TRAVELS IN MAGELLANIA

Part One: Salamander, Sarah, Sarah and Sarah, So To Speak

There is an old saying: never judge a book by it's cover. Believe me, I found out how utterly true that is when I hopped-off with the Doctor to the far end of our galaxy, and confounded pretty much every prejudice ever acquired in my twenty odd years on this planet. Troopers at Aylesbury pestered me to give all the juicy details for weeks afterwards, only to be sadly disappointed – I'll come to that later. Not only that, I found out that my weakness in respect to women transcends biological boundaries. I'll come to that later, too.

I opened my mouth to explain what the acronym "CVRT" means to my Polish liaison, Kapitan Tadeusz Komorowski, who is more conveniently known as "Tad", and instead got interrupted by a phone call from UNIT's resident Medical Officer, Harry Sullivan, calling direct to my office.

'Ah, Captain Walmsley. Can you come down to the sick bay? The Doctor is asking for you.'

'I know you are,' I replied, slightly puzzled, before the penny dropped. 'Oh! The Doctor!'

'Only you,' added Harry. 'On your own. Alone'

So I sloped off to the grandly-named sick bay, simply a small room with whitewashed walls. Harry lurked outside, looking a bit peeved. The Doctor, by his lights, ought to have been up and out of the bed of sickness he currently reclined upon, and Harry seemed to feel professionally challenged that the Time Lord wasn't skipping about like a six-year old.

'I know he's gotten better,' complained the doctor (lower case). 'But why on earth is he malingering in there?'

'No nice female nurses? Lack of ice cream? Super-comfy mattresses? Honestly, Harry, you're the doctor, you explain it.'

Grumbling, he sent me in.

The Doctor lay in bed, moaning and groaning terribly.

'You can pack that in. You sound like a lost soul,' I told him, sternly.

'Oh! It's you, John,' he said, promptly sitting up in bed, cheerfully and patently not ill in the slightest. 'Good. Firstly, is Sarah still on the premises?'

'I think so. She's been bedding down in one of the guest rooms instead of commuting back into London. Hanging around on the off-chance of seeing you when you get better. Oh – is that the problem?' - for his face expressed annoyance the instant he knew Sarah remained at Aylesbury.

'Hmph! Really!' he huffed. Cheeky sod. If I had charming and attractive young women wanting to meet me, the injured hero, I certainly wouldn't complain about it.

'Oh, I don't mean it like that,' he added, seeing my eyebrows rise. Then he snapped his fingers. 'And if I recall, you owe me a favour, John.'

That I did. Our detailed information about the Cybermen's weapons and tactics came courtesy the Doctor, wheedled out of him by me, playing the begging supplicant. After extracting the promise of a favour to be returned in future.

'Too true. What do you want me to do?' Visions of blackmailing QMS Campbell or breaking into Marconi swum before me.

'I want you to get Sarah out of the way for a day or two.'

That was all?

'Discreetly, John. Subtlety to be your watchword,' he also added, a little archly. As if I'd lock her in the back of a Landrover with no radio, bound and gagged, with the driver ordered to take her to Castlemuir up in the Hebrides via the B-roads at no more than twenty-five miles per hour!

Well, if the Doctor could call in favours like that, so could I.

'She will not only whiz out of here at high speed, Doctor, she'll be glad to go.'

He beamed an effusive grin, his craggy face lighting up.

'Splendid! Knew I could count on you!'

Back in my office, where Tad had been trying to do the Times crossword and failing bravely, I put a call through to the BBC. I was after another John, one who worked there. After enduring several secretaries and using my best officious voice and manner, I finally got a third John, not the one I was after but close enough. His manner was pretty stand-offish and hostile.

'I'm John Walters, John's producer. John's not here yet. He won't arrive - '

'Until later on this afternoon, I know. Tell him that Big John from the Tube would like to speak to him, soon as possible.'

I left the switchboard number and crossed my fingers. Tad had looked at me curiously, wondering at the plethora of John's being mentioned, no doubt. We plodded on with comparisons of motorbike performance, engine size, brake horsepower, top speed, cost of spares, availability of spares, until hunger drove us to the canteen.

