Part Six: A Break In the Country

Whereas the past few days had been a collective helter-skelter of rushing around, shooting Sontarans, rescuing abductees, playing the playboy abroad and being conspiratorial, my time from now on became far less urgent and strident, and much more in tune with the Amalthean way of life. For a few days, at least. Don't think that I'm complaining, I'm not – it's a good job I got a rest on the Corrigan garth for what lay ahead.

The police hovercraft that took me off to temporary exile had Officer Headon driving and Officer Dunbavin as my escort. This was not a coincidence: both were extremely angry at the way the Archate were behaving, and intended to see me on my way with information.

'We have orders to escort you to Frangipani,' explained small, wiry Dunbavin. 'Supposedly incommunicado, but they can suck my sweaty socks if they think either of us are sitting still for that! Here, wait a minute.'

She lifted up a seat cover, revealing a storage bin. After a short scrabble inside, she came out with a gazeteer, worn and dog-eared despite being laminated.

'Take this. I reckon the bloody idiots in the Archate are trying to get rid of you – Frangipani is one of the places those Sontaran toads are going to hit for hostages. See?' and she opened the book at one page, pointing at a grey dot sat on the intersection of several roads. "FRANGIPANI" read the legend. "TOADS" read another etched into the plastic, under a black cross penned in on the opposite page. Dunbavin tapped the black cross.

'Their main base. We got a couple of looks at it from orbit, before they destroyed the satellites. The photo's are taped inside the back cover.'

With a backhand flip, she tossed the book to me.

'I notice you've got no knife in your boot.'

'Given up to a greater cause,' I half-lied. 'Tad,' I expanded. She looked back at me, tongue in cheek.

'Your jacket pockets also appear to be strangely distorted, in the same way the back of your jacket doesn't hang properly.'

I shrugged. Trust a woman to notice what's wrong with a man's clothing! Before a word passed my lips, she interrupted.

'I'm not asking, I'm only commenting.'

The journey was a long one. Normally it would have been made by helicopter, but two had been lost without good cause in that canton. The Sontarans were suspected, and rather than risk more helicopters, the trusty if much slower hovercraft got used instead. I dozed fitfully at first, then lay down on the padded seats and had a proper sleep, having contorted myself so my hidden rifle didn't dig holes in my back.

When I woke, that familiar dusky twilight came in via the portholes, and the gradually fading whine of the engine meant we had stopped.

'Journey's end, all out,' declared Headon from the cockpit, coming into the passenger compartment, stretching hugely. 'Wake up, Greta, you human stone,' she said, kicking Dunbavin's foot.

'Ow! Hey, can't a girl rest her eyes?' complained the sleeping officer. Headon took up her webbing harness, snapping it together.

'Er – could you do me a favour?' I asked, having dithered over asking before falling asleep, and now rushing.

'Depends,' replied Headon.

'Well, can you keep a motherly eye on Clara for me?

Dunbavin's eyes got big and interested.

'So it's true – ow! Hey, enough, I'm awake!' she scolded Headon, who looked daggers at her.

'Headstrong girl. She's likely to go after the Sontarans if they arrive, you see, as the Doctor thinks they might, and I'm not there to help. But you are. So,' I finished, weakly.

Headon escorted me outside, leaving Dunbavin to get into the pilot's position.

'Don't worry, I'll look after her. Ignore Greta, she's got a big mouth. Let's get you introduced to the garth.'

That half-familiar smell of grass hung in the air, and the brilliant moons came up over the horizon.

'Pretty idyllic,' I commented. There were pens with sheep in the mid-distance, and large black lumps in the far away that could be cows. Big orchards nearby, and fields that looked to have long cereal crops in, marching away to the horizon. One of the giant tractors, this one with a camouflage scheme, came rumbling down the rutted track, headlights big as bin lids glaringly illuminating us.

Headon waved with both arms, and the massive tractor came to a sliding halt beside us. The big clamshell doors on the passenger cabin opened up, allowing a petite woman to climb down whilst her co-driver and passengers leaned over, staring at the two new arrivals.

'Officer Headon,' nodded the small woman in acknowledgement. 'And this is the exile?'

'How do you do? John Walmsley,' I smarmed, bowing as taught, missing out the "Captain" bit as being introduced to A Man would be quite enough novelty for the moment.

'Oh!' she said, taken aback. 'Polite, isn't he. Minerva Corrigan.'

'Better-behaved than the Andromacheans,' explained Headon. 'But his tongue runs away with him.' She gave me a good-bye salute. 'Look after yourself, John, and this lot of bumpkins, too.'

Minerva gestured me up to the cab of the tractor, and I climbed in, making it uncomfortably cramped in the rear seat, squeezed in next to a pair of lithe, copper-headed teenaged girls who bore a passing resemblance to Minerva.

'Great!' said one, eyeing me. 'Another the size of Fat Anne. Bet he eats by the bucketful, too.' The driver turned in her bucket seat to glower at the speaker, and Minerva pointed a finger when she climbed in and toggled the doors shut.

'That little barb just cost you a lie-in tomorrow, Gloria. Milking duties, at second moonfall.'

