustration. 'Yeah, I get it. But I'm not the one drowning in dandruff and hair gel.'
'Sam.' The Doctor looked deadly serious. 'Sam, I need you to listen very carefully. Somewhere in there, Sam is still alive. You are more than a puppet, and you need to try very hard to remember that.'
The Vykoid controlling Sam laughed hysterically. 'Why are you even trying? It's like cattle going to the market. You are going to be sold, so stop mooing.'
The Doctor wasn't put off. 'Sam, you need to listen to me.
This city was built on dreams of freedom. The American dream wasn't built on might and weapons. It was built by hard work and the hope of freedom on the other side. That's why you came here, that's why your great grandparents came here. This is the city of the free, and no one in it, simply no one, can ever accept being a slave. Focus on that feeling, Sam, the dream of freedom you have in you - use it to overpower what you're feeling.'
Amy leant close to the Doctor and whispered, 'Do you think it'll work?'
The Doctor met Sam's eyes and continued. 'You need to believe in yourself, Sam. You are more than this, you are not meant to be a slave. Sam - this is your big day. The moment you become famous. Help me, and I can stop this happening.
Trust me, Sam, and trust yourself.'
The Vykoid controller looked rattled. He pulled 235
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on the levers, but it seemed that Sam was no longer responding. Moving so fast he was a blur of energy, the controller was slamming buttons and yanking every control he had, but to no avail.
With every movement an obvious effort, Sam raised his hand, grasped the Vykoid and yanked the chair from his head. 'Ow!' he winced as the tiny wires they'd drilled into his skull ripped out. He bent double, but then straightened up with pride.
'I did it!'
The Vykoid was dangling from Sam's hand, furiously trying to bite and scratch his way free.
'As for you...' Sam lifted the Vykoid higher. 'How dare you do this to me?' He inspected the troll-like figure with a scientist's eye. 'What an ugly little creature you are.'
'Over here, Sam.' The Doctor was holding out his hand.
Carefully taking the Vykoid by the scruff of the neck, he took out the sonic screwdriver and scanned the small creature from head to toe. 'Here, hold this. Gentle with him now.'
The Doctor handed the Vykoid to Amy and clambered up to the top of the Torch. Standing precariously on the crossbeams, he touched the sonic screwdriver to the very peak of the Torch and then leapt down, a huge grin on his face.
'Done!'
'Is that it?' Amy said, bewildered. 'Here, take this back... I don't want him.'
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The Vykoid's leathery face was screwed up and knotted with anger.
'Ah, let him go,' said the Doctor. 'He can't stop us now.'
Amy dropped the Vykoid to the floor and dusted her hands together, glad to be rid of the alien. 'So why are you looking so pleased with yourself?' she asked.
The Doctor led Amy and Sam to a tiny porthole and looked out towards New York.
That's one of the biggest cities in the world,' he told them.
'The best of everything is there. But it's not about being bigger. It doesn't matter who has the biggest guns or the most money or the most troops. The mightiest army can fall to the smallest. The Vykoids showed us that. But they made a mistake, a tiny mistake. They should have killed us when they had the chance.'
'What have you done?' Sam asked.
I can't make the mob turn on them. I can't even stop the Time Freeze. But I can do something they don't expect...'
'Which is?'
'That teleport beam. They've programmed it for humans.'
'Yeah, I gathered,' Amy said.
'Erik does everything with his remote control. Very technological race, the Vykoids, they love to put too many functions into a device. Their beam comes 237
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from the highest point of the Statue of Liberty.' The Doctor pointed up. 'Right here.'
Amy looked out. 'But they're all still captives. The Vykoids have rounded everyone up.'
The Doctor grinned. 'That teleport beam is going to leave the people of New York exactly where they are. But the police officers might lose something on their heads...'
In the Crown Room, General Erik checked his watch and nodded to his men. He picked up his radio, and issued the command. 'We are good to go. I'd like to thank the puppeteers for their sterling work.'
Around him, the Vykoids scurried around a control room, and the green vortex grew in intensity like a mini-star. It burnt so brightly that the entire top half of the Statue of Liberty became luminescent.
Holding his baton in front of him as if it were the key to life itself, General Erik pressed a button. A vast beam leapt out of the vortex, sprang to the Torch on the top of the Statue of Liberty and arced through the air towards Broadway. As it touched the ground, it crackled and smoked. The ground shook, and smoke rose from the tarmac.
The beam idled for a moment on the south of Manhattan. Then, with a flick of General Erik's wrist, it snaked and turned along the jagged line of Broadway, leaving a cloud of smoke in its wake. As it reached the top of the island, General Erik turned
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the beam off with a triumphant wave of his hand.
'It is done. Ten seconds - that's all it took!' General Erik pushed his sense of dignity to one side and did a little dance on the windowsill. 'We have taken New York. If I can make it here, I'll make it anywhere!'
General Erik was already dreaming of the rewards he would have lavished on him in the Vykoid halls. They'd build a statue of him twice the size of the Statue of Liberty. It would be the Statue of Victory, and it would bear his name.
He picked up his radio and called Commander Strebbins.
'Lars! Come in. I am ready to hear your report.'