'Not very thrilling,' commented Tad, stoking up on sausage, egg and chips.

'No, not at all. The toil that oils the wheels of UNIT, however,' I replied, attacking a steak pie and chips.

'Forsooth! What doth my eagle eye espy! Captain Walmsley, son of Wigan, eating a pie!'

Nick Munroe came into the canteen, looking very jolly, which either meant he'd slept with another man's wife or made a lot of money. He was followed by Lieutenant Eden, universally known as The Boy because he appeared to be a boy scout grown larger but not older and certainly not wiser.

Tad frowned at Nick, unable to understand the mock-Shakespearean gibberish.

'I'm from Wigan, Kapitan,' I explained. 'We are supposed to eat anything, as long as it's in a pie. Assault Platoon having the day off, Lieutenant?'

'No, sir. Lieutenant Spofforth and Sergeant Whittaker are drilling them this afternoon,' replied Eden. 'Dispersed tactics for use against Cybermen, a la Bannockburn.'

Great. Rolling around in mud and puddles across the fields of Aylesbury. No wonder Nick and his sidekick were here in the warm and dry.

'This Bannockburn – is it an Operation or an Exercise?' asked Tad. 'I have heard it called both.'

'It was an Exercise,' declared Nick, whose brainchild it was. 'But we, with our sense of humour, frequently call it an Operation.'

Tad nodded gravely.

'British humour. Yes. Benny Hill, Norman Wisdom, Ken Dodd.'

Hmm. No wonder Eastern Europe had a skewed view of the West, if that was what was construed as humour over there!

Before any cultural comparisons could take place, a call came through to the canteen phone, for me. The catering crew let me into the back room to take it.

'Hello?' I asked, hoping to hear a particular voice.

'Hello?' replied a quizzical voice at the other end. 'This is John Peel. Are you the rather large chap who – er – dissuaded some London low-lifes from attacking me? You mentioned the Tube in your message.'

'That's me,' I hastily agreed. 'Listen, Mister Peel, if you consider I did you a favour then, then you could do one for me now.'

'I don't do requests,' he protested, which nearly made me snap back, until I realised he meant requests for particular records.

'No, I wondered if you would allow a journalist to interview you.'

A silence settled on the phone, until a very puzzled Mister Peel replied.

'As a favour you want me to be interviewed? Sorry, how is that a favour? Oh, not that I object – it's just that I seem to be getting the benefit.'

Damn, he was slow on the uptake, this Peel chap!

'Not at all. I know the journalist, a young lady called Sarah Jane Smith. Freelance, with regular work in the Metropolitan and the Evening Standard.'

'Very well,' agreed Mister Peel. 'Sarah Jane Smith? Didn't she cover Captain Beefheart for the Standard when he gigged in London?'

Did she what? Captain who?

'Absolutely!' I lied, not knowing the first thing about it. 'The other thing is, could it be tonight?'

'If she can get here before nine, I suppose so. Walters and I will be in his office, so if she calls in at Reception, she can meet us there.'

'Thank you very much, Mister Peel,' I effused, and left to finish my food.

'There was half a pie left,' I accused the table at large, eyeing my now spotless and empty plate.

'Who were you calling, sir?' asked Nick, so I told him. His eyes practically fell from their sockets.

'John Peel! You know John Peel! Good God, do you deliberately set out to trump me!' He had to swig down his tea to regain his composure. 'How did this bitterly unfair circumstance come about? Sir.'

Well, whilst I was on detached duty at Kensington Office. Major Lyle was off on leave, so I commuted in to do the shift work. My work cycle coincided with a radio technician who also worked the night shift at the BBC, or so I thought. Over a couple of weeks, being the only two people on the platform or train, we happened to chat casually, and I found out his name was John. Late one night three unpleasant young men took a dislike to him, and circled him on the Tube platform, getting ready to give him a "right tonking" as they put it, as they objected to his taste in music – although how they knew what music he liked was beyond me at the time. I loudly warned them to leave the technician alone, and when they paid closer attention to "Fatty" and produced flick knives, I showed them the K-Bar in my boot and the .45 automatic in a fancy clip-on bum holster. Fatty then offered to send the nearest home with his brains in a bucket. Exit three very quiet youths, one of whom looked to have wet himself.