'Aw, Mam,' sulked the girl. Her twin sister mocked her silently, until she caught her mother's eye in the rear-view mirror and became a model of good behaviour.

'Messr – no, sorry, Mister - Walmsley is a guest at this garth. Anyone the Archate bothers to exile can't be all bad. You two remember that. Mister Walmsley?'

'Er – yes?'

'If these two, or anyone else, makes life difficult for you, come straight to me. They won't do it again.'

'Oh – right. Thank you. I'm sure that won't be necessary.'

The hitherto silent twin spoke up.

'You hope! This garth hasn't seen a man in ten years.'

'Faith,' said Minerva, in a warning.

'He'll be a big change, Mam, that's all I meant.'

The tractor dropped us passengers off at a complex of long, single-storey buildings that sprawled for at least an acre over the low hills. This turned out to be the family home of the Corrigans, where new buildings were added as or when needed. No lack of space to expand into, and no lack of timber, stone or traded metals and plastics to construct with. Nor was this a frontier community at the cow-and-plough level; microwave antennae stood on the roof, with a big parabolic dish off in a fenced-in area all to itself. Three small hover-vehicles were parked in front of the "house", covered with a semi-reflective netting that I instantly recognised as camouflage.

'We'll introduce you whilst Mam's parking,' announced one twin. They waltzed into the house, leading me through a warren of rooms, walkways and corridors until we arrived at an enormous open plan room, with a canted glass roof. People ate quietly in a corner, a pair of kittens chased each other and five small girls studied the details present on a broadcast screen and scratched away on computerised writing pads – or what resembled them.

Gloria, or Faith, made a rapid round of introductions that I had no chance of remembering. The opposite was not true.

'Have you eaten since Hollandia?' asked a very large young woman at the dining table: Anne. I remembered her name. 'No, I didn't think so. Those Law Officers aren't up on feeding people.'

'I haven't eaten, and I am actually rather peckish,' I said, being polite. Actually I was starving, and the sight of food laid out on the table caused an embarassing rumble of the stomach.

' "Peckish"? Does that mean hungry?' asked a small girl with a grubby face, spooning what looked like strawberries into a bowl, before devouring them with her fingers.

'Politely interested in the contents of your larder,' I replied. 'Larder – pantry – cupboard?'

'Ooh he talks funny,' commented a middle-aged woman opposite, 'I think he means the freezer. Is that how they talk on Mars, now?'

'He comes from Earth, Mum,' explained Minerva, stalking purposefully into the room. 'What, has nobody offered our guest any food!' and there was a snappishness to her voice.

'Here we are,' said that large young lady, reappearing from behind a pair of swing doors carrying a tray. 'Fresh bread, hummus, chicken goujons, and a bean salad.'

'Thank you, Anne,' said Minerva, casting a narrowed eye at Gloria and Faith.

'That's Anne's second course,' sniggered Gloria to her sister, quietly but not quietly enough. Her mother directed an accusing finger at her.

'Milking the day after tomorrow, too.' Both twins retired sulkily.

Minerva shooe'd me into a chair, and took one opposite, getting a plate of what looked like cucumbers; purple cucumbers. Slicing them with quick, deft strokes, she ate them one after the other.

'So, Mister John Walmsley. The Archate have seen fit to dump you on this humble, distant garth. Why's that?'

The explanation took a while, and a couple more women joined the table to listen. This pair held hands, and occasionally whispered in each other's ear, quite the raciest behaviour I'd witnessed on Amalthea so far.

When my tale of helicopter theft and hostage release was told the small girl looked at me with a curiously screwed-up face, smeared with strawberry juice.

'Her mum was taken,' murmured Minerva, leaning across the table. 'We found her hiding in the school basement. Took her in as the nearest garth with room to spare and care.'

The small girl burst into tears. This naturally made me collapse internally, big strong chap that I am on the outside, snivelling coward on the inside.

'Hush, Imogen! You need to be a brave girl, and grow up – ow!' exclaimed Minerva, as I grabbed her wrist. Far too hard, unfortunately, since I wasn't thinking clearly. In fact it felt as if a heavyweight had landed an uppercut in the region of my solar plexus. Mum taken, hidden in school: it had to be!

'Imogen? From Sittangville?'

Minerva tried to release her wrist while nodding, and Imogen nodded too, tears forgotten.

'And your mum is called Isobella?'

This time I remembered to let go of Minerva's wrist, as both she and Imogen nodded again. I fell back in my chair, which hurt since I still had that slung rifle over my back.

'Your - ' and my throat stopped working properly. Cough, try again. 'Your mum is alive, Imogen. She's back in Hollandia. You can't go back there right now, it's going to be dangerous for a few days.'

'What about Sadie?' asked the small, strawberry-faced girl, in an equally small voice that wavered. I frowned and shook my head, not trusting to my voice: Sadie must be the dead older sister.

'Why is it going to be dangerous there?' asked Anne, looking as amazed as I probably did at this sudden reversal of fortune.

'Sontarans. They'll probably try a raid there.'

