Did I mention that the fixtures and fittings at Aylesbury were thoroughly ancient? Saying "ancient" in the sense of being "old and practically worn out", not in any way valuable. Every month brought a bill for electrical repair or plumbing sent to us from the REME fitters who got called out, and it was as well to keep the invoices out of the way of the Brig, who would otherwise turn purple with rage at the gross over-charging involved.
Nick tried to make capital out of this fiscal blackmail, and rapidly learnt to leave well alone.
'Only the Royal Electrical Blackmailers have security clearance to work here,' he told me in the mess over a sherry. 'No civvies at all, not after something that happened during the last lot of Auton activity.' Cue wise nodding of heads from the older officers present, who knew exactly what he was referring to and politely refrained from telling us. 'Now, the REME charge according to a peculiar scale that involves "Hazardous Duty pay", "Duty in aid of the civil power", "Emergency access priority deployment", "Mainland UK crisis aid" and "UNIT preferment compensation". And they charge for all of them at the same time.'
Nice work if you can get it. No wonder the Brig's blood pressure climbed into the stratosphere when a fuse went!
I have to say, however, that our resident boffin-stroke-weirdo-stroke-genius The Doctor used to come up with occasional answers to technical problems which meant no resort to the REME. Only if the solution was of benefit to himself and his very peculiar areas of research, and he was very wary of ever making such solutions public or well-known. His little black boxes helped us to maintain the central heating, the air conditioning and the telephone system, and were probably several decades ahead of their time.
Okay, not "probably". They were several decades ahead of their time. Nick and I prised one of them open with a steak knife and discovered that it contained lots of small black plastic modules made in Korea in 1995. We looked at each other in puzzlement, then smashed it to bits and threw the bits in the Solid Waste bin, just to avoid being caught out. That's why the Aylesbury air-conditioning went funny in the autumn of 1975.
Anyway, about the fixtures and fittings. I found out the hard way about these, whilst en route to an O Group, preparation for a trip to Salisbury Plain and a joint exercise with the regular Army. I needed to get to the basement for a collection of target profiles, which approximated to the outlines of various extra-terrestrial bad guys. I dived into the lift on the top floor, in a hurry, only for the thing to stop on the next floor down, whereupon the Doctor got in.
He didn't speak, just gave me a polite nod, so I gave him one back. Politeness with the Doctor is advisable; he knows a lot more about everyone than they do themselves, not to mention being a black belt whatever-dan, and having a cutting wit besides.
The genteel atmosphere lasted no more than two seconds before the lift jolted massively to one side, screeching metallically as it did so, then stopped abruptly. The lights went out.
'Oh dear,' said the Doctor, wearily, whilst my response was measured in Anglo-Saxon vernacular.
'You were trying to get somewhere?' he asked, an implicit condemnation of my cursing in every syllable.
'Yes! An Orders Group for the Salisbury exercise. And the targets. Fat chance of making either, now.' I fumbled around on the button panel and pressed the alarm button, which did nothing.
Abruptly, without any kind of warning, a pale green glow illuminated the interior of the lift. In the strange lighting I saw the Doctor wielding the light-source – a miniature radar-on-a-stick..
'Sonic screwdriver,' he explained, as if "sonic screwdriver" explained anything. The screwdrivers I was familiar with came from the hardware shop and worked on cross-head screws.
'I suppose we could try opening the doors,' I suggested.
'Not possible,' replied the Doctor. 'The lift jammed between two floors. You might get the doors open but you couldn't get out.'
'The emergency escape hatch?' I tried, pointing at the ceiling. Actually it's a service hatch, but I felt a sense of drama was appropriate.
'My dear chap,' said the Doctor, sounding amused. 'You couldn't possibly fit through that. Whilst I might be able to, I don't relish the idea of trying to rapell up or down greasy cables.'
He was right about Lieutenant Walmsley not fitting through the hatch. Stuck we were, then, until another party tried to use the lift or people missed me.
That took all of five minutes, when a worried voice shouted down the lift shaft to us. Whatever they yelled was inaudible due to distance, echoes and the sound-proofing within our cosy little cell. After a minute the lights came back on, allowing the Doctor to put away his sonic screwdriver. Despite my fond hopes, the lift remained static. Now I could stare at the walls in mock-daylight for however long it took to rescue us.
My attention wandered, and it wandered over to the Doctor, who sat quietly looking at an immensely thick and tattered diary.
Bloody hell, he did look incredibly human. After a few seconds intense scrutiny, he seemed to notice my staring and frowned at me.
'Whatever is the matter, Lieutenant?'
'Oh – was I staring? Sorry. Er – just that I've never seen a real live alien up close, and up close you look extremely human.'
He waved a hand dismissively, still reading in his diary.
'Only skin deep, Lieutenant. Even a cursory examination would reveal that I have two hearts.'
' "Two"?' I replied, wondering what bad jokes to make, then deciding that perhaps bad jokes were a bad idea. 'I wouldn't mention that, Doctor. You'll never hear the end of jokes about it.'
'Ahum,' he replied, only partly paying attention. 'Harry Sullivan can confirm it.'
'No he can't! He may look like a stuffed-shirt with a stiff-upper lip, but he's every inch the doctor. Client confidentiality.'
I got a look cast in my direction again.
'Then you'll just have to take it on trust that I won't sprout tentacles, won't you?'
