Part Five: Interrogation Is A Drag

Within an hour we landed on the hardstand at Darien, to the relief of the control tower, who sent a police hovercraft to meet us.

The police were confounded by the arrival of twelve mine escapees, who overwhelmed them with demands for food, water, showers, clothes, access to telecom, the Archate, the Assembly and a dozen other things besides. Nor were they pleasantly surprised by the presence of two live Sontaran prisoners.

'Interrogation?' asked an officer I recognised, Dunbavin. 'Interrogate Sontarans? How in the name of Gaia do we do that!'

It transpired that the Law Officers had a series of five detention cells beneath their office building, for those women who committed major crimes. Last occupied the year before by a woman who killed a rival in a crime passionelle. Hardly appropriate for the passionless Sontaran toadies, but the best place to keep them.

By virtue of bluster, lying and implied consent, the Law Officers never got to quiz the Doctor about stealing a rotary-wing aircraft before he vanished into the cells. I went with him, dragging one of the toadies with me, unfortunately down several flights of concrete stairs, stairs with rough edges to the steps. After matey had been dumped in a corner, the Doctor took me outside into the corridor to consult. Not good to do it inside the cell, not given how sharp Sontaran hearing was.

'Did Tadeusz explain away his sudden insight? No, no, I suspected he didn't. He had the right idea, with wondering why normal Sontarans behave the way they do. I – ahem! – I'm afraid I rather discounted your reply.'

Which had been about how tradition and ritual and regalia, etcetera, are used to create a sense of belonging to a formation.

'He said "rogues" was the clue. The Sontarans we have encountered here in Magellania are deserters. Deserters. Consider that.'

I did. Desertion is a major military crime. If Soldier Everyman decides that he doesn't like the military life any more, he can always leave it by running away – which puts him in very hot water with his own side. He may run to the enemy, who are often glad to receive him with all the information he can bring them. Or he relocates to a distant part of the landscape, hoping that the military authorities are too busy elsewhere to hunt him down.

'I did wonder about it myself,' continued the Doctor. 'But Sontaran deserters are utterly unknown. This is a unique case.'

So – this lot, the ones who retrieved Salamander, who landed on Amalthea, who enslaved and murdered en masse, they were operating beyond the Sontaran pale. Deserters. No sustaining military tradition or esprit de corps – aha, and now I began to realise why those Sontarans aboard the Seraphim didn't care that we had one of their own as a hostage. He was just another schmuck fallen on hard times. Murder, rob, enslave, exploit, all without any recourse to a superior authority.

This, of course, explained why the Doctor found it difficult to fathom a reason for the Sontarans being here. No terrulian, no Rutans, no mass slave populations. Nothing but a hiding place, far distant from the battlefields of Mutter's Spiral.

'What are they up to here, then? They could live quietly out in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud, except they're making the neighbour's lives miserable.'

That was what we were about to discover.

Half an hour later our discoveries were limited to names: Sub-Commander Kralig and Trooper Rarg. Neither Sontaran would talk voluntarily, nor with the encouragement of being smacked about a bit with a fire axe (no spades in the prison cell corridor). I was perfectly willing to go much further with the fire axe, to the point of removing limbs, but the Doctor – of course – jibbed at GBH upon a pair of GBHers.

His patent spinning mirror on a stick didn't work – both proofed against mind-manipulation. No spoken threats worked, either. I sat next to him on a wooden bench outside the cell.

'What's needed is an edge of some kind, a theoretical acid of the mind that will seek out any weak spots and break through,' muttered the Doctor between his fingers.

I sighed. Time to put the merry mayhem aside and stop thinking about turning the prisoners into piles of quivering offal. How could you break down the barriers of a creature that didn't fear physical torment short of death?

'Doctor,' I began, slowly, thinking the anecdote through while speaking. 'I recall reading a history of D Day. A German prisoner refused a blood transfusion because it wasn't guaranteed free from Jewish or Negro blood. He died.'

The Doctor looked at me, seeing that I was working my way there slowly.

'And two young prisoners from the SS dug what they expected to be their own grave, entirely without fear. They weren't worried by death.'

A silent nod from my audience.

'Sooo – what if those SS men had been threatened with a non-Aryan blood transfusion? A threat that cut to the heart of what they feared most, racial contamination.'

The Doctor rested his elbows on his knees and cradled his chin.

'I see. A psychological threat. Well, what do Sontarans fear?'