'Who says so?' asked Minerva, aggressively.

'Well, the Doctor.' Hopefully my voice and face expressed all the conviction I felt in the Time Lord's judgement.

'I don't need a doctor,' quavered the middle-aged woman. Minerva sighed.

'No, mum, not you. The one we call "The Traveller".'

Imogen burst into tears, then raced around the table to hug Minerva tight enough to make her cough. The child relinquished her grip for a second to give me an equally intense one, which drove the rifle magazine into a kidney, wincingly hard. She went back to Minerva and cried herself out, until Anne took charge and carried her off to bed.

'That's – that's – well, words fail me,' said Minerva, flicking a knife over and over.

'How unusual,' said her mother. She got a stare and a tut.

'Happy to be the bearer of glad tidings,' I said, truthfully.

'And a weapon under your jacket,' observed one of the romantic pair.

'Yes, quite. Do you mind if I take it off? Imogen caused permanent damage to my internal organs when she squeezed me.'

Nobody said "yes", nor did they say "no", so I doffed my denim jacket and unslung the FN, sitting it on the table just in front of me. Dead silence hung in the air.

'That's a funny-looking shotgun,' observed the second of the romantics, resting her chin on her partner's shoulder.

'It's not a shotgun,' I warned. 'It will kill at ranges of up to six hundred yards. And it fires ten rounds per second.' To be on the safe side I removed the magazine and cocked the action three times. 'Okay. Now it's an expensive, machine-tooled, precision club.'

Another silence settled over the table. That didn't stop me from scoffing the entire contents of the tray provided by Anne.

'And The Traveller sanctions this?' asked Minerva.

'You bet. The Doctor said I needed to help defend the garth I got sent to.'

'I really don't need the doctor,' protested Minerva's mum again, to an exasperated sigh.

'I think it's time for everyone to head for bed,' declared Minerva. 'Girls, you can finish that homework tomorrow.' The children watching the broadcast screen ahh'd in disappointment, then dutifully turned off their strange devices and trooped off. I stood up to see the other women out of the room, as etiquette dictated.

'Good night, good night, good night, good night,' I farewelled, getting long, solemn stares from the girls having left their homework behind.

'Ooh, don't them Martians talk funny,' said Minerva's mum to herself as she ambled out of the room.

'Mum!' scolded Minerva. She turned to me. 'She's all there and a bit extra, just likes to play the idiot in front of strangers.'

Before I could make any move, she motioned me over to a corner and a suite of giant cushions that served as chairs.

'Not you, not you. First, you haven't been shown where you're sleeping, and second, I want a bit of the bigger picture. Go on, sit.'

She whistled twice and the lighting dimmed.

'What constitutes the bigger picture?' I asked. 'You mean what the Sontarans are up to?'

'Partly that. Also what's going on in Hollandia with those morons who are supposed to represent and serve.'

The Sontaran's plans were a bit of a mystery. So far we realised they were renegades, mining metal ores for an undetermined project, and using the Amalthean population as slaves. Beyond that lay only speculation. The Archate, according to the Doctor, were all Sontaran slaves to a woman, blindly obedient to their master's whims. His having checkmated the politicians meant that he suspected the Sontarans would arrive in person to try and kill or capture him.

'Ha! No big surprise there!' snorted a disgusted Minerva. 'Prating on about the sanctity of life and how weapons are taboo. Then ignoring any threats to our lives. They must have known about Isobella's daughter, and they didn't bother to re-unite those two. It's only thanks to the garths setting up a radio-net that we can evacuate before the stumpies get here. The Archate didn't bother to arrange that.' There was more, mostly insults in a low voice that didn't carry. She produced the battered gazetteer Dunbavin gave me earlier, opening it at the pages that displayed relative distance between Frangipani and the Sontaran's landing site. Half a dozen other small grey sites, denoting other garths, had been crossed out, the victims of attacks that emptied them of their population.

'To judge by this, Frangipani is likely to be attacked next. And the Archate sent you here, of all places. I think they want rid of you!'

With my anti-social record of killing and crippling Sontarans, they very well might. Tad's garth lay much farther to the east, the other side of the continent. Probably equidistant from the Sontaran's base too, all the better to get rid of him.

Minerva showed me to a spare room off in a corridor that faced onto fields of poetically-waving wheat, illuminated by multiple-moonlight. The bed wasn't long enough, and my feet stuck over the end. Contorting myself into a huddle with the FN under the pillow enabled all bodily parts to be covered by blanket.

Next morning the working folk kindly let me stay in bed until Second Sun – that is, the second dawn, when that fiercely bright sun climbed up over the horizon after it's rosy predecessor. The beams from this solar furnace were bright enough to wake me and start a search for breakfast.

'No food 'til lunch,' announced a small girl doodling on a computer screen in the open plan dining room-cum-lounge. 'But there's fruit.'

There was food in bowls on the dining table: apples the size of footballs, pears with red skins and what had to be corn-on-the-cob. My nutritional adviser solemnly watched me cut slices out of an apple, then down a pear. Raw sweet corn I'd rather do without, but the small girl took a cob and rapidly scoffed the corn from it.

