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Finer looked down at the small, dark man beside him and raised an eyebrow. 'Childlike perhaps.'

Parnaby shook his head more vigorously, and said with mock disdain, 'It was childish. Why didn't you just bang on his lab door and run away?'

Finer smiled. 'I would have done but he'd probably have included that in his poltergeist data.'

Parnaby chortled, unable to suppress his amusement any longer. 'Is it possible,' he suggested, 'that you might be the teeniest bit envious?'

'Of?'

'The Kellerfield Research Fellowship.'

'The science of "things that go bump in the night"? Oh please.' It was Finer's turn to be disdainful, though in his case it was genuine. 'Credit me with a little more taste if not integrity'

'I'm glad to see you're not depressed anyway,' Parnaby commented.

Depressed?' Finer frowned. 'Why should I be depressed?'

'It's reading week.'

'So?'

Parnaby shrugged a small, slightly embarrassed shrug. 'I've noticed you tend to get a bit withdrawn around this time of year.'

Finer looked surprised. 'I do?'

'A touch of seasonal affective disorder perhaps?'

'Maybe reading week gives me time to think about the waste of resources in general and our friend Hitchins in particular. That's enough to depress anybody'

They had reached the tiny room which Parnaby had been allocated by office administration with, as he told it, a rather dismissive: you're a thinker for God's sake, how much space do you need anyway? Parnaby unlocked the door. 'I'm told his funding is particularly generous,' he said. 'No converted cupboards for the Kellerfield Research Fellow'

'Now who's being envious?' Finer asked, following him in and flopping down in the more comfortable of the two small armchairs which took up all the space not occupied by an untidy desk and some overstacked book shelves.

'I make no secret of it,' Parnaby said. 'I would kill for a study like he's got and enough money not to have to do any more popcorn lectures on piffle like time travel and the paradoxes thereof.'

'You love it,' Finer scoffed.

'This is not what I was led to expect from academic life in general and my academic life in particular,' Parnaby sighed, rooting through precarious stacks of paper.

'What you mean is,' Finer was grinning, 'nobody told you it was going to be this much fun.'

Parnaby did not look up from his search. 'Define fun.'

'Playing the wild man of philosophy for all those impressionable young females? You don't get them queuing to hear my lectures.'

'If your next observation is that philosophy is the new rock-and-roll I shall throw up that meagre and revolting lunch you just bought me.'

Finer did his best to look hurt. "The Developmental Engineering Department's not short of funds, but our sponsors demand detailed accounts and they frown on frivolity.'

'You mean you're going to charge it to expenses?' Parnaby found the notes for his forthcoming lecture on the impossibility of time travel and proffered them. Have I mentioned that you're the stereotypical mean Yorkshireman?'

On a number of occasions.' Finer got up from the chair and accepted the lecture notes without smiling. 'Thanks for these. I'm interested to understand your reasoning.'

'You could have come along and listened,' Parnaby suggested. 'I do take questions from the floor'

'I can't sit in your audiences,' Finer said. I find all that screaming and seat-wetting distracting. I suppose it's inevitable though,' he smiled. 'Philosophy being the new rock-and-roll.'

They stood outside the TARDIS looking round at the wood and the pastures beyond. The leaves of some of the deciduous trees were showing hints of yellows and reds. There were black fruits on the tangles of barbed creepers and shiny red seed pods on rambling thorn bushes. Everything was bathed in cool, early autumn sunshine which cast light shadows and deepened and enriched the pale colours of the ripe meadow grasses in the nearby fields. The Doctor was entranced. 'This is Earth,' he said beaming delightedly. 'I