Not sure whether this was a rhetorical question or not, I stayed quiet, for all of two seconds. What did brutal militaristic killers fear above all else? Put in a slightly less extreme way, what would turn the Brig into a quivering jelly?

'Being turned into mincing fops?'

It was an off-the-cuff remark, but he seemed to like it.

'Hmm. Emasculation. Feminisation. Emotional expression. All utter anathema. And we have just the tools at hand!'

He went off at a rapid pace, returning ten minutes later with Clara, a spray hypodermic, a spray of flowers and a long purple dress.

'Ooh, hello John. Have you been busy?' asked my green girlfriend. 'I have. I went all over the town - '

'Yes, thank you Clara,' interrupted the Doctor. 'Remember what I told you. John, only intervene at the point where I am just about to inject the prisoner.'

Clara went and nosied at Trooper Rarg in his cell, trussed up in his sapphire string.

'I don't like doing this,' she sulked. 'Sontarans are wicked bad.'

The Doctor glanced at me.

'Yes they are,' I improvised. 'Which is why – ah – which is why what the Doctor asked is important. To break them down and make them less wicked.'

She gave a snort and shrugged off her clothes, putting on the purple dress. Then she did the green glow of shape-changing intent, transforming into a Sontaran.

A Sontaran wearing only a purple dress.

'This is wrong in so many ways,' I muttered, aghast. The stumpy toad man wearing a frock was bizarre beyond belief.

Boldly swinging the cell door of Sub-Commander Kralig open, the Doctor stalked in, waving his spray hypodermic. I followed slightly after, whilst our – and I shook my head in wonder – our fake Sontaran hung about outside.

'Well, you've resisted physical interrogation, old chap,' began the Time Lord.

'I am not old,' hissed Toady.

'So, it's time to begin the pharmeceutical assault,' and the spray hypo got waved. Toady didn't reply to that, licking his lips instead. 'Nine Three Metacorticozone. Destroys the personality completely. Allows us to rebuild you as we wish.' The Doctor scratched his cheek. 'Mind you, I did misjudge the dosage for your colleague.'

Clara sidled into the cell, holding the posy of flowers, delicately sniffing them, or as close as a Sontaran can get to "delicate". The incongruity of the image was stunning.

'Oooh, Sub-Commander!' cooed Clara. 'Haven't you told the humanth what they want to know?'

Sub-Commander Kralig's face was the most expressive of all the Sontarans I'd met. Mostly, it expressed sheer astonishment.

'I've got thome flowerth,' lisped Clara. 'Would you like to thmell them?' and she inhaled deeply.

Kralig's squat face worked fervently, without him managing to speak. My response was to bite the inside of my cheek, in case I burst out laughing.

'Do you like my dreth?' asked Clara, giving a clumsy twirl. 'Much more comfortable than thothe nathty armour thuitth I uthed to wear.' She stopped in mid-twirl. 'That ith, I think I uthed to wear them. My memory'th not very good now.'

'What – what – what - ' blustered Kralig, as the truth – or what we wanted him to think was the truth – began to dawn.

'An overdose. Don't worry, we'll get the amount correct for you, Sub-Commander,' said the Doctor, in a warm and friendly tone, checking the settings on his spray device.

'They thaid I can go collecting flowerth later on,' said Clara. 'And put on thome make-up, tho I don't thtand out tho much. Ithn't that kind of them!' and she waltzed out of the cell with all the grace of a hippo on roller-skates, ducking back in to blow a kiss to Kralig.

'Don't you dare!' barked the prisoner, leaning away from the Doctor. The muscles of his face weren't really made for showing fear but the tone came across in his voice.

'Go on, turn him into a dancing pansy,' I said, managing not to laugh. Holy heaven, this combination of utter farce and extreme evil couldn't get any more pronounced.

'We'll only remove all those nasty aggressive urges,' soothed the Doctor. 'So you can appreciate things the way Trooper Rarg does.' He moved closer to Kralig, who threw himself away from the spray hypo, risking severe cuts from his spun sapphire bonds.

'No! No! I'll tell you what you want to know!' he shouted, very loudly in the small cell.

'Of course you will,' said the Doctor, calmly, still approaching. I decided to butt in.

'Hold on, Doctor. That drug'll knock him loopy for ages, and we need information now.'

Kralig got water, and bread, and a tray of sliced meats, enabling him to chat away at length. That little white cube of the Doctor's recorded it all.