'You don't have to boil that?'

'Silly!' she said, chewing a mouthful of corn. 'Why would you need to boil it?'

Oh well. The forty-second century garden at work. The corn was tasty, if a bit firm. I gnawed two cobs bare and felt fuller and more interested in my surroundings.

'Where is everyone?'

'Working,' said my information source, busy doodling.

'Not you?'

She looked up at me from under her eyelashes.

'No. 'cos I was bad yesterday I have to do extra homework.'

'Extra homework. That's bad.' The doodling on that computer screen must be homework.

'Yes!' she agreed, vehemently. ' 'specially since I can't see the baby chicks today.'

'A deprivation undoubtedly as bad as extra homework,' I agreed with her. She furrowed her brow and then decided I wasn't making fun of her.

'Yes. Aunty Min is cross with everyone because the twins took their Elective. Gloria's going to Rainbow and Faith's going to Andromache.'

That explained a little of the late-teen angst yesterday; two girls about to leave the nest and seeing how far they could push Mum.

After a short silence, the small girl plucked up the courage to ask me questions.

'Did you really bring a gun here to kill people with?'

Oh dear, rumours were already flying!

'Certainly not, small girl. If the - '

'Ellie. You can call me Ellie.'

'Thank you, Ellie. I don't kill human beings.' Well, not usually. 'But the man you call The Traveller wanted me to help defend whoever I ended up with.'

'Against the Bucketheads?'

'The Buck – oh, I see. I call them the Toadmen. Yes. They are horrible creatures.'

'Yuck, they are! All hairy and lumpy and green and slimy.'

'I meant on the inside, Ellie, on the inside. The way they think and treat other people makes them horrible. Don't judge a book by it's cover.'

Oh, very profound and deep and meaningful, truly the Doctor would have been proud of me, if the effect hadn't been spoiled by Ellie asking what a book was?

A flood of women came into the house by the time I got hungry again, including some I'd not met the previous night. Minerva came over to Ellie and I.

'Sorry to leave you alone, Mister Walmsley. We're all busy at present. I need to get some work out of the twins before they take the shuttle out to Seraphim. Ellie, you didn't pester our guest, did you?'

Shake of head from Ellie.

'No, Aunty Min. Have you ever seen a book?'

Books were long obsolete, I was informed. Cutting down trees to pulp them, process the pulp, printing, binding and adding illuminated letters was grossly inefficient, it was all done with computer databases now. The gazetteer Officer Dunbavin provided me with looked crumpled and old because it dated back at least ninety years.

I helped to carry crockery and cutlery from kitchen to dining table. Even if I'd found the kitchen earlier it wouldn't have helped, since it looked more like the cockpit of Concorde than a kitchen. That constellation of lights, meters and switches were the ovens, that big silver and white box cleaned dishes using sonics, the art deco wardrobe was the freezer entrance, that was the flash-freezing equipment –

'You're not familiar with any of this, are you?' asked Minerva. 'I begin to understand that the Traveller told the truth about moving backwards and forwards in time.'

My confession about hailing from the late twentieth century went down fantastically well at the dining table, a real topic of conversation. There were problems with finding common ground, the first cropping up when I described myself as trained to be "an officer and an English gentleman".

'What's "English"?' asked one of the small girls.

'What's a "gentleman"?' asked one of the women.

'England? You've not heard of it? But – there'll always be an England!' I spluttered, offended that the best and most perfect country in the world seemed to be forgotten. 'You know, part of Britain. Tea, bad weather and fondness for animals.'

Blank looks around the table, until one woman brightly spoke up.

'Oh! You mean Albion! Off-shore province of Europia.'

The Grey Empire began to pall, I felt.

'I hope the French and Germans aren't there, either,' I muttered. That would be too much to bear.

Mostly, the women wanted to know about politics. Bit of a busman's holiday, that, given my degree. Their appetite for information was voracious – when did universal suffrage come in, were there educational restraints on voting, what difference existed between local and national elections, how did single transferrable voting work, who monitored politician's behavious, how many political parties were there, how did you form one – the questions went on and on. I got more background information about their ancestors, who fled the Grey Empire centuries before. Another Magellanian world got mentioned – Phaedra, where the settlers were religious adherents of faiths considered dangerous by the Grey Empire. Being Christian, it seemed, was a criminal offence. Being of any faith, in fact, seemed a quick ticket to prison. Or a sentence to "thought-surgery", as an option. My ignorance of thought-surgery remained, it didn't sound like the sort of subject matter I'd enjoy. And, even if you were a sincere believer in the official Statist politico-religious substitute, if you were a "mono-gee" then you could count on being executed if discovered for "Violation of State populace maintenance".

Eventually I voiced my dislike of the Grey Empire.

'No wonder your great-grandparents left. This Grey Empire sounds vile.'

'That's why we're so far from it,' said Minerva. 'Magellania exists – I should say existed – to allow human beings to live how they wished. Now we've got the Sontarans to contend with.'