'They don't like my music!' the other John had jested, pale-faced, before revealing that he was a disk jockey on Radio One: John Peel. Feeling worried about what the Brig might say, I asked him not to mention the gun and knife. John Peel? I'd never heard of him.

'You've never heard of him! He plays Pink Floyd, The Grateful Dead, Barclay James Harvest!' stammered Nick, in the grip of righteous musical indignation. 'Top Gear! The Perfume Garden!'

'Programmes about cars and horticulture have no appeal, Nick.'

'They were music programmes, sir,' explained Eden, clearly embarassed at his superior officer's complete lack of contemporary musical knowledge.

Sarah, when I approached her, was slightly taken aback.

'An interview with a disk jockey, and tonight? I don't want to get groped in some seedy club, please!'

I explained. All above-board. Tickety-boo. The hallowed halls of Aunty Beeb.

'The late-night DJ?' She paused. 'He does play some nice reggae, actually. Toots and the Maytals, Misty in Roots, Lee Perry. Oh, go on!'

She grabbed a bag of her kit and was off, calling a taxi to get her to the station before six.

John's Most Cunning and Subtle Plan had worked!

From my lair in the BTO's office, I rang sick bay and told Harry to tell the Doctor that Sarah was gone.

'Not back before tomorrow, which is a Saturday, so she'll probably stay at her flat this weekend and come back to Aylesbury on Monday.'

Tad gave me a questioning look, followed by a questioning question.

'Why does Doctor Smith want Miss Smith out of the way?'

Good question! If I were a smoker, the fags would come out now and a whole little ritual would be gone through. Instead of that, I chewed a biro and considered.

'He is not romantically-attached to Miss Smith?' asked Tad, making me cough.

'Good Lord, no! No, not at all. Given that he's a humanoid alien, I don't know whether he is capable of being attracted to a human female. Hell, it isn't the sort of thing I'd begin a conversation about!'

Oh would some power – I must have tempted fate in saying that.

The Pole nodded, pursing his lips in a business-like manner.

'He is very fond of her, however,' I muttered to myself. 'So if he were deliberately entering a situation of great peril he wouldn't take her along.'

Tad and I exchanged glances simultaneously, thinking the same thing.

The Doctor had come back to UNIT HQ almost beaten, burnt and bled to death. So far nobody knew what had happened on his little constitutional in TARDIS. If he didn't want Sarah along then it was a fair guess he was heading back into the danger that rendered him practically lifeless originally, since he'd never willingly or wilfully put her life in danger when there was no need.

I rang the Brig's office, only for the adjutant to tell me that Lethbridge-Stewart was off fighting tooth-and-nail with Buckinghamshire County Council about getting more land for our practice courses.

'Senior OC at the moment is Major Crichton, in the Computer Room, sir.'

I rang the Computer Room, where our semi-resident boffin was pottering about with punched cards.

'Sir! I strongly suspect that Doctor Smith is about to deliberately get himself into very hot water, similar to the situation he arrived here from.'

The chilly major hummed for a second.

'He "arrived here" nearly dead! Get along and accompany him, Captain, and make sure he doesn't come to any harm.'

'Would it be possible to come along?' asked Tad, using his usual euphimism of "would it be possible" for "I want".

Nodding, I stood up and took hold of the dusty antique golf bag propped up in the corner, unzipping it.

'Pass me down the Nitro, will you?'

He handed me the huge double-barrelled rifle, which just fitted into the long, stiff leather case. The rounds were in my desk drawer, so they went in a pocket for golf balls.

'We are expecting elephants?' asked Tad, following in my rapid footsteps down to the Armoury.

'Expect anything in the next half hour,' I called over my shoulder. You never know what's going to happen when the Doctor gets involved.

Corporal Higgins, sitting doing stag in the Armoury sentry booth, gave me a surprised and perfunctory salute.

'Portable kit that delivers lots of firepower,' I half-asked, half-told him. 'What do we have? Because I want it.'

Rapid blinks from the Corporal, who had been disturbed reading the News of the World.