"Deserters" didn't properly cover the Sontarans here in Magellania. They were the survivors of a Rapid Pursuit Group, KVR 147, tasked to carry the war to light elements of the Rutan space fleet. Originally they had a strength of two Linx-class Cruisers and ten Valt-class destroyers, and they fought successfully, if inconclusively and non-stop, for seven years. After a devastatingly effective ambush by Rutans, their fleeing single cruiser and seven destroyers encountered human warships of the Grey Empire. After that, their single cruiser and three destroyers took a pause from fighting. A Sontaran Commander called Gault, exhibiting rare individuality for a clone, took a decision.

If the Rutans were being defeated, and driven into strategic retreat, why should the survivors of KVR 147 risk death at the end of war that had lasted for over a hundred millenia? Especially if a third galactic power, humans, were on the rise.

Gault's suggestion had considerable backing. Enough, in fact, for the disloyal Sontarans to kill their more conventional fellows. Years of inconclusive struggle, followed by the loss of most of the unit, appeared to have soured their morale.

This little force of deserters then made their way to the Lesser Magellanic Cloud, a stellar environment far indeed from the main war effort. Imagine their surprise when they found human colonies there already, small, barely able to defend themselves and ripe for conquest. They picked on Amalthea first because human women are weak, apparently, and these "sexual deviants" would be even weaker, unmetalled by any male stock.

Slaves were taken, programmed and forced to carry out mining operations. When one batch of slaves died off, another would be taken.

Meanwhile, back at the main Sontaran encampment, time-corridor testing netted an interesting and nearly-unique catch: a Time Lord known as "The Doctor", who had been a constant thorn in the side of the Sontaran Empire.

Then, obviously, they realised it wasn't the Doctor, but Salamander instead. However, they could still use him as bait to snare a real Time Lord. That led to the Seraphim being captured, and the crew programmed, and the Doctor's own initial capture. A little recreational torture later, the Sontarans learnt about the existence of an individualistic Rutan.

Such a trophy would enable them to bargain with the Sontaran Empire. Freedom, a fiefdom of their own, terrulian, ships, weapons, carte blanche in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud – all potentially on offer if they could acquire that "infected" Rutan.

Not that the chat was that logical and serial in narration. The Doctor went backwards and forwards over the evidence until he felt satisfied Kralig was telling the truth. An hour later, we took a break and adjourned above ground, in the offices of the Law Officers. The lowest floor was all open plan, enabling us to bag an empty table, after I found the staff showers and Headon stood outside, stopping other females using the facility for a few mintues. When we reassembled I was cleaner and more alert, even if my clothes were pretty wretched.

'Ironic,' was my comment. 'Clone warriors expressing individuality, trying to acquire another ex-warrior because they expressed individuality.'

'Not to mention the appalling behaviour of these same individuals,' commented the Doctor. 'As part of a formal military unit, they adhered to certain standards. As free-booting deserters, they murder on a whim.'

Clara, back in her Annette-disguise and retaining green skin, bounced over to us.

'It worked! It worked!' she crowed. 'Did I do well?'

'Splendidly!' chuckled the Doctor. 'We have a full confession without having to resort to violence. Perhaps a little to John's disappointment.'

'That lisp was a touch of genius,' I replied, to Clara's immediate brightening of expression. 'It made your imitation sound like a real addled dolt.'

There were still questions to clear up. What, exactly, were the Sontarans mining for? What was their long-term plan? Would they still try to lay hold of Clara, mistaking her for Winnie?

One of the phones on our deserted desk rang.

'Call for the Doctor,' shouted a Law Officer from across the room. He took the call, nodding, pursing his lips and frowning before putting the handset down.

'That was the geophysical laboratory at the Higher College. I got Tad to rush those ore samples from the tractor there for analysis.'

Jolly good show, very thorough.

'Entirely mundane ores, apparently. Iron, with traces of copper, tin and molybdenum. No trace of any terrulian at all.'

Okay, so no power ores. Only the sort of things that humans might mine for. One more question to ask our detainees.

Another call came through for the Doctor. Salamander, this time. Whatever he said made the Doctor sit bolt upright and look over to the stairwell that led down to the subterranean cells.

'John – get down there and check the prisoners!' he snapped, still listening to Salamander. Off I went, much as a bull would do in a china shop, Law Officers and probationers scattering out of my way in mixed worry and amusement.

'The toilets are the other way!' called one.