Yes, for the moment. Whilst Tad and I were off in exile, the Doctor was free in Hollandia. He'd been cooking up a scheme of some description with the Law Officers before I had to leave.

'I was on the microwave link to Hot Springs,' announced Anne to the table at large, whilst looking at me. 'There's a lot of rumours flying around about strange events in Hollandia. And about our guest.'

Projecting an air of complete innocence takes practice. I'd had practice, which may have convinced the eaters.

'A hired assassin from Philandros, come to kill the Archate's enemies. A spy for the Grey Empire. A spy for the Sontarans. One of the Archate in disguise. A man who rips out the throats of Sontarans with his bare teeth - '

'Anne!' exclaimed Minerva, casting a look at the younger children.

'A charmingly well-behaved guest with a winning manner?' I ventured.

'A character-sketch spoilt only by that weapon you carry,' commented one of the newer arrivals.

When the meal finished, I found Minerva.

'Do you have any hard physical work that needs doing? I ought to earn my keep while I'm eating your food.'

'Hmm. Hard physical work?'

It made sense. Forty-second century technology would probably be way beyond my comprehension, a fact which occurred to Minerva as quickly as it had to me.

'Yes there is. Anne is putting in fence-posts for a new corrall. Help her.'

The young lady Anne wasn't really fat, just large, with a chubby but pretty face. She got the jobs that required sheer force, and had been pounding big wooden fence posts into the hard ground all morning, marking the outer edge of a corrall about six hundred yards square. With two of us, the work went quicker. At first Anne's conversation consisted merely of instructions strictly to do with the job in hand, until she felt more comfortable with a man nearby.

'Have you really killed lots of Sontarans?' she asked, before passing me a vacuum flask full of iced water – necessary out in the heat and double-sunlight.

'A few,' I cautiously replied. Established by pacifists, the citizens of this world wouldn't take kindly to a bloodthirsty maniac boasting about slaughter and death.

She laughed.

'Oh, you're definitely not a Philand! They'd love a chance to fight the stumpies and brag about it. I think I would, too.'

Throwing the flask to her, I shook my head.

'No! Bad idea. They mass twice what you do, and their weapons make holes that don't heal. If you get the warning about them arriving here, grab the kids and run for it.'

She pointed out my FN, slung over a fence-post (no way was I going to leave it lying around in the houses!).

'Nope. That would probably just bounce off their armour. I used a high-velocity half-pound grenade to kill the last one I encountered.'

That meant explaining what a grenade was while we hammered the next post in. I skated over details of the Sontaran getting disintegrated above the belt; a bit too graphic. It was my turn to ask questions after that.

'Do the stumpies still land in a big circle around a garth when they attack?'

Yes; from what survivors said, they still did that, but with far fewer of their hemispherical craft doing the attacking. Could they be conserving energy supplies? Possibly. There was none of that power-ore on Amalthea for them to refuel with, and they never encountered resistance, so a sensible toady commander might decide four craft could do the job as easily as sixteen.

'How much warning will you get if they come here?'

Only a few minutes. That parabolic dish back at the house was a low-level radar. If a Sontaran raid came for Frangipani, the alarm would sound and the panic plan for evacuation went into action. Anne looked a bit subdued after telling me this. Later I found out why: the whole garth had practiced a mock-evacuation, and she got left behind. Not quick enough on her feet, and normally she was out working on her own in distant fields.

The line of posts we'd hammered in formed one side of the corrall, and a second by the time our next meal came due. I learnt from Anne that Minerva's twin daughter's consistently picked on her, mainly because she didn't have a partner or girlfriend.

'Too fat and ugly,' she sighed, in mock-pity. 'Not a problem either of those two have,' she added, hammering the fence post with considerable venom.

'You're not fat, and you're not ugly, either,' said John's Tongue, much to the surprise of John's Brain. Anne looked at me in surprise, then alarm.

'Don't worry, I'm not making a pass at you. Trying it on? Copping-off? Attempting anything?' I reassured her, trying to find an idiom she'd understand. 'I am armoured by the love of a good woman.'

'D'you mean that Rutan female?'asked Anne, displaying unwelcome knowledge.

'No!' I replied, hotly. 'My girlfried, Marie. Back on Earth.'

'That would be the Earth of two thousand years ago, would it? Bit of an age difference,' retorted Anne, grinning and enjoying herself.

'Yes, but – no, I know that she's in the past now, but I'll be going back into the past in the near future, so while she isn't here now – is any of this making sense?'

I should have stuck to hammering fence-posts.

'What I meant was that I've had my fair share of people taking the mickey out of me because of my size. It used to happen most at school, except it had to be a gang of them or they'd get flattened.'

Once again, achingly profound John, the Doctor would have been gratified, if Anne hadn't stopped me to ask what a "school" was.

After a meal where I ate, talking little, it was back to more fence-post hammering. We got the full corrall fencing done before it got as dark as it ever does on Amalthea. Next day, I was informed, the staples would be hammered into the posts and the barbed wire strung between them.