There was no reply, but General Erik wasn't daunted.
'Stop celebrating, you hothead! We have another five transports to do before the day is done.'
Again there was no reply. General Erik flicked a switch on his radio and tried again.
'Red? Are you receiving? Red?'
Another Vykoid clambered up and whispered in his general's ear.
With a mounting sense of dread, General Erik took the telescope that the private thrust into his hand, and gazed out at Manhattan.
The people of Manhattan were still crammed into Broadway. But on every street, the NYPD officers were scratching their heads and wondering what 239
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on earth was going on. Their Vykoid controllers had gone.
Teleported back to their home planet.
For a whole minute General Erik said nothing.
The Doctor stood in the doorway.
General Erik faced him with tiny tears falling from his red eyes onto his wrinkled face, and he howled. He felt like a mouse caught in a trap, and took little satisfaction from the sight of the Doctor recoiling from the noise of his painful and ugly rage.
'You have tricked me, Doctor.'
The Doctor walked forward, and crouched down to General Erik's level. 'I'm sorry, Erik, I really am, but I couldn't let you do it.'
'But we are better than them. They are only oafs. We are the true race.'
'That's where you are very wrong. They may be stupid and clumsy and selfish, but they are the most brilliant people you will ever meet. Right now, there are men and women who deserve to live freely, with no one telling them what to do, and without fear that someone might tear their city to pieces overnight. And as long as you keep on thinking that they deserve less, I will keep on stopping you.'
If General Erik had grown conceited with success, he now seemed puzzled by the humility of failure. 'How can I return empty-handed?'
He realised instantly that the question had been 240
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a mistake. There was a hint of anger in the Doctor's crooked smile, and General Erik found himself backing away.
The Doctor spoke quietly. 'You should count yourself lucky. You fought and lost, and will go home as free men.
We've been kinder to you than you've been to any planet you've conquered. And when you get back, tell everyone you meet that this planet is not prepared to be enslaved. Tell them they have a great champion and a great warrior.'
The Doctor bent down towards General Erik and whispered in his ear. Two words.
'You better go before the boat tours start.'
The Doctor, Amy and Sam were standing on Liberty Island with the mammoth. General Erik was at their feet, gazing over the city he'd failed to conquer.
The Doctor held out his hand and General Erik handed him the baton. 'It's time you left, Erik.'
The Vykoid General stood in front of his most senior officers, thanking them one by one. It was obvious to Amy that they meant nothing to him. He had no affection or gratitude for any of them.
'Oh, er, sorry about the insides.’ Amy said, nodding at the mammoth. 'We had to make some room.'
General Erik saluted farewell and joined the columns of Vykoid soldiers retreating onto the belly 241
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of the mammoth. With a gentle tick of clockwork, the army was lifted back inside the mammoth. It shut with a quiet clunk and, moments later, an eerie green light blasted out, filling the air with that strange high-pitched screech. The sphere of green boiling light engulfed the mammoth and spread out, pulsing as if ready to explode over the city.
But this time it snapped inwards, and a crash rang out, echoing like a thousand cymbals rumbling to the floor.
The mammoth was gone.
Amy gave the Doctor a massive hug. 'Now tell me what you did.'
'Simple really. I changed the genetic profile of the teleport beam. Took a scan from the Vykoid controlling Sam, fed it into the teleport transmitter, and it took all the Vykoids back home. Smallest thing we did today.'
Sam stepped forward. 'If you don't mind, Doctor, I have a question. All you said, about freedom and dreams, is it true?'
'Worked on you, didn't it? Have you heard the story about the richest man in America? He arrived in New York with nothing but two potatoes, he sold those and bought four potatoes, sold them and bought eight potatoes, in ten years time he was selling potatoes up and down the East Coast. Pretty soon he was so rich he had people to chew his own chips for him.'
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'Really?' Sam said excitedly. 'Do you think that's how it works? Could it happen to anyone?'
To you? Oh no, you'd make a terrible potato dealer. You're far better than that. You brought an alien army to New York, and then sent them back again. That's as good as it gets.'
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Times Square and clicked his fingers. The TARDIS faded into view.
There was no sign that the mammoth had ever existed. The streets had been cleared of debris, and the road works and building sites of New York were back in action, churning out dust and noise. Nobody would ever know they had all been seconds away from working for the Vykoids.
'Stop, police!'
The Doctor looked around him.
'It's Oscar.’ Amy told him. 'Hi, Oscar.'
Oscar looked at the Doctor and Amy, as if he was struggling to remember them. 'How do you know my name?'
Amy grinned. 'Lucky guess.'
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'Right.' Oscar frowned. 'Well, you can't leave this box here.'
'We're not going to.’ the Doctor said.
'And, Oscar,' Amy said, 'you've been brilliant.'
The Doctor and Am y stepped back inside the TARDIS, and Oscar stared after them in wonder.
'Why didn't he know who we were?' Amy asked.
'I think the Time Freeze is going to have a terrible effect on their short-term memories. When their brains sped up again, they lost a lot of what happened, maybe all of it.
They'll never know.'
Amy strolled over to the Doctor, who was leaning back on the console, 'So that's it? You saved the world, and nobody ever knows?'