Yes, ta, the comedy circuit didn't miss out when you became a policewoman.

I hurtled down the steps to the corridor, barely missing a woman coming up them. What had she been up to in the corridor?

'Hoy! What were you doing?' I called after her, walking backwards to keep her in view.

'Prisoner inspection,' she droned, not looking behind her. Her voice didn't sound right, dull and dead and lifeless.

Good adjective, because both Sontarans were lifeless when I reached the cells. Shot with a rheon weapon, to judge by the dirty great holes in them. Using a wall phone opposite, I rang upstairs.

'That woman just killed the prisoners!' I shouted, dropping the phone to bound back along the corridor and into the room upstairs, skidding to a halt when I took in the tableau – the dull and listless woman come to life in a most definite way, pointing a rheon pistol at Clara's head. Startled and alarmed Law Officers were scrambling to get out of the way, or in the way, or to unlock a massive steel cabinet containing their strategic-deterrent shotguns, or shouting at the weapon-wielding woman.

'Get me a portable comm suite or this hostage dies!' she shouted, careful not to get too close to Clara.

'No killing!' snapped the Doctor, as much to Clara as the kidnapper. 'No killing! We can resolve this without any violence!'

We could? I'd left my undiplomatic elephant gun and .45 in the TARDIS, out of respect for the way Amaltheans regarded guns with extreme dislike. The Doctor and I edged closer to the pair, who were standing in the middle of a large circle of hostile witnesses.

'Can't you use your magic mirror?' I whispered from the corner of my mouth. He shook his head.

'Nowhere near close enough. Pass me that paperweight, will you?'

I snagged the large circular weight and passed it to him behind my back.

'Who are you trying to contact?' asked a policewoman, to which the kidnapper scowled.

'I must – I must!' she said, almost to herself. Her tone was exactly that of Aarhuis when we first met him aboard the Seraphim, unwilling but unable to resist. I darted a quick glance at the Doctor, who nodded.

'Hurry up!' shouted the kidnapper, sounding more desperate than before. I got my boot-knife, wondering: could I get her with the K-bar before she fired at Clara? Or creep round behind her and knock her arm up whilst burying the knife in her brain?

'If you shoot her you've got no hostage,' I tried. 'Also, I will cut you in half.'

'She's one of the Archate!' realised a Law Officer, pointing and sounding not terribly surprised.

'The comm gear is on the way, just lower the weapon,' tried another policewoman. This amounted to a welcome distraction, allowing the Doctor to slip his sapphire string box out of his pocket, press the wire against the paperweight and reel out a couple of metres of filament. He flicked his wrist over in an impossibly rapid action, knotting the wire.

'You two are getting too close – back off!' shouted the Archate member, looking at the Doctor and I. Instead of backing off, I moved behind the Doctor, away to the left, trying to draw her attention. Whatever the Doctor had promised, if that weapon wavered, Miss Kidnapper would get nine inches of carbon steel in the ribs. When the woman's eyes moved to follow me, the Doctor cast the paperweight ahead in an overhead lob, way beyond her weapon.

'Missed!' she snarled, and it did look that way for a second. He'd thrown the paperweight too far.

Well, not quite. The sapphire filament, drawn taut by the paperweight and held in place by a knot, fell on the rheon pistol, then through the rheon pistol, then onto the floor, to be followed by the front half of the pistol and a sputter of sparks.

'Touche,' murmured the Doctor, looking quietly pleased.

The Archate woman looked at the useless piece of metal junk in her hand, then at the closing ring of policewomen, exhaled loudly, then collapsed in a heap, her eyes rolling up.

'Pooh!' snorted Clara in disdain. 'Far too soft.'

Half a dozen Law Officers descended on the fallen woman, quickly growing concerned. They began resuscitation techniques, which went on for a good five minutes, before admitting defeat.

'Dead,' explained one of them. 'But don't ask me how.'

'What did she kill the prisoners for?' asked another.

'I see where that confiscated Sontaran weapon ended up,' added a third.

Us three off-worlders backed away, letting the Amaltheans discuss what had just happened in tones of wonder.

'Did the Toadies do that?' I asked. I got a nod from the Doctor.

'Conditioning command. "Kill yourself in case of capture". John, Clara, we are going to have to tread very carefully from now on. The Sontarans are worried about us, about what we know and what we might discover, or they wouldn't stoop to an act as rash and desperate as this.'