'M79 grenade launcher, sir. In the Blue firearms lockers. Ah – Armalite calibre minigun, Red locker. Fifty-seven mill recoiless rifle, with HE or steel, silver and gold flechette rounds, Red locker.'

I'd never heard any of this kit being in our Armoury before. It was all American, and recent. Haste prevented Corporal Higgins being grilled about weapons, Tad scooping up an M79 and a wooden box of rounds for it. The grenade launcher, resembling a giant sawn-off shotgun, went in the golf bag, followed by loose rounds for it, to be followed in turn by No. 36 Pattern Hand Grenades. I finally crammed a Jimpy in, having taken the barrel and butt-stock off. I draped Tad in belts of ammo for the Jimpy, then espied a folding-stock Belgian version of our own SLR.

'Sir! Captain Beresford's put that aside for himself!' protested Corporal Higgins.

Too late. I slung it around my shoulders, taking half a dozen magazines for it and emptying clips of 7.62 rounds into the golf bag to fill up any remaining space. The bag was now so heavy Tad and I had to carry it between us.

To comfort the whimpering and worried Corporal, I signed out all the equipment.

'Don't worry, Corp,' I cheerily assured him. 'We'll probably come back alive, with most of this stuff, and some of it might even still work.'

Lugging the extremely heavy golf bag to the Doctor's underground lair was sweaty, slow work. My assumption was that the Time Lord wouldn't be hurrying, not now that Sarah had been safely sent out of harm's way, and that we could take our time.

We didn't have a choice about taking time. The lift up from the Armoury to the ground floor was slow, and we then needed to drag the massive bag down corridors, up and down steps, across the connecting walkway and into the lift that went down to the Doctor's lab. We only encountered one person on this journey, fortunately for us, as questions would undoubtedly have been asked about exactly what was going on - I had interpreted Major Crichton's order prettty broadly. Unfortunately, that single person was Lieutenant Munroe, who exhibited an unwelcome interest in what the bag contained.

'En route to the Doctor, too, eh? Me, I need to pass on this film of Exercise Bannockburn to him.'

Politely, he held the lift doors open for us as we gracelessly dragged the golf bag in.

'My Old Man would hit me with his clubs if I mistreated them like that, sir' he observed, in a carefully neutral tone. 'New American design, are they? Incredibly dense clubs?'

Biting back a retort at this gift of a sentence, I merely offered to take the film to Doctor Smith myself.

'Oh, no, sir!' he blithely replied. 'Brig's orders. Individually-numbered copies. Each to be signed for upon receipt, then countersigned by myself.'

Which meant not being able to get rid of him before we got to meet the Doctor. Damn!

My apprehension at having Nick dog our footsteps was confirmed when we actually got into the Doctor's lab.

TARDIS was still over in the corner, so he hadn't departed yet. In fact the tall, white-haired gent was busy carrying out electronic work on a bench, watched by – of all people – Sarah Jane Smith.

Taken aback for a second, I still managed an annoyed glare.

'I thought you were in London by now, getting ready to see John Peel!' I snapped. All that hassle for nothing!

The Doctor looked up from his work with a mischievous gleam in his eye. He seemed to be stifling a grin.

'I beg your pardon?' asked Sarah, looking blank.

'The interview. John Peel. Radio One,' I said, gradually slowing down because this really didn't make sense.

'Protective camouflage,' explained the Doctor, finishing off his electronic work. He put an arm around Sarah's shoulder and indicated us three officers.

'Gentlemen, may I introduce the Rutan scout previously held prisoner here.'

Not really "prisoner", more sort of "uninvited guest held at gunpoint". This particular Rutan scout had been stranded here on Earth since the late nineteenth century, apparently. Hearing about a Sontaran involvement in snatching scientists from this time, the nosey alien came a-sneaking into Aylesbury. The Doctor offered to take it back home, in what must have been the jaunt when he got severely injured.

Not-Sarah smiled brightly and saluted.

'Rutan Scout Senior Class, previously nominate EOH16181924707.'

I loomed a little menacingly toward the simulacrum, which flinched away from me.

'John, John, don't be so hostile,' chided the Doctor. 'Our involuntary guest has adopted a new name.'

'Winifred!' declared the copy of Sarah.

