They made it back to the city at mid-morning. By this time, nearly all of the party goers had gone home to bed. Maude insisted on stopping at her house to get her own sunglasses. (specially designed, tinted, fitted goggles) She then took the picture of the possum with the black patch and led Susan and Barbara through the streets until they reached a particular tree. Through gesture, Maude indicated that this was where the younger possum lived.

An older female answered the door, grumpy at haven been woken up. "What do you want?" she huffed.

"Terribly sorry for bothering you at this hour, Kita, but is your daughter in?"

"Which one?"

"The one with the fur. Rikki, isn't it?"

Kita took in the sight of Barbara and Susan standing in the background and gave a long-suffering sigh. "Oh, what's she done this time?"

"Stolen a piece off the aliens' ship."

Kita groaned. "Of course! First aliens to ever come to Bekberry and it's my daughter that goes and pulls a stunt like this! Takes after her father, you know."

"Yeah," Maude said sympathetically, "You see, they really need it back. I don't know what it does, but it seems to affect their speech. Poor things can hardly communicate anymore, you should have seen it-"

"Well, she's not here. She'll probably be out all day again. You might try the old bobo tree down by the river. If she's not there, I don't know what to tell you. But don't you worry. If she comes home with it, you can bet I'll have her get it right back to you!"

"That'd be lovely, thanks!"

Barbara waited patiently as Maude finished her business with the other possum. She hoped it had something to do with the whereabouts of the translation circuit and the other possum. (She'd started mentally referring to it as 'Patchy'.) How did that thing work, anyway? It made it so they could understand everyone else and vice-versa, that much was clear, but what did that mean? When they were in France, for example, had she been speaking French without knowing it? That feeling in her head; she'd felt something similar long ago, when the TARDIS had taken off with them for the first time. Had the ship done something to her mind? Barbara wasn't particularly pleased by the thought. She had so many questions she wanted to ask!

Another question occurred to her as she watched the two possums chatter at each other. Did the TARDIS translate nonverbal communication as well? Only earlier it had been easy to see these possums as people because they'd been so expressive. Now, a lot of their body language was harder to read, and they seemed to be more like trained animals. At least with Susan, the nonverbal signals were the same as always.

Come to think of it, were they? They'd tried to communicate a little through gesture on the walk over, but there were a few aspects that felt muddled. It was hard to describe. It was a bit like trying to keep time in a piece of music, and a few notes are ever so slightly late. The music was still playable, but those few odd notes made it vaguely disconcerting. Barbara wondered if Susan was thinking the same thing about her right now.

Susan was thinking about whether or not she should let Barbara know that she'd been wearing her cardigan inside-out all day.

Maude had apparently finished her chat and motioned for them to follow her. Susan was getting tired of walking in silence, and tried to think of something they could do. She really should have learned English. It wasn't helpful in the slightest to have only one word to speak to someone with. Unless...

She checked that Barbara was paying attention and pointed at Maude. "Possum." she said in English. Barbara nodded and repeated the word. "Possum." Susan said again. Barbara repeated it again. Then Susan pointed once more and said "Possum." both in English and in her own language. She did this two or three more times until Barbara caught on.

"Pah..." she began. Susan pronounced it slowly. "Pah...possuh...possum?" asked Barbara. Susan nodded, grinning broadly. "Possum!" Barbara said again and they laughed.

As they walked, they taught each other words in their respective languages. In addition to 'possum', they also managed 'tree', 'sun', 'yes', 'no', and 'hello'. Most of the time, though, they took turns at attempting to repeat whatever the other had said. Barbara found Susan's words difficult to pronounce, but the look on Ian's face when he finally ran up to join them and they each greeted him in the other's language was well worth it.

"Don't do that!" he exclaimed, "I thought I was going mad!"

"Where's the Doctor?" Barbara asked.

"He's right...well, I thought he was right behind me." About five minutes after the girls had left, they'd ended up with the beginnings of a pillow fight. Then they realised what they were doing and exchanged looks that they both understood to mean that they would never speak of this again. "And where were you two rushing off to?"

Barbara quickly explained the situation, informing him that Maude probably knew where they could find Patchy, and so they'd been following her. Susan managed to ask, through gesture, about where the Doctor was. In his notebook Ian drew a picture of the TARDIS, and she left to go find him.

There came an impatient sort of chattering noise. Maude was clearly in a hurry, seeing as they'd already wasted half the day. They moved on.


