The capsule disintegrated only a minute after the Doctor jumped ship, and with a childlike glee he was watching its many parts burn up above and around him like tiny meteors. As it turned out, this was the perfect cover for his descent. And it was a good thing that he was also wearing the perfect suit. Never lose track of a good tailor, especially one who is not only friendly and competent, but also good with heat, pressure and micrometeoroid resistant fabrics.
.
.
A few minutes later, now standing in a field of very tall wheat, the Doctor hurriedly removed his dive suit, bundled it up in his parachute and set about hiding it as best he could.
He decided that criminals were not the brightest bulbs in any civilisation. If the bouncers of Protos had indeed spotted him, they could track down Hatfoot without too much trouble. The small silver chute had HATFOOT SPARE PARTS painted across it in large fluoro orange letters.
At least his supersonic space jump was more accurate than the TARDIS was likely to be. The Doctor had landed not only in the correct year, and merely minutes before what looked to be a spectacular day of sunshine, but he was standing only a few hundred yards from his intended destination.
The tiny lights of civilisation, or at least the fires and smoke of an encampment, twinkled off to the east. The Doctor shivered and rubbed his arms against the cold, straightened his bow tie, adjusted his backpack, and began pushing his way through the wheat towards the torchlights ahead of him to the west.
Based on the little information he had been able to gather from a distance, these were the markers of the tomb of Avram, fashioner of worlds, craftsman of dynasties, keeper of secrets, and owner of a planet so laced with veins of gold that it almost bled the stuff. No wonder it was protected.
"Clara, can you hear me?"
"Yes, Doctor! Are you alright?"
"According to my calculations, your cake is burning."
He was right.
.
.
Deimos and Phoebe, a boy and a girl, both apparently around the age of twelve, were sword fighting with gold painted sticks at the entry to the tomb. Those weren't their real names. They were the roles they were filling. Standing in for the ancient guardians of the tomb of the great father, but with no one from whom to defend it, they practised on each other. The click-clack of parried blows echoed in the flickering torchlight.
They suddenly stopped, sensing somebody approaching from the east, a silhouette with the vapour of his breath visible before the rising sun. As they stared, the glory of dawn exploded behind him.
"Who goes there?" they called out in unison.
"Don't be afraid. I'm just a tourist."
"What's a tourist?" Phoebe asked her twin.
"We don't get visitors around here," Deimos responded. "Did you come down in the shooting stars?"
The Doctor used a question to quickly change the subject.
"Why aren't you two home in bed? Aren't you a bit young to be doing guard duty?"
"It's sort of a rite of passage, an honour, a tradition," retorted Deimos.
"It's the only tradition. And it gets us out of collecting food today," admitted Phoebe.
The building itself was a small ziggurat which appeared to be covered in hammered gold. It was now shimmering in the dawn light, but when he squinted, the Doctor could see that it was also covered in what appeared to be graffiti.
"Are you the protectors of the tomb, then?" the Doctor asked.
"Yes we are, at least for today." Deimos pointed a stick at him.
"So, are you going to stop me having a peek inside?"
The children looked at each other, then back to the Doctor.
"No, not at all. We've always wondered what's inside!"
"That's a relief. Normally there are guards or booby traps or something. Do you think there's a booby trap?"
"Nobody ever comes here. Nobody visits Protos."
The Doctor noticed the detail of the children's tunics, visible beneath their fur coats. They were embroidered with what appeared to be gold thread. Both of them wore numerous, roughly-fashioned necklaces and bracelets of gold. Both of them had golden beads braided through their hair. Yet their feet were bare and they were dirty from top to toe. Perhaps the most striking detail was the golden dot painted or tattooed just beneath each of their eyes.
"Clara, I've found the tomb. The inhabitants are really low-tech, but you won't believe the amount of bling the kids wear around here."
.
.
The doors were made of solid gold. Either no expense had been spared or there really were no other materials available when the tomb was constructed. Gold is soft, but gold is heavy and non-corrosive. And on Protos, gold was everywhere.
The door mechanism, however, was surprisingly high tech, as the Doctor had expected, and it only took him a few minutes to find the right frequency with his sonic screwdriver, a gadget which the children eyed off keenly. He put it in his inside pocket just in case they were skilled at collecting things other than food.
After some humming and scraping, the doors were retracted to reveal a narrow passageway with stairs leading down into darkness.
The children offered to bring one of their fire torches, but the Doctor strapped a metal band containing a torch to his forehead, an arrangement which looked as hurriedly conceived as the device through which he now communicated with Clara.
"In we go, Clara! If I'd thought of it I could have included video. Doctor-CAM…"
"I don't know if that would be better or worse, Doctor. You're really embarrassing in front of a camera, especially CCTV."
"Who's that you're talking to?" asked Phoebe.
"That's my minder. She's a beautiful guardian angel, just like you. She's a long way away but she worries about me. Just like your father and mother worry about you."
The children looked at each other, blankly.
The Doctor frowned.
"Oh dear. Well, like you look after each other."
That seemed to make more sense to them.
"Okay then, lets get on with it."
"Are you sure about this?" asked Clara.
"To quote an old friend of mine, stealing ideas from contemporaries is rude and tasteless, but stealing ideas from the long dead is considered literary and admirable."
"What?"
"The same is true of grave-robbing. Loot your local cemetery and find yourself mired in social awkwardness. But unearth the tomb of an ancient king and you can feel free to pocket his toe rings. You'll probably end up on a book tour, or bagging an honorary degree or two."
The Doctor walked around the building, checking for surveillance, then stood in the doorway looking down the passage. He turned to the children.
"I'll walk on ahead, and you two keep guard. If anything nasty happens, perhaps let somebody know — you know, the authorities. Actually, on second thought, perhaps don't tell anyone — especially the authorities. If nothing nasty happens, I'll call on you to come down and check it out. Don't ever do anything like this on your own, ever."
The children, now bright-eyed, looked at each other once again and grinned. As far as they were concerned, this was the best day of their lives. And anyhow, if they were ever going to do anything like this on their own, they would most certainly do it together.
The sky was now a burgeoning study in red and gold. The Doctor gave it one last glance and disappeared.
The children stood obediently in the doorway, more out of excitement and fear than anything else. In the dawn light, neither they nor the Doctor had noticed the triple flashes pulsing silently from the peak of the ziggurat, signalling into the chilled morning air, and beyond.