'Cause if you do, I should warn you...

The desert sun was a lot harsher than Daniel had expected and his allergy to journeys was playing up badly, but the site was worth all the hassle.

A royal necropolis on the west bank of the Nile, with two of the oldest, largest and best preserved pyramids in Egypt, dating back over four and a half millennia! From the moment he'd first seen the outlines of the Bent Pyramid and the Red Pyramid on the horizon, during the brief trip from Saqqara, he'd known that it held everything he'd dreamed of and more.

In the half-hour they'd been here, among the excavated features of the distant past, he'd realized that neither the excruciating hot temperatures nor the persistent dust being blown everywhere by the surprisingly strong wind meant anything to him: this was a paradise.

Sturdy white tents criss-crossed the area and he watched with undisguised envy the number of pale-shrouded archaeologists from all over the world that were allowed to actually work on the field, rather than just stroll through it like the tourists. Oh, how he wished he'd been able to convince someone – anyone, really – to include him in the dig. Any dig. Better still, to fund one of his own!

Sadly, that was likely to remain a wishful dream. The scientific community was determinedly blind and no effort on his part got him anywhere except as a joke. Even Dr. Jordan was outright dismissive of his theories.

Daniel sighed bitterly.

It hurt, being treated like nothing more than a delusional fool. There were far too many of those to be found in every corner of the Earth – Daniel could attest to that: only two days before, on the plane, he'd had to listen to a bloke earnestly going on and on about mysterious time wars and travelling with an alien lord or something. And about wishing desperately to find him again.

The poor bloke had looked perfectly normal in his framed glasses, with a very sensible square face and slightly receding haircut; but he'd sounded like the sad drunkards prone to con the next beer from credulous tourists with stories of alien kidnappings, or one of those weirdos on fanatics-funded broadcasts raving about angels roaming the Earth.

And Daniel hadn't found anything better to say than a lame: "Well, you could always write it all down and send it to ABC. They might take it as a sci-fi script, if nothing else... you'd make some money, at least."

He'd been more acidly dismissive than he usually was, but the bloke hadn't minded; instead, his eyes had lit up with a firework of possibilities and he'd started muttering to himself: "And I could fund further research on the matter... private research... but it would have to be... perhaps... yes, after all, why not?..." He'd kept stroking the bulky watch strapped to his wrist all through the rest of the flight and for some reason, it had unnerved Daniel.

Though he could admit that what had disturbed him the most had been realizing the very real possibility that that might end up being his fate after all. Except he probably wouldn't even have success with it. He could just see himself walking dejectedly into a bookshop and finding a pile of copies of The Truth About the Pyramids by D. Jackson being sold at a 70% discount in the bargain section. It would probably have an horribly gaudy cover, too, he'd bet.

But no! He couldn't afford to think like that. He was right, he knew he was. He just needed a chance to prove it; and sooner or later, he would get that chance.

He sighed again.

His hands were itching to run along the beautiful stony hieroglyphs describing King Sneferu's military incursion in Libya, which their coarse guide was just then translating. Wrongly. Not by much, admittedly, but he was still wrong. Daniel closed his eyes for a long moment, pained.

He fell behind and did his best to tune everything of the present out and fill his eyes and mind with the bounty of history and culture that sandy, dusty corner of the world was offering so generously.

Their guide started shouting after a while, to gather them for the return trip, but Daniel ignored him. He only had a week here – couldn't afford anything more, nor was it likely that he could save up enough for another trip anytime soon; he had no intention of wasting his time. If he managed, he planned on avoiding even sleep. He was going to enjoy. Every. Last. Second.

He wandered off, naturally drawn to the less touristy areas and poured all his focus on the wealth of half-erased inscriptions that dotted the valley temple site. Maybe, just maybe he should consider compromising with the rest of the scholars about his theories. He knew he was right, but oh! To be allowed to work on these digs! He was never going to get his wish if he stuck to his convictions, losing all credibility in the face of those blind fools who, unfortunately, controlled most of the funds for his field of study. Maybe he should just give up.

He caught sight of a half-hidden, partly collapsed wall with an unexpected combination of symbols – the metonymic logograph for 'traveler' with the determinative for 'god' – and ducked under a rope held by battered delimitation columns, careless of the mistreatment he was inflicting to his already worn out clothes.

Everything faded into irrelevance around him as he lost himself into the joy of translation, slowly moving farther and farther away from the officially approved paths, following the trail of information recorded four thousand years earlier...

