Frank looked on fascinated.

He heard a woman’s voice on the phone. ‘OK, what happened?’

‘I’m blaming the TARDIS,’ said the stranger.

‘Yeah, it’s all the

TARDIS’s fault. It’s got all these emergency systems. I turned them all off years ago. They kept going off and I couldn’t hear myself think.

Must have come back on. I’m at –’ he looked at Frank – ‘Where am I?’

‘Crediton Vale,’ said Frank.

‘Crediton Vale, disused bunker, must be about a mile and a half away. Lovely walk for you. I’m jealous. See you in a bit.’

‘Hold on, Doctor,’ said the woman’s voice urgently. ‘Something really weird and important. Two things actually. First, there’s this dig, and they’ve –’

‘Yeah, I’m there now. See you later. I can’t talk because I’m on someone else’s phone.’ He snapped the phone shut and handed it back to Frank. Then he rubbed his hands and looked down into the pit. ‘Digging,’ he said. ‘Don’t know if I like digging. Digging can be good, digging can be bad. Depending on what the diggers are digging up.’ He turned to Frank and gave a wide, wide smile. ‘I know. Shall I stop talking for a bit?’

Frank was looking at his phone’s screen. No bars. ‘The signal’s gone,’ he said.

‘Has it?’ replied the stranger innocently.

Frank pointed to the metal tube in the stranger’s hand. ‘What’s that? How did it do that?’

‘Don’t ask me,’ said the stranger. ‘Birthday present from my sister-in-law. I wanted a tie.’ He pointed over Frank’s shoulder to a long piece of rotted wood, one of their biggest finds so far, which was tagged and laid out on a long work table. ‘That’s the turning spike 13

from a Roman well, about AD 70. Tie your horse there, round and round it goes. Five minutes later one nice bucket of water, one very dizzy horse.’

Frank got up and followed him to the table, scratching his head.

‘I thought it was a supporting beam,’ he said. Something about this bloke made him feel like a beginner.

‘No, look at the edges. Too smooth for that.’ He reached out and shook Frank’s hand very tightly. ‘I’m the Doctor, by the way.’

‘Frank Openshaw. They said someone was coming down from London. . . ’

‘Did they?’ The Doctor saw another find on the table, a worn Roman coin. ’Ah, look at that. Nero. Takes me back.’ He knelt, slipped on a pair of glasses and chuckled at the man’s profile on the coin. ‘He was fatter than that.’ He pointed upwards. ’So, there was a Roman town there, right? And it went up in the revolt of Boudicca. The Britons chucked everything down into these caves. About 1950 the British government builds a great big bunker in the caves: centre of regional government. Looks like a bungalow up top, very secret. When the Cold War ends, someone goes to fill this place in and build some flats on the surface. Then they find this stuff and call you in. Am I right or what?’,

Frank swallowed. ‘Pretty much. OK, come and have a look at this.’

He led the Doctor to the pile of most recent finds and handed him a metal triangle. ‘Gardening tool?’

The Doctor shook his head sadly. ‘No, handle’s wrong. That’s a pizza slice. Except they didn’t have tomatoes then. It was more like herby cheese on toast. Cheesy naan actually. Yum.’ He took off his glasses, put them away and looked right at Frank. ‘Sorry. Am I being annoying?’

‘Didn’t catch your name,’ said Frank.

‘Just the Doctor. The. Doctor.’ He scratched the back of his neck.

‘Now, would I be wrong to think you’ve dug something up that you really, really don’t understand?’

Frank sighed. ‘And I suppose you’ll know just what it is.’.

14

The Doctor shrugged. ‘Might do. Sorry. Everybody loves a smar-tarse. . . ’

Frank pointed down a narrow corridor that led off the main dig.

‘Image on the right of the mosaic. Down there. Follow the lights.’

The Doctor gave him a thumbs-up and walked off. Frank stared after him and wondered. And the more he wondered, the odder the thoughts that came into his head.

One of the students broke into his thinking. ‘Frank!’ he called from the pit. ‘There’s something metal down here. Dead weird it is!’

The Doctor sauntered along the corridor. A standard lamp shone down on to a display case with a large, rough-edged mosaic inside.

The Doctor guessed that when the Britons had looted the Roman town above, they’d tossed it down into the caves too.

He saw what was depicted there and felt his hearts skip a beat. At the same moment he heard cries of excitement and surprise from the main dig. The radio was switched off.

He ran back. ‘Frank! Mr Openshaw!’

He emerged into the huge hollowed-out room and jumped down into the pit, striding over to where Openshaw and his workers were gathered in a far corner.

‘Get away from it!’ he called, pushing a couple of the students aside.

And found himself facing a Dalek.

15

CHAPTER FOUR

‘LOOKS LIKE A ROBOT,’ said Frank.

The thing had been unearthed hurriedly by the students. In their excitement they had forgotten that the first rule of archaeology was patience. Its base was still covered in earth and its sides were caked in lumps of dirt. It looked exactly like the thing in the mosaic. Its golden casing had lost its colour but it remained whole. Eye-stalk, sucker and stubby gun were lifted arrogantly. The Doctor waved a hand over the eyepiece. No reaction.

He seemed to consider for a second. Then, as Frank moved to touch it, he cried, ‘It’s a bomb! Step back from it, Frank!’

Frank pulled his hand back. One of the students looked the Doctor up and down, then asked, ‘Who’s this?’

Frank and the Doctor looked at each other. Somehow, Frank trusted this odd young stranger. ‘It’s the bloke from London,’ he heard himself saying, though he knew it wasn’t true.

The Doctor slapped the student’s arm down as he lifted it towards the gun stick. ‘And the bloke from London says get back!’ Then he grabbed a loud hailer from the floor of the pit and called, ‘Evacuate the area! I have authority from London and all that! Get up to the surface now!’

Frank wasn’t surprised when the students obeyed. But he found himself remaining.

The museum teashop opened early. Kate, who was the only customer, munched in a daze on a teacake while speaking on the phone to Serena. Getting angry with Serena was pointless – but still, Kate was getting angry. ‘Yes, I was nearly run over. Just now.’

‘Nearly run over running for the late bus, then?’ asked Serena’s dull, flat voice.

17

‘The “nearly run over” part of the sentence is the important bit!’

Kate snapped.

She felt a wave of anger rushing up inside her. Why did she have to even pretend to be polite to this idiot? The meaning of the phrase

‘seeing red’ suddenly became clear to her. She felt that if Serena had been there she could have picked up her butter knife and stabbed her.

But she wasn’t, so she flipped her mobile shut and grabbed the café’s copy of the paper from the counter. Idly, she turned to the puzzle page.

She might have a go at the easy crossword to calm herself down.

The sudoku puzzles caught her eye instead. She’d hardly bothered to look at them before – she’d always been rubbish at maths – but this morning the numbers seemed to dance in the air. Without even thinking about it she filled all the empty boxes in – for all three: the easy, hard and killer sudokus – her fingers whizzing across the page.

Then she looked at the crosswords. She filled in the blanks with letters easily, solving even the hardest clues in fractions of a second.

It was easy. Really easy. Why had she never noticed that before?

She looked around, taking deep breaths. Something in the world had changed – or was it inside her?

She could see the atoms dancing around the room. She knew the exact temperature of her coffee. She saw and understood the chemical processes taking place inside the cup. But this wasn’t like thinking.