CHAPTER 19

The Dying Seconds

If the final whistle didn’t come soon, Rory was going to keel over. He wasn’t sure which was more unbearable – the effect of the shimmer on his poor, aching body or the atmosphere of raw, nervous tension that now filled the Empire Stadium.

West Germany had clearly decided that they had nothing to lose. There were only a few minutes of the second period of extra time left to play and they were still a goal down. They were throwing everyone forward in a last-ditch attempt to save the match.

The English fans in the crowd were watching the dying seconds in a frenzy of nervous anticipation. Victory had already been snatched from the English once, only half an hour earlier. They wouldn’t dare believe this match was won until it was over.

Rory knew that he shouldn’t be sharing their anxiety – after all, he knew how the match would turn out. Or, at least, he knew how it was meant to turn out. Somehow, his nerves were on a knife-edge, too; it would still only take one moment of German skill to change the scoreline to 3–3.

But there was nothing more Rory could do. He had done his bit. Or, to be more accurate, he had done Bahramov’s bit. Surely history must be back on track now.

He watched anxiously as the West German players pressed forward again. There was a tremendous roar from the crowd as Ray Wilson bravely slid in to steal the ball. The English fans were cheering every tackle now.

Rory checked his watch yet again. They were into injury time. England just had to keep hold of the ball …

But, moments later, the West Germans had won possession once more. Beckenbauer began a dangerous, weaving run into the English half.

‘Come on!’ muttered Rory to himself. ‘Blow, ref. Blow!’

Outside the stadium, the situation was equally tense.

As soon as it had become obvious that the Doctor’s cable was not going to reach her, Amy had resolved to find a way to reach it.

Climbing was not her greatest strength at the best of times; climbing the sheer face of a large building, which offered few handholds or footholds, was proving a real challenge. A very painful, very scary challenge.

She had now made it nearly six metres up the stadium’s wall. She was clinging on for dear life, with one hand and both feet somehow maintaining their purchase on the slightest of holds, while she felt about desperately above her for another ridge or ledge by which to pull herself up. She had the crocodile-clip connector clamped firmly between her teeth.

The exposed end of the cable dangled tantalisingly close overhead. It was only a metre or so out of her reach.

Amy could feel the strength ebbing from her arms. The view of the drop to the concrete below made her feel light-headed. She felt sure she would lose her grip at any moment … but she had to keep going. All she had to do was get to the cable and make the connection. Just a few more centimetres …

On the ground below, PC Sanderson was showing similar bravery in the face of danger. By now, the largest of the adult Vispics – the one that Amy had fought off at the Tube station – would have overcome both of them, were it not for the policeman’s desperate actions.

As the Vispic came scuttling into the stadium’s forecourt from Olympic Way, Sanderson had leapt back on to his faithful Thunderbird and kick-started the bike’s powerful engine. With little thought for his own safety, he had driven the bike straight at the charging Vispic. He was determined to keep the alien beast from harming Amy at all costs.

His headlong motorcycle charge had worked. The Vispic was forced to throw itself to one side to avoid a collision. It came to a halt, then began to scuttle first one way, then the other, weighing up its reckless opponent.

The two were now engaged in a one-on-one stand-off, like the world’s most bizarre bullfight. Man and machine against alien monster.

Meanwhile, up on the stadium roof, the Doctor was being kept fully occupied by the other two adult Vispics. They were having their own pitched battle. It was playing out between the stadium’s gleaming twin towers. The Vispics were circling the Doctor menacingly while he brandished his sonic screwdriver like a sword.

It didn’t look like a fight the Doctor could win. But so far he had managed to evade each sudden, vicious attack thanks to some well-timed dodging and the odd blast of stinging sonic energy.

Down on the ground, the Vispic began its next charge. Sanderson boldly urged the Thunderbird forward to meet it head on. But this time the alien creature got the better of him. It dipped its ugly hammerhead at the last moment, then threw it back, flipping the front wheel of the police bike into the air. Sanderson lost control of it completely. He was thrown from the Thunderbird’s saddle. His body hit the forecourt, skidded across it a considerable distance, then lay still. His motorcycle screeched to a standstill on its side some distance away.

The Vispic had no further interest in Sanderson for now. It clearly understood what Amy was attempting to do – and it was intent on stopping her. It scuttled to the base of the wall she was clinging to and began to climb.