My ears pricked up when barbed wire got mentioned. Professional interest and all that. When I asked about where it came from, I was told the wire came from one of the garth's residents who ran a metal workshop and foundry. Induction furnace, laser welding, flash-casting, three-dee metallic sculpts – all pretty basic stuff. For the residents, I mean. None of it was familiar to me.

The old grey matter started to ferment a little at this information. "Defend", said the Doctor. Without spilling oceans of Sontaran blood, he implied. And no improvising explosives and infernal engines for destruction and confoundment of your enemy. A bit of a spoilsport that way, the Doctor.

'You're very quiet tonight, Mister Walmsley. Too tired to talk?' asked Minerva at the evening meal.

'Hm? Oh, sorry, yes, the cat got my tongue,' I replied, and then had to explain what a cat was, and then what a pet was. The Magellanian settlers brought only farm animals with them, for meat or milk or brute motive force to begin with. Pets were unknown on an overcrowded Earth.

'No, actually, Minerva, I was wondering how much barbed wire your metalsmith could make.'

'Kilometres of it, I suppose,' she replied, plainly curious.

'And the ground-loading of your tractors?' which caused a few furrowed brows. Minerva nodded at Olivia, a tractor-driver, mechanic and all round expert.

'Very low, given the size of their tyres and footprint. Considerably less than a full-grown woman. Or man,' she hastily added.

'How many two-inch nails can you spare?' and I then had to indicate approximately two inches.

'Thousands. Millions, maybe. Why!' asked Minerva. Her tone of voice brooked no argument. Typical woman, hint to her and she wants chapter and verse.

'Last question: can your metalsmith make small castings?'

'Yes! Now tell me why all these questions!'

Time for John to reveal that knowledge is power.

'I will - tomorrow. No, no, I need to see your metalsmith tomorrow and ask them a whole lot of questions.'

By the second mealtime I had zipped around Frangipani in a hovercar driven by Olivia, visited the Fosters, who ran the miniature factory in the garth, and came back to the dinner table in fair spirits, together with a handful of props.

Faith and Gloria pestered me all during the meal, until a snappish Minerva got them to be quiet, and once the dishes were away, I plonked my collected bits down on the laminated tabletop.

'For defence of your garth,' I proclaimed.

'I do like a party!' beamed Minerva's mum.

'Don't scratch that surface. It takes special solvents to fix,' complained Minerva.

'Now, imagine this is a roll of barbed wire,' I began, holding a small coil of copper wiring in my hand. I stretched it out taut. 'Normally, this is how you string it between posts to keep cattle in.' Producing a second coil, I pulled the ends gently, creating a concertinad coil of copper wire. 'A roll of barbed wire coiled out like this, and staked down, is exceedingly difficult to get through. Put another roll alongside it and another on top of those two and it becomes near-impossible.'

Minerva caught on instantly. Quick on the uptake, she.

'So you could fence a garth with coils like that and keep the stumpies out?'

'It would take kilometres of wire!' objected one of the women who'd been romantic that first night. Shona, I think.

'Not keep them out, no - after all, you can't block off your roads in and out. It would restrict where they could get in, a great deal. Vintage World War One.'

Exhibit two came next.

'This is four of your five centimeter nails, flash-welded together at their head. They project along the axes of a tetrahedron - '

'That's in our homework!' gleefully announced Imogen.

'Well-spotted, Imogen. That means that, whichever way it falls, a nail is always pointing upwards.' I indicated upwards with a finger.

'Does he mean the angels are watching?' whispered Mrs Corrigan Senior, hoarsely, to be frowned at ferociously by Minerva.

'Ooh! Imagine standing on that!' winced Anne.

'Just so,' I replied. 'Called a caltrop, or crows-foot. Normally used against horses, from the Medieval era onwards. A two hundred kilogramme Sontaran stepping on one of these will stop chasing humans, believe me.'

Then there was the wicked-looking double-ended spike, which had a flat spur projecting halfway down it's flank.

'This one is Roman. You take a length of timber, tapered at one end, and knock it into the ground. Using a hammer on this spur, you knock the spike into the wood's flat end. For added nastiness, you can barb the spike. Once again, any Sontaran stepping on one of these will start thinking about his aching feet and not bother about chasing anyone.'

The collected women inspected the nastiness on the table and looked at me.

'Clever, these Martians,' muttered someone – I could guess who.

'Purely defensive,' I said, in defence. 'Ancient technology. The Traveller-friendly. Non-explosive.'

'Yes. I see,' replied Minerva, thoughtfully. 'Tell me one thing.'

'Yes?'

'What is World War One?'

My little technical brainstorm went down pretty badly with the women in Frangipani, whose responses ranged from disgusted to highly-approving.

Alright, only Anne approved highly. Anything that helped her get to a hovercar before the stumpies arrived got her vote.

Anyway, I was once more cast out to do the hard physical work, stringing barbed wire upon the fenceposts of our recently-completed corrall. The heat meant I took off my denim jacket, then the heavy cotton shirt, before they were completely ruined by sweat. Anne's eyebrows rose when I doffed my shirt.

'Don't think I'm going to do the same!' she warned me. I probably blushed.