As Susan walked back to the ship, she remembered that she still had Maude's book in her pocket. She pulled it out and opened it to find that the previously legible text was now just a collection of meaningless characters. Well, what did she expect? At least she'd already read it. The book was part two of a trilogy, and while she supposed it would be better if she'd also read the first instalment, Maude had provided enough exposition for a reader to be able to follow along anyway.

The story took place about fifty years ago in this planet's timeline. After an unexpected solar eclipse, strange things began to happen. People disappeared under mysterious circumstances and turned up a few days later, looking haunted and disoriented; weather patterns changed without warning, and bits of landscapes would rearrange practically overnight. That was the plot of the first book. Then a mysterious blue box that carried a two-legged alien and his apprentice (Grandfather and herself, she supposed) who agreed to help solve this mystery. That was what the first book was about, Susan had extrapolated from the second. In the sequel, the 'alien' discovered that there was another race of two-leggeds on a floating city in the sky causing the trouble. They had grown tired of their domain, and were intent on taking the possum's world as their own. In the third book, she supposed it would involve the escalating war between the two species, and victory for the possums.

Susan recognised what had happened immediately. Either colonists or refugees had decided to settle on Bekberry, and had begun terraforming. Clearly, at some point in her and Grandfather's future, they would return to this planet in its past and stop the colonisation. She probably shouldn't have read the book in the first place. It was dangerous to know too much about one's own future. But the whole thing was told from the point of view of a species that had no knowledge of space travel, and so had taken a lot of liberties. In order to fit into a suitably dramatic, three-part structure, Maude had to have altered a lot of details.

She really was a brilliant author, though. Her writing style reminded Susan of a book series from Earth- the one with the wizard school and the dark lord.

In the back of the book, there was a special preview chapter from one of Maude's upcoming books. This one was to be an encyclopaedia of mythical creatures, and the sample text was the entry for "Shadow Beast". The creature was described as an enormous monster that lurked in the darkest places in the forest- places too dark for even possums to see. Anyone it approached would feel a chill, then a sudden longing. It was looking for something. It wanted something, but nobody knew what, because it always disappeared, leaving behind only a set of footprints.

Footprints that looked exactly like the ones Susan had just tripped over.

They were certainly large; large enough for her to fit both hands and feet inside. And they appeared to have been made by an animal with six toes on each foot, with claws. She gasped, and then scolded herself for letting her imagination run away with her. It was probably some local fauna, long gone by now. She continued on her way, unaware that she was being watched.

When she returned to the TARDIS, she thought it was empty at first. "Grandfather?" she called. The sound of someone moving things echoed from further within. Investigating, she found the Doctor rummaging around inside a cupboard. The hall outside was littered with boxes and various odds and ends. "What are you doing?" She asked as she picked her way through the mess.

"Hmm? Oh, it's you, Susan!" He had opened up another box and was digging through it. "I thought we might have a few portable translators lying about somewhere. Ah, here it is!" He pulled out a handful of electronics. "It seems we only have two, I'm afraid. We'll have to share."

Each translator was composed of a small wireless earpiece that contained a speaker and a tiny microphone. The unit sent signals to another speaker, also wireless, that clipped on to the user's clothing. When a foreign language was spoken, the wearer would hear a translation in their ear. Likewise, whatever the wearer said would be translated and broadcast though the clip-on speaker.

"But they're so old!" exclaimed Susan, "They're practically antiques."

"Well..."

"And doesn't this model only do two languages at a time?"

"Yes, I know. If I'm correct, these were created before psychic link technology was perfected. They are a little piece of history, you might say. Primitive, yes, but they will have to do for the moment. Even a very elementary translation would be more efficient than all of this pantomiming."

They walked back into the console room as the Doctor attempted to test one of the portables. They didn't seem to be working. "Must be broken." He opened up one of the units. "This has certainly seen better days. Bring me my tool kit, would you, Susan?"


"What are you doing?" asked Ian.

Barbara had been looking upwards, examining the tree branches. "Looking for Patchy. The possum, I mean." she added, remembering that she hadn't told him about her nickname.

"What, up there?"

"Possums hang from their tails, don't they? So we should search the trees as well."

"Well, yes we should check the trees, but they won't be hanging upside-down." said Ian, "That's just a myth."

She stopped her tree-gazing. "But we saw them doing just that last night."

"The babies do. Adult possums don't because their tails can't support their weight. What they do is use their tails to help them balance, along with the thumbs on their feet."

"But these possums already have an extra set of thumbs. Perhaps they can hang from their tails as well?"

