"Ah, Miss Shaw." The Brigadier looked up from reading through a file marked 'Top Secret' as Liz entered his office. "I've got your report on the Nestene incident here. Before I add it to the rest, I was hoping you might be able to supply a little more information about that device the Doctor rigged up?"
"Didn't he put the details in his own report?" Liz knew the Doctor had been told to provide one, and that he only agreed to do so when the Brigadier threatened to withdraw his new UNIT pass, his shiny yellow car, and access to the laboratory – including the TARDIS.
"This is the Doctor's report." He handed her a single sheet of foolscap paper, barely half-filled with type. "As you can see, it's not exactly a mine of information."
"Oh dear." It didn't take Liz many seconds to scan through the carefully-worded sentences. "He dismantled the device last week, I'm afraid. Said something about not wanting it misused by…" She paused. The exact wording had been 'gun-toting military buffoons'. She paraphrased. "… by the military."
The merest hint of a smile beneath his moustache indicated that he knew perfectly well what the exact wording had been. "Well, if you can recall the components he used, and the order he used them in, it would be tremendously helpful," he said, taking the page back from her and shuffling it into the folder. "What the Doctor said about those things being telepathic worries me. If they try another invasion, we'll need a way of dealing with them."
"I'll try," she said, "But it was over two weeks ago – and I was so tired by the time we finished putting it together I kept missing things. I'd look up, and he'd have three or four more wires in place."
"Anything you can remember will be an improvement on what we have at the moment," he said, closing the folder and pushing it aside, "Which is, effectively, nothing. I'm due to deliver the report to Geneva at the end of the week, do you think you could have something by then?"
She nodded. "I can write it up this afternoon," she said, "The Doctor's taking that car you got him for another test run, so I'll be glad of an excuse not to get in it again."
"Still tinkering with it, is he?"
"There are bits of engine all over the garage floor," she said, "And TARDIS components all over the laboratory. But don't worry – he hasn't forgotten the analysis you wanted of that Nestene gloop. We've got blobs of it bubbling, freezing, and being subjected to bacteria, chemicals and gases. The results will all be ready for your report by Friday."
"Good." He sat forward again, and she thought the meeting was at an end, but instead of the nod of dismissal that she expected, he said: "I'm sorry that you've ended up assisting the Doctor, rather than acting as my Scientific Adviser as I intended when I recruited you, Miss Shaw. I have made sure your salary equates to the original post." He pulled another file from the pile on the desk and flipped it open, and she realised it was her personnel file, the one he'd had in front of him on the day she arrived. "I will understand if you'd prefer to return to Cambridge," he said, leafing through the pages, "But… well, if the Doctor gets that contraption of his working, he could be gone again by the time I get back from Switzerland, then I'll have to start the whole process over again – and there really wasn't anyone else with your sort of qualifications."
Liz was touched at his courtesy in giving her the option, and flattered that he didn't think anyone else could do the job as well as she could. She had thought about going back to Cambridge – the Nestene were gone, the Doctor knew far more about, well, everything, than she could ever hope to – but… "I'd like to stay," she said, "For a while, at least. I've found out in the past few weeks that the universe is even bigger and stranger and more complex than I'd ever imagined. I could learn a lot from the Doctor too, if I can get him to trust me."
"Trust you? Surely he already knows enough to do that."
"Trust me as a scientist, I mean. At the moment I don't do much more than pass him test tubes and ask questions – I suppose he feels like an emeritus professor answering an 'O' level student. That's the way it feels from my end, anyway."
"You don't mind?"
"Only when he explains the things I know, as well as the things I don't. And that doesn't happen often. There's so much I don't know."
"I find that hard to believe." He glanced down briefly at her file, then smiled at her.
Liz reminded herself firmly that her decision to stay had been an entirely logical and reasoned one that had nothing to do with the way his eyes twinkled. "It's true."
"Well, I'm glad we'll have the benefit of all the things you do know for a while longer." He picked up a pen and jotted something on her file, then closed it and slid it underneath the 'Top Secret' one.
Liz stood up to go and he stood too. She hoped he wasn't going to open the door for her – that was something she could manage perfectly well on her own! "How long will you be in Geneva?"
"Ten days or so, I expect. I'll have to deliver the report, get their assessment, attend at least three meetings to explain the same things in three different ways, and then go to more meetings to justify my requests and recommendations for replacement personnel. Still, it's not all bad. Might get some ski-ing in, with any luck – and I don't have to clear Customs."
"Chocolates all round then?" she said, then went hot as she realised her slip. She'd meant to say 'duty frees' not chocolates! What was she thinking? That was the sort of item you asked lovers for wasn't it?
Fortunately, the Brigadier seemed oblivious to any impropriety. "Miss Shaw, the delivery of industrial-sized boxes of Swiss liqueurs to the typing pool is the only thing that stands between me and the abyss. I always bring chocolates."
He opened the door for her, and without a squeak of protest at his chauvinism, she hurried out.