Out of the blue, a series of weird, wheezing noises started up right behind the wall Daniel was studying, startling him out of his focused reverie: like a crescendo of trumpeting of elephants, getting louder until they stopped with an unexpected thud.

Completely flabbergasted, Daniel moved slowly around the corner, peering out to whatever had made those strange sounds.

What he saw made him take off his glasses and frantically clean them with the dusty hem of his shirt, all the while blinking owlishly at the big blue box that most likely was not supposed to be there.

It looked like the back of a British telephone box, only blue. And it was kind of squished between two ancient walls. Looking completely out of place.

Putting his glasses back on, and distractedly noticing that he'd accomplished nothing except making it even harder to see anything, what with the sand now smeared all over the lenses, Daniel tried to make sense of what he was seeing.

There was a loud bang, followed by a crash, then more clangs and clanks, and finally a dull thud.

Daniel hurried to the... blue telephone box... if that was what it was... and pushed himself into the narrow space between it and the nearest wall, squeezing himself until he managed to pass through, even though he had to sacrifice his waistcoat, whose many pockets had got wedged on the edge of the box and the wall.

On the other side, a tall man with close-cropped hair and jug ears was getting to his feet: he wore a plain leather jacket, dark trousers and black leather boots and looked utterly normal and utterly out of place at the same time.

By the looks of it, a temporary wall had collapsed on him and dragged down an entire cupboard on top, spilling catalogued fragments of artefacts all over the place.

Daniel blinked, stunned to find himself in the back storage area of the valley temple's temporary museum, where the remnants of the mudbrick houses of the priests of Sneferu's mortuary cult were being catalogued and stored against the enclosure wall. How had he got there?

Come to think of it, the light was a lot more reddish and the air a lot more stifling than it had been just a moment ago... it was just a moment ago, right? Admittedly it looked like sunset was close, but... surely not?

The man dusted himself off brusquely, then checked the black wristwatch strapped to his wrist and glanced at his surroundings critically. "Hmm... it seems I'm a little further away than I'd aimed for," he said with a British accent. "Not too much, though. That's good."

He looked up and smiled at Daniel winningly.

"Who are you?" asked Daniel rather stupidly.

"I'm the Doctor!" was the perky reply. "Who are you?"

"Dr. Daniel Jackson," he replied automatically. "Sorry, Doctor who?"

"Just the Doctor," the weird man answered cheerfully.

Daniel's gaze went from him to the telephone box – and yes, it was just that: there was even writing on top of it, saying 'Police Public Call Box'. It was unbelievable.

Daniel's gaze roamed over the square lines of its design, so oddly familiar...

"Hold on!" he cried out, astonished. "I- I've seen this before!"

The Doctor raised an eyebrow: "Really? That's interesting. I don't remember meeting you before. Maybe I've yet to."

Daniel swung his head back to stare at the man: "What?"

"Oh, you know. Sometimes I meet a person when he or she has already met me. Hazards of travelling in time, I guess."

Daniel repeated in shock: "Traveling in time?"

"I imagine sometime in one of my futures I'll meet you in your past, then. Something to look forward to!" the weird man finished with a huge grin.

"No; no no no no. That. But. You. That. I-" Daniel ran a hand through his longish brown hair, feeling out of his depth. He took a deep breath, trying to find some coherence: "This makes no sense," he murmured. "No sense at all. Who are you?"

The man frowned: "I thought you said you'd seen my Tardis already."

Tardis, mouthed Daniel, gaping. Then he blinked at the man's deepening frown: "No, I mean... not seen seen, just... seen it."

"You're the one who's not making any sense now."

"Huh. Right. Right." Daniel ran his hand through his hair again. "I- I mean I saw something on a cartouche, among hieroglyphs. Something absurd. It didn't make any sense, but I- I think maybe, now it does. Because. Right. I- I suspect it was... this." He gestured to the blue box.

The man – the Doctor? – raised his eyebrows and crossed his arms.

Daniel grabbed him by an elbow and dragged him away: "Here, come. Come have a look. It was just... this... way... There!"

And there it was indeed: an undoubtedly authentic sculpted hieroglyph of an undoubtedly anachronistic phone box.