All three of us soldiers were exchanging looks of incomprehension and incredulity.

'Do you mean to say, Doctor, that you brought Billy Blob back – back into Aylesbury?' I asked, appalled at the Time Lord's cavalier attitude. 'An alien spy!'

Not-Sarah put on a pout.

'A scout, not a spy.'

'You are not Miss Smith?' asked Tad, looking surprised, the first time anything had taken him by surprise since we'd met.

'Can you sign for this, please?' asked Nick, offering the film canister.

'Gentlemen! Please!' shouted the Doctor above the din, creating a sudden silence. 'That's better. One thing at a time. John, you ought to recall that Rutan's don't have any individuality. They're hive members, forbidden to use terms like "I" or "me" or "mine". Adopting a name is a big break with Rutan societal programming.'

'Ohyes!' beamed the copy of Sarah, which I hoped I wasn't alone in finding bloody creepy.

'Look, could you not hang around looking like a copy of Sarah?'

'Yessah!' said the copy, firing off a salute.

'Who do you prefer? Yourself, John?' asked the Doctor, somewhat acidly. He pointed at Tad. 'And why is the Kapitan unflatteringly draped in swathes of bullets?'

Not-Sarah rolled her eyes, gave a big sigh and began to glow green, her outline dissolving and then reforming in the shape of another woman, a complete stranger to me. She wore a long frock, and had masses of dark brown hair, framing a cheery face complete with a long, elegant nose.

'Wow!' murmured Nick, his tongue nearly hanging out. 'Who else can she be?'

This stranger was entirely acceptable to me. What I didn't want were copies of anyone I knew running around in Aylesbury – the complications that might result were too horrible to contemplate.

'Gertie Millar!' said the Doctor, beaming in happy recognition. 'Star of the Victorian music hall,' he explained to us cultureless oiks. He ought to know, in his frock coat and ruffled shirt he looked like a Victorian stage magician himself. 'Happy now, John? Perhaps you could answer my question about – and what's that golf bag doing here?'

Tad sat down on a lab stool, staring at the new guise our visitor had adopted. The poor chap looked stunned.

'Does this sort of thing happen often?' he muttered to Nick, getting a shake of the head in reply.

'Why is your little Rutan friend back here, Doctor? Good God, she – it - they haven't been parading around HQ masquerading as other people, have they?' I asked, getting more worried by the minute.

We got our first lecture of the day from the Doctor, as Gertie Winifred Blob pottered about, looking us over with interest. Wheels were visibly revolving in Nick's head as he watched the alien; coming up with some sordid little scheme, knowing him.

'Winifred has been hiding in the TARDIS since I rescued her from execution on Ruta III, Captain Walmsley. As for the why, no sooner had she started to begin her debrief to a Scout Controller, than her Rutan superiors decided to execute her. The very concept of individuality, never mind using words like "me" or "mine", is total anathema to Rutan culture. Winifred came racing back to the TARDIS, since I suspected such a thing might happen and delayed my departure.'

'Contaminated culturally,' interrupted the alien. No, make that the humanoid alien. No, that's not right, either – the shapeshifting alien. Oh, I give up.

'Well,' I began, not sure how far we'd get with the Time Lord, who can be notoriously difficult to deal with when he's determined to buck authority. 'You got me to divert Sarah away from Aylesbury, because you intend to go back into the teeth of whatever peril left you in sick-bay.'

A wordless nod of acknowledgement.

'I have orders from Major Crichton to accompany and escort you, generally to try and make sure you avoid getting done-in, Doctor.'

'I have orders to remain with CaptainWalmsley,' said Tad.

Nick didn't have orders, he's just nosey, so he hung around.

The Doctor sighed, crossed his arms and gave us all a long, flinty look.

'Gentlemen -' which was a bad start, not using our names ' – I do not intend to let a gang of armed desperadoes into the TARDIS!'

'Desperadoes?' queried Tad, not familiar with the idiom.

'Desperadoes? Where!' quipped Nick, looking around. The Doctor's flinty look became akin to granite. Cease the baiting, Nick!

