Ben shrugged. 'Yeah, well, that proves everything then, doesn't it?' He rolled his eyes.

The Doctor was almost dancing about with poorly contained impatience. 'We're just wasting time,' he complained. He stared at the two Daleks, barely visible through the hatch in the capsule. 'Of course, as the Examiner I could always order them to destroy the Daleks.'

'Can you?' Polly asked eagerly. That would at least remove one of their problems. Whoever this person was and Polly couldn't decide whether she believed him or not if those creatures were Daleks, then they had to be destroyed. Mind you, if this stranger was lying about being the Doctor then he might just be lying about those things being Daleks as well. Maybe he only wanted them to believe that those machines were Daleks so they'd help him to destroy them. For all she knew, that could be why he was here. In which case, it was up to her and Ben to stop him from doing that. Her head was aching from all of the suspicions and uncertainties.

'I can try,' the little man answered. 'I must try.'

Ben grinned. 'Tell you what I think,' he offered.

The Doctor smiled back. 'I'd be most interested.'

'You wouldn't have done some funny kind of switch with the Doctor?' Ben asked. 'Just so you could get on this planet and make some sort of trouble here? Like over that?' He gestured at the capsule.

The stranger sighed and shook his head. 'Ben, for goodness sake, get your priorities right! The Daleks are more important than your childish suspicions.'

Ben grinned again, as if he'd proved his point. 'Yeah, but you see if I'd said a thing like that to the real Doctor, he'd have bitten my head off.' He shook his head. 'You're a phoney and you know it. Why not just admit it?'

The little man stared at Polly. Gently, she added: 'Tell us the truth. Please.'

'The truth is,' he replied crossly, 'the truth is whatever you choose to believe. But I am am the Doctor.' the Doctor.'

Before Ben could say anything else, the door slammed open. Lesterson strode in, his hair in a mess. He'd obviously been wakened from his rest. Beside him walked his a.s.sistant, Resno, who'd spotted Ben in the lab and had seized his chance to alert his boss.

'What do you think you're doing?' Lesterson snarled.

'Who gave you permission? You've no right to be in here, no right at all!'

The Doctor pulled the Examiner's ID from his pocket and virtually slapped it against the lens of the scientist's gla.s.ses. 'On the contrary, I have every right, and shouting doesn't help. Read this. Aloud.'

'Accord every access,' Lesterson read, reluctantly.

'Exactly,' the Doctor agreed. 'And it doesn't say "except for Lesterson's laboratory", does it?' Then, looking vaguely worried, he started to examine the pa.s.s. 'Unless it's in the fine print'

Knowing that he'd lost that battle, Lesterson tried a different tack. 'I should have been asked first,' he complained.

The Doctor gave an incredulous grunt. 'Why? So that you could hide the other two Daleks?' Without waiting for a reply, he rounded on Ben. 'What did you notice first when you looked in that capsule?' he demanded.

'Eh?' Ben hadn't been expecting this. 'Er, well, the Daleks.'

Sounding like a lawyer in a bad TV show, the Doctor asked, 'And you were astounded?'

'Well, yes.'

'Intrigued?'

'Er '

The Doctor whirled around to point an accusatory finger at Lesterson. 'Yet you you haven't even given the capsule a second glance! The inner door - which you claimed not to know how to open - is now open and you can see right in. But you didn't even look! Why? Because you've already been in there and seen them. Where's the third Dalek?' haven't even given the capsule a second glance! The inner door - which you claimed not to know how to open - is now open and you can see right in. But you didn't even look! Why? Because you've already been in there and seen them. Where's the third Dalek?'

Lesterson tried to look innocent. He didn't do a very good job of it, however. Ben thought he could take lessons from the so-called Doctor. 'I don't know what you're talking about,' Lesterson said.

'You opened the capsule without permission,' the Doctor said. 'You found that second door and opened it.

You discovered the three Daleks. You took one of them away and hid it. I want it back!'

'Those are all lies!' Lesterson protested.

'They're not lies,' the Doctor insisted. The door to the laboratory opened and Bragen strode in, accompanied by one of his inevitable guards. The Doctor didn't seem to even notice the intrusion. His whole attention was centred on Lesterson. 'You knew how to open the capsule too easily. Because you'd already done it.'

'Oh, thank you!' the scientist said sarcastically. 'It doesn't seem to have occurred to you how much time it took me to measure every single inch of the surface and '

'Stop it, stop it, stop it!' the Doctor cried, like a baby having a tantrum. When Lesterson fell silent, the Doctor glared at him. 'I want the third Dalek. Where is it?'