"This... this hasn't been related to any other hieroglyph ever found, I remember reading about it, didn't even know it was here. Heh." Daniel looked at the strange shape with fondness and wonder. "It's incredible. It's simply not explainable. Most scholars just think it's a hoax, never mind the radiocarbon dating. But I knew there had to be more... Oh, some other egyptologysts have tried to come up with theories, but nothing makes sense, especially in the context it's put in – see here? It's in a list of 'treasures' for the temple, included in the narration about a 'traveler god', of whom there is no trace in Egyptian mythology I might add, and 'war machines' that-"

"Yes, yes. I was there, you know, I don't need a blow-by-blow account," said the Doctor irritatedly. His gaze was dark and sad.

"You were there..." breathed Daniel. "So it's true. What you were saying. It's impossible, but it's true. You... you travel in time!" He put a hand over his mouth, beyond shocked – and just a tiny bit delighted. "And this!" He pointed back to the mysterious hieroglyph, his enthusiasm growing. "This is real. It's your... whatever you called it, isn't it? It really is. I knew it had to be a representation of a thing, not a concept... the Egyptian writing system has always included a combination of both alphabetic and logographic elements, you know, and..."

"Yes, yes, it's the Tardis," murmured the Doctor, sounding tired all of a sudden. "Odd, though. I didn't think I'd made such an impression. Not until much later, at least – I don't remember ever visiting Ancient Egypt again... not until the New Kingdom period, anyway. I was never very comfortable with the Old and Intermediate Dynasties," he explained with a slight grimace. "All those alien gods."

"What? Wait- what?!" Daniel's eyes were bugging out.

The Doctor shook his head disapprovingly: "I simply can't stand aliens posing as gods. They make me nervous. Because of Sutekh, you know," he said in confidence. "Which reminds me!"

He snapped his head up and sprinted away.

Daniel was left gaping after him for a long moment before he managed to break through his shock and run after the mystifying time traveller.

"Wait. Wait! You can't just run off like this!"

"Yes I can!" the Doctor shouted over his shoulder. "Look. This is me, running off. See ya!"

"But, but... but!" Daniel started running after the strange man. "Wait! Wait, please! You have to- look, can you just stop a moment?" he panted.

The Doctor slowed down and turned with a very put-upon expression: "What is it?" he asked, starting to walk nonchalantly backwards.

Out of breath, Daniel attempted to put into words the exhilarated thoughts that were threatening to make him burst with excitement: "Your... thing! It's a- a phone box! And, and- it's blue, and it was depicted in a hieroglyphic text!"

"It wasn't blue in the depiction," pointed out the Doctor unhelpfully.

"You said the ancient gods were aliens!" cried Daniel.

The Doctor stopped, wavered, grimaced, then admitted: "I... did, yes. Yes, I said so." A pause. "You don't have to listen."

"I knew it!" Daniel shouted his triumph to the universe. "This is the proof! I was right!" He laughed in pure glee. "I was right about everything! Ha! Ha ha ha ha!"

The Doctor started marching briskly away again.

"No, wait. Wait!" Daniel ran after him. "You can't just walk away – that's not fair. You've gotta tell me what's going on."

"No I don't."

"But this, this ties in with my theories perfectly! Don't you understand! I was right!"

"Good for you!"

"I told them, I told them that the Pyramids of Giza are much older than the third millennium B.C. ..."

"'Course they are."

Daniel gaped: "You... you believe me?"

"Why wouldn't I?" asked the Doctor distractedly. He found a Jeep in the employee parking and deftly took out something metal from a pocket of his leather jacket. It glowed for a moment and the car lock sprang.

Daniel ran around to the other door and slammed his hands on the window, positively vibrating with excitement: "With your help, I could get the scientific community to listen to me!"

"Sorry, I'm a bit busy at the moment."

"Please!" shouted Daniel, aware that he was sounding desperate. "You're the proof that I'm not delusional!"

The Doctor's eyebrows raised again.

"The entire scientific world thinks I'm deluded, they're ostracising me, saying I'm a madman, but I know, I know I'm right, there are proofs of cross-pollination of ancient cultures everywhere if you just look and now you're confirming my idea that the pyramids were actually landing sites for alien spaceships and this is beyond fantastic and you can't go away like that!"

Daniel ran out of steam, panting, but he'd managed to capture the attention of the Doctor, who gave him a sudden look of concentration: "Hold on a mo'," he said. "Did you say Daniel Jackson?"

"Yeah. That's. Um. That's me," replied Daniel, straightening up and fidgeting a little.

The Doctor's eyes widened with pleased surprise: "Daniel Jackson!" he repeated with growing enthusiasm. "Doctor Daniel Jackson! The foremost expert in ancient languages and history on Planet Earth! Egyptologist, archaeologist, historian, and of course, renowned terrestrial and extraterrestrial linguist... The person responsible for deciphering and unlocking the Stargate for the United States Air Force!"