Clara didn't seem bothered about two more dead Sontarans and a dead traitor. Make that "unwilling" traitor. Our mentor wouldn't worry over nothing, so I worried, too.

'So if we worry them too much – they might attack Hollandia?'

He sighed.

'John, that cruiser is capable of destroying Hollandia! A large-yield photonic missile would transform this capital and it's two hundred thousand people into a smoking crater.'

'Wicked bad,' nodded Clara.

Tad and Salamander showed up, at first looking anxious, then more settled. Tad looked conspicuously out of place in the nice, shiny, ordered building, not having had the chance to get cleaned up. Salamander reported to the Doctor. Effectively, he'd been out eavesdropping across Hollandia, seeing how the citizens were behaving, especially after Clara did her bit – her "bit" not having been explained to me yet.

The citizens, apparently, were not happy with the Archate or it's behaviour. Odd things had been happening: members of the Assembly acting strangely, then there'd been that attempted assasination of Isobella, after she'd been held incommunicado for months, and now a dozen so-called "hostages" were free, telling tales of massacre and degraded enslavement at the hands of the Sontarans. Salamander revealed that he'd released Isobella from her hiding-place, deeming her status to be far less unique now, and not sufficient to justify keeping her locked away. Moreover, whilst loitering around the Session House, Salamander had overheard enough detail to worry about quite what one of the Archate was going to do with the Sontaran prisoners. He managed to find a phone and rang around until he got the police station. The rest I knew.

The three bodies got carried away in what passed for an ambulance in Hollandia, for a post-mortem at the Mercy House. More members of the Archate turned up, with their liveried Session House guards, to be greeted with extreme hostility by the Law Officers.

'Is it Archate policy to send out assassins!' was one of the more polite greetings.

'What were you trying to do this morning, commandeering the city's radio net?' asked one of the more senior policewomen, pointing directly at one of the half dozen Archate women. 'The technical staff say you were attempting to call the Sontarans.'

The accused looked surprised.

'What? I've not been anywhere near the broadcasters today!'

Caught on the defensive, the Archate team tried to make up by being extra-officious. This didn't work, either.

'How come that assassin had the Sontaran weapon held securely at the Session House?'

Another officer chimed in.

'And why did one of the Assembly come in here under false pretences and steal a shotgun? We've had to lock the gun cabinet, for the first time ever.'

Once again the Archate team and their escort looked a bit sick.

'We've got them on disk,' added the officer, glaring over folded arms.

One hurried whispering later, the Archate withdrew. Officer Millington came over say that an attempt to lay hands on us off-worlders had been averted whilst the Archate tried to put it's own house in order.

'They haven't given up,' said Salamander, oh-he-of-acute-hearing. 'They intend to detain us, and they'll return, before anything above a minimum quorum can be established.'

Well, now, here was something I recognised. The Archate, all Sontaran progs to a woman, and a bare minimum of the Assembly, who would also be Sontaran progs, would vote on what to do with us. Nothing pleasant. Not capital punishment, no, which still left being locked up in a cell for months, or medically-restrained like the unfortunate Isobella.

'That's political manouevring, Doctor. We need to get Assembly members into Hollandia and the Session House rapidly, or we're going to be on the receiving end of Sontaran sentence-by-proxy.'

Thank heavens for Salamander's hearing! Out of honest curiosity I asked the question.

'Can I ask just why your hearing is so acute?'

He shrugged.

'Endless years listening to nothing and trying to make it sound like something. I trained my mind to pay very close attention to what I heard in the vortex.'

The Doctor, meanwhile, was off being practical. He sought out the more senior policewomen and chatted quietly to them. Clara, in all her green-skinned glory, sat down on a desktop nearby and beamed at me.

'Thank you for helping me with that horrid little woman. Of course, I could have electricuted her dead. But the Doctor didn't want that.'

' "Electrocuted". And it didn't matter in the end, really,' I sighed. Clara cocked her head to one side, mimicking one of Tad's habits.

'Do you feel sad for her? She was working for the Sontarans.'

'Not by choice. They forced her to work for them. Her and all those women dead at the mine.' That ghastly image of the pit full of bodies, disposed of like garbage, came back to haunt me.

'How I would like to meet a healthy upright Sontaran,' said Tad in an undertone. Salamander walked right into the gambit.

'Why is that?'

'To turn them into a horizontal dead one,' he answered, not joking in the least. 'I couldn't shoot the one John faced, or I would have killed John.'