'I only have what I stand up in, and this heat is making me sweat buckets. As for your shirt, Miss Schiffmansdottir, anything I say will be wrong. So I shall say nothing.'

She flicked a pebble at me.

'There's a stand barrel over by the corner of the eaves. You can pour water over yourself and cool off that way.'

Warning bells went off in my head. This is exactly the sort of malicious trick soldiers play on each other – the barrel is full of urine, or leeches, or it never existed in the first place, or another person leaps out of hiding and drags your pants down around the ankles whilst a third man with a camera – you get the idea. Suspiciously, and casting looks left and right, I went to the stand barrel and had an ad hoc bath. It was extremely refreshing.

'Hey, Mister John, where did you get all those marks?' asked a small girl's voice from behind me whilst I poured water over my head with a great steel ladle.

Straightening abruptly, and whirling around, I came face to face with Ellie.

'Oh! Good Lord, how long have you been there!'

She squinted at me.

'Ages 'n' ages. Did you mean to splash me?'

'No! No, you surprised me, that's all. Marks? What marks do you mean – ohhhh. Oh yes.'

Various scars from various wars. Rugby matches, Ulster, the Soviet Union, and latterly the UK. 'Well, you see, I was deep-sea diving in the Lemonade Sea, and a passing giant squid attacked me with his five hundred tentacles, all a mile long. I had to swim at a thousand miles per hour to the nearest sperm-whale and use his jaw to prise the monster free. Then I needed to scrape the whale loose against the wreck of the Titanic, and - the most dreadful thing happened!'

Ellie's face was a picture of disbelief and surprise.

'What!' she squeaked. 'What happened!'

'I was nearly late for tea,' I deadpanned, dipping my shirt in the barrel of water and putting it on.

'Awww!' she said, wrinkling her nose up. 'You big fibber!'

After that none of the small girls showed any fear of me, nor any respect either. Their mothers might look at me with all the fond regard a leper could expect; the daughters appeared to regard me as a human-shaped climbing frame that came with infinite patience as standard.

The treatment of John as a life-form akin to a rabid rat came to an abrupt end two days later, after a subdued but definite panic in the small hours of twilight. Minerva, looking tired and grumpy, flatly told us at breakfast (First Sun) that the garth of Holmlea had been attacked in the night by Sontarans. Tad, in exile there, had gotten away with the women and only four or five had been captured. "Four or five" sounded bad to me, if not to the women – thirty or forty had regularly gone missing before.

'We start on those devil's devices of Mister Walmsley's straight after breakfast,' said Minerva, daring anyone to answer her back. Faith, Gloria and Shona all began to protest.

'Be quiet!' snapped Minerva. 'I sent diagrams of what Mister Walmsley proposed to us over to Holmlea and they put up a barricade of barbed wire. Otherwise precious few would have escaped.'

Nobody said it, but the feeling persisted that if so few women had been captured at Holmlea then the Sontarans would arrive at Frangipani, looking for slaves. Work went on around the garth at a frantic pace; Olivia and the Fosters put an electromagnet in the bottom of a plastic bucket, then filled it with caltrops and turned the magnet on. That created an instant spinefield far quicker than my suggestion, racing around in a hovercar and hurling handfuls of caltrops. Encouraged by that, they began to adapt plastic buckets and electromagnets, creating enough for three buckets per household. When the alarm sounded, the buckets would propel their contents for hundreds of yards. Teams of stringers went out with massive coils of barbed wire, putting up a slim cordon that ran around the garth perimeter. The Foster's took on volunteers to cope with their workload, making three kilometres of wire with five-inch barbs. They cast hundreds of the spurred double-spike, which took the longest to prepare due to the timber stake it was forced into. We set up individual patches of these, off the roads, angled forward in the direction an attacker might come from, hidden in shadows or behind hedging or fencing. Gloria came up with the bright idea of ringing them with pegged-down yellow tape, making sure that nobody strayed into these gardens of spikes, and she had the next bright idea of ringing perfectly safe patches of ground, too, just to confuse an attacker.

Olivia brought news of the kind I'd been dreading in the early evening, whilst I was excavating a special surprise.

'The Traveller's on the link. Want's to speak to you.'

I was on a stringing team, far from the Corrigan house, so Olivia had come out in a tractor. We barrelled back at top speed.

'The stumpies will try to get at least one of your tractors,' I warned her. 'We smashed one to bits at the mine site.'

She patted a heavy-duty vacuum flask that dangled from her belt.

'Don't you worry about that, Mister John. I have a talent for mischief myself.'

The Doctor's voice sounded weary.

'Get ready for trouble, John. We've beaten off a major Sontaran attack here in Hollandia, at considerable cost. They'll be out for revenge, I expect. Failure at Holmlea means Frangipani is a definite target.'

'Are you okay? How's Clara?' I asked, instantly worried.

'I am, fortuitously, unharmed. Clara is fine. So is Salamander.'

Mention of his name creased my brow. Once a rotter, always a rotter. I still didn't trust him and didn't especially care if he got bludgeoned to bits by the toadies. Even if he was the reason we were out here in the first place, the swine.