Ian shook his head. "I doubt it. Apart from their hands, they look just like possums on Earth."

They continued walking. "So no hanging by their tails. How do you know so much about possums anyway?" Barbara thought that their adventures always seemed to be educational in one way or another.

"I used to know a man who was interested in animal biology. He used to talk-GAH!" Ian exclaimed as he ran into Maude, who was hanging upside-down by her tail at face height in order to get their attention. Once he had recovered and removed her from his head, she chattered something and pointed out a particular tree on the riverbed. "Patchy must be in there."

Meanwhile, inside the tree, Rikki was meeting up with her friends for their weekly LARP session. It was like a sort of long-form improvisation game in which they enacted various scenarios based off the stories in Maude's science-fiction works. A designated Storyteller oversaw the sessions, making sure everyone stuck to the rules, awarding skill and experience points, and getting new players set up.

They were all very excited this week, because Rikki had brought a piece of an actual spacecraft, a feat which earned her fifteen skill points. (The gameplay book didn't say anything about this type of situation, so the Storyteller took a few liberties.) They were even more excited, because it seemed that some of the Twolegs had come to join them.

"Okay, here's what we do," said the Storyteller as he peered out into the light, "Everyone get your sunshades on. When they get close enough, I'll give the signal and we'll all run out. We've got to get Rikki and the thingy to the other side of the clearing, and we win, allright?"

As soon as Barbara and Ian came within a yard of the tree, they were surprised by a passel of possums that suddenly emerged from within. About ten or so adolescents, all chattering loudly, scurried wildly about, making it incredibly difficult to catch one without injuring the others.

Maude hid her face in her hands as she watched the humans flailing around among the kids. "You idiots!" she moaned, "I told you I would go down and talk to them! You only had to wait here!"

"Gotcha!" Ian made a flying tackle for Rikki and succeeded in grabbing her with both hands. By now, most of the other possums had scattered, escaping up a tree, leaving three or four that had started to play dead. He started to reach for the circuit, but before he could grab it she had stuffed it into her pouch. She stuck out her tongue at him."Why, you little-!" Rikki just hung from his hands, looking very smug.

The thing about a possum's pouch is that it's not like the pouch of, say, a kangaroo. While they share certain properties, a possum's pouch is a bit more...internal. Although they really needed the translation circuit, Ian didn't think it would be very proper for him to just go in after it.

"Did you get it?"

"Barbara, I need your help." Ian walked over to her, holding out the wriggling possum. "She's stuck the circuit in her pouch. Could you just reach in...?"

Rikki hissed at Barbara and she recoiled. "Can't you do it?"

"I would, but, well..." Was he blushing? "Look, just stick your hand in-"

"I'm not sticking my hand in a possum!"

By now, Rikki had grown tired of hanging around and bit Ian's hand, causing him to drop her. She scampered off to join her mates, who cheered when she climbed up to the high branches. Ian and Barbara looked down to see Maude standing at their feet, looking very cross.

"And I suppose you have a better idea?" asked Ian.

Maude was about to reply when they heard a rustling in the bushes.


The Doctor, after a solid hour of tinkering, declared the portable translators completely useless. Nothing he'd tried could make them work. He turned away to put his tools away and Susan leaned forward for a closer look at one of the units. She surreptitiously flicked a tiny switch from "off" to "on" and the unit crackled to life.

"Grandfather, I think it's working now."

Taking both portables, they went to see where Ian and Barbara had gone to. They had just arrived at the outskirts of the city when Maude darted out from the undergrowth, Ian following quickly behind her. Both looked very frantic.

"Slow down there, Chittington!" said the Doctor into one of the translators, "Where have you been? And where's Barbara?"

"Slow there, Chittington! Where do you go? Which Barbara?" chirped the speaker. Ian was taken aback by the sudden use of the portable device. The juxtaposition of the Doctor's language and the oddly-accented English that the speaker produced was disorienting. Susan handed him the other translator, quickly indicating how he was supposed to use it.

"What happened here?" asked the Doctor, the device translating it as "Do you happen now?"

"What are these?" Ian asked. ("What is the word?")

"Be serious! What's happened? And where is Barbara?" ("He is considered to be serious! What to eat? Barbara?")

Ian looked at him strangely, then said "Look, I don't know what it is you were trying to say, or if you'll even understand this, but Barbara's gone! They've taken her!"

The severity of the situation was drastically undercut by his translator coming out with "You will see the difference here is Barbara!"

(This chapter was brought to you with the help of Bad Translator. /badtranslator )