The Doctor was now grinning in delight and looking at Daniel like a fan meeting a celebrity.

"I'm... all that?" Daniel asked, incredulous and hopeful at once.

"Well." The Doctor returned serious abruptly. "You will be. Possibly. Hopefully. See ya!"

He wrenched the car door open and climbed swiftly inside.

Without a second thought, Daniel threw himself after him and fastened his seatbelt under the Doctor's irritated gaze: "I'm coming with you," he declared, more bravely than he felt.

The time traveller rolled his eyes: "Why is it that you humans must always run head first into the unknown?"

Daniel found himself gaping again: "You... humans?"

The Doctor powered up the car and started to manoeuvre it: "Yes, I'm an alien. Problem?"

He nearly backed them into a wall, then almost ran over a rubbish bin when he reversed direction.

Daniel grabbed the seat with both hands, holding his breath, but shook his head vehemently: "You're the one with the answers I seek, I don't care what galaxy you come from."

"And what makes you think I'll give you any of those answers?"

The Doctor sped up, apparently disregarding both the actual road and any obstacles on their path, only ever swerving to avoid them at the very last minute. Daniel valiantly fought down a whimper at his slipshod driving.

"For that matter, why do you need my help?" he asked, frowning at Daniel and, incidentally, not paying much attention to where he was driving.

They got onto the road, by the looks of it by chance, and darted away far above whatever speed limit there might have been for it.

Daniel sagged against the seat with a defeated sigh: "Let's just say that my theory finds little acceptance in the academic world and leave it at that," he said, thinking bitterly of the ridicule that his colleagues usually reserved for him.

"Current."

"What?"

"In the current academic world. Give it... oh... 100 years or so, and no-one will doubt you at all."

"That's not very comforting."

The Doctor beamed a too-bright smile at him and steered abruptly to control the suddenly skidding Jeep, thrusting Daniel against the door.

The archaeologist grimaced, but doggedly forged on: "Tell me more."

"I'm not sure I should. Terrible thing, meddling with timelines. Knowing too much could kill you. Change the course of history for the worst. Destroy the entire universe. Who knows?"

"Are you always this catastrophic?"

"Well, I admit that's a worst-case scenario. The destruction could be limited to the human race."

The Doctor darted a glance at Daniel and smirked.

"But you've already told me so much. What difference will it make?" pleaded the archaeologist.

Sighing with impatience, the Doctor sped up even more and tried a different approach: "You don't need any help. You figured it all out on your own, didn't you? How did you come up with that theory anyway?"

And just like that, Daniel was off onto a lengthy lecture, explaining in detail everything he'd observed, conjectured, deduced and hoped.

He trailed off when he realized the Doctor was parking the car with a noisy skid. "...Where are we?"

"See that?" The weird man pointed to a squat building complex hunkered down around an unremarkable hill on which Daniel's expert eye could spot some discreet, but clear, signs of Egyptian architecture. The settlement had an undefinable area of military.

"Yeah?" he asked, a bit uncomfortable.

"That is what I came to check."

The Doctor got out of the Jeep and strolled up to the barred entry gate as if he owned it.

Daniel hurried after him: "Hold on, we can't get in there, we don't have permission!" he hissed urgently.

"Don't we?" asked the Doctor in mock surprise. He marched straight up to the military-looking guard and showed off a flap of black leather which presumably contained a paper: "I'm the Doctor and this is my assistant," he announced authoritatively.

Daniel tried not to let his jaw fall in shock.

The uniformed guard took the paper, studied it carefully, then nodded and motioned them through.

The Doctor moved with the determination of someone who knew exactly where he was going.

Daniel hastily followed, eyes wide and dazed: "How did you do that? How could you possibly do that? This site is under control of the military, you can't possibly have done that!" He caught up with the Doctor. "Did you bribe them? Is that it? Was there money in the folds of that paper?"

"What? No! How did you come up with that idea?" asked the Doctor, genuinely scandalized.

"But you got us in!"

"So I did."

"But it's impossible! You couldn't possibly be allowed here. I'm certainly not allowed here!"

But the Doctor was already entering an excavated tunnel on the side of the hill and Daniel could only follow him downwards, in thick darkness only pierced by the small torch the time traveller was now holding up.