'If you're sticking your neck out, Doctor, you need a bit of help alongside. You've carefully not told anyone what happened to get you knocked around so badly, but according to Harry, there wasn't a lot in it. A bit longer stuck in TARDIS would have finished you off.'

Wrong. A bit longer would have triggered a regeneration from the Doctor. He pointed this out to me, along with another correction.

' "The" TARDIS, John.'

Oh well. The definite article, you might say.

'Changing bodies now would be a shame, you've just gotten used to this one,' I tried. The suspicion of a smile played around the Doctor's mouth and he shook his head.

'I shall explain what happened to me, and what I'm about to do, and if – if – I feel so inclined, and you still wish, then I will take two of you along.'

The Doctor, as he explained, liked to take a trip every so often to the human colonies of the forty-second century, settled in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud. They had fled the Grey Empire – presumably human but we didn't get any details on that – and established their own disparate, slightly-Utopian and often mono-gee culture in the pocket galaxy of the LMC. Their little slice of the heavens was known as "Magellania", a cluster of a dozen populated worlds.

This particular trip was different, because the Doctor picked up a broadcast from a Magellanian spaceship, the Seraphim, announcing the rescue and retrieval of a Time Lord from the depths of space during a hyperdrive transit. They even included pictures of the unfortunate.

'This is where it begins to get complicated,' warned the Doctor.

Begins to get complicated?

The supposed Time Lord rescued by the spaceship was in fact an impostor, a villain known as "Salamander". Seven years before, Salamander had tried to hijack TARDIS – sorry, the TARDIS – and been ejected into the time-space vortex for his pains. The Doctor seemed quite pleased with his bewildering box of tricks for having the wits to get rid of an impostor, talking about "the old Girl" as if it were alive, almost.

So, the Doctor had ventured into the belly of the beast to rescue this twod Salamander, knowing that he was entering a trap. As he described it, the Sontarans hidden aboard the human spaceship had captured him, then discovered that he couldn't be conditioned by their hideous mind-bending technology, so they tortured him instead. To pass the time.

Nick muttered something uncomplimentary behind me, and Tad displayed profound dislike – a slight furrow in his brow. For him, that was like you or I jumping up and down shrieking venomous hatred.

'I think they initially wanted to trap a Time Lord into rescuing Salamander,' explained the Doctor. 'Since he so greatly resembled me, in my earlier regeneration. Any Gallifreyan except myself would have been fooled.'

He showed us a photograph, of a man who looked almost entirely similar to himself the previous incarnation over.

'Looks a bit Latin,' commented Nick.

'Mexican, actually,' corrected the Doctor. 'Now, coincidence dictated that I knew who he really was, hence the rescue attempt. However, after capture, my gracious Sontaran hosts got rather bored of me and began to focus on Winnie. Winifred.'

That made sense, according to what I knew of the Toad-men and the Billy Blobs. Mutual hatred, despise each other unto death, kill before allowing the other to pass the port, et cetera.

'One reason I'm so worried is that the Sontarans showing up in Magellania is very bad news, very bad news indeed.'

'Why's that?' asked Nick, beaming honest enquiry from every pore. 'Would property values drop with them as neighbours?'

'Hardly,' was the sardonic reply. 'They have a solid, materialistic reason for being present in Magellania. I need to find out why.'

'So – they passed up on the chance of getting their paws on your combined time-machine and space-ship?' asked Nick. 'They'd rather gut their hapless opponent with a spoon than have the TARDIS?'

A silent and ruminative nod from the Doctor.

'Would your wonder machine enable a person to know which horse wins this years Grand National? Or the FA Cup?' asked Nick, in a staggering display of personal greed versus the good of the galaxy. This mercenary attitude moved the Doctor to comment.

'The Eff Ay Cup! What on earth would that be, Lieutenant Munroe, and why would I want to know it?'

' "Football Association", Doctor Smith. You'd want to know it because it could win you a fortune on the pools or at the betting office!'

The Doctor's inquiring frown vanished, to be replaced by his dismissive "Oh that!" face.

'Money, pffft! I've got no use for it, Lieutenant!'

Nick gibbered a bit at that, since to him money and breathing are the two basic essentials for intelligent life on this planet.

'That sounds – well, forgive me, but it sounds like a damn Bolshevik.'