Bragen stepped forward, determined to control whatever was happening here. 'May I ask what this is all about?' he asked coldly.

Polly gave him her very best smile. 'We opened the inner door to the capsule only to discover Lesterson had already been inside.'

For the first time Bragen looked across at the capsule.

His eyes widened as he saw the inner door now open.

The Doctor pointed to Bragen's astonished look. 'That's how you'd have reacted if you were telling the truth,' he informed Lesterson. 'You're playing about with things you don't understand.'

Realizing there was no further point in lying, Lesterson said defiantly, 'All right. I admit it, I was in there'

'And you nicked a Dalek!' Ben accused.

'Dalek?' Bragen was rapidly losing his grip on the situation, which was doing little to improve his temper.

'Do you know what Daleks are?' the Doctor asked, almost in tears. He couldn't come right out and ask them what year this was. That would ruin any credibility he had in their eyes. He had been hoping almost praying that it was some time after the Daleks had invaded the Earth.

'I presume it's the name you've given to those two metal creations,' Lesterson replied, deflating the Doctor's hopes completely. Humanity on Earth had not yet met the Daleks.

'Yes,' the Doctor agreed. 'And they're worse than anything you can possibly imagine in a million years!'

'Lumps of metal,' Lesterson scoffed. 'They're quite inactive.'

Recalling the scratching sounds that he'd heard in the capsule made Ben shudder. 'That's what you think, mate,'

he said.

'They're dead,' Lesterson insisted.

The Doctor caught Ben's eye before he could blurt out what they had been searching for. He gave a slight shake of his head and a mournful no no note on his recorder. Knowing Lesterson's pa.s.sion for this thing, news of a living being inside it would only spark further foolish attempts to research it. 'Dormant, not dead,' he said, gesturing at the two Dalek machines. 'I want them broken up or melted down. Up or down - I don't care which. Just do it!' note on his recorder. Knowing Lesterson's pa.s.sion for this thing, news of a living being inside it would only spark further foolish attempts to research it. 'Dormant, not dead,' he said, gesturing at the two Dalek machines. 'I want them broken up or melted down. Up or down - I don't care which. Just do it!'

Lesterson reared back, furious. 'I refuse to allow it!'

'You're very pig-headed!' Polly snapped, unable to control herself any longer. 'You must listen.'

'Polly,' Ben said, plucking at her arm and trying to get her to quieten down. But it was to no avail. Only Polly got started, she was harder to stop than a battleship.

'No, Ben.' She nodded at the Doctor. 'He may well be right. Those... things give me the creeps.'

'The creeps!' Lesterson scoffed. 'How terribly scientific.

Keep out of this.' He turned his back on her, treating her like a stupid child intruding on the talk of adults. He rammed his finger almost into the Doctor's face. 'I'm warning you all of you keep away from my laboratory.

Keep your hands off my experiments.'

Bragen tried once again to regain charge of things.

'Gentlemen,' he said winningly, 'please! Shall we just '

'I'm the Examiner,' the Doctor yelled at Lesterson, completely ignoring the security man. 'I demand that those Daleks be destroyed!'

'You're exceeding your authority,' Lesterson snapped back.

'Perhaps we should let the Governor decide that,' the Doctor replied, and rounded on Bragen. 'I want to see the Governor immediately.'

'That won't do you any good,' Lesterson said.

'I'm afraid he'll be asleep,' Bragen explained, glancing at the clock on the laboratory wall. It was, after all, the middle of the night.

'Then we'll wake him up,' the Doctor said. 'I'm going to wake you all up. You don't know the danger of the Daleks and I do!' Spinning on his heels, he marched straight for the door. Like a procession, Ben and Polly fell in behind him Bragen directed a glance at Lesterson and Resno and then followed. The silent security guard was the last to leave.

Resno closed the door and turned back to his boss.

'Could he stop the experiments?' he asked.

'I don't know!' Lesterson snapped. He was polishing his gla.s.ses again, a sign of great agitation. 'Anyway, that's none of your concern.' He thought feverishly. If that idiot did convince Hensell, there might be trouble. Hensell hadn't actually given his approval for what Lesterson had done so far, and he was angling for a solid reason to reprimand him publicly. This could be all the excuse he'd need. Lesterson glared at Resno, as if it were somehow all his fault. 'Go and get Janley and come back yourself. We haven't got much time left.' Resno nodded and opened his mouth. 'Hurry up, Resno!' Couldn't he see that this was an emergency?