From what the archaeologist could see, it was a very typical burial site, all dark tunnels and small, barely decorated chambers. Daniel was torn between the violent desire to stay and study every detail for hours on end, and the irresistible pull to follow the mystifying alien and find out what he was doing.

The mystery that was the Doctor won and Daniel found himself half-running to keep up with his loping strides, plunging ever deeper into that darkness he itched to explore and fast reaching what had to be the underground chamber.

The Doctor turned his small torch to the ground, quickly darting the light around until he found some cables and with a soft "Aha!" he blared the unexpectedly whirring thing at them, evidently jury-rigging them because his action triggered a few electric lamps, obviously left behind by whoever was studying the place.

Daniel gasped in awe.

The murals on the walls of the room could not be seen clearly in the shadows, but his breath was taken by what filled the other side of the chamber almost to his ceiling: an enormous, black basalt statue of the jackal-headed god on a throne; Seth in all his magnificence.

The Doctor went instantly to work, starting to pass his torch-thing slowly along the outline of the door and then moving to do the same to the sarcophagus at the feet of the statue. Only, it didn't look much like a torch anymore: there was a sort of bluish laser pulse on it and it was emitting a soft buzzing sound.

The archaeologist considered asking about it for half a second, but history had a greater call on him than whatever alien technology that might be. "Where are we?" he whispered, enthralled.

The Doctor turned to him with gleaming, eager eyes: "This, Doctor Jackson, is the burial chamber of Sutekh; or, was, rather. It's what remains of it." He returned to his examination and tossed over his shoulder: " We're in the lower levels of the Black Pyramid, in case you're wondering."

"There is no Black Pyramid," blurted out Daniel automatically.

The Doctor grinned in an extremely self-satisfied way: "Not anymore."

Then he returned to his perusal of the sarcophagus, crouching low and muttering to himself.

Daniel shook his head and tried a different line of questioning, his hand running along the stone reverently without much conscious thought: "Sutekh... In ancient Egyptian mythology, Sutekh is one of the many names for Set, the god of the deserts," he pointed out.

"Oh! Yes, I suppose it was," was the rather distracted reply. "He travelled a lot, that one. Gathered quite a few names while at it: Set, Setesh, Sadok, the Typhonian Beast, simply Typhon... But the Osirian one was Sutekh."

The Doctor stood up with a pleased grunt and fiddled with his not-torch, dimming the laser light. The soft buzzing noise returned with a vengeance.

"Sutekh the Destroyer, that's what his own people called him," he went on explaining. "Very paranoid. He was convinced that all forms of life might one day challenge his hegemony and feared them for it."

"What, all forms of life?"

"Yes. All. So he decided to destroy all life in the universe. Very logical, when you think of it." The Doctor stopped, a thoughtful expression on his face: "Also completely unacceptable, of course."

Daniel regarded him warily: "What is it that you're looking for in Sutekh's tomb?"

"Well, when I say tomb..." The Doctor turned to him and Daniel got the distinct impression that the mad alien was having a lot of fun. "Prison might be a better word."

"But that's a sarcophagus. You get those in tombs, not prisons," the scholar protested.

"The problem with sarcophagi is that they can hide just about anything! A Sontaran cloning device... a Goa'uld healing device... a nuclear power plant..."

"What?" asked Daniel in a strangled voice.

The Doctor contemplated the statue thoughtfully: "Or, an Osirian lodestone..."

"What's a lodestone?" asked Daniel, feeling weak in the knees (a part of him was still wondering about nuclear plants in sarcophagi).

"A type of technology used by the Osirians to travel through time," was the matter-of-fact answer.

Daniel nodded, pretending with all his forces that he wasn't completely out of his depth: "Like your... Tardis?"

"No, not really. Lodestones have a 1:1 ratio between the distance in time travelled and the time experienced for the traveller, as far as I know no other people ever invented something like this. Of course, not many species live thousands of years like the Osirians. Ageing 70 years to go back in time 70 years wouldn't have mattered much to them. I call it boring."

Finished with passing his not-torch over every available surface edge, the Doctor stood back abruptly; the metal stick vanished into a pocket of his leather jacket.

"They're tricky things, lodestones," he said lightly. "Last time I was here, one of those sent my Tardis completely off course. Mind, they're occasionally useful too..."

"And they are hidden in Egyptian sarcophagi?" asked Daniel tentatively.