To Amy’s great dismay, it seemed Vispic leeches made better climbers than girls from Leadworth. Only moments later, she felt an alien claw clutch at her trailing leg. She risked losing her grip by kicking down hard with one foot and landed a solid blow on the Vispic’s head. A moment or two later she had the satisfaction of hearing the creature hit the ground below with a clatter.

Amy frantically scrabbled to regain her foothold, then peered down anxiously.

The Vispic was already beginning to climb the wall again.

Bobby Moore, the England captain, won the ball deep in his own half. He looked up and, in a typically inspired moment, spotted the perfect pass to play. The desperate West Germans had pushed up so far, they had left themselves wide open to a fast counter-attack. Moore picked out Geoff Hurst in space on the left wing and sent a gloriously well-judged ball into his teammate’s path.

From the touchline, Rory watched Hurst collect Moore’s pass and begin streaking upfield with the ball. As Hurst did so, all sense of anxiety lifted from Rory. Once again, he recognised this moment – he had relived it on YouTube countless times, and it never lost its ability to fascinate and thrill him. What was about to happen, Rory knew, was the greatest moment in English football history.

‘Go on, Geoff! GO ON!’ Rory cheered wildly as the English centre-forward ran past him, the ball at his feet. Rory didn’t care any more that he was supposed to be Russian, or Azerbaijani, or whatever. Nor did he care that, right at that moment, he had the most terrible stomach ache of his entire life.

All he cared about was what was about to happen.

After almost two hours of full-on football, Hurst somehow found the energy to sprint the entire length of the pitch. He took the ball past the final German outfield player. As he bore down on the German goal from the left wing, he drilled a powerful left-footed, long-range shot towards the near top corner of the net …

With one final heroic heave, Amy pulled herself up to within reach of the dangling cable. She let go of the wall with her right hand, risking a deadly fall, and pulled the connector from her mouth. She stretched the fingers of her right hand to their limit to grasp both its handles and squeezed them together.

Something cold and sharp scraped against the back of her right leg.

She desperately raised the connector until its jaws were round the exposed cable end, clamped it on and gave the red handle a firm twist.

One thousand volts of electricity instantly surged along the cable. They flowed into the complex inverter-transformer circuit that the Doctor had ingeniously engineered from Wembley’s vast aluminium roof structure. The voltage was boosted a hundredfold, before the pulse finally shot up the flagpole of the left-hand stadium tower and along the wire that connected it to the other pole.

The displacement anchor, secured at the midpoint of the wire, glowed brilliantly, blindingly white for an instant.

Then it exploded into a million tiny pieces, like a puff of glittering powder.

All three adult Vispics vanished in the blink of an eye. Amy, the Doctor and PC Sanderson, who had now struggled back to his feet, found themselves alone.

And all along the north-west branch of the Metropolitan Line, bewildered Tube drivers wondered why their trains had just ground to a halt.

Amy wasn’t out of danger yet, though. The last drop of strength in her left-hand fingertips was draining away fast. She couldn’t hold on much longer. With one last exertion, she twisted back the red connector handle to kill the power. Then she scrabbled at the wall hopelessly with her right hand. But there was nothing to grip on to.

Her left foot slipped, and she fell.

A split second later, she found herself dangling in thin air – not falling through it. Something was clinging to her right wrist. A hand.

‘Gotcha!’

Amy looked up into the anxious face of the Doctor. Much of it was covered by his drooping hair, which had flopped forward due to the fact that he was hanging almost upside down. Somehow, he had managed to drop from the stadium roof and slide down the power cable in time to catch her.

‘Nice work, Agent Beckham!’ Despite the effort he was clearly putting into keeping hold of her, the Doctor forced a smile. ‘Never doubted for a moment that you had things under control!’

Amy looked up at him, her pale face paler than ever. ‘Did we do it, Doctor?’ she asked. ‘Are they gone? Do you think it’s all over?’

At that moment, a deafening roar rose from inside the stadium – the roar of tens of thousands of rejoicing spectators. Hurst had scored his third goal. The match was over. England had beaten West Germany, four goals to two.

And, under the South Stand, not a single luck-sucking larva remained to feast on the elation of the euphoric England fans.

As the Doctor replied to Amy, his grin broadened. ‘It is now!’