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'If you've got trouble with your central-heating thermostat,'

said the Doctor, striding back into the hall, 'lead me to it. You can be getting on with your work while I fix your central-heating. I like tinkering with things. Where is it?'

By now Dr. Quinn was perspiring and not only through the heat. 'Where is what?' he asked a little irritably.

'The thermostat,' said the Doctor. 'The place is as hot as the reptile-house in the zoo. It's very unhealthy.' The Doctor looked around the hall, and saw a door under the stairs. 'Is that where it is?'

He made to open the door, tried the handle and found it locked.

'That is just a store-room,' said Dr. Quinn. 'The thermostat is in there, but I'd much rather you left it alone. It's still under guarantee, you see. I must call in the people who installed it.'

The Doctor stopped and turned to smile at Dr. Quinn.

'Wise fellow. If I tamper with it you will break the conditions of the guarantee.'

'Exactly,' said Dr. Quinn, clearly much relieved.

'I shall leave you in peace then,' said the Doctor, going towards the front door. 'By the way, are you related to Sir Charles Quinn?'

'He's my father,' said Dr. Quinn.

'He did a great deal of the early work on smashing the atom,'

said the Doctor. 'No wonder you went into nuclear physics.'

'There was no option,' said Dr. Quinn. 'One didn't argue with my father.'

The Doctor paused on the doorstep. 'Oh? Did you want to do something else?'

'As a boy I was interested in geology. My father thought that rather childish. Learning about the history of our planet doesn't do anything, like making wheels go round.'

The Doctor felt rather sorry for Dr. Quinn. 'I imagine being the son of a famous scientist isn't easy,' he said.

Dr Quinn tried to cheer himself up with a smile. 'Oh, I don't know. I may be famous myself one day. In science you never know what's going to happen next.'

'That's true,' said the Doctor. 'You never know. Well, thank you for letting me see inside your charming house. I shall have to get along.'

The Doctor went back to the Jeep and drove away slowly. He knew that Dr. Quinn was hiding something, but he didn't know why.

As soon as he got back to the research centre he found Liz, and told her of his suspicions about Dr. Quinn, and started to search the man's office. Liz was nervous. 'What if he comes back and catches us in here?' she said.

'He won't be coming back,' said the Doctor, opening the drawers of Dr. Quinn's desk, 'at least not for the time being. I believe he's got a visitor in that little house of his, someone who needs to be kept very warm.' The Doctor took from a drawer the cast of a fossil.

'Look, a trilobite.'

Liz looked. 'The first animals that came up from the sea. Why is he interested in fossils?'

'It's his first love,' said the Doctor, turning his attention now to a cupboard. 'He didn't really want to be a physicist...' His voice trailed off as he found a sheaf of papers in the cupboard and started to read them. 'These are notes he's made about the beginning of life on this planet.'

Liz looked into the cupboard, took out a plastic ball with markings on it. 'Surely these marks mean something?' she said.

The Doctor looked at the ball for a moment. 'It's a crude globe of the Earth when all the land masses were joined together. You see,'

he said, pointing, 'there is the western outline of the Americas. That's how the Earth was before the Great Continental Drift, two hundred million years ago.'

They both looked at the globe in wonder, and didn't notice Miss Dawson as she entered the office. In a loud voice she asked,

'Have you Dr. Quinn's permission to be in here?'

The Doctor and Liz spun round, caught red-handed. The Doctor put on his most charming smile. 'As a matter of fact, no,' he said. 'But I must find out what is going on here before anyone else is killed.'

'If you're talking about the potholer,' said Miss Dawson, with rising anger, 'I don't see that gives you any excuse to pry into another person's personal possessions.'

'Not only the