'Quickly, man, quickly!' The urgency in Lesterson's voice finally seemed to sink in. Resno set off at a trot down the corridor. Lesterson locked the door behind him. Then he crossed to the capsule.

The compartment containing the two... Daleks? Why on Earth did this idiotic Examiner call them that? Giving these machines names, like they were pets or something!

They were robots, that was all - alien robots, granted, but they could represent an incredible breakthrough for him.

Reaching into the right-hand side of the hatch, Lesterson triggered a small panel that the Doctor hadn't spotted. The right-hand wall slid quietly open to reveal another chamber. Inside it rested the missing Dalek. As the Doctor and Polly had guessed, Lesterson had already begun his work on it. He'd opened the lid of it to discover a computer inside of incredible complexity and built to some alien system of logic. It hadn't taken him more than a few moments to realize that all it needed to bring the machine on line was power. He'd begun to connect cables to recharge the Dalek when he'd been forced to hide the machine away and pretend he'd never been inside the capsule.

Lesterson was utterly convinced he was doing the right thing. Scientific progress could never be served by listening to the rantings of Luddite fools like the Examiner, or the silly superst.i.tious fears of the girl who a.s.sisted him. Small steps, carefully taken, were what was required. And he was being forced to take the next step before he'd had time to fully evaluate his previous stages.

'He won't stop me experimenting,' Lesterson promised the machine. 'There must be a way to bring you back to life. And I'm going to find it.'

He had very little idea that he had in fact already partially succeeded in his quest. The Dalek machine was still completely inoperative. But inside the still-hidden compartments of the craft, the single living Dalek creature was very active indeed.

10.

Plenty of Nuts Bragen ushered the Doctor politely but firmly back into the room he had been a.s.signed. Ben and Polly stuck with him, determined to have a council of war as soon as Bragen vanished. The security head was doing his best to be charming. It wasn't his fault that he wasn't very good at it.

'Of course you do have the right of any access,' he told the Doctor, who promptly whipped out the Examiner's badge and waved it in front of Bragen's eyes.

'I don't need you to tell me that,' he said peevishly. 'It's right here in black and white.'

'But Lesterson watches over his ideas like a mother hen, you know,' Bragen continued, fighting to keep his temper.

This little man really irritated him.

'So you're advising me to be discreet? Is that it?' The Doctor glared up at Bragen. 'If you knew there was a bomb under this floor set to go off in five minutes, would you ask my permission to rip up the floor boards to get at it? I doubt it.' His eyes narrowed as he realized there was something different about the room since he'd sneaked out earlier. They fastened on a bowl on the bedside table. It contained bananas, nuts, apples, cherries and a small bunch of grapes. 'Ah! Fruit!' He dashed across to the bowl and picked up a banana. After polishing it on the shabby edge of his coat, he then replaced it and repeated the actions with an apple.

Bragen seemed at a loss, watching the Doctor buffing the fruit. 'It's up to you, of course,' he said, 'but I would counsel a low-key approach in your investigations. Of course, if you were to tell me why you're here and what it is you are examining, then I could offer my help.'

The Doctor didn't even bother to look up from the bowl as he started work on the cherries. 'Yes, I'm sure you'd love to help'

'Well, it's not a very good time at the moment,' Bragen snapped. 'What with all of these disturbances.'

'Disturbances?' Polly asked. People like Bragen had a whole dictionary of euphemisms - such as nuclear device nuclear device when they meant when they meant atomic bomb atomic bomb. Or disturbances disturbances when they meant things like when they meant things like murders murders.

The security head waved his hand dismissively. 'Oh, little acts of sabotage. Secret newspapers. Rebel cliques.

Nothing important, you understand, but it does keep the Governor busy. I expect he'll tell you about it himself if he thinks that it's important enough.'

c.o.c.king his head to one side, the Doctor gave Bragen a thoughtful stare that seeemd to unnerve the man. Hensell had already alluded to rebels, and here was Bragen the man responsible for stopping such activities carefully drawing attention to them. There seemed to be some kind of power play going on, as well as some not-too-subtle attempts to guide his investigations. Not for the first time, the Doctor wished he knew who had called the dead Examiner here, and why.

Bragen took the Doctor's scrutiny for silent criticism.

'The Governor's going off on a tour of the perimeter in the morning,' he explained. 'He has to check up on the progress in the mines and extraction centres, as well as with the shipments back on Earth. I'm sure you understand that he's a very busy man. But I'll check if he can see you before he goes, shall I?'

The Doctor was busily shaking an apple up and down in the air. 'Oh, please do,' he said. Bragen gave him a rather wintry smiled and then left the room.