Rubbing his hands in satisfaction, our Time Lord returned.

'Tad, you need a shower. John, much as it pains me, I think you need to obtain your arms from the TARDIS. Can you conceal them?'

Certainly could. That folding-stock FN could be slung over my back, under the denim jacket I wore. A magazine in each pocket, nobody Amalthean any the wiser. The Nitro – not possible, really. Tad could have my .45, and it's holster, and the K-Bar.

When our Polish sphinx returned, looking cleaner and smarter, we trailed to the TARDIS with the Doctor and retrieved our lethal kit, putting it on before venturing outside. The Doctor had a few words for us, which made more sense later on.

'If we are separated, then you can consider yourselves protectors of the Amalthean community. Defenders. Mark that, gentlemen, "defenders". No innovations in bloodshedding, thank you.'

Well, he might ask. Tad and I already had our agreement.

'You couldn't yield up that sapphire string, could you?' asked Tad, to be answered by a shake of the head.

'All gone, I'm afraid. And no Level Five technology available to create more.'

Hmm. Perhaps, perhaps not. I don't think he'd forgotten my nasty little booby-trap aboard the Seraphim.

Clara and Salamander – didn't he have a normal name? – greeted us in the Grand Piazza, almost running to get to us.

'The Archate are going to banish Tad and John,' blurted Salamander. 'I heard a police officer take the call from the Session House.'

The Doctor greeted this with a calm nod. No big surprise to him.

'Excuse me?' asked Tad, not looking very happy. That is, he had a wrinkle on his forehead. 'I do not wish to be banished.'

Me neither!

'I think it's for the best, actually,' said our Time Lord. 'Since I intend to neutralise the Archate, which will precipitate a Sontaran riposte here in Hollandia.'

When last Hollandia and Sontarans were mentioned together, a body-count of two hundred thousand had been in the offing. Now the combination suddenly seemed far less dangerous.

'You expect the Sontarans to attack!' I asked, not quite dumbfounded. I got a disarming grin.

'John, I not only expect it, I positively require it!'

I took a long look around the Grand Piazza. No sign of radar or anti-aircraft, or anti-spacecraft, missiles or guns. No heavily-armed military force able or willing to repel the toadmen. Open season, in fact.

'The Archate are trying to get rid of you two in order to make me more vulnerable. As a short-term option it can be sustained, because I know the Sontarans can be dealt with.'

'How!' I asked, probably far too intensely. I pointed at Clara, which is rude but forgivable in a crisis. 'Don't tell me you're relying on Clara as a Trojan horse. You can't put her at risk against those Sontaran butchers!' and according to onlookers and passers-by, fiery sparks flew from my eyes.

My outburst got a roll of the eyes from the Doctor, coupled with a theatrical sigh.

'John, don't be so melodramatic. Clara will not be at risk. I will.'

'Also, John, you forgot Salamander,' muttered Tad.

'Well, I am a bit of a rotter, aren't I?' added Salamander, a mischievous twinkle in his eye. Clara had another look in her eye, even if it was a simulated eye, and the twinkle had more than mischief in it.

Honestly, I give up. Clearly the gears of some contrived machination were at work here, and Tad and myself were caught up in them. I had the feeling that the Doctor had at least a dozen plans on the go at once, and he would swap between them at a moment's notice, depending on circumstances. Not only that, to prevent clodhopping humans like Captain John Walmsley from spoiling those plans, those same clodhopping humans wouldn't be told any more than they absolutely needed to know.

'Ohalrightwhendowego,' I mumbled, grumpy and feeling left out.

'Thank you for being humane!' chirped Clara, pressing a curious squished mouth to my cheek.

Two police hovercraft came whining over the flags of the Grand Piazza, heading for our little group, sending dust and debris scurrying over the square.

'Due departure time about imminent,' explained the Doctor. 'Remember what I said before, gentlemen. Sorry, Tad, no goodbye peck from me!'

The two hovercraft singled out the covertly-armed members of our party, one aiming at Tad, the other at me. I walked over to the right, creating a gap between the group and making the hovercraft swerve away from them.

'What is "peck"?' asked Tad, once again puzzled by English idiom.

'Um – used to be a unit of measure. Or what a chicken does. Or "a peck on the cheek" is a – oh.'

'A kiss?' he ventured, staring directly at the approaching hovercraft, not even a crease of laughter at the corners of his eyes, even if he did beat a fist against his thigh.