"Well, those around here are. Except when they're activated, they lose their stone form and become visible doorways." The Doctor gesticulated to underline his explanation: "Entrances into a time space tunnel, with energy spiralling in their form. It's rather beautiful to see. Like the materialization of a complex mathematical concept. Osirians truly were an amazing species, when it came to mathematics."

Unable to contain himself any longer, Daniel blurted out: "Ok, look. What, exactly, do you mean by 'Osirians'?"

"I mean that they came from the planet Phaester Osiris."

"Right."

"They were a powerful race, the Osirians," mused the Doctor. "Very advanced psychic powers: mental and physical projection, mind control, telepathy... they particularly liked puzzles. Arrogant bastards, most of them, but much more pleasant than the species that succeeded them as the dominant species of the Milky Way galaxy."

Daniel's eyes bugged out: "So... so they came from a... a different galaxy?"

"Originally, yes. They liked this one, though."

"That's..." Daniel swallowed a few times.

The Doctor sighed: "Incredible? Impossible? Delusional? Couldn't you try and be a little more original?"

"...very far from here."

"Oh." The Doctor blinked. "Guess you could."

After an awkward pause, Daniel tried again: "If what you say is true, how did Sutekh end up here of all places?"

The Doctor beamed unnervingly: "He annihilated his home planet and left a trail of destruction across half the galaxy, exterminating all living things he encountered," he said cheerfully. "He was pursued across the galaxy by his brother and the other seven hundred forty surviving Osirians, until he was finally defeated by their combined might. Here, as it were. Isn't it fantastic?"

Faltering in the face of the enormity of all this, Daniel fell back onto familiar ground and started reciting: "In early Egypt, Set was the brother of Horus, Isis, Nephthys..."

"Who was also his wife, yes," interrupted the Doctor. "Quite typical in Osirian's society."

"Really?" frowned Daniel, momentarily derailed.

The Doctor didn't pay him any mind: "She was nearly as nasty as him, I'm told. Never met her, though."

"It was all true, then? All the myths? They were all just alien stories?"

"Pretty much. The tales of the Osirians were remembered in Egyptian mythology for generations. And then they were taken over by the Goa'uld."

"The who?"

The Doctor looked at him, appearing startled for a moment, and then gave him an unconvincing bright smile: "Oh, never mind that. Come have a look, instead. What does this look like to you?"

Feeling as if he was walking in an unsettling dream, Daniel slowly drew nearer and tried to see what 'this' was.

The Doctor leaned down and picked up a fragment of an octagonal stone coin with an unrecognisable pattern on it: "Interesting," he muttered. He looked at Daniel with satisfaction: "Not as bad as it could be."

"What? What is it?" the archaeologist asked anxiously.

"Grahwwonds. They're pirates." The Doctor grinned madly. "Scavengers. They travel around the universe and steal, pilfer, plunder, filch everything they can scrounge without too much danger to themselves. They prey on the wreckages of other civilizations."

"Grownds."

"...More or less."

"Ok. Ok. They're aliens, yes?"

"Oh, yes. Shouldn't have arrived in this galaxy for another five centuries, but like I said... pirates. Likely as not, they stole someone else's time travel technology and ended up here by mistake. Wouldn't have stopped them, of course. They're a very unflappable species."

"So they were thrown into a different place and time and they just... went on pirating?"

"Why wouldn't they?"

Daniel turned the odd coin over and over in his hand and tried again: "Grahw-wounds."

"Oh, much better pronunciation!" cheered the Doctor.

"Alien tomb robbers," dead-panned Daniel.

"That's the Grahwwonds for you!" nodded the Doctor enthusiastically.

"Right."

There was a long moment of meaningful silence. It didn't seem as if the Doctor was picking up on the meaning of it at all.

"'Not as bad as it could be', you said," prompted Daniel.

"That's right."

"That isn't the same as 'good'."

"Ah... Thing is, Grahwwonds tend to like... traps," replied the Doctor.

Another moment of silence.

"Excuse me?"

"It's kind of like their signature," insisted the alien blithely. "A way of saying 'a Grahwwond pirate was here'. Like those graffiti of yours, that kind of thing." He looked mighty pleased with himself as he concluded: "Only... they prefer traps that get sprung by the next unfortunate to follow in their steps."

"They litter the places they plunder with traps to mark their passage?"

"Yes. It's a matter of pride to them," said the Doctor earnestly.

"Fascinating!"

"It is!" agreed the Doctor enthusiastically. "Also a little dangerous." He turned abruptly to the sarcophagus and started poking and prodding it here and there. "Now if only..."

"DOCTOR!"