'I've been demonstrating one or two methods of passive defence here, Doctor,' I warned. 'Ancient history to the women here, but likely to be effective at least the first time.'

Despite his aversion to violence, the Doctor sounded interested.

'Oh? You must tell me more when we have time. I have to go now, the Assembly impeached the Archate and an emergency replacement is being voted-in. Take care! Remember what I said about defending. Defending, not attacking.'

Minerva told me what she'd heard from Hollandia and the two battles there. Firstly, as the Doctor expected and (worryingly!) hoped for, the Sontarans sent a flight of their small, domed spaceships to Hollandia, landing in the Grand Piazza. Three ships, with five toadies aboard each, situated equally spaced from the TARDIS. Clara remained inside the spaceship, sternly warned by the Docotr and Headon, escorted by Salamander. When the stumpies landed, they found that their weapons didn't work – the Doctor's electronic stick doing it's magic again. Not only that, they found several dozen deputised Amalthean Law Officers lying in ambush and carrying rheon pistols. Officer Headon demonstrated that these worked by blowing a hole in one of the spaceships.

At that point, the Doctor's plan anticipated that the Sontarans would chuck in the towel and surrender, being mere unmotivated renegades. The ambush was a big fat bluff – the only real rheon pistol was the single one held by Headon, all the others being replicas – that same pistol taken from the Seraphim, impounded by the Archate, cut in two and then painstakingly repaired by the Doctor. However, several of the toadies decided to get physical with their daggers. Headon killed two of these and the other Sontarans began to wonder why the rheon pistols weren't being used. A short, ugly battle ensued. Salamander helped by emerging from the TARDIS with my elephant gun; the Doctor appropriated the Nitro and dropped two Sontarans with a single bullet each, in the leg, so they survived.

They and two others, badly cut about. Eighteen Law Officers were dead, and every other one was injured. The Doctor bitterly reproached himself for the deaths afterwards, but I don't see what else he could have done; he'd nearly succeeded in bluffing fifteen killers into surrendering to one woman with a pistol.

Mere hours after that, the Sontarans proved that they wanted the Doctor dead and were prepared to be complete bastards about it. One of their surviving Valt destroyers appeared high over Hollandia and began to blast the city with meson cannons. Safely enough for them, from a mile up. Desperate situations call for desperate measures and the Doctor's TARDIS suddenly vanished from the Grand Piazza after he made a dash for it when the bombardment began. The Amalthean's talking to Minerva thought, wrongly if justifiably, that he'd abandoned them – until TARDIS reappeared in the great square, glowing and smoking. The Doctor asked that nobody approach the spaceship until it had been washed down. Far above, the Valt destroyer turned into an expanding cloud of atomised vapour. Apparently, spaceships do that if a large object suddenly appears in the middle of their tellurian-powered engine pile –

This second brief battle caused approximately two thousand casualties in Hollandia. Minerva's contacts couldn't be more exact, since bodies were still being removed from collapsed buildings. The Law Officer's plotting with the Doctor came to fruition right then – they brought in every member of the Assembly who could be found, driving them to the steps of the Session House. The Assembly then voted to impeach the current Archate and elect an emergency version. Current Archate members were tracked down and tranquilised by surprise, mostly successfully so far. A few were missing, a few obeyed their Sontaran conditioning and died when approached.

That's where things stood at present. Minerva shook her head in shocked disbelief.

'Two thousand people killed or injured! I can't send Imogen back to that. Hollandia isn't safe.'

'Neither is Frangipani. You need to evacuate the kids, send them on to the nearest garth if you won't send them to Hollandia.'

My hard-headed advice. Silently, I wondered why the Sontarans didn't blast half the planet to bits when they arrived, establish a reign of terror, which seemed more their sort of thing.

The family groups in the garth chatted briefly over the radio, and agreed to send their daughters off to the next garth, eighty kilometres away. Olivia would take them in a hastily-converted trailer towed by a tractor, within thirty minutes.

The grimy-fingered mechanic took me off to one side before she left.

'Here, take this,' she hoarsely whispered, passing me her heavy-duty vacuum flask. 'Flash-frozen tractor fuel.'

'Great!' I replied. 'Just what every man wants. For cooling drinks?'

'No! Don't you – oh. Of course, you won't have this stuff back in the past.'

One crash course in flash-frozen tractor fuel later, I now knew that this stuff, if tipped from the flask onto a hot surface, would sublimate and rapidly ignite.

'Any part of a tractor engine or the exhaust system. Or try the kitchen microwave.'

Feeling a lot happier that the children were being evacuated, I was part of the crowd of women waving them off. I maintained my dignity and composure, and didn't weep and wail like some of the garth.

'Huh. Typical man. All the expression of a stone,' criticised Shona, snivelling and waving to her daughter as Olivia turned the engine over. Norma, Shona's partner, snivelled on Shona's shoulder.

'Oh, he's alright, mummy, even if he does have a willy,' cheerfully announced Ellie, waving goodbye.

There was no real comeback to that, apart from flushing like a fire engine. I'm also sure those peals of laughter were directed at me.

Bloody women!