'I didn't know aliens came equipped with sarcasm,' I muttered, which generated a grin.
'Oh, Lieutenant, it's patently obvious you're dying to ask questions. Go on, ask them. It's not as if we can go anywhere.'
'Why two hearts? Why not one, or three?'
'Evolution. That's how we evolved on Gallifrey. Two hearts gives us significant advantages in terms of metabolism, longevity, stamina and so on. Three – now, three would be greedy.'
'Alright. How is it that you look so incredibly human? Or – from your viewpoint – why do we resemble you so much?'
A smile from the Doctor, who must have heard this question a million times already.
'The humanoid design is robust and efficient, Lieutenant. Why, even here on Earth it's happened before – the Silurians, if you've been studying the Bestiary.' He paused to think a little. 'Also, if the Time Lords had exiled me to a planet like – Skaro, as an extreme example – then I'd stand out rather a lot. They didn't want that.'
Exile.
'I thought you were on the side of the good guys, Doctor – why did these Time Lords exile you? You don't have a dark past waiting to catch up with you?'
He took a deep breath and shook his head.
'The Time Lords hold to a strict policy of hands-off, observance-only, laissez-faire. No interference with other cultures. I, on the other hand, believe in getting my hands firmly on, and interfering whenever I think it advisable. The phrase they used of me was "incorrigibly meddlesome". And after a considerable time as a free agent, they eventually caught up with me.'
There were hints of considerable depth here, if you had the wit to notice. Exactly what a Time Lord was remained to be seen. A collection of super-scientific aristocrats?
'I see. What about The Master? Is he another Time Lord like you?'
Not the best way to phrase the question; there was fire in his eyes when the Doctor replied.
'A Time Lord, yes, but most certainly not like me!' He caught himself and calmed down. 'The Master, as you surely realise, is quite irredeemably evil. He would think nothing of turning this whole planet, with it's charmingly naïve native population, into a giant cinder, for no more reason than to distress me.'
The bar steward. Sergeant Benton's sweepstake looked ever more attractive. I must remind myself to put a tenner on the unpleasant alien oik getting a sudden dose of high-speed lead.
'So you're an exile because you broke official rules. How does this exile thing work?'
In a tic I'd seen before, the Doctor scratched his brow.
'Well, all things considered, it was a rather cushy exile. My TARDIS dematerialisation circuitry was disabled and my memories of how to repair it were removed. Ergo, I was stuck here. Not only that, my appearance and personality altered completely due to regeneration.'
He then had to explain regeneration to me, simplifying it considerably to enable me to grasp the concept.
'Sounds like Captain Scarlet to me,' I said in an off-hand manner.
' "Captain Scarlet"? I'm sorry, I don't think I've met him. Recent recruit?'
I stared back at the Doctor, who seemed perfectly sincere.
'No, no, "Indestructible Captain Scarlet – dah-dah-dah-da-dah-da-dah." Kids television. You know. You don't know?'
Feeling that the shoe was on the other foot, I described Gerry Anderson's finest. At first the Doctor looked amused, then interested, then ended up looking rather worried.
'I think a little visit is in order,' he muttered to himself, making a note in his brick of a diary. 'Someone has been talking a century out of turn.'
'It's only a kids show!' I commented, frankly amazed.
He waggled his pen at me.
'Don't be so blasé, Lieutenant Walmsley, because once the Federated Concordat begins to explore Mars - '
Damn me if the lift didn't give a great big lurch and horrendous loud twangs resound within it just at that point as it got back in running order. I never got to find out what the Federation Concorde or whatever got up to on Mars and why the Doctor, interstellar alien visitor, got so hot under the collar about a kids TV programme. Couldn't be anything big, right? Right.
'Excellent!' said my fellow prisoner, happy that being stuck in a lift with a nosey officer was over so soon.
Creaking and grating, the lift got hauled back up to the floor above, where the doors were already prised apart and we both gratefully left the comfortless cubicle.
Our rescuers turned out to be Bessie and Jo, the elderly yellow roadster and the sporty young lady. While a dozen strapping young men in uniform stood around idly sucking their thumbs and waiting for REME to turn up and charge telephone numbers, Jo backed Bessie up to the front doors, tied a cable to the rear bumper, ran the cable upstairs and to the liftshaft, where she managed a clove hitch around the main lift cable. Then she drove forward about ten feet in first gear.
The Doctor thanked her loudly, and so did I. The Brig happily rang to cancel the REME team, and I even made it to the exercise on Salisbury Plain only an hour late – the Doctor flew me there in his delta-hover-jet-ski-plane, a truly terrifying experience. At mess the Brig commented, only mildly sarcastically, on the lack of initiative amongst the soldiery who'd stood by to see Jo solve the problem.
'It was the Lieutenant, sir,' said Nick Munroe, going at his roast beef. 'He weighs so much it takes a 150 horsepower engine to lift him. Not possible for human muscles,' to a chorus of appreciative sniggers.
I didn't reply as my plate was piled high with food – hey, it was a hard exercise and I'd worked up an appetite. My revenge was to borrow two well-greased heavy duty jacks from the vehicle workshops, wait until Nick went to bed, sneak into his room, stick the jacks under his bed and raise it a metre.
At breakfast he walked in delicately, having literally fallen upon his arse from a great height.
'That'll teach you to get a lift out of me,' I told him.