Since I knew that our Doctor Smith had been present at and during the Bolshevik Revolution, I bit the inside of my mouth and remained silent.

'Not to mention that, in ignoring your time-machine, the Sontarans seem to have a very blinkered view. They could have gone back in time and gotten rid of the – the - 'and Nick indicated our Winifred with a wave of his hand.

I was still trying to think of reasons why the Doctor ought to let us into his TARDIS to protect him from the fate lying in store for him, probably. Almost certainly. Maybe.

'I did wonder that myself,' mused the Doctor.

How about naked militaristic intent? I mused to myself. The Sontarans are repulsive murderous killers who exist in a completely militarised society, utter anathema to the Doctor, entirely outside his persona. Me, Captain Walmsley, on the other hand, would be far better able to understand, predict and baffle the Toad-men.

'You said only two of us can go with you, Doctor,' I began.

'Yes! I won't operate the TARDIS with a large crew. Five – five is not a good number,' he replied, looking troubled. 'Katarina and Sara – well, five is not a good number.'

'I think I ought to go, as a trained and experienced soldier. If you're up against these wretched Sontaran toad-warriors, then you need advice from someone who can second-guess them.'

He stroked a cheek with a forefinger, one of his habits when thinking under stress.

'Hmm. You may have a point there, John. An insight into the military mind.'

Tad stuck a finger up in the air, much as a small child in a classroom might.

'You wondered why the Sontarans wanted your fugitive Rutan? I may have a solution, thanks to Nick and his Bolshevik.'

Naturally this information intrigued the Doctor a lot more than mine, since it smacked of deductive intent and answered a problem he hadn't solved. He nodded at Tad.

'We in the Warsaw Pact are familiar with the arrival in Tsarist Russia of Vladimir Illyich Lenin, in 1917. Whilst the Soviets like to give the impression that Lenin appeared as if by magic, fully-grown, as it were, we in Poland are aware that he travelled to Russia courtesy of the German Reichswehr. He travelled to Petrograd in a sealed train with a crate of gold coins, provided by the German armed forces.'

From my Politics degree I knew this to pretty close to the truth. Lenin did indeed arrive in Russia, and began to spread Bolshevism. The fragile and rootless Russian state under Kerensky then collapsed.

'I see!' snapped the Doctor, also snapping his fingers.

He did, I didn't.

'Don't you see! The Sontarans want Winifred, want her over and above the TARDIS or a captive Time Lord. They intended to send her back to Ruta III, and to begin sowing the seeds of revolution. Individuality, self-expression, the concept of "me".'

Ah. That would be bad, apparently.

The Doctor looked at Tad very closely, very closely indeed.

'Don't be in Poland during "solidarnosc",' he said, using the Polish word for "solidarity". 'You have a future as an intelligent individual, Tadeusz. Don't mess it up!'

The Pole and I exchanged baffled looks. What?

'Okay, who gets to go with you?' asked Nick. 'Me, I can't wait to get amongst those triple-breasted, green-skinned alien princesses who can't keep their hands off human males!'

I hope he was joking. The Doctor looked at him with a combination of amazement and horror.

'If Moyra hears that, you'll be more concerned with the green-eyed monster than green-skinned ones,' I warned Nick. 'I'm sorry, Doctor, my idiot subaltern is clearly not suitable for, nor capable of, travel to the far reaches of the galaxy.'

' "Green-skinned"? "Alien princesses"?' repeated the Doctor faintly.

'Yes, your mammalian reproductive physiology is quite bizarre,' suddenly interrupted Winifred. 'Why, I had no idea what these - '

'YES! Thank you Winnie!' I interrupted, trying not to look at the lady in Edwardian clothing and her impromptu biology lecture. This air of farce dogged me at every step during the trip to Magellania.

'Lieutenant Munroe!' called the Doctor, heading for his TARDIS. 'I am leaving Winifred in your hands. It would be folly to take her along if the Sontarans are trying to capture her. Please look after her! '

Fox. Chicken coop. Taking care of.

I shouldn't complain. Thanks to the Doctor's attention being elsewhere, Tad and I managed to get our golf bag aboard the TARDIS.