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By Root 823 0

in here before, have you? Can I show you what I've got set up? I'd be interested in your opinion.' He got up from his workstation and moved to where the head of the Developmental Engineering Department was standing barely over the threshold of the lab.

'Pointless waste of time,' Finer said flatly.

'Is that your answer or your opinion?'

Both.'

Barry nodded. 'So what are you doing in here, Finer?' he asked, no longer bothering to keep the anger out of his voice. 'Aren't you afraid of catching some reputation-crashing virus?'

Finer's smile broadened slightly into what looked like a sneer.'Stupidity by association is always a danger.'

'As is respectability by association,' Barry sneered back. 'So make your point and leave. I wouldn't want to get a reputation as an establishment poodle.'

'One of my students is not working to his potential because your experiments; Finer stressed the word making it sound ludicrously inappropriate, 'are taking too much of his attention.'

'Maybe your course is boring crap,' Barry snapped. 'Maybe you're just not taking enough of his attention.'

'Josh Randall could be a talented engineer.' Finer's tone was pure contempt.

Stung, Barry said, 'As in train-driver presumably?' and immediately felt stupid and petty.

'You see,' Finer said loftily, 'that's the sort of ignorant prejudice developmental engineering comes up against constantly'

'I can't imagine what coming up against ignorant prejudice must be like,'

Barry remarked, hoping he sounded ironic rather than self-pitying.

Finer scowled. 'Finish what you're doing with Randall and let him get on with his real work.'

'Consider it done.' This time Barry had no trouble sounding wry.

'I mean it.' Finer poked a bony finger at Barry's face. 'I'm not going to let you ruin this kid.'

'Get out of the lab!' Barry felt the anger making his heart beat quicker and his breath get shorter.

'You call this a lab?' sneered Finer.

'I call this my lab,' Barry raged, and I advise you to get the hell out of it before I forget that I'm an inoffensive academic and give my full attention to kicking your bony arse!'

Finer bunched his fists and stared at Barry for a long moment as though considering whether to fight him or not. Finally he shook his head dismissively. 'I shall never understand why they let anyone like you on campus in the first place,' he said, and turned on his heel. 'But I'll make it my business to have you thrown off it if you keep on the way you're going!'

Barry followed him to the door of the laboratory and slammed it after him.

You arrogant pillock!' he shouted at the closed door. 'You do right to run away, you you chicken shit!' Then he locked and bolted the door just to be on the safe side and went back to his workstation to think about ways to widen the focus of his experiments. He would make Finer eat his words, preferably written in large letters on something disgusting.

The Doctor took a sip from the free sample of bottled water he had taken out of a Clearspring Water Company advertising display and looked at the flyers stapled to the notice board. One in particular caught his attention. 'If time travel were not impossible it would be pointless - a lecture by Professor Bill Parnaby,' he read aloud. He beamed down at Leela. "That should be fun,' he said. 'It's a couple of weeks away though. What do you think, shall we jump the TARDIS forward and go and argue with him?'

Leela finally managed to twist and flip open the dispenser nozzle on her bottle. If you could control the TARDIS in that way we would not be in this place,' she said reasonably, and squirted some of the water into her mouth.

'Are you sure? Perhaps I would have brought us here anyway'

Why?'

'To discuss impossibilities with Professor Parnaby.'

But you did not know of this man until we came here.'

'That's true,' the Doctor nodded. 'But I do know of him now. So I might have brought us here then. And as you know, then and now are relative and interchangeable.'

Leela sighed. 'You are making fun of me again.'