Part Ten:Home is the Hunter

Arriving back at Aylesbury, to my surprise I found that many days had elapsed during our absence, revealed to begin with when I helped Tad to drag our weaponry back up and down down to the Armoury. Corporal Higgins sat in his booth, as he did when we left.

'Cor! Back again, sir?' He looked at the now considerably lighter golf-bag. 'Captain Beresford's been doing his nut, sir, since you took off with his FN.'

'I christened it for him, Corporal. Er – he had time to miss it?'

'You've been gone two weeks, sir,' replied Higgins, disapprovingly noting the wear and tear on every weapon we'd taken.

Two weeks! I'd sort of taken it for granted that the Doctor would return us mere minutes after he left.

Time to report back to the Brig, then. He wasn't in, Major Crichton deputising instead, creating a bit of an oh-dear situation.

'Report, on my desk by oh-nine hundred tomorrow, Captain Walmsley. Dates, times, places, names, to at least five thousand words length. Dismissed!'

'He is always like that?' asked Tad as I headed back to my office.

'Oh yes. Except that was pretty friendly for him.' I walked in to my office.

'No, don't get up, Lieutenant Munroe. I only came back to drop my golf-bag off.'

Yes, Nick had moved-in as BTO in my absence. He expressed surprise at seeing us, whilst wearing an air of furtive worry.

'What, you thought we were dead in a ditch somewhere? Thank you for that comment on my survival skills.'

We went down to the canteen, as the mess was closed for several hours yet. Over cups of segeant-major's tea, Tad agreed not to mention Clara to anyone if I refrained from mentioning his amorous slip. Technically his affair was two thousand years in the future, but that kind of argument carries no conviction with a wife.

Feeling more fortified with the best of Indian inside us, back we went to the Battalion Transport Officer's den. Nick had vanished like morning mist, leaving all the files in utter chaos – I found that he had them all up-to-date and accurate, however.

'Can you write up some notes for me to expand on?' I asked Tad. My calculation was that if we got sufficient bumf together then lovely and typewriter-friendly Sarah Jane Smith, the real one this time, could type them up. I spent an hour laboriously writing out longhand notes in biro before Lieutenant Eden stuck his head around the door.

'Oh! Sorry, sir, I was after another calendar from Lieutenant Munroe.' He retired at speed.

Calendar? Nick? The only dates he was interested in were edible ones. I smelt one of his scams.

The Guard Room log showed that Lieutenant Munroe had signed out hours ago.

'Taking delicate spares up to Castlemuir, sir,' explained the private on duty.

Oh yes? That was a two-day drive. What on earth was the scheming rascal up to?

In fact I was wrong in my assumption of guilt – he'd already been up to something and this was his escape method. I only realised that the next day, when I caught Lieutenant Spofforth tacking up a calendar on the noticeboard in his room.

'Tim – I need advice on motorbikes. I understand you did rallying and know the two-wheeled beasts more than I do?'

'Yes, sir!' he said, a touch of enthusiasm in his normally dour character. 'Cross-country or road? Sir?'

My attention had wandered to the calendar. "June" had Charlton Heston displayed, baring his chest as he did in "Planet of the Apes", looking sweaty and harassed.

'That's Charlton Heston.'

'Yes, sir. From Planet of the Apes. Outstanding film.'

'I don't know – I'm not convinced the ape's ammunition supply was sustainable long term.'

'One of my favourites, sir.'

'American actor. American film. Yet he's on the target range behind this building!'

A bit of an oddity, you'd have to agree.

'It was Lieutenant Munroe, sir. He's got a contact at Tangmere's Photo Reconaissance Unit who can gimmick photos.'

"July" was Kirk Douglas, wielding a sword. In our gymnasium.

'Aha! "Spartacus"! Excellent film, Tim. You get a real sense of what a Roman legion must have looked like in the attack.'

'Stanley Kubrick film, sir. For my money, the best director there is.'

'And mentioning money, I take it that some crossed Lieutenant Munroe's palm?

Spofforth admitted that freely.

'Cutting up the photographs takes a lot of fiddling about to make them seem realistic, sir, according to Nick.'

I suddenly realised exactly how Munroe got images of Kirk Douglas and Charlton Heston, and it certainly wasn't thanks to any photographic processing! Leaving him in charge of a polymorphic alien, a seemingly naïve alien to boot, was a major mistake on the Doctor's part.

Not only that, there appeared to be more calendars around Aylesbury. I'd taken the woman in a bikini displayed in the Guard Room to be a cheesecake model, but on closer examination it happened to be Raquel Welsh, draped on the bonnet of a UNIT Landrover. The next month had Sophia Loren in a wet dress, at Aylesbury's swimming pool.

I never discovered whether the rumours of Liz Shaw in a beachwear calendar were true or not, but I subtly put it about that anyone with a calendar like that had better bin it or risk loss of teeth.

No wonder Nick had gone scurrying off to the Outer Hebrides!

After hours of writing up notes on our jaunt to Magellania, I tracked Sarah down in the Doctor's lair.

'The real Sarah?' I asked, just to make sure.

'The one and only!' she replied, full of vim. Catching sight of the foolscap sheaf, she made a face.

'You owe me a special treat for that, John! How much is there here?'

'Aboutfivethousandwords,' I mumbled.

'A nice meal at a restaurant of my choice,' she declared. 'No, not with you,' she continued. 'With John Peel. I want to get more biography out of him.'

'Oh, right – "My cocaine, booze and floozy Hell", eh?' I commented sourly. Sarah smacked me round the chops with my notes.

'How dare you! John Peel is a thoroughly modest and down-to-earth man.'

'Oh,' I replied. I thought all disk jockey's were self-obsessed twods of the first order. Except that wouldn't square with his catching the Tube into London, would it, instead of having his chauffeur drive the Rolls.

'He met President Kennedy, you know,' said Sarah, turning back to her typewriter. 'When he worked in Texas.' She turned round to point a pistol-like finger at me. 'Plus, John, he loves music, unlike you. And you are definitely in my bad books for tempting me away from a trip in the TARDIS.'

My cunning plan to divert Sarah away from the Doctor thus ended up costing me thirty pounds.

Nick came sneaking back to Aylesbury days later, once I'd calmed down. I think the Doctor must have blithely told him about Amalthea and Clara and all our little excitements along the way, because Tad vehemently denied ever mentioning it.

'Let me get this straight,' asked Nick for the umpteenth time, hanging around my office. 'You were on a planet with no men, none at all. A planet with millions of women, some of whom, by the law of averages, must have been good-looking. Yet you hit it off with a green-skinned alien shapeshifter?'

'Don't push it,' I growled.

'Where is she now?'

'The Doctor dropped her and Winifred off on their very own planet. They can look after themselves pretty well.'

A look of huge amusement passed over my comrade's face.

'Winnie is the parent, right? Head of the planet. An alien queen in other words.'

'Stretching a point, but yes.'

'So that makes your girlfriend Clara a green-skinned alien princess! Did she have - '

I'm afraid I threw the sellotape at him.